Jul 122025
 


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

 

Bongino and Patel May Resign If Pam Bondi Stays As Attorney General (Margolis)
Tensions Explode Between Bongino And Bondi Amid DOJ Epstein Memo Fallout (ZH)
Is This What Happened to the Epstein Client List? (Margolis)
Flux Rules (James Howard Kunstler)
Trump Attempts to Slow the Inertia of War (CTH)
Trump’s Renewal of America Has Gone Dramatically Wrong (Paul Craig Roberts)
Sen. Kennedy Skewers Comey and Brennan (Margolis)
Trump Threatens Canada With 35% Tariff If It Does Not Help With Fentanyl (JTN)
Sen. Ron Johnson Prepares Subpoenas For DOJ, FBI in Butler Shooting Probe (JTN)
Europe Is Losing – Jamie Dimon (RT)
JPM CEO Jamie Dimon: Democrats “Idiots” Obsessed With Failed Wokeism (ZH)
EU ‘Has No Money Except For War’ – Hungarian Official (RT)
Western European Leaders Dragging Continent Toward War With Russia – Lavrov (RT)
Relations With US Will Never Be The Same – von der Leyen (RT)
Kiev Needs Ceasefire By The End of 2025 – Ukrainian Spy Chief (RT)
Zelensky Claimed He ‘Never Heard Of’ Ukrainian Nazi Crimes – Duda (RT)
The West Mocked BRICS For Years But Now It’s Paying Attention (Lukyanov)
France Opens Criminal Case Against Musk’s X (RT)

 

 

Benz

Scott

Reagan
https://twitter.com/mcucolo57/status/1943379084051927438

 

 

 

 

“This isn’t just about how Epstein died; it’s about whether the deep state inside the Department of Justice can finally be exposed and held to account.”

Bongino and Patel May Resign If Pam Bondi Stays As Attorney General (Margolis)

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is on the verge of walking away from the bureau over what insiders are calling a full-blown crisis of confidence. According to a source close to Bongino who spoke with The Daily Wire, he’s issued an ultimatum: either Attorney General Pam Bondi goes or he does. The standoff stems from Bongino’s growing frustration with Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which he sees as a betrayal of the public’s right to the truth. The source says Bongino is “furious” and feels that he can’t in good conscience continue working alongside Bondi. After taking the job in February, he had hoped to help restore trust in the FBI, but Bondi’s alleged stonewalling has made that mission impossible. “He’s done if she stays,” the source said bluntly. “He’s not backing down.”

As PJ Media previously reported, Bongino’s frustration with Bondi has reached a breaking point over her handling of the Epstein investigation. Once promising a bombshell about Epstein’s so-called “client list,” Bondi has since backpedaled, claiming she was misunderstood and that the “file” on her desk was just routine paperwork. The DOJ, under her leadership, now insists there’s no evidence of a client list, no sign of blackmail, and no indication Epstein was murdered. For those demanding answers, this reversal isn’t just disappointing; it’s infuriating. But the story has gotten even bigger. According to independent journalist Nick Sortor, FBI Director Kash Patel is also considering resigning if Bondi stays on and Bongino leaves.

Axios previously reported that both Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel are “furious” with Bondi over the blowback her handling of the Epstein files has caused them. Bongino reportedly did not come into work on Friday. This isn’t some petty bureaucratic spat; it’s a crisis of trust. Bongino’s absence from the FBI after a heated exchange with Bondi signals how serious things have become. His once-busy social media has gone silent. One source close to him summed it up: “He ain’t coming back.” Officially, the administration claims he’s still on the job, but the writing is on the wall.

The DOJ’s memo concluding there was no client list was a slap in the face to anyone who’s paid attention. No client list? No blackmail? No reason to investigate further? That’s not a conclusion; it’s a cover-up. Epstein’s entire operation was built on compromising the elite. To suggest that he acted alone defies logic and insults the intelligence of the American people. What this country needs right now isn’t more spin or bureaucratic buck-passing — we need the truth. Real answers. Real accountability. Not some carefully worded memo designed to dodge the most damning questions. Bongino and Patel understand exactly what’s at stake. This isn’t just about how Epstein died; it’s about whether the deep state inside the Department of Justice can finally be exposed and held to account.

Read more …

It looks very bad on Trump if he loses Patel and Bongino, just like it looked good when he brought them in. Bondi has a much more chequered past. But he won’t want to let her go either.

Tensions Explode Between Bongino And Bondi Amid DOJ Epstein Memo Fallout (ZH)

Speculation is mounting that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is furious over the Department of Justice’s explosive memo concerning Jeffrey Epstein, with anonymous sources claiming he has issued a stark ultimatum to the White House: dismiss Attorney General Pam Bondi or he will resign from his position. Axios, citing four sources familiar with the matter, reported Friday morning that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino was absent from work following a heated confrontation with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Washington insider outlet noted that Bongino’s absence sparked speculation about whether he had resigned, though a White House source quickly clarified that he remains in his role at the FBI.

This week, federal law enforcement released a memo asserting that an “exhaustive review” of evidence from Jeffrey Epstein’s death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City conclusively ruled out murder. “Following a comprehensive investigation, FBI investigators determined that Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell on August 10, 2019,” the memo stated. The agencies also firmly denied the existence of a “client list” linked to Epstein, directly contradicting earlier statements by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi had previously claimed on Fox News that such a list was “sitting on my desk” for review, fueling speculation about Epstein’s alleged blackmail of global elites.

By Friday afternoon, reports indicated that tensions between FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino and Bondi were escalating, with the FBI official reportedly contemplating resignation if Bondi remains in her role. “Source close to Dan Bongino tells me it’s either him or Pam Bondi, and that he won’t stay at FBI if she stays at DOJ,” The Daily Wire’s White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan posted on X. Independent journalist Julie Kelly corroborated Olohan’s reporting, writing on X: “Sources confirm to me the blow up between Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi is very real. This has been brewing for four months and came to a head at the White House on Wednesday.”

https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1943724569333788760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1943724569333788760%7Ctwgr%5E282c62e15638351eb281e156bb768b0bd8ae9c8e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Ftensions-explode-between-bongino-and-bondi-amid-doj-epstein-memo-fallout-reports

https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1943726798488936588?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1943726798488936588%7Ctwgr%5E282c62e15638351eb281e156bb768b0bd8ae9c8e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Ftensions-explode-between-bongino-and-bondi-amid-doj-epstein-memo-fallout-reports

“He has not been in the office since. Most of the frustration at [the] FBI relates to her handling of Epstein disclosures and disputes between [the] FBI and Bondi about how to proceed,” Kelly continued. “Bongino appears ready to resign imminently if Bondi remains in office,” she added.Fox News sought comment from the White House on whether President Donald Trump was satisfied with Bondi, to which Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded that the president is “proud” of his attorney general. “The President is proud of the attorney general’s efforts to execute his Make America Safe Again agenda, restore the integrity of the DOJ, and bring justice to the victims of crime,” Leavitt said.

“The continued fixation on sowing division in President Trump’s cabinet is baseless and unfounded in reality.” On Tuesday, Trump dismissed questions about Epstein during a press exchange. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said, while taking questions during a Cabinet meeting. “You’re asking – we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable. I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.”

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“..he believes that the Biden administration intentionally destroyed the Epstein client files to protect powerful individuals.”

Is This What Happened to the Epstein Client List? (Margolis)

Every time the topic of Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous client list surfaces, the American public is treated to a familiar dance: officials dodge, the media obfuscate, and the powerful breathe a sigh of relief. After years of waiting for the Epstein client list to see the light of day, the Trump administration says the list doesn’t exist. On Thursday, Alan Dershowitz came out and said that’s not true and that he saw it when he had to defend himself from false accusations of being an Epstein client. If the list does exist, what happened to it? Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) has a theory. In a recent interview with NewsNation, Burchett told host Leland Vittert that he believes that the Biden administration intentionally destroyed the Epstein client files to protect powerful individuals.

“I think the files existed at one time,” Burchett said. “I think they were destroyed in the previous administration… and if they’d ever had anything on Trump, it would have been out day one under the Biden administration.” When Vittert agreed, Burchett continued, suggesting that the real reason the files remain hidden is because of who they might implicate. “I think there’s some very prominent people. There’s Hollywood people, but I think there’s world leaders too. And would it have caused economic disruption around the globe? Maybe. But I don’t really care.” Vittert asked if the hesitation to release names might be due to fear of unjustly tarnishing people who may have interacted with Epstein but did nothing wrong. Burchett rejected the idea and instead pointed to Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction:

“What’s Ms. Maxwell doing in jail? What did she do? Where is that… you know, who did she provide whatever she did? Why is she in jail? That’s gotta be a question that should be asked at some point.” He was blunt about the finality of the situation: “Dead men tell no tales. He’s dead.” Vittert pressed him to clarify: Was he saying that the Trump administration destroyed the files? “No, I think they destroyed everything,” Burchett replied, referring to the Biden administration. When Vittert asked former special prosecutor Pam Bondi wouldn’t say that directly, Burchett speculated, “Because she doesn’t have any proof of it. I’m just telling you what I think.” He went on to criticize Bondi’s handling of the situation. “I think she’s got over her skis pretty much, saying all this stuff — ‘The files are on my desk. I’m gonna release it.’ — and then she releases stuff that I knew.”

Burchett said he based his belief on his own instincts and experience in Washington. “I’ve been around this town enough. I just don’t think they exist. I think they did at one time.” He tied it back to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal: “You got an administration that lied and said Hunter Biden’s laptop didn’t exist… You had 30 of the top so-called intelligence people in the country say that, and they didn’t get chastised by anybody but y’all and a couple of others.” Burchett doesn’t trust the official story and doesn’t believe that the truth about Epstein will ever come out.

Read more …

“We’re trapped in a structure. We named the Structure ‘Jeffrey Epstein’.” — Eric Weinstein

Flux Rules (James Howard Kunstler)

No one in America — not even the most deranged, spike-faced, pink-haired transtifas — believes the latest Epstein story as played out by Mr. Trump and AG Bondi in this week’s cabinet parlay: nuthin to see, just a bunch of pointless child porn, fuggeddabowdit. . . But stay! Much is moving, flowing unseen. The world is yugely in flux, large events in human affairs are in motion, many things are breaking, rotating, dissolving and re-forming, while others wind into giant hairballs. . . so many players acting as though they live in one great hall of mirrors, and treachery abides at every turn. Nobody seems to be actually managing any of it, though there is plenty of pretense, jockeying, staging. The public’s anger and anxiety rise in tandem.

One thing about Epstein is likely certain: it was an intel operation. And one thing is probable: it was a joint operation between the CIA, Israel’s Mossad, and the UK’s MI6. The object: to get as many political poohbahs on-the-hook for disgraceful behavior of the lowest kind and blackmail-able. Under the thumb. Theories and suppositions abound. If Mr. Trump was in on the Epstein sex shenanigans, as Elon blurted this week, why did the Democratic Party not go after him for it in three election campaigns (and all the many months in between)? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Elon appears to be losing his shit. His CEO at “X” bailed on him this week. His A-I app, Grok, started spouting Hitler gags, and his empire of world-beating genius is tottering on a broken business model.

