Aug 182022
 


Odilon Redon Fallen angel 1872

 

Something is Looming Geopolitically, We Better Start Taking It Seriously (CTH)
A Eurasian Jigsaw: BRI and INSTC (Escobar)
Russia Urges International Inspection Of Shelled Nuclear Site (RT)
Europe’s Powers Gave Ukraine No New Military Pledges In July (Pol.eu)
Ukraine Could Be Put On ‘Ammo Diet’ – US Military Expert (RT)
Germany Declares War On Europe And Refuses To Ban Russians (CdS)
Putin First, Populists Next – Who To Blame For The Energy Crisis? (RT)
Russia Names Main Victim Of US Energy ‘Victory’ (RT)
Government Must Quickly Start Repairing Purchasing Power – Professor (AD)
Central Bank Warns Gov’t: Be Cautious With Purchasing Power Repairs (NOS)
UK Green Party Calls For Nationalisation Of Big Five Energy Firms (G.)
Audio Tapes In Bill Clinton’s Sock Drawer And Mar-a-Lago Search Dispute (JTN)
FBI Sought Documents Trump Hoarded for Years, Including about Russiagate (NW)
CDC Admits To Botched Covid-19 Responses (RT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roth

Roth/Ratner

 

 

France

 

 


Gas & electricity bill for a business owner in the South of Italy. – July 2021: EUR 120k – July 2022: EUR 979k In his own words: ”A holiday in July would have been more profitable than running my business with these input costs”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lawyer sundance: “.. the think-tanks and high-minded climate change ideologues do not have the ability to manage a transition and still meet the needs of people..”

Something is Looming Geopolitically, We Better Start Taking It Seriously (CTH)

As a result of western governments’ taking collective action under the auspices of a ‘climate change’ agenda, we are on the cusp of something happening with ramifications that no one has ever seen before. Western governments’, specifically western Europe, North America (U.S-Canada) and Australia/New Zealand, are intentionally trying to lower economic activity to meet the intentional drop in energy production. This is the core consequence of the Build Back Better agenda as promoted by the World Economic Forum. Anyone who says there is a reference point to determine both the short-term and long-term consequences is lying. There is no precedent for nations’ collectively and intentionally trying to reduce economic activity.

Hiding behind the false justification that current inflation is driven by too much demand, central banks in Europe, the Bank of England, Bank of Canada and U.S. federal reserve are raising interest rates. The outcome we are currently feeling is an intentional economic contraction and global recession. The Build Back Better monetary policy is successfully shrinking western economic activity; however, the impacted nations that produce goods for markets in North America and Europe, specifically southeast Asia, Japan and China, are not raising interest rates in an effort to try and offset the drop in demand. China has announced they are dropping their central bank rates in a desperate effort to lower costs and keep their export dependent economy working.

Underneath all of this, is a drop in energy production in the same nations trying to lower economic activity. The political policymakers are attempting to manage this process without informing the citizens of the unspoken goal. Shortages of oil, coal and natural gas are self-inflicted problems, all part of the BBB agenda. Beyond the massive increases in energy costs, which is the true source of inflation and a direct/intentional outcome of the BBB effort, Europe is now facing a looming winter without the energy resources to heat homes and sustain people. Things are going to be very uncomfortable in Europe this winter as roaming brownouts are now predicted.

As the collective west attempts to, using their words, “manage the transition,” they do not have mechanisms to control an outcome of this magnitude. It is simply too big a situation to manage. Where the rubber meets the road, the think-tanks and high-minded climate change ideologues do not have the ability to manage a transition and still meet the needs of people. Beyond the esoteric thinking, there are real consequences from these actions.

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What would we know about modern Asian politics without Pepe Escobar?

A Eurasian Jigsaw: BRI and INSTC (Escobar)

There’s no question that the proxy war in Ukraine between the US and Russia has been creating serious problems for BRI expansion. After all, the US war on Russia is also a war against BRI. The top three BRI corridors from Xinjiang to Europe are the New Eurasian Land Bridge, the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, and the China-Russia-Mongolia Economic Corridor. The New Eurasian Land Bridge uses the Trans-Siberian and a second link through Xinjiang-Kazakhstan (via the dry land port of Khorgos) and then Russia. The corridor via Mongolia is in fact two corridors: one from Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei to Inner Mongolia and then Russia; and the other from Dalian and Shenyang and then to Chita in Russia, near the Chinese border.

As it stands, the Chinese are not using Land Bridge and the Mongolian corridor as much as before, mainly because of western sanctions on Russia. The current BRI emphasis is via Central Asia and West Asia, with one branch then bisecting toward the Persian Gulf and on the Mediterranean. And this is where we see another – highly complex – level of intersection quickly developing: how the increasing importance for China of Central Asia and West Asia mixes with the increasing importance of the INSTC for both Russia and Iran in their trade with India. Call it the friendly vector of the War of Transportation Corridors.

The hardcore vector – real war – is already being deployed by the usual suspects. They are predictably bent on destabilizing and/or smashing any node of BRI/INSTC/EAEU/SCO Eurasia integration, by any means necessary: be it in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Balochistan, the Central Asian “stans” or Xinjiang. As far as the major Eurasian actors are concerned, that’s bound to be an Anglo-American train to nowhere.

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Someone will find excuses not to go. They first need to hide evidence.

Russia Urges International Inspection Of Shelled Nuclear Site (RT)

Russia is calling on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant as soon as possible to fulfill its mandate as the UN’s nuclear watchdog, a senior Russian diplomat said. “We would like such an IAEA mission to take place soon. Russia will do its best to facilitate it,” Igor Vishnevetsky, the deputy foreign minister for arms control, said during a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference on Wednesday. The inspection was supposed to happen sometime ago, he added, but was derailed “not due to a fault of ours.” The diplomat pointed the finger at Ukraine, saying that its regular attacks on the nuclear site was why it was not safe for IAEA monitors to visit it. “People should not attack nuclear sites, should not use artillery or other weapons against nuclear power plants,” Vishnevetsky stressed.


“The Ukrainian side knows it very well, and nevertheless does it, effectively committing acts of nuclear terrorism.” The Ukrainian power plant, the largest of its kind in Europe, comes under regular artillery shelling. One projectile this week reportedly struck ten meters from a container holding spent nuclear fuel. Kiev denies carrying out the strikes and claims that Russian troops are shelling the plant to discredit Ukraine. It also accused Russia of stationing its military forces at the Zaporozhye plant. The UN would neither confirm nor deny allegations by either side and called for a demilitarized zone around the nuclear facility. The US said that Russia had to cede control of the plant and the city of Energodar, where it’s located, to Ukraine, to prevent the risk of a nuclear disaster.

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“..European military aid commitments for Ukraine have been on a downward trend since the end of April…”

Europe’s Powers Gave Ukraine No New Military Pledges In July (Pol.eu)

Throughout all of July, Europe’s six largest countries offered Ukraine no new bilateral military commitments, according to new data — the first month that had happened since Russia invaded in February. The revelation is a sign that despite historic shifts in European defense policy — which have seen once reluctant countries like France and Germany ship arms to Ukraine — military aid to Ukraine may be waning just as Kyiv launches a crucial counteroffensive. The fresh data, covering the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland and set for release on Thursday, comes from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which has been maintaining a Ukraine Support Tracker throughout the war.

It illustrates a point Ukrainian military officials and politicians have been repeatedly making: That major European powers are not keeping up with the military aid coming from the U.S., and that having led the charge, big-hitting Britain and Poland may be running out of steam. Military specialists and some members of European Parliament have increasingly echoed the point recently. Christoph Trebesch, head of the team compiling the Ukraine Support Tracker, said the organization’s data showed European military aid commitments for Ukraine have been on a downward trend since the end of April. “Despite the war entering a critical phase, new aid initiatives have dried up,” he said.

Western allies did meet last week in Cophenhagen to gather pledges for boosting Ukraine’s military, amassing €1.5 billion in commitments. But Trebesch, who said his team is still analyzing the numbers, cautioned the figure “is meager compared to what was raised in earlier conferences.” Trebesch argued that European countries should be considering the Ukraine war as more akin to the eurozone crisis or the coronavirus pandemic, two events that promoted the Continent to funnel hundreds of billions into emergency funding measures. “When you compare the speed at which the checkbook came out and the size of the money that was delivered, compared to what is on offer for Ukraine, it is tiny in comparison,” he said.

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You won’t see it in the rhetoric, but “we” are withdrawing.

Ukraine Could Be Put On ‘Ammo Diet’ – US Military Expert (RT)

Ukraine’s European backers may be about to put the country on an “ammunition diet”, an American military analyst has claimed in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel. Michael Kofman said these nations may already have reached their limit in terms of weapons supplies to Kiev. In an article published on Tuesday, Kofman was quoted as saying it is not in the Ukrainian military’s best interests to bide its time, as the weather will soon begin to worsen, making any counteroffensive more difficult to pull off. On top of that, according to the US expert, Russian troops could use a hiatus to regroup and “solve some of their personnel problems.” He noted that time would be on Kiev’s side if Western support was unlimited. However, that is likely not the case, and the Ukrainian leadership is well aware of this, Kofman suggested.

He added that the “Ukrainians are apparently quite concerned about for how long they can expect further support, especially from the Europeans.” The analyst went on to suggest that Kiev’s European backers may already have “given Ukraine most of the weapons they are ready to give.” “The Ukrainians will likely go on a kind of ammunition diet,” Kofman predicted. The analyst told journalists that, with this in mind, the leadership in Kiev may be concerned that Ukraine “could come under pressure to accept the stalemate” in the absence of any major success by the start of next year. Such a scenario “would be a defeat for Ukraine,” he noted. Kofman concluded that Kiev’s ability to reclaim territories seized by Russia ultimately hinges on the extent of its Western support.