You can write all that Elon stuff off as a sideshow for now — wildly grotesque as it may be. But what is actually going on in the three rings of this circus? Flux in the Middle East is one. Whatever else the “Twelve Day War” was about, it’s the end of Israel threatening to bomb Iran’s nuke program out of existence. We’ve done that favor for them, or pretended to, as some are saying, kabukied it out. So, Israel, shut up about that for now . . . is the policy. One story is that the actual Epstein material, whatever still exists, that is, which might reside in multiple locations, is so destructive to the architecture of global leadership that it must be squelched for the sake of majorly realigning forces, tensions, and polities across the Middle East, namely, the Abraham Accords. Getting all that lined up is more important to Mr. Trump for the moment than defenestrating the various perverts-in-office around Western Civ. It just is. . . so. . . gotta lump it.

Let’s surmise that the president has learned a lot about the intel hall of mirrors over the past decade, but especially lately, in his second term, from DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who has access to every document in the bottomless pit of the intel archives. The President knows he is not exactly in control of his intel “community.” And he aims to do something about it. You could make the case that the so-called “community” is just a giant criminal syndicate engaged in the most nefarious activities ongoing in this world of sin: human trafficking, drugs, money-laundering, weapons, every off-the-book turpitude you could imagine. Nor is John Ratcliffe exactly in control of his own agency, though he can utilize some of its services. . . but more about that later.

Forget about Bondi’s gaffe. She is just following orders, as are Messrs. Patel and Bongino, standing down, good soldiers, and only on the Epstein business. You can’t even rule out the possibility that Jeffrey Epstein is not dead. Was it suicide? Or an escape? Shall we say, a rendition to parts unknown? I would not assert that, just proffer it as a possibility, since the events of that night in the Manhattan federal lockup were so astoundingly sketchy — the sleepy guards, the broken CC cameras, the missing minute in the one camera recording that worked, the suicide-proofed jail cell. . . . But, then, the autopsy reports. . . performed upon. . . whom, exactly. . . ?

There is parallel matter of Ukraine to consider. Mr. Trump is yugely frustrated by his inability to put a quick end to it, to make that golden deal with Russia. The Ukraine War is the globalists desperate final project, its last stand. By saying which, let’s assume that the Globalists are “a thing,” a combo of the UK’s remaining potent assets (MI6 and the City of London financial octopus), the megalomaniacal EU bureaucratic leadership (von der Leyen & Co.), and the WEF-Davos gang. Ukraine was their instrument to break up Russia. The project has failed. Yet the war goes on. Mr. Trump says he was not even informed about Ukraine’s recent long-range drone attack deep into Russia, to take out its strategic bombers. Wasn’t informed? WTF???

Was it because the CIA has gone rogue over in Ukraine? Running the war their way — and not even Mr. Ratcliffe has a handle on all that? Consequently, Mr. Trump is yugely embarrassed in his many skull sessions with Mr. Putin. And thus, Mr. Putin seeks to bring about an end to this enormous pain-in-the-ass situation by simply winning the war. Which he is doing. His terms have been simple, plain, and straightforward from the get-go: a disarmed, neutralized Ukraine that must surrender the Donbas provinces, end-of-story, and don’t even mention Crimea because there’s nuthin to talk about there. And, of course, regime change in Kiev. . . eighty-six on Nazis, thank you.

Read more …

Excellent from Sundance.

“Now Sending Weapons to NATO Instead of Ukraine..”

Trump Attempts to Slow the Inertia of War (CTH)

Everyone can see the play by President Trump. Essentially, the “coalition of the willing” (U.K, Germany, France) are not willing to go to war against Russia without the United States in front of them. Giving the coalition the weapons puts the consequences of their use on the heads of NATO allies. Despite the majority of Washington DC, specifically the Senate thirsting, pleading and demanding an expanded NATO war, President Trump does not want to go to war against Russia. However, simultaneously Trump has to try and steer the war machine controlled by DC, the Senate, USIC and NATO. The INERTIA for expanded war is evident. President Trump is now trying to split the baby regarding Russia, by sending patriot missiles and weapons to NATO as opposed to sending them directly to Ukraine.

In February Marco Rubio earnestly and honestly said, “The Ukraine conflict is a proxy war for the United States against Russia.” President Trump has concurred with that statement and through his prior comments he attempted to extricate the U.S. from this dynamic. The shipment of missiles to NATO instead of Ukraine is simply a way of trying to stop direct support, yet Trump is forced by the inertia toward war to maintain a footing of expanded conflict with Russia. To be very clear, Russian President Vladimir Putin is clear-eyed on this situation with NATO, and he has been all along. Putin has said repeatedly that NATO was/is in direct conflict against Russia despite Ukraine not being a NATO member. This conflict with NATO well precedes Putin’s decision to conduct a ‘special military operation’ within Ukraine.

Now, we see through Trump’s approach the dropping of pretenses. Putin was correct. With NATO directly providing the war weapons to Ukraine there is no pretense, no doubt. NATO countries are funding an offensive war against Russia using a non NATO proxy state, Ukraine. As I have said, this western triggering has always been the inertia for war, and that war is now likely to expand as a result of NATO and even, unfortunately, President Trump’s approach. The only thing that works in his/our favor is the cowardice of the U.K, France and Germany to fight Russia without the USA. President Trump may try and distance himself and by extension the USA from this consequence of expanded conflict. But the consequence exists regardless of the obfuscation. We are parsing terms.

The US is going to fund expansion of the conflict directly with arms to Ukraine or indirectly by sending arms to NATO to give to Ukraine. The destination and intent of the weapons is the same regardless of the procedural process. I came to Russia this time to understand the nature of how western inertia to war can exist, despite the people of the west demanding the opposite. I wanted to see for myself exactly what Russia was preparing for, and exactly how the people of Russia were reacting to that preparation. Russia is well prepared, both physically and psychologically to go to war against any adversary. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating is between 70 to 80%, and despite what you might have heard in western propaganda media, the economy inside Russia is doing very well.

In addition to the two-year service requirement (18-20 years old), all men aged 25 to 35 have been refresher trained in preparation. The psyche of the Russian military is ready to get rid of the Nazis. Also, the sentiment of Europeans dislike of Ukrainian Nazi’s is easy to spot, albeit not well known outside the region. Despite decades of Brussels and USA provocation and political manipulation (perhaps because of it), there’s not a lot of pro-NATO support for the west here. I am not a big fan of Russia; nor do I agree with the way the government constructs societal life within it. There are a lot of negatives to daily life in Russia. However, I do have a complete understanding of the govt positions and reasons for them.

Western media have pretended that Ukraine was not a U.S/NATO proxy war against Russia. Now, those pretenses are dropped. Conversely, Vladimir Putin never pretended. Putin always accepted that Ukraine was, and long has been, a NATO proxy state for conflict against Russia; which is exactly the reason he ‘invaded‘ Ukraine in the first place. President Trump may be trying to split the baby amid the retention of pretense, but it’s a pretense Russian President Vladimir Putin never held, he could not afford to. Thus, the inertia of war and people asking “how did this happen?” If I am accurate in his exit strategy, President Trump hopes to extricate himself from the Russia-Ukraine problem by putting the conflict directly into the lap of NATO, more specifically into the lap of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz; the so called “coalition of the willing.”

President Trump is giving the weapons to NATO, again Starmer, Macron and Merz, for transfer to their buddy in Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. President Trump then stands back and draws distance from the consequence of what they do with them. However, this is also a massive provocation because NATO is now essentially operating on behalf of a non-NATO state, Ukraine, against another non-NATO power, Russia. President Trump cannot remove the fact that the USA is the lead in all things NATO. As soon as France, Germany and the U.K start bombing Russia albeit from the geography of Ukraine, the conflict will expand.

NATO -thanks to President Trump- would then be baiting Vladimir Putin to attack France, Germany or the UK in retaliation, which would trigger Article 5; subsequently the USA is drawn into the conflict by agreement, and voilà a full expanded war between NATO and Russia commences. But why? If neither Russia or Ukraine are NATO members, why is NATO involved at all? Good question. Perhaps President Trump will answer that question on Monday. President Trump told NBC News, “I think I’ll have a major statement to make on Russia on Monday.” Live your very best life, but prepare for war. Like a fat kid playing dodgeball, I’m out of here tomorrow (hopefully), and will hold an AMA on the topic of all things Russia next week.

Love to all,
~ Sundance

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“Has it ever occurred to Trump and his government that they are seen as nothing but the two-bit punk puppets of Israel led around by Netanyahu with an Israeli ring in their nose?”

Trump’s Renewal of America Has Gone Dramatically Wrong (Paul Craig Roberts)

Donald Trump attracted massive political support–the most we have seen any candidate attract in many years–because he said his aim was to restore America on its traditional values, the values that had made the United States a successful country. Instead of foreign wars, Trump promised restoration at home. But everywhere we look Trump is enmeshed in foreign, not domestic, affairs. Netanyahu is leading Trump into war with Iran. Trump sends Zelensky, not himself, to meet with Putin despite the fact that Zelensky cannot deliver the mutual security agreement that Putin wants from the West. And now Trump is interfering in Brazilian domestic politics threatening a 50 percent tariff on imports from Brazil unless the current government drops charges against former president Bolsonaro.

I have no knowledge whether the charges against Bolsonaro are legitimate, any more than I know if the former charges against the current President Lula da Silva that resulted in his imprisonment were legitimate. The question is: what business is it of Trump’s? Does it ever occur to Trump and his government that it is incongruous to protect Bolsonaro but not the Palestinians, whose oppressor Trump has hosted in the White House three times in six months and plied with money, weapons, and diplomatic cover for a genocide? One would think that it is Putin, Xi, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Trump would have at the white house, and Netanyahu the one under US sanctions and threats for Israel’s genocide of Palestine and war-mongering in the Middle East.

Has it ever occurred to Trump and his government that they are seen as nothing but the two-bit punk puppets of Israel led around by Netanyahu with an Israeli ring in their nose? How are we supposed to be proud Americans when we are ruled by Zionist Israel? Will ever again Americans have a president who represents America?

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“Well, I know Mr. Comey, and I know Mr. Brennan. Neither one of them, in my opinion, should attempt more than six of the Ten Commandments.”

Sen. Kennedy Skewers Comey and Brennan (Margolis)

In a display of his trademark wit and candor, Sen. John Kennedy delivered a scathing rebuke of former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, labeling both men as fundamentally unethical and unfit for public trust. Appearing on Fox News with Harris Faulkner, Kennedy wasted no time in making his feelings known, blending his signature biting humor with pointed criticism in a way only he can. Kennedy began by drawing on personal knowledge of both men. “Well, I know Mr. Comey, and I know Mr. Brennan. Neither one of them, in my opinion, should attempt more than six of the Ten Commandments. They’re, they’re, they’re not very nice people. They’re not ethical people.” He added, “I know people who have worked with them closely, and if you talk to people who’ve worked with them closely, those people will tell you that, um, they’re about as, as popular as male pattern baldness.”

The senator’s critique wasn’t just about personality. He questioned their competence, remarking, “What’s scary about both of them is that they think that they’re competent. They’re not.” Kennedy’s signature Southern charm came through as he continued, “I would hire the guy who salts the fries at McDonald’s before I would hire either one of them, but they think they’re competent. They think they’re smarter and more virtuous than the rest of us, and they have… they acted on their political beliefs.”Kennedy then turned his attention to Brennan’s role in the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, saying, “Brennan, for example, Mr. Brennan was one of the ones who told the American people that the Hunter Biden laptop wasn’t real… that it was Russian disinformation. They’re, they’re just not honest people and if they broke the law, they should be held accountable.”

He didn’t let up on their arrogance. “They’re also just… they’re like so many in Washington, Harris. They’re so arrogant. Um, Lyndon Johnson used to have an expression. He’d say, ‘That guy’s so arrogant. He could, he could strut sitting down.’ Well, that’s the way Mr. Comey and Mr. Brennan are.” For Kennedy, the damage Comey and Brennan did went beyond personal failings: “Those two have done more to destroy the American people’s confidence in the FBI and national intelligence than any two people I can think of.”

Kennedy then really drove his point home: “No, they really haven’t. And, and I wouldn’t say that about all of the people in President Biden’s administration, but, but these two are—they’re just especially bad, and they were so political. They’re just political hacks who tried to pretend that they had the American people’s best interests at heart, and they, and they, and they, uh, and they don’t.” He closed with a final jab, “And I love McDonald’s french fries by the way, and the people who salt ’em.”

Salt the fries

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Tariffs as a general policy tool? Is that what they’re for? Like threatening Lula over Bolsonaro?

Trump Threatens Canada With 35% Tariff If It Does Not Help With Fentanyl (JTN)

President Donald Trump on Thursday sent Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney a letter notifying him that he would impose a 35% tariff on Canadian goods next month if the country doesn’t step up in battling fentanyl. Trump has been sending tariff rate cards out to countries this week that have not reached a trade deal with the United States. The letters have largely been going out to seven countries at a time. The president argued that Canada has not done enough to help with the illegal flow of fentanyl that has been smuggled into the U.S. through the northern border. The U.S. is facing an opioid epidemic, and fentanyl is considered one of the most dangerous opioids in the country.

“If Canada works with me to stop the flow of Fentanyl, we will, perhaps, consider an adjustment to this letter,” Trump wrote to Carney. “These Tariffs may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country.” The U.S. previously imposed a 25% tariff on Canada, but delayed the tariffs while trying to reach a trade agreement. However, the new tariffs will go into effect on Aug. 1. It is not clear if products covered under the 2020 trade agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico will be excluded from the tariffs or not.

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“..everybody else seems to have been moving on here and not particularly interested in an investigation. I am..”

Sen. Ron Johnson Prepares Subpoenas For DOJ, FBI in Butler Shooting Probe (JTN)

Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson approved a subpoena to be sent to the Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI regarding more information on the first assassination attempt against President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania last year. The subpoenas will be sent near the anniversary of the shooting, which occurred on July 13. Johnson was part of the Senate’s Homeland Security investigation into the assassination attempt last year, but now leads a separate investigation as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Johnson told Fox News on Thursday that he approved a subpoena on Wednesday to get more information from the two agencies, but has described the investigative process overall as “maddening,” because of the red tape he’s experienced so far.

“I’d like our report to be bipartisan, but everybody else seems to have been moving on here and not particularly interested in an investigation. I am,” Johnson said. “Whether I have the other officers involved or not, I’m moving forward, which is why I approved a subpoena.” Johnson claimed his investigation is still getting “stonewalled” nearly a year after the incident, and that he needs more documentation and information to move his investigation forward. It is not clear when the subpoenas will go out. The accusation comes despite FBI Director Kash Patel’s promise to provide full transparency in the bureau’s investigation into the assassination attempt.

Republicans have largely criticized the federal government for not holding people accountable for the errors that led to the failed attempt. A 180-page House report last year found “preexisting issues in leadership and training created an environment” in which security failures could occur. The Secret Service also recently revealed that six agents were suspended without pay or benefits after the shooting, and were placed in restricted duties or given roles with less operational responsibility when they returned. No Secret Service agents were fired over the assassination attempt but former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned after facing heavy backlash.

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“Europe has gone from 90% [of] US GDP to 65% over 10 or 15 years.”

“..GDP per person had dropped from around 70% of America’s to 50%..”

Europe Is Losing – Jamie Dimon (RT)

Western Europe is “losing” the economic competition with its main rivals, China and the US, and is struggling with a shortage of globally competitive companies, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has said. Since 2022, when the EU imposed sweeping sanctions on Russian energy over the Ukraine conflict, growth across the bloc has stagnated. Germany, once its economic powerhouse, is now experiencing its third year of economic downturn. Moscow has argued that EU restrictions are self-defeating, causing surging energy prices and weakening the bloc’s economy. Dimon, CEO of one of the world’s largest banks, cautioned EU leaders at an event in Dublin hosted by the Irish Foreign Ministry on Thursday that Europe has lost its competitive edge compared to the US and is facing a growing crisis in economic competitiveness.

“You’re losing,” he said. “Europe has gone from 90% [of] US GDP to 65% over 10 or 15 years.” “We’ve got this huge strong market and our companies are big and successful, have huge kinds of scale that are global. You have that, but less and less.” The JP Morgan boss has repeatedly expressed concerns about the state of Europe’s economy. Earlier this year, Dimon told Financial Times that Europe needed to “do more” to remain competitive, noting that GDP per person had dropped from around 70% of America’s to 50%, which he deemed “not sustainable.”

Dimon’s warning comes as European NATO members say they need to ramp up their military budgets to deter an alleged threat from Russia. NATO countries have recently pledged to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP over the next decade, more than double the longstanding target of 2%. Moscow denies posing any danger to these nations, accusing Western officials of exploiting fear to rationalize budget increases and cover a decline in living standards.

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Jamie Dimon ‘taking the knee’ looks incredibly stupid.

“I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots..”

JPM CEO Jamie Dimon: Democrats “Idiots” Obsessed With Failed Wokeism (ZH)

The inconvenient truth for Democrats is that there is still no bottom in sight, as the party of leftist radicals doubles, triples, and quadruples down on diversity, equity, inclusion, all things woke, and most alarmingly, a rapid descent into embracing Marxist ideas. That’s why rational people have been jumping ship from the imploding party. Just look at the tech bros who voted for President Trump and how the right side of the political spectrum reformatted itself with a relatable message: ‘America First’… On Thursday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon spoke at a foreign ministry event in Dublin, blasting the Democratic Party for going off the deep end with DEI, gender politics, and a series of failed policies that he said have harmed the country. “I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots,” Dimon said at the event.

“I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works. Almost every single policy rolled out failed.” Dimon continued, “They overdid DEI …. We all were devoted to reaching out to the Black community, Hispanic, the LGBT community, the disabled — we do all of that. But to the extent, they gotta stop it. And they gotta go back to being more practical. They’re very ideological.” He described himself as “barely a Democrat” since the party of woke has fallen into the abyss. His criticism of the Democratic Party also extended to politics in New York City — particularly Manhattan, where the bank is headquartered — which now faces the possibility of a Marxist becoming mayor later this year. “Barely a Democrat”? Please. Dimon was a full-blown kneeler not long ago…

“This guy [Zohran Mamdani] just got elected — he’s more of a Marxist than a socialist, and now you see these Democrats falling all over themselves saying, ‘Well, he’s pointing out some real problems, affordable housing and grocery prices.’ OK, maybe,” Dimon said. “There’s the same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.” Dimon’s criticism of the Democratic Party is nothing new. In late May, the CEO blasted Democrats for the border invasion they facilitated over the Biden-Harris regime’s first term. “If you do not control the borders, you are going to destroy our country … Now that they are sending migrants into New York … all my super liberal friends realize what the problem is,” Dimon told CNBC last year. Dimon’s criticism signals that the party of leftist radicals is nowhere near a reset. In fact, it has gone further off course — doubling, even tripling down on failed policies that are driving more of its own supporters to jump ship and align with the America First movement.

Jason Curtis Anderson from One City Rising highlights just how far off course Zohran and the Democratic Party have gone (and spoiler alert: it’s bad): “Zohran’s worldview is shaped by his father, who has dedicated his life to promoting anti-Western values and decolonization—a field in which he is regarded as a thought leader. Marxism has become the philosophy of the “death to America” class, spanning from the permanent-protest and NGO movements to activist-teachers and into the Democratic Party through the Democratic Socialists of America—the political organization Mamdani calls home. Unfortunately, many Democrats remain slow to recognize that this philosophy breeds only misery and is incapable of improving society. In the 1960s, Frances Fox Piven outlined the revolutionary “Cloward-Piven strategy” to deliberately overload social service and welfare systems until they collapse, creating an opening for the far-left to demand a new system and “prove” that capitalism doesn’t work. It should come as no surprise that she is now an honorary chair of the DSA.”

From hating America to preaching Marxism and fueling chaos in city streets with dark money-funded NGOs, people are fed up with the radical left. And so is Dimon. It’ll be a long time before Dimon takes a knee again — of that, we’e certain.

Read more …

“While Europe cannot climb out of its own economic, social and security crisis, Brussels would continue to finance the war – weapons instead of peace, new debt instead of a competitive Europe..”

EU ‘Has No Money Except For War’ – Hungarian Official (RT)

The EU is placing Ukraine’s military needs above the priorities of the bloc’s member states, Hungarian government adviser Balazs Orban has said. He accused EU leaders of always finding money for “war” but not other causes. Leaders of EU nations are considering the creation of a new €100 billion ($117 billion) fund under the bloc’s upcoming seven-year budget to cover expenses for the Ukrainian government, Bloomberg reported this week, citing people familiar with the discussions. Budapest, however, has been a vocal critic of the bloc’s approach to the Russia-Ukraine conflict since its onset. “Europe has run out of money – except when it comes to war. There is always 100 billion euros for that,” Orban wrote on Wednesday on social media. He warned that such an allocation of funds would likely lead to further proposals to spend EU taxpayers’ money on Ukraine.

Orban pointed to Kiev’s estimate that it would require $1 trillion over 14 years for reconstruction and modernization, a figure shared by Prime Minister Denis Shmigal during a donors conference in Rome this week. “While Europe cannot climb out of its own economic, social and security crisis, Brussels would continue to finance the war – weapons instead of peace, new debt instead of a competitive Europe,” Orban said. Last week, Bloomberg reported that US investment firm BlackRock had abandoned efforts to attract private investors for a Ukraine reconstruction program. The fund was expected to be launched at the Rome conference, but potential participants reportedly expressed “a lack of interest amid increased uncertainty” over the country’s future.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky said at the event that “only friends are invited” to help rebuild the country. He reiterated his call to confiscate Russian state assets frozen by Western nations and transfer them to Kiev. Moscow has warned that such actions would constitute international theft. EU members have voiced concern that expropriating Russian assets could significantly erode global confidence in their financial systems. As an alternative, Ukraine’s backers have been imposing a “windfall tax” on profits from the immobilized Russian funds and channeling the money to Kiev – an approach Moscow has described as another form of criminality. Hungary has accused the EU leadership of inflicting major economic harm on member states through sanctions on Russia, and of wasting resources on a war effort that it argues cannot deliver a military victory over Moscow.

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“..German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said Germany must once again become Europe’s leading military power. “He didn’t even choke on the word ‘again,’” Lavrov noted..”