He also acknowledged “some small Russian successes in the southern part of Donbass, like in Peski,” adding, however, that the offensive is largely being carried out by the militaries of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), as well as by “Wagner mercenaries.” When asked about the possibility of a Ukrainian counteroffensive to reclaim the southern city of Kherson, which is currently held by Russian forces, Kofman pointed out that while Kiev has a lot of personnel on paper, only a limited number of units are “really trained and equipped for that.”

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Translated from Le Courrier du Soir. “The European Union on the brink of a new unprecedented political crisis.”

Germany Declares War On Europe And Refuses To Ban Russians (CdS)

The European Union on the brink of a new unprecedented political crisis. Less than a year after the violent crisis over Russian gas which had deeply divided the Union, it is now the thorny issue of the visa granted to Russian citizens which risks provoking a real internal war. Indeed, it all started a few days ago when the Ukrainian President, Zelensky, asked that European countries prohibit access to their soil to all Russian nationals. His wishes seem granted because for three days, EU countries have been working hard to stop granting visas to Russians. But the project risks leading to a total fiasco because Germany, Europe’s leading economic power, is firmly opposed to it. This is at least the information that Lecourrier-du-soir.com obtained on August 16 from several reliable sources including the Euronews media.

Indeed, according to information provided by this press organ, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his disagreement (on this subject) during a trip to Oslo. In front of the press, his remarks were blunt. “This is not the Russian people’s war. It’s Putin’s war and we have to be clear about it,” he said. The German Chancellor also made a point of pointing out that several Russian citizens are fleeing Russia because they are not in phase with the policy of the regime in place. Meanwhile, the subject is already on the table but could trigger a new political crisis within the EU where some believe that banning Russians from entering Europe is a good move. This is at least the opinion of Kaja Kallas, Prime Minister of Estonia who, in a tweet posted on August 09, did not mince words.

“Stop granting visas to Russians. Visiting Europe is a privilege, not a human right. Airspace must be closed. This means that while Schengen countries continue to issue visas, Russia’s neighbors bear the burden. It is time to end tourism from Russia immediately”, she reacted. And Estonia is not the only European country to refuse to grant visas to Russians. Because, on August 14, in a tweet posted on his official account, Andriy Yermak, close to the Polish president, also made it known that his country will prohibit access to its territory to all Russian nationals.

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“..close the local swimming pool amid the record summer heat, citing a choice between the cost of feeding school kids increasingly pricy organic food in the cafeteria… or keeping the facility open.”

Putin First, Populists Next – Who To Blame For The Energy Crisis? (RT)

At the outset of the Ukraine conflict, Western officials proclaimed their unity against Moscow and vowed to accelerate their transition away from Russian fossil fuels and towards greener energy. The idea was to deprive the Kremlin of revenues which, in their minds, would result in defunding the military operation in Ukraine. So they went full scorched-earth on their own cheap energy supply – that is, gas from Europe’s largest country – and sanctioned it. It wasn’t long before it became obvious that was something much easier said than done. Soon, officials started making public requests of their citizens to “do their part” by sacrificing their everyday comforts and quality of life, like taking shorter showers – as though that would remedy the fact that industrial representatives were already sounding the alarm about rationing and manufacturing shortages.

Next, Western officials started backpedalling on their pledges to eradicate those forms of energy they had previously considered non-green. It was barely a few months earlier that Germany was chastising France for persisting with nuclear energy. Now, Berlin may potentially be joining Paris in turning back to it as a source, all while it also fires the old coal plants back up. Western Europeans had initially figured that they could at least maybe rely on hydroelectric energy from Norway, but the dry summer heat now threatens that, too, as Oslo considers cuts to its exports. And even liquified natural gas from Britain may not be exportable to the EU, since toxic and even radioactive contaminantshave recently been found in the supply originally sourced from countries like the US and Qatar.

The first flickers of real trouble are already evident – well ahead of the winter heating boom. The British consulting firm, Cornwall Insights, is warning of possible planned blackouts and empty shelves in Britain. Average household energy costs in the UK have reached £4,000 ($4,860) per year and are estimated to go even higher. The Bank of England is warning of a recession amid inflation which, in Germany, has just hit the highest level since reunification in 1990. Countries like Spain and Italy are imposing limits on heating and air conditioning in both public and commercial buildings. The EU’s imposition of a 15% energy cut across all member states has just come into effect, providing yet another pretext to reduce services to taxpayers. The mayor of the French town of Cabriès used it as an excuse to close the local swimming pool amid the record summer heat, citing a choice between the cost of feeding school kids increasingly pricy organic food in the cafeteria… or keeping the facility open.

And whose fault is all this? It should seem obvious, no? Western officials cut themselves off from their own energy source in order to play geopolitics by pulling Ukraine into their orbit – but the blame is squarely on Russia. That’s what they said and that’s what they’re doubling down on. Britain’s Daily Mail refers in a graphic to Putin cutting the gas supply. “Putin’s new gas squeeze condemns Europe to recession and a hard winter of rationing,” according to a CNBC headline. US President Joe Biden has framed it as “Putin’s tax on both food and gas.”Yet these officials did it to themselves – and to their citizens – “for Ukraine.”

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“US attempts to divide the energy markets into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ leads to destabilization, rising fuel prices and inflation..”

Russia Names Main Victim Of US Energy ‘Victory’ (RT)

Europe’s current woes with natural gas supplies are due to US pressure to block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from coming online, Russian ambassador in Washington Anatoly Antonov said in a TV interview on Wednesday. With this, he said, the US won a victory not so much over Russia, but over European industry, which now has to rely on far more expensive American “molecules of freedom.” “No matter how much Washington tries to present Russia as an unreliable supplier, this is not true,” Antonov told Russia-24 in an interview that aired Wednesday evening. “The problems of our buyers began solely as a result of sanctions and restrictions imposed or inspired by the US,” the ambassador added. “We are ready to sell to everyone who needs inexpensive and high-quality resources.”

He cited the example of Nord Stream 2, the pipeline under the Baltic Sea that was supposed to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany. It was completed last year but Berlin halted its certification in February – prior to the escalation of hostilities in Ukraine – and refused to make it operational despite appeals from German industry and local officials to do so. “The pipeline was ready to launch and could solve almost all the supply problems that arose with [Nord Stream 1] due to the sanctions confusion,” Antonov said. “The only thing missing is political will, the EU states just need to press the button and the pipeline will start working. But in the EU capitals they gave in to persistent pressure from the White House. As a result, a bet was made on expensive LNG.”

Liquefied natural gas is exported by the US in quantities nowhere near sufficient for the European market. Antonov made a pointed reference to the US Department of Energy calling it “molecules of freedom” back in 2019. Nord Stream 2 was a victory for Washington, which “struck a massive blow not so much against Russia, but against European competitiveness,” Antonov said. Addressing the reports that the US and its allies are trying to impose a price cap on Russian oil and gas exports, Antonov pointed out that such attempts would backfire, as there would be a realignment of commodity markets “not in favor of Western countries.” “US attempts to divide the energy markets into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ leads to destabilization, rising fuel prices and inflation,” Antonov said.

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Google translate from Dutch. Don’t think this guy buys his own groceries.

Government Must Quickly Start Repairing Purchasing Power – Professor (AD)

The passive attitude of the cabinet to protect the purchasing power of citizens is incomprehensible, says Tilburg economics professor Harald Benink. “A lot was possible quickly during the corona pandemic, now it is going very slowly.” High inflation, especially the high prices for energy and food, will become a huge problem, Benink predicts. “It is unprecedented what is happening with purchasing power. Energy bills that go from 2000 euros to 6000 euros per year. New families are confronted with this every day. And then the groceries are also 10 to 20 percent more expensive,” says Benink. High inflation threatens to put millions of households in financial trouble. And that will lead to more problems, Benink fears. “There will be a great demand for debt relief. But the municipalities do not have the capacity to help all those people at all.”

Benink foresees major economic damage if nothing is done to repair purchasing power. Sooner or later people will have to cut their spending. An economic contraction of more than 4 percent is then possible. And it’s not just about low-income people, middle-income people are also affected by the declining purchasing power.” Added to this is the consequential damage of problematic debts. People get stressed by money problems and that leads to illness, failure and reduced productivity. According to Benink, the government is probably so passive because they underestimated the increase in energy prices. “It was immediately clear during the corona pandemic that it was a major problem. A package of tens of billions of aid was quickly rigged. Now it is less than 10 billion euros.”

While it is the government’s turn, the professor believes. “It is a classic government function to protect people against uninsurable risks. And that’s inflation. You cannot get vaccinated against that. It’s a tsunami that’s hitting the people.” Benink thinks the cabinet will have to come up with a mix of measures to repair purchasing power. Targeted support for lower and middle incomes. I am thinking of the proposal from the Eneco director who wants an income-related energy discount. But it will also be possible to take generic measures, such as a further reduction in VAT or lower income tax.” Money is not the problem. “For example, if we spend 8 billion extra, the government debt will increase by one percentage point. We can have that easily. Doing nothing costs a lot more.”

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Ha! Also Google translate from Dutch. The Central bank plays with fire. Not a matter for a central bank. The government should talk to Russia.

Central Bank Warns Gov’t: Be Cautious With Purchasing Power Repairs (NOS)

The government is under great pressure to do something about sky-high inflation and high energy bills and is considering measures to compensate for rising prices and save purchasing power. However, the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) warns the cabinet against excessively generous financial support measures, because this could be counterproductive and actually fuel inflation. In NRC, DNB director Olaf Sleijpen argues for restraint in compensating companies and households for the increased prices. It is true that companies and households were kept afloat during the corona crisis in 2020 and 2021 with aid measures costing billions of euros, but the current price crisis works differently. “Large-scale support is now unwise and even counterproductive”, says Sleijpen. “During the corona crisis, we benefited from broad financial support – and therefore a decisive role for the government. Now we are not. As difficult as that message is, we can’t get around it.”