Western European Leaders Dragging Continent Toward War With Russia – Lavrov (RT)

Western European leaders have forgotten the lessons of history and are once again steering the continent toward direct military confrontation with Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned. During a press conference following ASEAN events on Friday, he pointed to recent actions and rhetoric coming from Berlin, Paris, and London as evidence that European leaders are taking an increasingly aggressive stance toward Moscow. Lavrov pointed to a public exchange in which French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot was asked why Paris continues to support the Nazi regime in Kiev. The Russian diplomat questioned the sincerity of Barrot’s “hysterical” response, in which he insisted France was defending “the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

“They have forgotten the conclusions that all of humanity once drew from those lessons. And, essentially, they are once again trying to prepare Europe for war – not some hybrid war, but a real war against Russia,” Lavrov stated. Kiev’s push for territorial control serves only to “suppress the rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking population and to physically eliminate those who oppose” the post-coup regime, according to Russia’s top diplomat. Claims that territorial integrity is the sole motive amount to “self-incrimination,” he added. Moscow has sounded the alarm over the resurgence of Nazi ideology and suppression of Russian culture in Ukraine for years, listing ‘denazification’ as one of the key goals in the conflict.

Lavrov also addressed remarks by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said Germany must once again become Europe’s leading military power. “He didn’t even choke on the word ‘again,’” Lavrov noted. If Merz now believes peaceful solutions are exhausted, he has effectively dedicated himself to the militarization of Germany at the expense of its own people, Lavrov argued, calling such a stance “complete nonsense.” Moscow has warned that Berlin’s stance could lead to a new armed conflict with Moscow decades after the end of World War II. The Kremlin maintains that Russia prefers a peaceful solution to the conflict but warned that conditions on the ground are rapidly evolving while Kiev balks at a third round of direct negotiations.

Moscow has condemned the EU’s growing militarization, which has stirred divisions within the bloc, while describing its weapons deliveries to Kiev as part of a NATO-led proxy war. Lavrov said Moscow will take Europe’s militarization “into account in all areas of our strategic planning.”

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“The EU’s priority is to stabilize the situation with the US, von der Leyen said. “We are working tirelessly to find an initial understanding..”

Relations With US Will Never Be The Same – von der Leyen (RT)

Relations with the US may never return to what they used to be, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said, citing tensions with Washington over increased tariffs on European goods. US President Donald Trump introduced 20% tariffs on European imports in February. The EU responded with its own set of trade penalties. Trump later lowered duties to 10%, pending negotiations. That pause has now been extended until early August. ”We believe that tariffs are a loss for everyone. But we are not naive either: we know that the relationship with the US may never go back to what it used to be,” the EU chief stated at an economic-industrial forum in Rome on Thursday. The EU’s priority is to stabilize the situation with the US, von der Leyen said. “We are working tirelessly to find an initial understanding,” she added.

The EU chief called Washington “the most important trading and investment partner” of Brussels. In 2024, the US was the largest exporter of goods to the EU and the second-ranking destination for EU imports after China, according to Eurostat. Trump’s global tariff campaign has grown to include 211 countries. The American leader says his objective is to reduce the US trade deficit and stimulate domestic production. Since his first term, Trump has been pushing European NATO members to spend more on their own defense. While the bloc’s members agreed to a 2% threshold in February, the US president suggested that NATO countries consider spending as much as 5% of GDP, warning: “if they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them.” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said Trump was right to demand that European members step up military spending.

The bloc subsequently agreed to a 5% minimum in June. NATO leaders insisted that the hike in expenditure was aimed at deterring Russia amid the Ukraine conflict. Some officials suggested that Moscow could launch a full-scale attack on the US-led bloc within a few years. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, however, called the NATO spending increase “unreasonable and counterproductive,” which Trump responded to by saying he would “make them pay twice” through trade measures. Russian officials have repeatedly emphasized that Moscow has never had any plans to attack NATO. Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected the allegations as “nonsense” and “utter rubbish,” stating that Western politicians make such claims to deceive their constituents and justify increased spending on defense and aid to Kiev. “In Ukraine, we are just protecting ourselves,” Putin insisted.

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Well, you know the conditions.

Kiev Needs Ceasefire By The End of 2025 – Ukrainian Spy Chief (RT)

A ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine must be reached by the end of the year, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, said in an interview with Bloomberg published on Friday. He made his remarks as Ukrainian troops have been steadily losing ground along different sections of the front line, and after the 2024 incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region ended in costly failure. The Ukrainian army has also been struggling to bring in new conscripts. According to Bloomberg, Budanov argued that “a ceasefire must be reached as soon as possible and well before the end of this year.” “Is it realistic to do so? Yes. Is it difficult? No,” he told Bloomberg. “It takes at least three sides – Ukraine, Russia, and the US. And we will get to this position.”

Moscow has rejected the proposal for an immediate and unconditional truce, insisting that Kiev and its Western backers must first agree to several demands, including the withdrawal of troops from Russian territory claimed by Ukraine, an end to Ukraine’s mobilization campaign, and a halt to foreign military aid. Russian President Vladimir Putin also accused Ukraine of wanting to use any pause in fighting to rearm and regroup its forces. Moscow has further warned that it will not accept the presence of NATO troops in Ukraine, even if they are deployed under the guise of peacekeepers. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said this week that the sides are working to arrange a third round of direct talks in Türkiye. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, however, said during a summit in Rome on Thursday that the countries must first complete the prisoner swaps agreed during negotiations in Istanbul on June 2.

Read more …

“Militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) slaughtered up to 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945..”

Zelensky Claimed He ‘Never Heard Of’ Ukrainian Nazi Crimes – Duda (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky claimed he had no idea about the atrocities committed by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during World War II until confronted about the issue by Polish President Andrzej Duda, the latter has told the media outlet RMF24. According to the president, Zelensky’s claim underscores that Ukrainians are kept in the dark about their nation’s troubled past. “He said to me: ‘Andrzej, I’ve never heard of the murders, the killing of Poles in western Ukraine, in Volhynia. They didn’t teach us about it in school’,” Duda said, recounting one of his meetings with the Ukrainian leader. The president was referring to the infamous Volyn massacre, which has long been a flashpoint in bilateral relations between the two countries.

Militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) slaughtered up to 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945 in the regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, which were later incorporated into Ukraine. Both the UPA and the OUN collaborated with Nazi Germany during WWII. Many historic ultranationalist leaders, including OUN leader Stepan Bandera, a notorious Nazi collaborator, are widely revered by Ukrainians today. According to Duda, they are ignorant about the crimes of the past. The widespread belief that they are aware of their own “difficult history” is wrong, according to the Polish president. It is not the first time Duda has expressed his concerns about Ukraine’s approach to its past. In September 2024, he told Polsat News that “Ukrainians have many problems with their history,” including “the Volyn massacre … service in SS units, collaboration with the authorities of the Third Reich, and participation in the Holocaust.”

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry released a statement on Thursday, saying that historical events should be studied and discussed “without politicization.” “On the eve of the day when the Republic of Poland commemorates the victims of the Volyn tragedy, Ukraine shares the pain and grief of the Polish people. At the same time, we do not forget about the numerous Ukrainians who became innocent victims of interethnic violence, political repression and deportation on the territory of Poland,” the statement continued. Warsaw has been one of Kiev’s strongest supporters since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022. Poland also provided a key logistics hub which was used to transport between 80-90% of NATO-supplied military equipment and ammunition to Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities continue to glorify Nazi collaborators despite concerns expressed by Kiev’s Western backers. In February, the city of Rovno celebrated the 120th birthday of Nazi collaborator and prominent anti-Semitic propagandist Ulas Samchuk, who called for the mass killing of Jews and Poles during WWII. Less than a month later, Ukrainian nationalists commemorated the 75th anniversary of the death of UPA leader Roman Shukhevich with a torchlit march, and unveiled a museum dedicated to him. Shukhevich is considered by many historians to have been one of the architects and commanders responsible for the massacre of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.

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“There is no clear international balance, and no blueprint for restoring one. This transitional era will last, perhaps for decades.”

The West Mocked BRICS For Years But Now It’s Paying Attention (Lukyanov)

The idea of a multipolar world has long been used in two distinct contexts. One is when global hegemony is solid and unchallenged, as it was for the decade and a half following the Cold War. In that case, ‘multipolarity’ serves as little more than a slogan – a symbolic protest against US dominance, with no practical strategy behind it. The other is when that hegemony has fully collapsed, and international relations revert to their historical norm: a fluid, unpredictable interplay of states with differing levels of power. Then, multipolarity becomes a fact, and actions are guided by immediate context. Today’s world fits neither condition. The old unipolar order is fading, but its structures and reflexes remain. That is why the current moment is so peculiar – and why BRICS has become such an important indicator of the transition underway.

This group of nations, for all its diversity and contradictions, reflects the emerging outlines of a world less shaped by Western control. The latest BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro prompted disappointment in some quarters. Several key leaders were absent, and the headlines lacked drama. Compared to last year’s bold meeting in Kazan, it seemed muted. But this calmer tone is not a setback – it reflects the changing environment BRICS now operates in. Three trends help explain the summit’s tone. First, global tensions are rising. The recent clashes between India and Pakistan, and between Israel and Iran, directly involve BRICS members. While not full-blown conflicts within the group, they underscore a lack of unity. As BRICS expands, internal diversity increases, making it harder to maintain a single voice. The natural result is cautious language and vague formulations. That may frustrate observers, but it reflects realism.

Second, the United States under Donald Trump has adopted a more explicitly anti-BRICS stance. Washington has issued direct threats and imposed new duties on countries perceived to be aligned with the bloc. These efforts have a clear goal: to deter deeper cooperation between BRICS members. So far, they have not provoked open defiance. Most BRICS countries remain wary of direct confrontation with the West. Yet US pressure is steadily fueling resentment, and a firmer response may come if that pressure intensifies.

Third, the rotation of the BRICS presidency from Russia to Brazil altered the rhythm of the group’s activities. For Russia, BRICS is both a practical tool for economic coordination and a political platform that bypasses Western gatekeeping. Moscow invests heavily in its BRICS role. Brazil’s focus is different. Tied more closely to the West, it has other strategic priorities. That doesn’t mean Brasilia is uninterested in BRICS – only that it doesn’t treat it with the same urgency. Still, something important has happened. The 2023 and 2024 summits in South Africa and Russia changed BRICS. The group has matured, acquiring a new identity. That development will take time to digest. India’s upcoming presidency may continue the current more restrained phase, but that should not be mistaken for stagnation. It is a necessary period of consolidation.

This is why the Rio meeting should be seen as a success. The early phases of BRICS expansion, when the group was seen as vague and aspirational, were relatively easy. No one expected much. Now, the stakes are higher. America and its allies, once dismissive, are paying close attention. They are actively probing for weaknesses. This alone shows that BRICS is starting to matter. The group’s appeal lies in its alignment with real global trends. Today’s international environment demands flexibility, minimal obligations, and openness to difference. BRICS embodies these features. It avoids binding structures, embraces diversity, and operates on the basis of shared (though loosely defined) interests. We are living in a time of disorder.

There is no clear international balance, and no blueprint for restoring one. This transitional era will last, perhaps for decades. In the meantime, the world will increasingly look for platforms that reflect the new reality. BRICS is one of them. The perception of the group is shifting. It is no longer treated as a rhetorical device or a curiosity. It is becoming part of the emerging architecture of a multipolar world. That evolution will be slow and uneven, but it is underway. Following the summits in Johannesburg, Kazan, and now Rio, BRICS has entered a new phase. The challenge now is to recognize that change – and to adapt to it.

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The unpopular European “leaders” see a chance for revenge. The Trump/Musk rift gives them hope.

France Opens Criminal Case Against Musk’s X (RT)

France has opened a criminal investigation into whether algorithms on Elon Musk’s X platform were used to interfere in domestic politics. The probe stems from two complaints filed in January, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Friday. Without naming Musk directly, she stated that investigators will examine the company and its executives for allegedly manipulating algorithms “for purposes of foreign interference.” The first complaint came from Eric Bothorel, a legislator from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble party. He alleged that a “reduction in the diversity of voices and options” on X has created a dangerous environment.

Bothorel also criticized the platform’s moderation model as lacking clarity and accused Musk of personally intervening in its management, according to France 24. The complaint described X’s activities as posing a “real danger and a threat to our democracies.” The second complaint reportedly originated from a government cybersecurity official who claimed that changes to the algorithm promote racist and homophobic content, aiming to “skew democratic debate in France.” On Thursday, Socialist Party politicians Thierry Sother and Pierre Jouvet filed a separate complaint against Musk’s chatbot Grok, which recently generated antisemitic and otherwise offensive comments on X, including praise of Adolf Hitler.

The Grok team said on Wednesday that they had updated the model to remove hate speech. Musk commented that the chatbot was “too compliant to user prompts” and “too eager to please and be manipulated” into producing hateful rhetoric. European politicians have increasingly called for greater oversight of X and similar platforms, warning of potential abuse by bad actors. Musk caused controversy in Berlin when he openly endorsed the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party during the parliamentary elections in February. AfD significantly increased its vote share, becoming the second-largest faction in the Bundestag.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Bhakdi

Birth rate

Wine
https://twitter.com/LangmanVince/status/1943355762924724718

Men
https://twitter.com/CRIXUSwasHERE/status/1943287953100292104

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 252020
 


Jack Delano “Untitled” near Durham, North Carolina 1940

 

Wuhan Was The Fentanyl Capital Of The World. Then Coronavirus Hit (LAT)
‘Wuhan Plague’ Plaques Are Popping Up Around Atlanta (Vice)
Trump Owed Tens Of Millions To Bank Of China (Pol.)
Trump Doesn’t Owe Bank of China Money (Christopher Balding)
Small Business Owners Asked To Sign PPP Loans Without Forgiveness Pledge (IC)
Small Business Rescue Earned Banks $10 Billion In Fees (NPR)
People In Their 30s And 40s, Barely Sick With COVID19, Die From Strokes (WP)
South Dakota County Offers Drive-Through Covid-19 Testing Friday (Strong)
Nearly 60 New Coronavirus Cases Confirmed On Cruise Ship In Japan (R.)
China Pressured EU To Drop COVID19 Disinformation Criticism (R.)
US Weighs Taking Equity Stakes In US Energy Companies – Mnuchin (R.)
Economics Professor: Australia Would Be ‘Better Off’ Without Lockdown (DM)
Brazil Justice Minister Resigns Over Bolsonaro’s Investigations Meddling (IC)
Denver Health Execss Get Bonuses 1 Week After Workers Asked To Take Cuts (CBS)
Amazon To Be Fined €100K For Every ‘Non-Essential’ Delivery in France (RT)

 

 

Daily US coronavirus death toll down sharply in past 24 hours to 1,258, the lowest daily toll in the country in nearly three weeks: Johns Hopkins

4/24/20 – Top 12 State Cases
New York: 271,590
New Jersey: 102,196
Mass : 46,023
Illinois: 39,658
California: 39,254
Pennsylvania: 38,652
Michigan: 36,641
Florida: 30,174
Louisiana: 26,140
Connecticut: 23,921
Texas: 22,806
Georgia: 22,147

• “At least 30 New Yorkers ingested household cleaners in the 18 hours since the president suggested using it to fight #coronavirus”

• “The timing on the bleach stuff is interesting, since the DOJ started cracking down on MMS, the diluted form of bleach being sold as a miracle cure for any disease under the sun on social media… six days ago.”

 

 

Cases 2,845,858 (+ 100,389 from yesterday’s 2,745,469)

197,846
Deaths 191,791 (+ 6,055 from yesterday’s 185,156 )

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-

 

 

From Worldometer – NOTE: among Active Cases, Serious or Critical fell to 3%. Among Closed Cases, Deaths have fallen to 20%

 

 

From SCMP:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live: Note: Turkey, Russia, UK are the biggest risers

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keep it locked down.

Wuhan Was The Fentanyl Capital Of The World. Then Coronavirus Hit (LAT)

For drug traffickers interested in getting in on the fentanyl business, all roads once led to Wuhan. The sprawling industrial city built along the Yangtze River in east-central China is known for its production of chemicals, including the ingredients needed to cook fentanyl and other powerful synthetic opioids. Vendors there shipped huge quantities around the world. The biggest customers were Mexican drug cartels, which have embraced fentanyl in recent years because it is cheaper and easier to produce than heroin. But the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan late last year before spreading across the planet has upended the fentanyl supply chain, causing a ripple effect that has cut into the profits of Mexican traffickers and driven up street drug prices across the United States.

Few industries — illicit or not — have been unscathed by the pandemic that has upended the global economy and killed more than 190,000 people worldwide. The narcotics trade, which relies on the constant movement of goods and people, has been stymied by lockdowns, travel bans and other efforts to contain the virus, according to government officials, academic researchers and drug traffickers. Mexican production of fentanyl and methamphetamine appears especially hard hit. Both drugs are made with precursor chemicals that are typically sent on planes or cargo ships from China, where despite U.S. pressure to ban them, they continue to be sold legally. That supply chain was shut down in January when authorities in Wuhan enacted a lockdown that forced residents to stay inside for more than two months.

In February, after a major manufacturer of the chemicals closed, vendors began posting apologies on the online sites where chemicals are typically sold, said Louise Shelley, a professor at George Mason University who tracks global fentanyl production. “They were saying: ‘We’re not producing or selling or shipping,’” she said.

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The headline says: “racist”. I like everything Winnie.

‘Wuhan Plague’ Plaques Are Popping Up Around Atlanta (Vice)

Racist plaques depicting Winnie the Pooh holding a bat with chopsticks have begun to pop up around Atlanta, and police have no leads as to who is responsible. The round, bronze and teal plaques bearing the words “Wuhan Plague,” referencing the Chinese city where the coronavirus originated, first appeared April 13 on an electrical box in Inman Park, according to Atlanta police. Another appeared three days later at a coffee shop in the neighborhood of Reynoldstown. The most recent incident occurred on April 18 at Atlanta’s Candler Park Market. Winnie the Pooh’s association with Chinese culture originated in 2013 when parody comparisons between the cuddly bear and Prime Minister Xi Jinping went viral on social media — and China then banned Pooh images.


The plaques appeared to be glued to the sites where they were posted. Hodgepodge Coffeehouse owner Kristle Rodriguez said her employees alerted her to the plaque at her site. Rodriguez said she immediately called the cops and the building’s landlord, who quickly removed the plaque. “The adhesive was still wet, meaning this happened late morning or early afternoon,” she wrote in a Facebook post Friday. “This isn’t amusing, funny, politically incorrect, edgy, or punk rock. This is super fucking gross and racist. There’s enough xenophobia and ignorance being spouted from this administration, we certainly don’t need street art reinforcing this shit.”

Read more …

Curious article, because it’s not true.

Trump Owed Tens Of Millions To Bank Of China (Pol.)

But Trump himself has taken on debt from China. In 2012, his real estate partner refinanced one of Trump’s most prized New York buildings for almost $1 billion. The debt included $211 million from the state-owned Bank of China — its first loan of this kind in the U.S. — which matures in the middle of what could be Trump’s second term. Steps from Trump Tower in Manhattan, the 43-story 1290 Avenue of the Americas skyscraper spans an entire city block. Trump owns a 30 percent stake in the property valued at more than $1 billion, making it one of the priciest addresses in his portfolio, according to his financial disclosures. Trump’s ownership of the building received a smattering of attention before and after his 2016 campaign.

But the arrangement with the Bank of China in 2012 has gone largely unnoticed. The questions surrounding Trump’s ties to the Bank of China come as his campaign is claiming that Biden would be a gift to the Communist country and America’s chief economic rival. After the first version of this article was published, the Bank of China issued a statement Friday evening stating that it sold its debt on the building weeks after the 2012 loan on the property. Vornado Realty Trust owns 70 percent of the building. “On November 7, 2012 several financial institutions including the Bank of China participated in a commercial mortgage loan of $950 million to Vornado Realty Trust,” said Peter Reisman, managing director and chief communications officer of Bank of China U.S.A.

“Within 22 days, the loan was securitized and sold into the [commercial mortgage-backed securities] market, as is a common practice in the industry. Bank of China has not had any ownership interest in that loan since late November 2012.”

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Balding explains.

Trump Doesn’t Owe Bank of China Money (Christopher Balding)

Let me explain the deal structure and why Trump doesn’t owe Bank of China money. First, Trump is a minority passive owner of a real estate trust. 30% so not nothing and he is the president but it isn’t even his company. He doesn’t manage it even before he became president 1/n

Second, the nitty gritty of the financing goes like this (and this is very common in general especially in real estate) assume Citibank agrees to lend the building $1 billion to refinance their loan in 2012. Rather than lend the entire $1 billion themselves, Citibank will 2/n

get on the phone to other banks to take a piece of the $1b they need to raise. Let’s assume in this case it was five banks of $400m, $200m, $200m, $100m, and $100m. In this case Bank of China is one of the $200m slots. They lend that company the $1b to refinance their other 3/n

loan. However, the banks aren’t done. They don’t want to make a 10 year loan on real estate when they make more money from fee and churn of debt securities. So right after they made they $1b loan, Citibank lawyers (I don’t know if it was Citibank just an example) are 4/n

Drafting offering documents to sell off different pieces of the entire $1b loan to investors. The $1b loan is not actually 5 different loans but 5 different injections into a special purpose vehicle that is capitalized with the loan capital from those banks. The SPV 5/n

Which will receive the annual payments then sells off pieces of the loan in say $10m or $25m increments to investors. The banks then receive all of their original loan back as the entire $1b is sold off piece by piece. Typically, banks will have capital out on these projects 6/n

Read more …

In the US, small is ugly.

Small Business Owners Asked To Sign PPP Loans Without Forgiveness Pledge (IC)

Randy George had never laid anyone off in his 20 years running his bakery and café in Middlesex, Vermont. But after Vermont Gov. Phil Scott shut down restaurants to slow the spread of the coronavirus, half of his sales disappeared virtually overnight. He’s had to put 28 of the staff of Red Hen Baking Co. on furlough. George decided to sign up for a loan through the Paycheck Protection Program, created by Congress’s CARES Act relief bill to help small business owners stay afloat. At first, the program was funded with $350 billion, an amount that ran out about two weeks after it began; Congress is now working on a deal to add another $320 billion.

The key feature of these loans, which are being run by the Small Business Administration, is that they are supposed to be entirely forgiven if an owner spends most of the money on payroll and doesn’t lay anyone off. The details of how that forgiveness will work, however, are far from clear, making some small business owners wary to use it at all. In bank loan contracts reviewed by The Intercept, owners have been asked to sign onto terms that said that “forgiveness may apply” or “all or part of the Loan may be forgiven” — releasing the banks from liability but giving business owners no contractual guarantee of loan forgiveness, or even guidance on how to comply with the rules or how to pursue it. One didn’t mention forgiveness at all. The application materials, which are produced on SBA letterhead, have even fewer details.