The cause of the high inflation is not in demand but in supply, because there is a scarcity and shortage of products and energy. Financial support does not remedy scarcity, but it does stimulate demand and thus fuel prices. “The ECB is trying to slow down demand with its interest rate policy. If the government presses the accelerator at the same time, it does not help to reach the destination (lower inflation),” Sleijpen told the newspaper. On the other hand, DNB shares the concerns about the major economic and social consequences of the rising prices of energy and groceries. Payment problems are looming for low-income households. “It goes without saying that the government will at least address the worst needs, and really focus on the hardest hit households.”

However, generic measures, such as lower energy taxes and fuel taxes, mainly benefit the higher incomes who do not need them. Additional income support measures should also not lead to a larger budget deficit. “Financing income compensation with a higher government debt means that the bill is passed on to the next generations,” says Sleijpen. The idea of asking employers to raise employees’ wages to keep up with rising inflation has raised eyebrows at DNB. It must be “an appropriate wage increase”. “We do not benefit from the full effect of inflation on wages”. There is as yet no sign of the feared wage-price spiral, DNB notes. and so there is room for stronger wage growth for the time being.

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Saw a pic of this on Twitter. Went looking on the Guardian frontpage, nothing. Their UK page: nada. Went through Google search in the end. So they finally publish something useful, and then try to hide it. But it’s not about the Green Party, or even the UK: we will see this discussion in many European countries.

UK Green Party Calls For Nationalisation Of Big Five Energy Firms (G.)

The Greens have called for the permanent nationalisation of the main energy supply companies and for domestic fuel bills to be reduced to the level of last autumn, describing this as a solution to the failed experiment with a market-based energy system. In a proposal that goes well beyond Labour’s idea for a freeze on energy bills for at least six months, the Greens said nationalising the main five energy firms was a necessary part of a plan sufficiently ambitious “to avoid a catastrophe this winter”. The scheme would be based on one proposed by the TUC last month. This was based on a cost of about £2.85bn to nationalise the big five supply firms – British Gas, E.ON, EDF, Scottish Power and Ovo. As a comparison, the government spent £2.2bn bailing out another firm, Bulb.

The Green plan would also involve the energy price cap – the maximum households can pay – being put back to the level of last autumn, before this April’s increase of nearly £700 a year for the average household. Putting this in place throughout the autumn and winter would cost about £37bn, the party said, compared with the £29bn estimated cost of Labour’s proposal to keep the cap at its current level. The cost would be paid for in part by tightening up the government’s windfall tax on oil and gas firms’ extra profits from higher global prices, and the party also proposes higher taxes for very wealthy people. Carla Denyer, a co-leader of the Greens alongside Adrian Ramsay, said the party would also aim to create more energy efficiency by introducing differential tariffs under which households that use a lot of power face proportionally rising prices, with exceptions for people with disabilities or chronic health conditions.

The party is already committed to a mass programme of home insulation to improve energy efficiency. “This experiment with an energy supply market has failed,” Denyer said. “Only the government can intervene at the scale required to avoid a catastrophe this winter.” She said there was “nationwide anxiety about the prospect of unpayable energy bills”, adding: “Other parties have only offered to fix energy prices at current levels, but we know these are already unaffordable. We would return energy prices to an affordable level.” s

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I sense a link with Melania’s underwear.

Audio Tapes In Bill Clinton’s Sock Drawer And Mar-a-Lago Search Dispute (JTN)

When it comes to the National Archives, history has a funny way of repeating itself. And legal experts say a decade-old case over audio tapes that Bill Clinton once kept in his sock drawer may have significant impact over the FBI search of Melania Trump’s closet and Donald Trump’s personal office.= The case in question is titled Judicial Watch v. National Archives and Records Administration and it involved an effort by the conservative watchdog to compel the Archives to forcibly seize hours of audio recordings that Clinton made during his presidency with historian Taylor Branch. For pop culture, the case is most memorable for the revelation that the 42nd president for a time stored the audio tapes in his sock drawer at the White House. The tapes became the focal point of a 2009 book that Branch wrote.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington D.C. ultimately rejected Judicial Watch’s suit by concluding there was no provision in the Presidential Records Act to force the National Archives to seize records from a former president. But Jackson’s ruling — along with the Justice Department’s arguments that preceded it — made some other sweeping declarations that have more direct relevance to the FBI’s decision to seize handwritten notes and files Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago. The most relevant is that a president’s discretion on what are personal vs. official records is far-reaching and solely his, as is his ability to declassify or destroy records at will.

“Under the statutory scheme established by the PRA, the decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President’s term and in his sole discretion,” Jackson wrote in her March 2012 decision, which was never appealed. “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records,” she added.

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FBI cover-up.

FBI Sought Documents Trump Hoarded for Years, Including about Russiagate (NW)

The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago last Monday was specifically intended to recover Donald Trump’s personal “stash” of hidden documents, two high-level U.S. intelligence officials tell Newsweek. To justify the unprecedented raid on a former president’s residence and protect the source who revealed the existence of Trump’s private hoard, agents went into Trump’s residence on the pretext that they were seeking all government documents, says one official who has been involved in the investigation. But the true target was this private stash, which Justice Department officials feared Donald Trump might weaponize. “They collected everything that rightfully belonged to the U.S. government but the true target was these documents that Trump had been collecting since early in his administration,” says the source, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.

The sought-after documents deal with a variety of intelligence matters of interest to the former president, the officials suggest—including material that Trump apparently thought would exonerate him of any claims of Russian collusion in 2016 or any other election-related charges. When Trump left the White House in January 2021, many of the normal processes of transition were not followed, especially because the president would not admit that he had lost the election or that he would be leaving office. As a result, we now know, some 42 boxes of documents were shipped to Mar-a-Lago by mistake: officials papers under U.S. law, which the National Archives is supposed to take custody of and catalog.

Over the past 18 months, the Trump camp and the Archives were engaged in a back-and-forth which resulted in the return of 15 boxes (and some additional documents). As late as June 3, when officials from the FBI and Justice visited Mar-a-Lago to serve a Grand Jury subpoena for specific documents, these negotiations were largely cordial. But in the course of its investigation, the FBI and Justice became aware of Trump’s private collection. As Newsweek previously reported, a confidential human source revealed that the former president wasn’t planning to divulge that he had possession of some of his own documents and that he did not intend to return them.

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Disband. First fire Walensky.

CDC Admits To Botched Covid-19 Responses (RT)

The CDC has acknowledged flaws in its response to the Covid-19 pandemic and announced plans to restructure the agency to rehabilitate its public image and better respond to future public health crises. “For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said on Wednesday. “As a long-time admirer of this agency and a champion for public health, I want us all to do better.” The overhaul announcement follows an internal review that found the CDC’s “rigid, compartmentalized bureaucracy” undermined its response to Covid-19 and slowed its data analysis and releases of public advisories. When pandemic guidance was offered, it was often “confusing and overwhelming,” the review found.

The US leads the world in Covid-19 cases and deaths, by far, and the CDC has been criticized for confusing messaging and slow response times. The agency also held back much of the data it collected, in some cases because it feared the information could be “misinterpreted.” For instance, it withheld dataon Covid-19 infections among fully vaccinated Americans and the efficacy of vaccine booster shots for 18- to 49-year-olds. “Our public health infrastructure in the country was not up to the task of handling this pandemic,” Walensky told CBS News on Wednesday. She added, “We learned some hard lessons over the last three years, and as part of that, it’s my responsibility, it’s the agency’s responsibility, to learn from those lessons and do better.”

The CDC also has drawn criticism for its handling of the monkeypox outbreak. The reorganization plan, which will require approval from higher-ups in President Joe Biden’s administration, aims to get information to the public more quickly and speak about health issues in plain English, rather than scientific jargon. Walensky also plans to make the CDC more streamlined, with fewer reporting layers, and to develop a nimbler workforce that is prepared to respond to crises. “We need to have special forces, if you will, to deploy during pandemic times,” she said. Plans also call for creating a new office to promote “equity in health care,” though Walensky didn’t clarify how that would improve pandemic response.

Brilliant Sagan

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Britain’s railways
https://twitter.com/i/status/1559944313055989761

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Mark Morris: My family owned an iconic restaurant, Bens Deli, in Montreal for 100 years. This is Leonard Cohen entering its doors in 1965. What a beautiful picture and legacy.

 

 

 

 

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Jul 232022
 
 July 23, 2022  Posted by at 8:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Salvador Dali Mme. Reese 1931

 

Deal Between Ukraine And Russia Aims To Ease Global Food Crisis (NYT)
Servant of the Corrupt (Gonzalez)
Russia About To Run Out Of Steam In Ukraine – MI6 Chief (BBC)
Western Currencies Will Fail (Vilches)
IEA Chief: Europe Must Cut Gas Usage 20% To Survive Winter (OP)
EU Debates Revised Plan To Reduce Gas Use After Opposition (R.)
Triple/Quadruple Vaccinated Account For 91% Of All UK Covid Deaths (DE)
Unvaccinated Fans Can Attend the U.S. Open. Why Can’t Novak Djokovic? (NW)
The State of Banks in China (Balding)
Trump ’25: A Radical Plan For Trump’s Second Term (Axios)
Liz Cheney Said Trump Family and Aides Have Now Publicly “Confessed” (Turley)
People, Get Ready (Jim Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

“Everybody that has an mRNA injection will die in 3 to 5 years.”

 

 

 

 

“If the research done on rats is applicable to humans we will see massive infertility in the next 5 years followed by death via various organ system failure and/or cancers.”

 

 

 

 

Bannon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550527743565053953

 

 

 

 

Conflicting info.