“Loan forgiveness will be provided for the sum of documented payroll costs, covered mortgage interest payments, covered rent payments, and covered utilities,” most applications read. No other information is offered about what “covered” means. The CARES Act contains some details about how these are defined, but it’s buried in an almost 900-page bill. And no concrete information has been given to small business owners about how they should go about getting their loans forgiven. Some owners were told that to gain forgiveness, they’d have to submit a request to their banks. Others were told that they have to go straight to the SBA. That’s left many people questioning whether the loans will indeed be converted to grants at all. “The keystone, the cornerstone of this program is not assured,” George said.

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Won’t surprise a single soul.

Small Business Rescue Earned Banks $10 Billion In Fees (NPR)

Banks handling the government’s $349 billion loan program for small businesses made more than $10 billion in fees — even as tens of thousands of small businesses were shut out of the program, according to an analysis of financial records by NPR. The banks took in the fees while processing loans that required less vetting than regular bank loans and had little risk for the banks, the records show. Taxpayers provided the money for the loans, which were guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. According to a Department of Treasury fact sheet, all federally insured banks and credit unions could process the loans, which ranged in amount from tens of thousands to $10 million. The banks acted essentially as middlemen, sending clients’ loan applications to the SBA, which approved them.


For every transaction made, banks took in 1% to 5% in fees, depending on the amount of the loan, according to government figures. Loans worth less than $350,000 brought in 5% in fees while loans worth anywhere from $2 million to $10 million brought in 1% in fees. For example, on April 7, RCSH Operations LLC, the parent company of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, received a loan of $10 million. JPMorgan Chase & Co., acting as the lender, took a $100,000 fee on the one-time transaction for which it assumed no risk and could pass through with fewer requirements than for a regular loan. In total, those transaction fees amounted to more than $10 billion for banks, according to transaction data provided by the SBA and the Treasury Department.

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As he used a needlelike device to pull out the clot, he saw new clots forming in real time around it.

People In Their 30s And 40s, Barely Sick With COVID19, Die From Strokes (WP)

Thomas Oxley wasn’t even on call the day he received the page to come into Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan. There weren’t enough doctors to treat all the emergency stroke patients, and he was needed in the operating room. The patient’s chart appeared unremarkable at first glance. He was male, no medications, no history of chronic conditions. He had been feeling fine, hanging out at home during the lockdown like the rest of America, when suddenly, he had trouble talking and moving the right side of his body. Imaging showed a large blockage on the left side of his head. Oxley gasped when he got to the patient’s age and covid-19 status: 44, positive.

The man was among several recent stroke patients in their 30s to 40s who were all infected with the virus. The median age for that type of severe stroke is 74. As Oxley, an interventional neurologist, began the procedure to remove the clot, he observed something he had never seen before. On the monitors, the brain typically shows up as a tangle of black squiggles – “like a can of spaghetti,” he said – that provide a map of blood vessels. A clot shows up as a blank spot. As he used a needlelike device to pull out the clot, he saw new clots forming in real time around it. “This is crazy,” he remembers telling his boss.

Reports of strokes in the young and middle-aged – not just at Mount Sinai but in many other hospitals in hard-hit communities – are the latest twist in our evolving understanding of the mysteries of covid-19. Even as the virus has infected nearly 2.8 million people worldwide and killed 195,000 as of Friday, its origins, biological mechanisms and weaknesses continue to elude top scientific minds. Once thought to be a pathogen that primarily attacks the lungs, it has turned out to be a much more formidable foe – affecting nearly every major organ system in the body.

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Small is beautiful. A lot of the solutions will have to come from communities.

South Dakota County Offers Drive-Through Covid-19 Testing Friday (Strong)

A health center in Stanley offered one of the first COVID-19 test drive through services in the state that did not require symptoms or pre-screening. As southern Mountrail County continues to be a hotspot for COVID-19, one medical center stepped up to offer free drive through testing without an appointment. At least 160 cars came through the testing site in Stanley from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with some holding as many as nine people who wanted to be tested. “We’re preparing probably to do between three and 400 tests,” said Dr. Rich Laksonen. Stanley is not in the southern part of the county, but Laksonen said the center wanted to help the state learn more about where the virus is spiking in the county.


“Being that we are the facility that services the count, we saw that need to determine where in Mountrail County these hotspots are located,” said Laksonen. Laksonen said they were compelled to drop restrictions on the site making it “no appointment, or symptoms necessary.” It’s one of the only in the state. “We also wanted our residents in northern Mountrial County to come in and get a test whether we have symptoms or not,” he said. Laksonen said the community was appreciative of the effort. Medical staff say it is too soon to tell how many will test positive. It will take 24 to 48 hours for the dozens of people that came out Friday to know their results.

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It’s fitting this should be in Japan again.

Nearly 60 New Coronavirus Cases Confirmed On Cruise Ship In Japan (R.)

Nearly 60 new cases of coronavirus infections were confirmed among crew members of an Italian cruise ship docked in Japan, domestic media reported on Saturday. With testing of all crew members now complete, the new number, reported by public broadcaster NHK, brings the total infections onboard the Costa Atlantica to around 150, roughly one quarter of the vessel’s 623 crew members. TV Asahi said 57 crew members tested positive. The infection cluster onboard the vessel docked in Nagasaki comes as hospitals are running out of beds in some parts of Japan, where the national tally of virus cases has risen above 12,800. Some 345 people have died.


Of those infected onboard the Costa Atlantica, only one crew member has been admitted to hospital, NHK said, while others remain on board, having shown slight or no symptoms. The vessel has been docked in Japan since February for repairs and maintenance after the pandemic prevented scheduled repairs in China. Nagasaki authorities had quarantined the vessel on arrival, and ordered its crew not to venture beyond the quay except for hospital visits. But prefecture officials said earlier this week that some of the crew had departed without their knowledge, and sought detailed information on their movements.

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And China refuses an international investigation.

China Pressured EU To Drop COVID19 Disinformation Criticism (R.)

China sought to block a European Union report alleging that Beijing was spreading disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak, according to four sources and diplomatic correspondence reviewed by Reuters. The report was eventually released, albeit just before the start of the weekend Europe time and with some criticism of the Chinese government rearranged or removed, a sign of the balancing act Brussels is trying to pull off as the coronavirus outbreak scrambles international relations. The Chinese Mission to the EU was not immediately available for comment and China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to faxed questions about the exchange. An EU spokeswoman said “we never comment on content or alleged content of internal diplomatic contacts and communication with our partners from another countries.”

Another EU official said that the disinformation report had been published as usual and denied any of it had been watered down. Four diplomatic sources told Reuters that the report had initially been slated for release on April 21 but was delayed after Chinese officials picked up on a Politico news report hat previewed its findings. A senior Chinese official contacted European officials in Beijing the same day to tell them that, “if the report is as described and it is released today it will be very bad for cooperation,” according to EU diplomatic correspondence reviewed by Reuters. The correspondence quoted senior Chinese foreign ministry official Yang Xiaoguang as saying that publishing the report would make Beijing “very angry” and accused European officials of trying to please “someone else” – something the EU diplomats understood to be a reference to Washington.

The four sources said the report had been delayed as a result, and a comparison of the internal version of the report obtained by Reuters and the final version published late Friday showed several differences. For example, on the first page of the internal report shared with EU governments on April 20, the EU’s foreign policy arm said: “China has continued to run a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image. Both overt and covert tactics have been observed.”

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Yeah, let’s buy us some shale.

US Weighs Taking Equity Stakes In US Energy Companies – Mnuchin (R.)

The U.S. government is considering taking equity stakes in U.S. energy companies as it seeks to help the nation’s oil and gas sector amid the coronavirus outbreak, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday. President Donald Trump, speaking at a White House event with Mnuchin, said he wants to help industry and suggested the federal government could buy fuel for the country in advance as well as purchase airline tickets in advance. “We’re looking at a whole bunch of alternatives,” Mnuchin said. “You can assume that’s one of the alternatives, but there’s many of them,” Mnuchin said, referring to possible equity stakes.


The oil sector has been hit hard by a dramatic drop in demand as the coronavirus has effectively shut down economies around the globe. “The energy business is very important to me, and we’re going to build it up. This really hurt the energy business as much as any other business because it totally knocked out – the supply kept coming,” Trump said. Trump helped negotiate a reduction in output from OPEC and other countries including Russia, but the move has not removed the market’s oversupply. The president encouraged Mnuchin to look at buying oil for later use. “The United States is the largest user of oil. We could buy oil at a great price into the future. That gives them the infusion they need, and we have oil at a great price into the future,” Trump said.

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Well, if you wait long enough… Meanwhile, there are no buyers for your products anyway, so why bother?

Economics Professor: Australia Would Be ‘Better Off’ Without Lockdown (DM)

An economics professor has been slammed as ‘cold’ and ‘heartless’ for suggesting Australia prioritised health over the economy by going into coronavirus lockdown. University of New South Wales Professor Gigi Foster sparked outrage from fellow panellists and other economic professors while answering questions about the impacts of shutdown measures on Q&A on Monday. Professor Foster suggested Australia hadn’t properly weighed up the economic consequences of tough restrictions introduced to reduce the death toll, and argued the ‘economy is about lives’ too. ‘What frustrates me is when people talk about the economic costs of the lockdown they often don’t think in detail in terms of counting lives,’ Professor Foster said.

‘Has anyone thought about how would you get a measure of the traded lives when we lock an economy down? What are we sacrificing in terms of lives? ‘Economists have tried to do that and we try to do that in currencies like the value of a statistical life. ‘If you do that kind of calculus you realise very quickly that even with a very, very extreme epidemic, in Australia, we are still potentially better off not having an economic lockdown in the first place because of the incredible effects that you see. ‘Not just in a short-run way but in many years to come.’ Her views prompted a shocked response from fellow panellists on the ABC program.


‘How can you say that?’ ACTU secretary Sally McManus fired back. ‘We’re avoiding what’s happened in the UK, what’s happening in the US, the idea of having our ICUs overrun, our healthcare workers dying as well is just the most horrible thought.’ ‘It’s horrible either way,’ Professor Foster replied. ‘The coronavirus has made the world awful. There’s absolutely no doubt about that. ‘In order to have a proper discussion about trade-offs, you need to think in terms of lives you’re giving up. ‘I know it’s invisible lives and difficult to imagine when we aggregate, for example, all of the health effects and the mental health effects and the effects of people right now who have illnesses other than COVID-19.’

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Moro is no Mother Teresa himself.

Brazil Justice Minister Resigns Over Bolsonaro’s Investigations Meddling (IC)

As the country slept Friday morning, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro fired the Federal Police Director Maurício Valeixo, bringing to a head a long-simmering battle with Justice Minister Sergio Moro. Moro, in turn, promptly resigned — in a new, major episode of deepening chaos in Brazilian politics. The official notice firing the Federal Police head bears Moro’s digital signature, but in a press conference Friday morning, the outgoing justice minister claimed that he was not informed of the move and did not sign the document. This and other revelations made by Moro could serve as grounds for impeachment, if the Brazilian body politic can muster the political will to support such a drastic measure. Members of Congress are already gathering signatures for a congressional inquiry into Moro’s allegations.

In his press conference, Moro suggested that Bolsonaro removed Valeixo because the president opposed investigations being conducted by the Federal Police. “He was concerned about investigations underway in the Federal Supreme Court and that a change would also be opportune at the Federal Police,” Moro said of Bolsonaro’s thinking. Moro said Bolsonaro’s concerns were not a reasonable justification for firing Valeixo, but added that he nonetheless searched for “an alternative solution, to avoid a political crisis during a pandemic.” In the end, Moro said, “I understood that I could not set aside my commitment to the rule of law.”

Notably, the Federal Police are conducting several investigations that could impact Bolsonaro, his politician sons, and several members of their inner circle. Moro loomed large over Brazilian politics during the past several years, even before he accepted Bolsonaro’s offer to serve as justice minister. He was the judge at the center of the influential Operation Car Wash anti-corruption investigation that put former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in prison, removing the popular politician from the 2018 presidential election and clearing the way for Bolsonaro’s victory. When he entered government, Moro was among the most popular political figures in the country and was seen as an important ally for Bolsonaro, but also as a potential rival in the 2022 elections.

The ex-judge’s standing, however, was seriously weakened after The Intercept began publishing an explosive series, in English and Portuguese, on malfeasance and potential illegal actions by Moro and Car Wash prosecutors. As a result of the series, Lula was eventually released from prison.

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Is there anything more American?

Denver Health Execss Get Bonuses 1 Week After Workers Asked To Take Cuts (CBS)

Top executives at Denver Health Medical Center received significant bonuses this month for their performance in 2019, ranging from $50,000 up to $230,000, one week after frontline hospital workers were asked to voluntarily take leave without pay or reduce their hours as the hospital dealt with the financial downturn resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. On April 3, Denver Health CEO Robin Wittenstein emailed hospital workers noting “the current situation will stress us financially.” She announced a hiring freeze and asked employees to voluntarily take leave without pay, use personal time off or reduce their normal work week.


“The goal is to reduce our total salary expense without the need to lay off employees or implement mandatory PTO/furloughs,” wrote Wittenstein. She said the hospital was also considering mandating workers to use their paid time off, mandatory leave without pay and other steps. “The goal is to avoid these extreme measures if at all possible,” she wrote. One week later, on April 10, Wittenstein and her executive staff saw their 2019 Management Incentive Plan bonuses deposited into their bank accounts.

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Macron pleasing the unions AND his small businesses.

Amazon To Be Fined €100K For Every ‘Non-Essential’ Delivery in France (RT)

Amazon will face a fine each time it delivers non-essential goods in France until it improves the safety conditions of its workers amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The company earlier closed its warehouses in protest. On Friday, an appeals court in Versailles, outside Paris, upheld last week’s ruling, which restricted Amazon’s French warehouses to only shipping IT products, health items, groceries and pet food until it ensures the safety of its workers. Jeff Bezos’ e-commerce giant was given 48 hours to comply with the ruling, and will be fined €100,000 ($108,020) for every delivery that doesn’t meet the court’s requirements.


On April 14, a court ruled that Amazon had failed to guarantee the safety of its workers amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and said that the company must submit an updated professional risk assessment before it can resume full operations. Amazon argued that it had already updated its work safety protocols and introduced disease-control measures to prevent its workers from being infected with the coronavirus. Following the ruling on April 14, the company completely shut down its French warehouses until Saturday.

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Trara Reade’s mom called Larry King in 1993.

 

 

 

Merkel is a chemist by trade. She understands a thing or two.

 

 

 

 

 

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Dec 132018
 
 December 13, 2018  Posted by at 10:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


René Magritte After the water, the clouds 1926

 

‘Her Goose Is Cooked’ (G.)
Tory Resentment Of Irish Power Within EU (BBC)
Cohen Gets 3 Years, Says He Will Reveal All He Knows About Trump (Ind.)
Yellen, Fed Fear Corporate Debt Bubble, Investors Don’t (CNBC)
US Bank Stocks Spiral Down (WS)
ECB Worries Multiply Even As Money-Printing Presses Stop (R.)
ECB Caught Between Economic Risks And QE Exit (CNBC)
French Government To Face A No-Confidence Vote (CNBC)
Japan Picks The Character For ‘Disaster’ To Define 2018 (Tel.)
Wikileaks’ Assange Undergoes Medical Tests At Ecuador’s Urging (R.)
Assange Complains Of ‘More Subtle’ Silencing Than Khashoggi (RT)
Fentanyl Surpasses Heroin As Deadliest Drug In US (AFP)
Time Magazine Says The US ‘Remains A Free And Fair Press’ (CNBC)

 

 

Might as well do it this way. May survives confidence vote and can now prepare to defend the deal whose certain defeat made her delay Tuesday’s Parliament vote, a delay which led to the confidence vote in the first place. She still can’t win that one. It’s not so much May who is cooked, it’s the country.

‘Her Goose Is Cooked’ (G.)

No 10 will not be happy with today’s front pages, which are all about Theresa May’s survival in the no-confidence vote, but paint the win as less of a triumph for May than a pyrrhic victory. Let’s start with the good news for the prime minister. Two papers have come out in support of the her, with the Express featuring a picture of a smiling May and the headline: “Now just let her get on with it”.


Neil Henderson
(@hendopolis)

EXPRESS: Now just let her get on with it #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/jBhPRSqbAc

The Mail is similarly supportive: “Now let her get on with the job!”, saying that “despite two months of sabre-rattling by her hardline opponents, and deadlock over Brexit, almost two-thirds of Tory MPs backed her”.


Neil Henderson
(@hendopolis)

DAILY MAIL: Now let her get on with the job! #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/oaEihTtsOv

Others were less sympathetic. “Time to call it a May”, says the Sun, never one to miss the chance of putting a pun in a headline. The Sun says the prime minister was “left wounded last night after a battering by Tory Brexit rebels”.

The Sun
(@TheSun)

Tomorrow’s front page: Theresa May was left wounded after a battering by Tory Brexit rebels in a make-or-break confidence vote https://t.co/SZTSNZoCZq pic.twitter.com/3OO11Qrm85

The Mirror has: “It’s lame duck for Christmas”, saying May’s “goose is cooked”. The paper describes her as “wounded” and “battered” and says she only managed to survive the no-confidence vote “by promising not to fight the next election”.


Daily Mirror
(@DailyMirror)

Tomorrow’s front page: It’s lame duck for Christmas#tomorrowspaperstoday https://t.co/fFIeHwiekz pic.twitter.com/xL0ijW0Qzv

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Britain’s -Tory- elites still see Ireland as some backward place way beneath them. “The Irish really should know their place.”

Tory Resentment Of Irish Power Within EU (BBC)

A Tory grandee recently sidled up to me to express grave reservations about the Brexit process. “We simply cannot allow the Irish to treat us like this,” the former minister said about the negotiating tactics of the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar. The Conservative MP was exasperated that the Republic of Ireland (population: 4.8m) has been able to shape the EU negotiating stance that has put such pressure on the UK (population: 66m). “This simply cannot stand,” the one-time moderniser told me. “The Irish really should know their place.” The remarks explained why Conservatives from both sides of the Brexit divide are so troubled by the negotiations. They also explain why Theresa May might find that any concessions from the EU over the Northern Ireland backstop may fall short of the demands of Tory MPs.

Over the last few months Tory MPs have asked in private how the Irish Republic can believe its relationship with the EU trumps its relationship with the UK. They cite economic reasons (the Irish Republic’s strong trading links with the UK) and the historical relationship. The MPs do of course acknowledge that left a troubled legacy. One minister familiar with Anglo-Irish relations points out that these Tories should bear in mind one date and one word to explain both the Irish and the EU’s approach. The date is 1973: when the Irish Republic joined the EEC at the same time as the UK and Denmark. That was the moment when Ireland took a giant political leap at the same time as the UK.

But it turned out to be arguably the biggest unilateral strategic move since Partition in the 1920s – a move that defined the modern Irish Republic as an independent state within Europe, with a wholly different approach to its larger neighbour.

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I’m afraid I missed something along the way. If you run for office in the US and someone tries to blackmail you, you can’t get rid of them, you need to have lawsuits, court cases etc., interfere with your campaign. Not doing so is illegal. But, as Candace Owens said today,

“Congress has a slush fund, made up of tax dollars, that is used to pay off & silence their alleged sexual assaults and affairs. To date, over 200 million dollars in 200 settlements have been paid since 1998. But tell us more about Trump’s possible campaign finance violations…”

Moreover, a US judge just sentenced Stormy Daniels to paying Trump’s legal costs. But he was still in the wrong? How is that possible?

Cohen Gets 3 Years, Says He Will Reveal All He Knows About Trump (Ind.)

Michael Cohen has warned that he has more to say about what he called the ”dirty deeds” of Donald Trump as the president’s former lawyer and fixer was sentenced to three years in prison for facilitating payments to two women who have had alleged affairs with Mr Trump. Cohen was sentenced to 36 months for tax fraud and for his role in the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and the former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both say they had affairs with Mr Trump before the 2016 presidential election. The judge in a district court in New York also handed Cohen an extra two months for lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Russia.

The payments have implicated Mr Trump directly in criminal conduct according to a court filing from prosecutors last week, which said that Cohen was working in coordination with the president. Cohen’s adviser Lanny Davis, who was his attorney for the case, said after the sentencing that Cohen will disclose more information concerning Mr Trump, once Robert Mueller wraps up his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and possible collusion with Trump campaign officials. “At the appropriate time, after Mr Mueller completes his investigation and issues his final report, I look forward to assisting Michael to state publicly all he knows about Mr Trump – and that includes any appropriate congressional committee interested in the search for truth and the difference between facts and lies,” Mr Davis said in a statement.

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Why is anyone still listening to Yellen?

Yellen, Fed Fear Corporate Debt Bubble, Investors Don’t (CNBC)

The corporate debt scaring policy experts like former Fed Chair Janet Yellen isn’t throwing too much of a fright into market participants. In fact, some of them are continuing to load up on lower-grade corporate debt because it’s managed to be a better performer than some of the investments considered to be safer. “Offense is the best defense,” Hans Mikkelsen, credit strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told clients in a note pointing out that BBB-rated companies are outperforming their A-rated counterparts. BBB is the last rung before junk, and the increasing level of company bonds going to that level is causing concern.

Some investors worry that the companies whose debt is in danger of slipping into high-yield territory will have trouble meeting their obligations during the next economic downturn. But Mikkelsen thinks those concerns are misplaced. The S&P 500 Triple-B investment-grade corporate bond index is down 2.9 percent year to date, which is not good. However, the group is outperforming the broader S&P 500/MarketAxess Investment Grade Corporate Bond Index, which is off 3.5 percent in 2018. The outperformance grows when isolating for risk-adjusted excess returns and runs counter to history when credit spreads are widening. Higher-quality bonds usually outperform in those cases, Mikkelsen noted.

“This outperformance of BBBs is noteworthy as one of [the] key investor concerns this year remains the possibility that large BBB-rated capital structures get downgraded to high yield during the next downturn,” Mikkelsen wrote. “We think this outperformance reflects in part a low recession probability being priced into credit spreads, as well as the fact that most large BBBs are unlikely to get downgraded to [high-yield] anytime soon as they tend to have stable cash flows and significant financial flexibility.”

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When do we start talking bailouts?