Deal Between Ukraine And Russia Aims To Ease Global Food Crisis (NYT)

Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement in Istanbul on Friday to free more than 20 million metric tons of grain stuck in blockaded Black Sea ports in Ukraine, a deal aimed at bringing down soaring grain prices and alleviating a mounting global hunger crisis. The breakthrough comes after months of talks and was brokered with the help of the United Nations and Turkey. The agreement provides a method for exporting Ukrainian grain through Turkey, and it comes after the United Nations gave Russia assurances that it can export its grain and fertilizers. If the agreement holds, it could help ease catastrophic food shortages that worsened when Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Ukraine is one of the world’s breadbaskets, and the invasion reverberated across the global economy, aggravating a growing food crisis, contributing to famine in Africa and threatening political unrest in some countries.

“This agreement did not come easy,” António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, said at the signing ceremony, calling the deal a “beacon in the Black Sea.” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to block food exports to gain international leverage has led to some of the gravest global consequences of Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, undermining a global food distribution network that was already strained by pandemic-related disruptions and climate change. Senior U.N. officials said that the first shipments of grain out of Odesa, Ukraine, and neighboring ports were only weeks away and would quickly bring 5 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain and other foodstuffs to the world market each month. That would also free up storage space in Ukraine’s silos for freshly harvested grain, the officials said.

Ukraine and Russia have agreed on very little since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24. Peace talks held in Belarus that month and in March went nowhere, largely because Russia insisted on a change of government in Kyiv, Ukraine. Later in March, talks in Turkey were also ultimately fruitless. Negotiators have been able to reach agreements on prisoner exchanges and on the evacuation of a steel plant in Mariupol where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians were holed up for 80 days. But Friday’s pact was the first time that representatives from the warring countries have publicly signed an agreement.

“It’s a big step forward,” said Stephen E. Flynn, founding director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University, crediting the Turks with an “elegant approach.” But he warned that it will be difficult to speedily deliver food to where it is most needed. The mechanics of transporting grain through the Black Sea under wartime conditions with little or no trust between the warring sides are extremely complex. “It will not move quickly,” he said.

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“It might be hard to believe now, but revelations from documents in the Pandora Papers [..] sent Zelensky reeling last year, threatening to end his political career.”

Servant of the Corrupt (Gonzalez)

In February 2021, by order of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine shut down three domestic television channels, accusing them of spreading Russian “propaganda.” Three months later, Zelenksky arrested Viktor Medvedchuk, who was at the time leading the second-biggest party in Ukraine’s national parliament, the pro-Russia and Eurosceptic Opposition Platform for Life (OPZZh). Zelensky didn’t have trouble incinerating vaunted democratic norms well-before Russia crossed the Rubicon into Ukraine this year. So it was no surprise when he did it again amid the war in late March, invoking emergency powers under martial law to nationalize TV channels and ban 11 opposition parties, including OPZZh — all supposedly done in the name of combatting Russian misinformation and Russian sympathizers, even though OPZZh’s then-chairman, Yuriy Boyko, denounced the war and called for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.

Zelensky, however, wouldn’t miss another opportunity to clip the wings of political opposition in his country, certainly not now that Western media rationalizes and glorifies his every move. The portrait of the Ukraine president as a democratic paragon whitewashes the real Zelensky and conceals a vast web of corruption and international skullduggery of which Ukraine is situated in the center. Understanding the real Zelensky, requires seeing him as a creation of Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. He is, in truth, a puppet of intrigue. It might be hard to believe now, but revelations from documents in the Pandora Papers — millions of files from offshore service providers leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with partners around the world — sent Zelensky reeling last year, threatening to end his political career. Though the actor-turned-politico campaigned as an anti-corruption reformer, the Pandora Papers showed him to be just as crooked as his predecessors.

Of more than 300 politicians and public officials, including several current and former national leaders, in more than 91 countries and territories to whom the documents were linked, Ukraine was home to more secret offshore holdings than any other, including Russia. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which contributed to the investigation, found that just before Zelensky was elected president, “he gifted his stake in a key offshore company, the British Virgin Islands-registered Maltex Multicapital Corp., to his business partner — soon to be his top presidential aide. And in spite of giving up his shares, the documents show that an arrangement was soon made that would allow the offshore to keep paying dividends to a company that now belongs to his wife.”

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Spooks never lie.

Russia About To Run Out Of Steam In Ukraine – MI6 Chief (BBC)

Russia will struggle to maintain its military campaign and Ukraine may be able to hit back, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service says. MI6 chief Richard Moore said Russia had seen “epic fails” in its initial goals; removing Ukraine’s president, capturing Kyiv and sowing disunity in the West. He was speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, in a rare public appearance. He called the invasion “the most egregious naked act of aggression… in Europe since the Second World War.” He said recent Russian gains were “tiny” and that Russia was “about to run out of steam”. “Our assessment is that the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to find manpower and materiel over the next few weeks,” Mr Moore told the conference in Colorado. “They will have to pause in some way and that will give the Ukrainians the opportunity to strike back.”

That view may be seen as optimistic and Ukraine’s ability to counter-attack may well depend on greater supplies of Western weaponry, which its officials say has often been too slow in arriving. The MI6 chief said some kind of battlefield success would be an “important reminder to the rest of Europe that this is a winnable campaign” – particularly ahead of a winter which was likely to see pressure on gas supplies. “We are in for a tough time,” he said. A further reason to maintain support to help the Ukrainians win, or “at least negotiate from a position of significant strength”, he said, was because China’s leader Xi Jinping was “watching like a hawk”.

[..] On China, he said MI6 had “never had any illusions whatsoever about Communist China”. He revealed MI6 now devoted more effort to China than to any other single subject – the effort in this field having just moved past that devoted to counter-terrorism. He said it was “too early to tell” what lessons China would draw from Putin’s actions in Ukraine, but there were lots of signs officials in Beijing were going into overdrive to work out what they thought. “It is quite difficult to read at the moment,” he said. He said it was “important” to remind China’s leadership of how an invasion of Taiwan could go wrong. He said China’s leadership underestimated US resolve and power and this might lead them to miscalculate. “I don’t think it is inevitable,” he said when asked about a major conflict.

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“Russia does not need, care to have, or find a valid use for dollars or euros which are strictly Western nonsense, not Russia’s..”

Western Currencies Will Fail (Vilches)

As Prof. Michael Hudson has repeatedly explained, printing humongous ´money´ specially for the FIRE rentier sector (Finance Insurance Real Estate) and beyond anyone else has tremendously increased Western GDPs… but did not increase at all its effective, real-life tangible products and services economy that would benefit flesh & blood human beings. The GDP formula and its 4 terms by themselves are clear evidence of such a problem. So today Western central banks have painted themselves into a far away “false GDP” corner with no effective tools, space, or time left to maneuver with or issue yet “new” forward guidance (lip service) for their “financial policies” to change such outcome.

Per multi-billionaire and Bill Gates’ partner Warren Buffett — a.k.a. the ´Omaha Oracle´ — derivatives are a weapon of Financial Mass Destruction which today would sum up a notional sum exceeding USD $ 2 quadrillion. Of these, the central bank-induced and managed “paper gold chimera” could be as high as 30%. Flat-footed as they now are, central bankers can thus awkwardly run around in circles, but they can’t ever effectively hide. They might still be kings for a little while longer but they wear no clothes. And so back to the 2022 world, Russia now says “it´s our products so you pay in our Rubles, okay?” Why euros or dollars? The West plain robs them anyways, so Russia cannot give away something for nothing. Russia does not need, care to have, or find a valid use for dollars or euros which are strictly Western nonsense, not Russia’s.

This includes oil + nat-gas + LNG + refined products + wheat + everything else. And the Chinese may also start gradually doing something equivalent until a new, stable, fairer, BRICS-non-NATO monetary system is developed, installed, and accepted. How the transition will unfold is not yet very clear other than that it´d probably be a bumpy road and that it will take time. Of course, physical gold would work as perfect money so recall that the Global South has plenty of gold — and highly valuable silver — buried deep in the ground but still environmentally recoverable with adequate mining practices. This might turn out to be a game-changer both for these Global South regions of the world and for the Russian and Chinese investments to be made especially if the countries in question belong to BRICS and/or the BRI – Belt and Road Initiative.

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No, Europe must make peace.

IEA Chief: Europe Must Cut Gas Usage 20% To Survive Winter (OP)

After calling on all member states to reduce gas consumption by 15% in the face of the threat of a complete Russian gas cutoff, the IEA says the European Union will need to cut even more in order to get through the winter. “Even if there is no single accident… #Europe still needs to reduce its gas consumption about 20% compared to today in order to have safe and normal winter months,” IEA chief Fatih Birol said, issuing what he called a “red alert” for energy markets. The short-term issue with the Nord Stream 1 pipeline may have been resolved, Birol told CNN, but “it’s too early to be happy about this”. The amount Europe is receiving now from Russia is only about one-third of what it was receiving prior to the force majeure, and the IEA chief warned that even that reduced flow “can be cut anytime”.

After a 10-day pause for regular maintenance, Russian gas flows via Nord Stream resumed on Thursday morning, with orders for gas set at around 40% of Nord Stream’s capacity, the level from before the maintenance after Russia slashed flows in mid-June. Flows early on Thursday were at around 21.5 GWh, compared to 30GWh prior to the start of maintenance on July 11th, and compared to 70 GWh before Russia reduced supplies by 60% on June 13th. On Wednesday, the European Commission unveiled measures for the bloc to conserve gas to pre-empt a Russian cutoff, asking member states to reduce consumption by 15% until next spring.

According to Birol, this won’t be enough to ensure a smooth winter for Europe, and there is no alternative to consumption reductions. Even assuming that the current Russian gas flow is maintained, and considering all the LNG Europe is getting from the United States and elsewhere, plus other natural gas sources, and even if there are no accidents that hamper supply, Europe still needs to reduce more, starting now, Birol said. There is not enough gas around the world for Europe to rely on, the IAE chief said, and there is no choice but to reduce consumption to avoid shortages and rationing this winter.

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Whistled back.

EU Debates Revised Plan To Reduce Gas Use After Opposition (R.)

European envoys debated revisions on Friday to a proposal by the EU executive that all bloc members cut natural gas use to prepare for potential Russian supply cuts, hoping for a compromise by next week after some governments, including in Greece, balked at the plan. The European Commission proposed on Wednesday that all EU countries should cut their gas use from August to March by 15%. The target would initially be voluntary, but would become mandatory if the Commission declared an emergency. But from the outset, the proposal met criticism from a range of countries. Spain, Portugal and Greece are among the most openly hostile, while diplomats say Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands and Poland also have reservations about giving the Commission the power to order cuts.

Under a proposal put forward by the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating EU presidency, EU governments would have to approve any proposal by the Commission to make the cuts mandatory, EU diplomats said. The revised text would also cut the time period for which the system would apply from two years to one, to emphasize the emergency nature of the measure. Some countries complain that a uniform 15% cut would inflict more pain than necessary on householders in some parts of the bloc, to protect gas-hungry industrial users in other regions. Envoys will discuss possible further revisions on Monday before energy ministers meet for an emergency session designed to forge an agreement. “It’s not just fine-tuning. There is still more work to be done,” an EU diplomat said.

Spanish Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said in a letter to the Commission on Friday that Spain shared the final goal of the EU executive’s proposals, but believed there were more effective measures than a uniform and mandatory gas demand cut. “It is essential that the European response to this situation not be perceived as unfair and economically damaging for our citizens and industry,” she wrote, adding Spain was committed to engage constructively. The Commission said on Friday the need for gas consumption cuts was clear and that an energy issue could quickly become a broader economic problem. “It’s based on the fact that there is a serious risk of cut-off of supply of gas from Russia and we need to prepare for this eventuality,” a spokesperson said. “This is not the first time that we are having fierce debates…. on crucial subjects.”

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And not because that many people went for the boosters.

Triple/Quadruple Vaccinated Account For 91% Of All UK Covid Deaths (DE)

In January, the vaccinated accounted for 85% of Covid-19 deaths, whilst the unvaccinated accounted for 15%. By March, the vaccinated accounted for 93% of Covid-19 deaths, whilst the vaccinated accounted for just 7%. And by May, the vaccinated accounted for 94% of Covid-19 deaths, whilst the vaccinated accounted for just 6%. Many people may believe that this is simply because, according to data published by the UK Health Security Agency, 50% of the population of England refused the third jab, and those vaccinated deaths are among the double vaccinated and partly vaccinated. But unfortunately, those people are wrong.

[..] Overall, there were 15,113 Covid-19 deaths by 31st May 2022, and a shocking 13,666 of those deaths were among the vaccinated population. But what’s even more shocking than this is that 12,442 of those deaths were among the triple/quadruple vaccinated population. This means the triple/quadruple vaccinated population have accounted for a frightening 91% of all Covid-19 deaths among the vaccinated since the beginning of 2022.

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Because he’s a symbol for failed policies.

Unvaccinated Fans Can Attend the U.S. Open. Why Can’t Novak Djokovic? (NW)

While Djokovic’s absence undoubtedly would be bad for the game, it also makes no sense from the standpoint of public health. First, it’s noteworthy that Djokovic had COVID-19 in December. Many sporting organizations—including the NCAA—recognize prior infection as a form of immunization, and rightly so. An abundance of scientific evidence shows that natural immunity offers as much protection as vaccination alone, if not more. A recent Cornell University-led study, for example, found that people with prior infection saw “little decline in protection even a year after their prior infection.” Their level of protection was higher than that of people who had received two Pfizer shots and a booster. Importantly, the study found that both vaccines and natural immunity offer “strong and durable protection” against COVID-related hospitalization and death.

These findings and others point to a simple reality: both natural immunity and vaccination offer significant protection against COVID, especially against a severe symptomatic reaction. Second, it’s worth noting that spectators are allowed to attend the Open regardless of their vaccination status. “At this time, ticket holders will not be required to show proof of COVID vaccination for admission into the US Open,” the event’s official website states. In other words, fans can attend the U.S. Open even if they haven’t had the shot—but the world’s greatest tennis star will not be able to set foot in the country. How we arrived here is not a mystery. Vaccination has become one of the most partisan and politicized issues in the world today.

People around the world (not just Americans) were divided over vaccines—not over whether they should be available or even whether they are safe and effective, but over whether it was okay to force people to take them. Coerced vaccination was always problematic because it violates a basic human right: bodily autonomy. But in light of abundant research showing the strength and durability of natural immunity, vaccine mandates don’t just look morally dubious; they look senseless. This helps explain why efforts to coerce vaccination are failing all around the world.

Tucker Harvey Risch

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“Chinese banks have significantly less capital to absorb losses and less cash on hand for withdrawal by depositors.”

The State of Banks in China (Balding)

The state of banks in China dominates concerns about the economy and global growth. With pictures of angry crowds outside banks and tanks on the street in one city to quell discontent about being unable to withdraw funds, it bears asking what the true state of Chinese banks is. Officially, Chinese banks are in fine shape. Nonperforming loans are low and are disposed of in a controlled manner. Banks remain comfortably within their regulatory limits of loan growth, and deposits continue to rise. However, as with all things China, a look behind the official statistics gives cause for concern. First, loan classifications in China fail to capture the true level of risk of defaults. Loan classification in China is notoriously pliable, so Chinese banks can set standards for loans being classified as nonperforming that would not pass regulatory scrutiny in other countries, a fact they openly acknowledge.

While an interest payment in most jurisdictions that was overdue by 90 days would change the classification, some Chinese banks have said they do not change the classification of the loan to doubtful until “the operations of the borrower have been suspended for at least half a year.” The cessation of a company’s operations would make any outstanding loans dubious. Second, Chinese banks are highly leveraged and short on capital. The weighted reserve rate for all banks in China is now just 8.4 percent of all capital. This is a drop from over 21 percent a decade ago. This means Chinese banks have significantly less capital to absorb losses and less cash on hand for withdrawal by depositors. These reserve figures are the official numbers, so even small changes to the bad loan numbers, an issue as just noted is highly suspect, can rapidly make that 8.4 percent even smaller.

Third, banks are facing a wave of stressed borrowers right as their capital is at historic lows, and they have been fudging the data for some time. Local governments have seen revenue plunge from lower economic activity from COVID-19 and real estate. The property sector, which is responsible for around 30 percent of GDP, is under enormous pressure, with buyers and developers alike feeling the pressure. In other words, right when banks need that capital most, they have the lowest capital levels in years. The bad news is that the choices available to Beijing are limited due to the years of pushing rapid expansion in fiscal and monetary policy to support growth. Recapitalizing the banks would require vast sums of money that would require significant inflation or devaluation of the Chinese yuan against the U.S. dollar.

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Drain the Deep State.

Trump ’25: A Radical Plan For Trump’s Second Term (Axios)

Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios. The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say. During his presidency, Trump often complained about what he called “the deep state.”

The heart of the plan is derived from an executive order known as “Schedule F,” developed and refined in secret over most of the second half of Trump’s term and launched 13 days before the 2020 election. The reporting for this series draws on extensive interviews over a period of more than three months with more than two dozen people close to the former president, and others who have firsthand knowledge of the work underway to prepare for a potential second term. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive planning and avoid Trump’s ire. As Trump publicly flirts with a 2024 comeback campaign, this planning is quietly flourishing from Mar-a-Lago to Washington — with his blessing but without the knowledge of some people in his orbit. Trump remains distracted by his obsession with contesting the 2020 election results.

But he has endorsed the work of several groups to prime an administration-in-waiting. Personnel and action plans would be executed in the first 100 days of a second term starting on Jan. 20, 2025. Their work could accelerate controversial policy and enforcement changes, but also enable revenge tours against real or perceived enemies, and potentially insulate the president and allies from investigation or prosecution. They intend to stack thousands of mid-level staff jobs. Well-funded groups are already developing lists of candidates selected often for their animus against the system — in line with Trump’s long-running obsession with draining “the swamp.” This includes building extensive databases of people vetted as being committed to Trump and his agenda.

The preparations are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported. What is happening now is an inversion of the slapdash and virtually non-existent infrastructure surrounding Trump ahead of his 2017 presidential transition. These groups are operating on multiple fronts: shaping policies, identifying top lieutenants, curating an alternative labor force of unprecedented scale, and preparing for legal challenges and defenses that might go before Trump-friendly judges, all the way to a 6-3 Supreme Court.

Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550704392315310080

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“Can a President who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”

Cheney’s losing bigtime in the polls. Trump is not.

Liz Cheney Said Trump Family and Aides Have Now Publicly “Confessed” (Turley)

Cheney ended the hearing this week by calling for more officials to come forward and noting that Trump family members and former officials have now come forward with their own public “confessions.” As with past hearings, the summation included a direct call by Cheney for voters to oppose Donald Trump in the coming election: “Can a President who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?” It is the type of pitch that is as unnecessary as it is counterproductive. Many voters tuned out the hearings weeks ago due to the absence of any balance in the presentation of evidence. To add direct political pitches only reduces the audience further. The result is that it is left telling largely Democratically aligned voters not to vote for Trump.

Tucker Bannon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550645124824186887

The alternative was to secure a larger audience by allowing more balance. It would not have altered the power of these accounts. It would have simply added greater credibility to the proceedings. It could have changed minds rather than just reaffirm preexisting views. Instead, once again, the Committee simply edited out conflicting evidence. For example, the Committee again edited out the line of Trump where he said “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” That line does not exonerate the former president. However, it is illustrative of the Committee’s refusal to hold these hearings for investigative rather than persuasive purposes.