US Bank Stocks Spiral Down (WS)

On Tuesday, the US KBW Bank index, which tracks the largest 24 US banks and serves as a benchmark for the banking sector, dropped 1.2%, the fifth day in a row of declines, to the lowest close since September 7, 2017. The index is now back where it had been on December 1, 2016. Two years of big gains gone up in smoke. [..] But no, the index doesn’t include Goldman Sachs – which is big in other ways but not as a bank, and which has skidded 35% from its all-time peak in February. The index has now dropped 22.5% since the post-financial crisis peak on January 26:

So far in Q4, the index has dropped 14%. Unless a miraculous banking-Santa-Claus rally pulls banks out of their dive by the end of the quarter, a 14% decline would make it the worst quarterly decline since Q3 2011. If tax selling kicks in, given the losses bank-stock investors have taken so far this year, it could get worse in the coming days. Not even in Q3 2015, during the oil bust, when investors were fearing that banks would take steep losses on their loans to the oil industry, did shares drop this much.

The index is now back where it had first been a couple of years before its crazy peak in February 2007. Said peak occurred about a year before Bear Stearns toppled. During the subsequent collapse of banks stocks, it looked like the index would hit zero. After the bottom in March 2009, the Fed’s strategies to benefit the banks and those that owned them took hold, at the expense of depositors and other classes of US stake holders, such as renters or future home buyers. And it worked. But that era is now over. And the tax cut too has been baked in, and banks are left to fend for themselves:

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Those negative rates will come back to haunt Draghi. But when their damage becomes obvious, he’ll be living quietly in some splendid villa on Lake Como.

ECB Worries Multiply Even As Money-Printing Presses Stop (R.)

The European Central Bank is all but certain to formally end its lavish bond purchase scheme on Thursday but will take an increasingly dim view on growth, raising the odds that its next step in removing stimulus will be delayed. The long-flagged end of bond buys must be irreversible for the sake of credibility, but with France and Italy in political turmoil, a global trade war still looming large and growth slowing, ECB chief Mario Draghi will be keen to emphasize that other forms of support will remain. This leaves Draghi with yet another delicate balancing act: appear confident enough to justify the end of the 2.6 trillion euro ($2.95 trillion), four-year-long bond buying program, but also sound sufficiently concerned to keep investors expectations about further policy tightening relatively cool.

“Ending quantitative easing now looks more like the ammunition is running out rather than (being) based on a convincing economic outlook,” Societe Generale economist Anatoli Annenkov said. The ECB’s problem is that growth is weaker than policymakers thought even just weeks ago while the predicted rise in underlying inflation has failed to materialize, putting in doubt some of the bank’s assumptions about the broader economy. Overall inflation, the ECB’s primary objective, may be near the target now but falling oil prices suggest a dip in the months ahead and a solid rise in wages is not feeding through to prices, leaving the bank with an unexplained disconnect.

Highlighting this complication, the ECB is likely to cut growth and underlying inflation projections and may take a dimmer view on risks, all while Draghi argues that growth is merely falling back to normal after a recent run.

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What a failure Draghi has been. Same goes for all central bank heads in the past decades. They make sure banks are fine at the expense of citizens.

ECB Caught Between Economic Risks And QE Exit (CNBC)

ECB President Mario Draghi has to tread a fine line once again as he gives his latest update on euro area monetary policy on Thursday. While steering the bank out of its QE program and stressing interest rates and reinvestments going forward, Draghi is faced with an economy that may be slowing and a dreary inflation outlook. “We expect the ECB to announce at its meeting next Thursday an end to net-purchases under the APP programme,” said Natixis’ Dirk Schumacher in a note. “While there has been a clear weakening in the economic environment, the ECB will argue that the reinvestment of the stock of bond holdings will ensure a continuing accommodative policy stance justifying an end of the program,” he added.

On Thursday, the ECB also will publish its newest staff projections for economic growth and inflation for the next three years. While it is expected that the central bank will lower its outlook for growth for the next two years, the numbers are also expected to remain just punchy enough to underline the case to exit their purchase program. Another big topic for Thursday will be the design of the ECB’s reinvestments. “The ECB will likely maintain its guidance that it will fully reinvest the proceeds and thus keep its bond holdings constant ‘for an extended period of time’ and ‘for as long as necessary’ to put inflation on track towards its target,” said Florian Hense, Economist with Berenberg.

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Might work if Le Pen joins the left.

French Government To Face A No-Confidence Vote (CNBC)

Left-of-center lawmakers in France have tabled a motion of no confidence in the French government following repeated protests and scenes of violence. The “gilets jaunes” (“yellow vests”) crisis started as a demonstration against a carbon tax policy and planned fuel tax increases, but have morphed into wider discontent at the leadership of President Emmanuel Macron. Now representatives from the French Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the far-left populist movement France Unbowed (La France Insoumise) have come together to table the motion against Macron’s government.

The government of Georges Pompidou in 1962 was successfully toppled by such a motion but few believe this one will pass as Macron’s centrist La République En Marche! party enjoys a strong majority in the 577-seat house. “The French political system makes it extremely difficult to remove a President from office,” said the Deputy Director of Research at Teneo Intelligence in a note Wednesday. “The only political tool available to the opposition to expel Macron is the constitution’s impeachment procedure, which no one is currently considering,” he added.

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Seems appropriate, but what symbols are left for the much worse years to come?

Japan Picks The Character For ‘Disaster’ To Define 2018 (Tel.)

Japan has chosen the character for ‘disaster’ to symbolise 2018. The public chose the symbol following a series of natural disasters. In July, 200 people died in floods and millions were evacuated from their homes, and mere days later 65 people died in a heatwave that hospitalised more than 20,000 people. The country was also hit by an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 and was rocked by its strongest typhoon for 25 years. These numerous natural disasters have had an adverse effect on the Japanese economy, and the country’s GDP has gradually shrunk over the last three months, by 1.2 per cent.

The country also experienced societal problems this year, as stories of sexual harassment in the workplace and suicide rates came to light. The master of the ancient temple in Kyoto, Seihan Mori, wrote the symbol for ‘disaster’ in dark ink on traditional white washi paper to mark the vote. The competition has been run by the Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation since 1995. In the annual poll, 21,000 of the 190,000 people who voted picked the character to summarise the years events, but the symbol for peace was a close runner-up.

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What kind of headline is this, Reuters? The UK has refused Assange medical care for years, and now you make it look like Ecuador, not Assange himself. makes it happen?

Wikileaks’ Assange Undergoes Medical Tests At Ecuador’s Urging (R.)

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange received a series of medical exams, Ecuador’s top attorney said on Wednesday, in line with a new set of rules for his asylum at the Andean country’s London embassy that prompted him to sue the government. Assange first took asylum in the embassy in 2012, but his relationship with Ecuador has grown increasingly tense, with President Lenin Moreno saying he does not like his presence in the embassy. The government in October imposed new rules requiring him to receive routine medical exams, following concerns he was not getting the medical attention he needed. The rules also ordered Assange to pay his medical and phone bills and clean up after his pet cat.

Inigo Salvador told reporters Ecuador did not have access to results of the tests, which were conducted by doctors Assange trusted, out of respect for his privacy. But he said Assange, who has sued Ecuador arguing that the new rules violate his rights, appeared coherent and lucid to him. On Wednesday, Assange appeared via videoconference in an Ecuadorean court to appeal a previous ruling that had upheld the new rules. Assange is concerned that Ecuador is seeking to end his asylum and extradite him to the United States, but Ecuador has said the United Kingdom told it he would not be extradited.

U.S. officials have acknowledged that federal prosecutors have been conducting a lengthy criminal probe into Assange and Wikileaks. Wikileaks published U.S. diplomatic and military secrets when Assange ran the operation. A lawyer for Assange said he did not know the results of the medical tests, and called on Ecuador to produce documentation proving that the UK would not extradite him to any country where his life was at risk.

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“..accused his Ecuadorean hosts of spying and feeding information to US authorities..”

Assange Complains Of ‘More Subtle’ Silencing Than Khashoggi (RT)

Julian Assange has accused his Ecuadorean hosts of spying and feeding information to US authorities, and slammed attempts to block his journalistic work as a more subtle way of silencing than the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Suggesting there were “facts of espionage” inside the embassy, the WikiLeaks co-founder expressed concern during a hearing in Quito on Wednesday that Ecuadorean intelligence is not only spying on him, but sharing the data it has harvested with the FBI. Ecuadorean intelligence clearly spent a sizable amount of money equipping the embassy for surveillance, Assange added.

He accused Ecuadorean authorities of “comments of a threatening nature” relating to his journalistic work and compared attempts to silence him to the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was tortured and cut up in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in October, but “more subtle.” The comparison elicited a harsh reaction from Ecuadorean Prosecutor General Inigo Salvador, who accused Assange of biting the hand that feeds him. Assange told the Ecuadorean court that the living conditions in the embassy were so detrimental to his health that they may put him in the hospital – and suggested that may be the point, because once he leaves the building, he’s fair game for UK and US authorities.

[..] Assange was in court appealing a strict set of rules handed down in October governing his conduct, which he has called a violation of human rights. He submitted 15 “facts of evidence” along with letters from individuals and groups barred from visiting him at the embassy. An earlier attempt to sue his hosts over the restrictive measures was ultimately dismissed by a judge last month, while Assange rejected E

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That stuff is very bad news.

Fentanyl Surpasses Heroin As Deadliest Drug In US (AFP)

The synthetic drug, fentanyl, has surpassed heroin as the deadliest drug in the United States, taking more than 18,000 lives in 2016, federal health officials said Wednesday. In 2016, the latest year for which full data is available, “29 percent of all drug overdose deaths mentioned involvement of fentanyl,” said the report from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fentanyl is a powerful, synthetic narcotic that has been blamed for the deaths of rock stars including Prince and Tom Petty. It works on the brain like morphine or heroin, but is 50 to 100 times more potent, and can easily lead to overdose.

The rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States has tripled from 1999 through 2016, as the nation grapples with a persistent opioid epidemic. Fentanyl-related drug overdose deaths have doubled each year from 2013 through 2016, “from 0.6 per 100,000 in 2013 to 1.3 in 2014, 2.6 in 2015, and 5.9 in 2016,” said the report. Meanwhile, deaths from heroin and methamphetamine more than tripled from 2011 to 2016. Heroin was the top cause of drug overdose death from 2012 to 2015, said the report. The prescription painkiller Oxycodone ranked highest in 2011.

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Every word of this is broken. Time defends the MSM against Trump, but he didn’t create fake news. I like the term ‘abuse of truth’, that verges on doublespeak, as does ‘..the willingness to dismiss anything including credible news reporting as fake news”. And c’mon, free and fair press? Who believes that?

Time Magazine Says The US ‘Remains A Free And Fair Press’ (CNBC)

Despite the White House ramping up its rhetoric, the United States remains a free and fair press, Ben Goldberger the assistant managing editor of Time magazine told CNBC on Wednesday. The year 2018 has been marked by manipulation, abuse of truth, along with efforts by governments to instigate mistrust of the facts, the magazine said in an essay when it named killed and imprisoned journalists as Person of the Year for 2018 on Tuesday. “There’s no doubt that the rhetoric from the White House about the demonization of the media as ‘the enemy of the people,’ or the willingness to dismiss anything including credible news reporting as fake news, is incredibly worrisome and chilling,” Goldberger said. “But that said, I return to what I said about the United States — this remains a free and fair press.” “Journalists here enjoy legal protections that are the envy of those in virtually every other country,” he added.

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