What was particularly bizarre was Cheney’s effort to dismiss the need for any opposing views in the hearings. In one of the most counterintuitive and forced claims, Cheney said that such balance would not have made a difference: “And for those of you who seem to think the evidence would be different if Republican Leader McCarthy had not withdrawn his nominees from this committee, let me ask you this. Do you really think Bill Barr is such a delicate flower that he would wilt under cross-examination? Pat Cipollone, Eric Herschmann, Jeff Rosen, Richard Donoghue?” No one is suggesting that Barr would have changed his testimony. Rather, the argument is that there were questions not being asked for the witnesses and evidence not being presented. For example, when the two former members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers testified, members carefully avoided a host of countervailing questions, including any direct contacts with Trump or the White House.

However, it was the true confessions moment that stood out in the closing summation. Cheney said that more people will be called to come forward. She then added: “The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies. It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family. They have come forward. And they have told the American people the truth.”

Dick Morris

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“We enter the new frontier of the Green New Deal and Build Back Better. In other words, the USA completely collapses.”

People, Get Ready (Jim Kunstler)

My political fantasy du jour: Thus, Kamala accedes to greatness! She must then appoint a new vice-president. That would be… wait for it… California governor Gavin Newsom — who else? (He was recently captured on video skulking into a back door of the West Wing while “Joe Biden” was out-of-town schmoozing up the honchos of Saudi Arabia.) Gov. Newsom is easily confirmed in the House and narrowly in the Senate when Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski vote with the Party of Chaos. Kamala soon resigns, citing “anxiety problems.” Now president, Mr. Newsom proceeds to accelerate the wrecking of the old USA along the lines of his recent work in California. All D.C. gas stations are ordered shut to promote the transition to renewables. The D.C. Mall is declared the National Homeless Camp….

I called it a fantasy, but this may be their only move left as the nation utterly loses its patience with the “Joe Biden” fiasco and the escalating disorders of Western Civ take us into August. The mid-term election must be revamped at all costs, they’ll say, “to save our democracy.” A new pandemic is declared in early October, complete with lockdowns, while Google partners with Facebook to roll out a new vote-by-phone app. By some miracle, then, the Democrats add thirty more seats to their house majority and five in the Senate. We enter the new frontier of the Green New Deal and Build Back Better. In other words, the USA completely collapses.

A dark scenario, I confess, but doesn’t that seem exactly where things are going? An epic crackup is upon us. Every place in the world is primed for meltdown, and a few lands in the periphery are already sinking. Sri Lanka is broke and out of gas after being set up as a WEF / Schwabenklaus low-carbon eco-state experiment. Panama is in revolt over extreme government corruption, food scarcity, and the after-effects of an especially severe two-year-long Covid lockdown that the rest of the world hardly heard about — perhaps because China has operational control over the vital Panama Canal and the CCP has operational control over the World Health Organization, which set up Panama as a lockdown lab project.

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Vicky Spit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jul 032022
 


Pablo Picasso The muse 1935

 

This 4th of July: Requiem for Freedoms Long Gone? (Brig Gen (ret) Blaine Holt)
The Disintegration Of Western Society – Visible To The Naked Eye (Wilbert)
“High Gas Prices Necessary For ‘Future Of The Liberal World Order'” (JTN)
Saudi Arabia in Discussion to Join BRICS Coalition (CTH)
A World Food Crisis Is Coming, And US Allows CCP To Buy American Farmland (CNBC)
Nuke War Coming, Mysterious Deaths Don’t Stop, Dems Can’t Win – PCR (USAW)
Kissinger’s Gas Crisis -And Pipeline- (George Webb)
Wall Street Advocates Begin Admitting Demand Side Economy is in Free Fall (CTH)
700 Million Worldwide Will Die from CV19 Vax by 2028 – Dr. David Martin (USAW)
Washington State Governor Makes Covid Vaccines A Permanent Requirement (JTN)
We’ll Investigate Bidens’ Shady Business Dealings (NYP)
On Clarence Thomas, White Liberals and Racial Politics (Musa al-Gharbi)
The EPA’s Loss Is A Win For Democracy (Darwall)
CNN Suffers Biggest Ratings Dip In 7 Years: Viewers Plummet 13% In June (DM)

 

 


Happy 51st birthday Julian

 

 

Putin on Edward Snowden

 

 


We’re almost there!

 

 

Kash Patel Transition Nov 2020

 

 

Bandera
https://twitter.com/i/status/1543221160187502596

 

 

FUN FACT: Over $8.5 trillion has been wiped out of the US stock market this year.

 

 

 

 

“Established old money elites and entrenched academics have long denigrated the power and influence that came from innovation and hard work.”

This 4th of July: Requiem for Freedoms Long Gone? (Brig Gen (ret) Blaine Holt)

Marinate those ribs, ice the beer, and get the fireworks ready so we can revel in the red, white, and blue. Let’s raise our collective glasses today to the bold few who spoke on our behalf more than 200 years ago. Thomas Jefferson’s inspired words live on: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Can you imagine how electric the atmosphere must have been on that steamy summer day when the Founders, having agreed to the brave separation from the British Crown on July 4, 1776 – committed their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to each other as 51 of the 56 signers executed the Declaration of Independence.

The American Constitution is the longest standing governing document in the history of the world. We owe the Founders not just gratitude, but a civic commitment backed by our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to protect and preserve liberty. Free people in hot pursuit of their happiness are quite an excitable and often unruly lot. Established old money elites and entrenched academics have long denigrated the power and influence that came from innovation and hard work. From Woodrow Wilson to Henry Kissinger to the Davos elites, the usurpation of liberty through the attacks on individual freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are being fired upon citizens at a rapid pace. The nefarious plot to slowly eat away at liberty has been working for more than 70 years.

Global elitist, Henry Kissinger had the playbook when he said; “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.” Since Wilson’s day the elites have worked overtime imagining ways to bridle, We the People. Rather than the ho-hum predictable “good ‘ole boys (and girls) clubs,” or access to capital and opportunity based on your last name, they have leveraged eager and willing accomplices in government bureaucracy to establish what we all know as “the system.” Professional politicians beholden to big money rarely fear the people or the ballot box. Voila! — Your 40-year, double-digit term senators and representatives are born.

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“The most practical example of this is recent with the Nordics joining NATO without any referendum or popular poll within the countries’ society.”

The Disintegration Of Western Society – Visible To The Naked Eye (Wilbert)

While we notice the closest integration among emerging countries, we notice a certain disparity among the richest, first-world countries, because they may not seem like it, but they also have internal problems that cannot always be fought. And the most recent of these is inflation, with an unprecedented rise in prices. The middle class, the main target of the Great Reset enthusiasts, is beginning to feel prices rising more and more, even though they don’t fully agree with the war at the moment, which is impressive if you consider that public opinion is of little concern to the leaders who are driving the economic-military and diplomatic disaster in Europe. The most practical example of this is recent with the Nordics joining NATO without any referendum or popular poll within the countries’ society.

And the argument to be used I can already imagine: “But democracy is representative, William! If the people vote for politician x, it’s because they agree with his platform.” Yes. But that is half right. Not entirely. Democracy, especially representative democracy, has a serious flaw, precisely in terms of representation. Politicians who are not faithfully committed to the objectives of the nation, of the homeland, but, unfortunately, are rather vain, cause a distortion in the etymological sense of the term “representative democracy”, because who would it represent? Not the people! And one of the causes of the wrong votes that the people usually give (considering totally clean elections) is due to the fact that it is not invested in the political conscience of these societies, usually due to a lack of interest from part of society, but also due to the lack of incentives from the State in this matter.

But this is a very complex subject that I can deal with in another article. To try to continue the reasoning of the Western disintegration and distortion of the democratic sense, I can give a practical example of Brazil, because it is closer to home. The juristocracy ended up taking over the country after Operation Lava Jato, which was nothing more than an American collusion with the Brazilian opposition to depose the Dilma Rousseff government (which does not cancel out Dilma’s mistakes, who was a terrible supposed economist and basically destroyed the country, becoming easy prey as she fell into popular disgrace). But what is this juristocracy? Simply the country’s Supreme Court overruling any take on government that the Federal Executive Branch has. And that’s just about anyone anyway.

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He actually said it.

“High Gas Prices Necessary For ‘Future Of The Liberal World Order'” (JTN)

White House economic adviser Brian Deese on Thursday told CNN that high gas prices were a necessary inconvenience to preserve the “future of the liberal world order,” amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The average price of gas exceeded $5 per gallon for the first time in U.S. history in early June. CNN’s Victor Blackwell asked Deese to speak to comments President Joe Biden made earlier in the day suggesting Americans would pay high prices for “as long as it takes” for the war in Ukraine to end. Blackwell noted that experts have predicted the war’s end is unlikely to come in the near future before asking Deese “what do you say to those families that say ‘listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years. This is just not sustainable’?”


“What you heard from the president today was a clear articulation of the stakes,” Deese answered. “This is about the future of the liberal world order, and we have to stand firm.” The Biden administration has drawn considerable criticism for its handling of the economy, especially on inflation and energy policy. Amid rising energy costs and opposition demands for increased domestic production, the government on Friday announced it had yet to decide on a plan to deny or approve, in part or in full, the expansion of oil and gas drilling leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

Rutte WEF

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Biden’s there next week?!

Saudi Arabia in Discussion to Join BRICS Coalition (CTH)

It is very curious timing in this article from Newsweek, containing massive geopolitical implications, using identified Saudi Arabia sources, would come in advance of Joe Biden’s visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Is this strategic geopolitical pressure from Saudi leader Mohamed Bin Salman (MbS) ahead of the meeting with Biden; or is this a genuine possibility that looms as likely? If the former, then Joe Biden is being geopolitically slow roasted by Saudi Arabia for his previous disparagements and ideological hypocrisy in his visit. If it is the latter, well, then the tectonic plates of international trade, banking and economics are about to shift directly under our American feet.

We have been closely monitoring the signs of a global cleaving around the energy sector taking place. Essentially, western governments’ following the “Build Back Better” climate change agenda which stops using coal, oil and gas to power their economic engine, while the rest of the growing economic world continues using the more efficient and traditional forms of energy to power their economies. This article from Newsweek is exactly about this dynamic with Saudi Arabia now potentially joining the BRICS team. [..] Here is the money quote:

[…] “China’s invitation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to join the ‘BRICS’ confirms that the Kingdom has a major role in building the new world and became an important and essential player in global trade and economics,” Mohammed al-Hamed, president of the Saudi Elite group in Riyadh, told Newsweek. “Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is moving forward at a confident and global pace in all fields and sectors.”[…] “This accession, if Saudi joins it, will balance the world economic system, especially since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest exporter of oil in the world, and it’s in the G20,” Hamed said. “If it happens, this will support any economic movement and development in the world trade and economy, and record remarkable progress in social and economic aspects as Saudi Arabia should have partnerships with every country in the world.”

That would essentially be the end of the petrodollar, and -in even more consequential terms- the end of the United States ability to use the weight of the international trade currency to manipulate foreign government. The global economic system would have an alternative. The fracturing of the world, created as an outcome of energy development, would be guaranteed.

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Chinese Purchase Of North Dakota Farmland Raises National Security Concerns

A World Food Crisis Is Coming, And US Allows CCP To Buy American Farmland (CNBC)

At first glance, the largely barren, wind-swept tract of land just north of Grand Forks, North Dakota, seems to be an unlikely location for international espionage. There’s not much on the more than 300-acre patch of prime Dakota farmland right now other than dirt and tall grasses, bordered by highways and light industrial facilities on the outskirts of the city. The nearest neighbors include a crop production company, a truck and trailer service outfit, and Patio World, which sells landscaping supplies for suburban backyards.But when the three North Dakotans who owned the parcels of land here sold them for millions of dollars this spring, the transaction raised alarm bells as far away as Washington, D.C.

That’s because the buyer of the land was a Chinese company, the Fufeng Group, based in Shandong, China, and the property is just about 20 minutes down the road from Grand Forks Air Force Base — home to some of the nation’s most sensitive military drone technology.The base is also the home of a new space networking center, which a North Dakota senator said handles “the backbone of all U.S. military communications across the globe.”Now some security experts warn the Chinese corn milling plant should be stopped, because it could offer Chinese intelligence unprecedented access to the facility. It’s an only-in-America kind of fight — pitting the property and economic rights of a community against national security warnings from high-ranking officials in the nation’s capital.

Debate over the project has roiled the small community, with emotional city council hearings, local politicians at odds with one another, and neighborhood groups gearing up to block the project. Craig Spicer, whose trucking company borders the Chinese-held land, said he’s suspicious of the new company’s intent. “It makes me feel nervous for my grandkids,” he said. “It makes me feel nervous for my kids.” Gary Bridgeford, who sold his parcel of the farmland to the Chinese company for around $2.6 million this year, said his neighbors have vented their anger at him and planted signs opposing the project in his front yard. “I’ve been threatened,” he said. “I’ve been called every name in the book for selling property.”

Bridgeford said he believes the national security concerns are overblown. “How would they gain any knowledge of the base?” he asked. “It’s about 12 miles away. It isn’t like its next door.” “People hear the China stuff and there’s concern,” Bridgeford said. “But everyone has a phone in their pocket that was probably made in China. Where do you draw the line?”

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Paul Craig Roberts.

Nuke War Coming, Mysterious Deaths Don’t Stop, Dems Can’t Win – PCR (USAW)

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says American leaders want war with Russia. Russia is trying to avoid war, but the provocations from the U.S. and NATO keep coming. At some point, Dr. Roberts says Russia will be backed into a corner, and it won’t take long for the battle to go nuclear. This is a special interview inside the Weekly News Wrap-Up that explains how we got here and where we are going in terms of war with Russia. Dr. Roberts says it’s no longer a question of if, but when, it all hits the fan.

You cannot hide the unexplained deaths and emergency sickness. It is now happening every week. 32-year-old SNL comedian Nick Nemeroff died in his sleep this week, but before he did, he was on video complaining about being deathly sick after the two CV19 shots he already got. He pledged that he would not get the booster, and he never did–because he died a few days later. Meanwhile, Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker was rushed to the hospital with some strange emergency, and the drummer for Five Seconds of Summer passed out on stage for no apparent reason. Once again, the question is, “Were they vaxed?” This trend is going to continue for some time to come no matter if you are famous or not.

A new poll for the Democrats is coming in awful. An AP poll reveals 8 out of 10 Democrats say the country is “headed in the wrong direction.” That’s 8 out of 10 DEMOCRATS. Let that sink in. Couple that with another story from the AP that reports new data showing 1 million Democrats have left the party to register with the GOP. It looks like the Democrats cannot win without massive cheating or a war that shuts down the election process this fall. It’s going to be a rough ride. Buckle up.

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George Webb races through Europe. He’s confusing at times.

Kissinger’s Gas Crisis -And Pipeline- (George Webb)

Five years ago, I speculated about seven laptops in the Senate Sergeant of Arms office – six laptops running covert actions in Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen and a seventh laptop used for the Iran Nuclear Deal. I believe the “Iran Nuclear Deal” laptop is still in use today. I based this speculation on a Senate Sergeant of Arms Blackberry I was left by a long-time Biden advisor who said the encrypted Blackberrys were given to the US Senate by the US State Department to negotiate secret energy deals like the Iran Nuclear Deal. Each country’s “deal” had separate participants, so I speculated there would be a separate laptop for each country’s covert action participants. Very similar to the Iran Nuclear Deal was the East Med Pipeline deal involving the US, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, which I called the “Southern Route” in 2017.

The “Southern Route” was being negotiated by Eric Braveman, his “husband”, Neil Brown, Avi Braverman of Israel, and one Ukrainian Billionaire named Igor Kolomoisky with lots of Cyrus bank accounts. So with all these US Senate Sergeant of Arms laptops running these top-secret negotiations, imagine my surprise when at least six of these laptops were stolen from the US Senate Sergeant of Arms office on January 6th, 2021. The “angry mob” took selfies in the US Senate Rotunda but still found time to break into the US Senate Sergeant of Arms office and steal six critical laptops. I had followed the story of the seven laptops for the seven Top Secret plans slipping through the fingers of CIA chief David Petraeus to his girlfriend, Paula Broadwell.

Petraeus somehow left seven folders with Top Secret information for overthrow operations in African and the Middle East on his desk – “Zero Footprint” for Libya and “Timber Sycamore” for Syria, for instance. I had been looking for the Blackberrys servers on Capitol Hill since I began my video series in 2016. because I knew Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus communicated with encrypted Blackberry devices. Imagine my surprise again a few days ago when I found that Michael Stenger, the Senate Sergeant of Arms during January 6th, 2021 Capitol break-in, was suddenly dead, just before a special hearing was called on the House inquiry into the January 6th events. The timing of this death seem to correspond to getting funding at the G7 meeting of the top seven nations of the world to underwrite the East Med pipeline.

The plan appears to be 1) Have Kolomoisky provoke Russia with a series of Azov Battalian raids in the Donbas, 2) Have Russia occupy the Donbas in response, 3) Get emergency funding from the G7 to build the East Med Pipeline on behalf of the Genie Energy oil and gas energy consortium that I had been reporting on since 2016. Since some of Kolomoisky’s henchman were seen on Capitol Hill on January 6th, I supposed early on during my broadcasts of January 6th that the Ukrainians were at least going for their own “overthrow server” and for the East Med Pipeline laptop.

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” Infuriating does not adequately describe my sentiments toward these intentional liars.”

Wall Street Advocates Begin Admitting Demand Side Economy is in Free Fall (CTH)

At the exact moment that U.S. inflation began spiking in housing, energy, fuel and food, consumer demand for non-essential purchases, durable goods, started dropping. This is a natural outcome that mirrors your own experience in checkbook economics. When food, fuel and energy cost you more, you stop buying stuff and start prioritizing. Following the path of the “build back better” agenda, the U.S. version called “Green New Deal,” meant the Biden administration had to continue denying that any demand side contraction was taking place. However, it is clear from the indexes under the control of purchasing managers that orders for factory goods have been dropping.


The same is true on the services side of the PMI. Demand for services are being prioritized, and demand for non-essential services are dropping. The U.S. economy is contracting. Denial abounds. Infuriating does not adequately describe my sentiments toward these intentional liars. We are in an abusive relationship with all levels of government and their media spokespeople. Independent and honest journalism, the sharing of information that can empower people to intercede events with political liars, is quite literally the only thing that might save us from the catastrophic consequences of all this pretending. Knowledge is power, and we need to build our arsenal with an urgency unlike any before in our lifetime.

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“This is old school racketeering, and it is no different than the mob in the 1920’s. This is old school racketeering for personal gain and profit at the expense of human lives.”

700 Million Worldwide Will Die from CV19 Vax by 2028 – Dr. David Martin (USAW)

Dr. David Martin has a deep medical science and investment resume. Dr Martin also runs a company (M·CAM International) that finances cutting edge innovation worldwide. He is also one of the key people seeking justice in lawsuits suing medical companies and the federal government involved in delivering the so-called vaccines for CV19. In simple terms, according to Dr. Martin, the CV19 vaccines are “bioweapons.” Big Pharma and the government knew it and also knew it would cause massive deaths and permanent injuries. Dr. Martin says, “It’s going to get much worse. . . . It is not a Corona virus vaccine. It is a spike protein instruction to make the human body produce a toxin. . . . The fact of the matter is the injections are an act of bioweapons and bioterrorism. They are not a public health measure. The facts are very simple. This was premeditated. . . . This was a campaign of domestic terror to get the public to accept the universal vaccine platform using a known biological weapon. That is their own words and not my interpretation.”

How many will die from the CV19 bioweapons? Dr. Martin says, “By their own estimate, they are looking for 700 million people globally, and that would put the U.S. participation in that of the injected population as 75 million to 100 million people. . . . There are a lot of reasons why they hope it will be between now and 2028 because there is this tiny little glitch of the illiquidity of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs. So, the fewer recipients of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the better. Not surprisingly, the recommendation was people over the age of 65 were the first ones to get injected.”

Dr. Martin thinks the catastrophic effects of the CV19 injections will hit the medical industry soon. Dr. Martin explains, “The dirty secret is . . . there are a lot of pilots having micro vascular and clotting problems, and that keeps them out of the cockpit, which is a good place to not have them if they are going to throw a clot for a stroke or a heart attack. The problem is we are going to see that exact same phenomenon in the healthcare industry and at a much larger scale. So, we now have, along with the actual problem . . . of people getting sick and people dying, we actually have that targeting the healthcare industry writ large. Which means we are going to have nurses and doctors who are going to be among the sick and dead. That also means the sick and the dying are also not going to get care.”

Dr. Martin and his group are suing everybody from President Biden along with the FDA, CDC, Pfizer, Moderna and many others over the deaths and injuries from the CV19 bioweapons fraudulently passed off as “vaccines.” The next big court case is July 6, 2022, in federal court in Utah. Dr. Martin contends “this is far worse” than the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after WWII and adds, “This is organized crime. . . . They have hidden behind the immunity shield that absolves them of product liability by naming the delivery of a bioweapon–a vaccination program. . . . This is actually a criminal act. This is an act of domestic terror, and it is an anti-trust violation. This is racketeering. This is old school racketeering, and it is no different than the mob in the 1920’s. This is old school racketeering for personal gain and profit at the expense of human lives. You need to call it what it is, and it’s organized crime. I would say the Nazis were better than the people who are doing this. . . . The real question is why did American citizens develop a weapon to kill Americans and get paid to do it? That is a morally outrageous question, and, unfortunately, almost no one is asking it.”

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…. for many state employees

Washington State Governor Makes Covid Vaccines A Permanent Requirement (JTN)

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee has issued a directive making COVID-19 vaccines a permanent condition of employment for state workers in executive and small cabinet agencies, including boosters. The new vaccination standards for state employees are, according to the directive, meant to head off any possibility of going back to more severe actions implemented during the height of the pandemic, including stay-at-home orders and the closure of schools and businesses. “Widespread vaccination is also the primary means we have as a state to protect our health care system and to avoid the return of stringent public health measures,” the directive states.

All new state employees are required to be vaccinated with the most up-to-date vaccines, including any additional doses or boosters as recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Current exempt state employees – executive or professional workers paid a salary rather than by the hour – are required to be fully vaccinated as of July 1, 2023. The directive calls for the State Human Resources Division of the Office of Financial Management to take steps necessary to continue the requirement that state employees not represented by a union be fully vaccinated, including that they have the most up-to-date vaccinations by July 1, 2023.

[..] Elizabeth Hovde, director of the Center for Health Care and Center for Worker Rights at the free market Washington Policy Center, indicated she didn’t understand where Inslee is coming from with this new directive. “COVID-19 is serious, but it is no longer a public-health crisis,” she told The Center Square in an email. “It has become like other viruses that we have to deal with in a reasonable and voluntary way. This is not reasonable or appropriate. And it doesn’t serve the public or the state workforce.” According to the state Department of Health’s COVID-19 Data Dashboard, there are 228 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people, and 10% of hospital beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients.

“People of working ages – and they are who this would apply to – have never been the ones dying from COVID-19 in a way that depletes hospital resources or state workforces,” Hovde continued. “Staffing shortages in the public sector and among health care workers are exacerbated by the governor’s vaccine mandate, on the other hand. “From ferries and highway workers to hospitals and first responders, Inslee’s vaccine mandate has ruined careers and family finances, and it has decreased expected service levels, for no demonstrable health benefit.

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By Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan and James Comer. Kevin McCarthy is House Republican leader, Jim Jordan is House Judiciary ranking member, and James Comer is House Oversight ranking member.

We’ll Investigate Bidens’ Shady Business Dealings (NYP)

We’ve pursued these threads despite Democrats’ refusal to cooperate. We’ve made almost 100 requests for information relating to Biden family schemes. Many, including every request made to the Biden administration, have been ignored. But with the help of witnesses who have documentation of their dealings with the Biden family, some answers are becoming clear. First, Joe Biden’s family members profited in foreign regions where he had influence as vice president. Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian company in an industry in which he had no experience. His only qualification was that his father ran point on US Ukraine policy. Second, Bidens have used their connections with Joe to promise access to the highest levels of government.

While Joe was vice president, Hunter promised Mexican business partners access to his father, and Joe Biden obliged by hosting them at the vice-presidential residence and the White House. Third, these practices continued during Joe Biden’s four-year government hiatus. In 2018, in the 2020 campaign’s run-up, Hunter Biden boasted privately, “If I say it’s important to me, then he [Joe] will work a way in which to make it a part of his platform.” Biden family members increasingly targeted foreign ventures, including multiple deals with the Chinese Communist Party. Fourth, Bidens were paid hundreds of thousands — if not millions — despite performing no discernible work.

Joe’s brother James boasted to foreign and domestic business partners that Joe would become president and they would reap the rewards in profits and US government endorsements. American banks flagged questionable transactions involving James and Hunter Biden and filed more than 150 Suspicious Activity Reports with the Treasury Department. Finally, contrary to Joe Biden’s statement that he never spoke to Hunter about his foreign business dealings, associates state that he was fully aware of his family’s business dealings and influence peddling. There is evidence of a direct sum of money set aside for “the Big Guy” — who witnesses have identified as Joe Biden — from foreign nationals. This raises significant questions about our national security and the role foreign nationals were allowed to play when he was vice president.

We have uncovered some answers, but many questions remain. In November, the American people will decide whether they accept being told what information they are allowed to know by a colluding media, including who is making policy decisions for this country and for whose interests. A Republican majority will be committed to uncovering the facts the Democrats, Big Tech and the legacy media have suppressed.

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“Thomas first encountered the work of Malcolm X while pursuing his undergraduate degree. He had a poster of the man in his dorm room.”

On Clarence Thomas, White Liberals and Racial Politics (Musa al-Gharbi)

Many assume that Thomas’ rulings flow out of a commitment to conservative orthodoxy, fervent Christianity, or partisan politics. The truth is much more interesting than that, albeit perhaps more unsettling. Thomas’ alignment with the Republican Party seems to be driven first and foremost by a deep mistrust of white liberals, the institutions they control, and the policies they try to advance in the name of ‘social justice.’ This mistrust was widely shared among black activists of his generation. Malcolm X, for instance, famously declared:

“In this deceitful American game of power politics, the Negros (i.e. the race problem, the integration and civil rights issues) are nothing but tools, used by one group of whites called Liberals against another group of whites called Conservatives, either to get into power or to remain in power… the white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or a tool in this political ‘football game’ that is constantly raging between white liberals and white conservatives. Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football.”

Thomas first encountered the work of Malcolm X while pursuing his undergraduate degree. He had a poster of the man in his dorm room. He memorized many of Malcom’s speeches by heart and continues to evoke him frequently to this day. But it wasn’t just Malcolm who was skeptical of white liberals. Not by a longshot. In 1966, for instance, the influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) issued a position paper arguing: “More and more we see black people in this country being used as a tool of the white liberal establishment. Liberal whites have not begun to address themselves to the real problem of black people in this country… previous solutions to black problems in this country have been made in the interests of those whites dealing with these problems and not in the best interests of black people in the country. Whites can only subvert our true search and struggles for self-determination, self-identification, and liberation in this country.”

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Now take on the CDC and FDA.

The EPA’s Loss Is A Win For Democracy (Darwall)

Thursday’s decision by the Supreme Court that the Clean Air Act does not give the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority to proceed with President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is much more significant than the narrow grounds on which it was decided. The Clean Power Plan was already dead. It had been repealed and replaced by the Trump administration, decisions that were later struck down by a court of appeals. Moreover, there is history between the EPA and the Supreme Court. In 2014, the Court ruled against the EPA’s rewriting of the Clean Air Act to facilitate its use as a tool of climate policy, which was already seen as “poor and probably unworkable” by officials in the Obama administration.

“We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance,’” Justice Antonin Scalia famously wrote. The Court also ruled that the agency had acted unreasonably with its mercury emissions rules, though the EPA boasted that despite this decision, investments meant that most power plants were already well on the way to compliance. Perhaps that attitude was a factor in the Supreme Court’s shock decision in February 2016 to stay the Clean Power Plan to prevent a repeat of the EPA’s workaround. As Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court’s liberal minority, put it, “This Court has obstructed EPA’s effort from the beginning.” Formally, the Court’s decision revolves around rival interpretations of Section 111 (d) of the Clean Air Act and what Congress meant by “best system of emission reduction.”

Around 20 pages of Chief Justice John Roberts’s 31-page opinion for the court is taken up analyzing what he calls this “previously little-used backwater.” By “system,” did Congress mean a system modifying an existing plant’s emission performance? Or can “system” refer to the whole electrical grid or even a cap-and-trade scheme, as Kagan contends? Kagan’s brisk arguments demonstrate how a differently composed Court would have decided the matter. Important as these rival arguments might be, they function as kabuki theater for the underlying disagreement between the justices on the role and legitimacy of the administrative state. Although Roberts refers only once to the administrative state, it is never far from the surface. But the battle lines are made explicit in Neil Gorsuch’s concurrence and in the Kagan dissent.

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They hope Trump will win.

CNN Suffers Biggest Ratings Dip In 7 Years: Viewers Plummet 13% In June (DM)

CNN’s ratings continue to slip in primetime to their lowest numbers in seven years, despite a public about face on sensationalism and opinion shows under new boss Chris Licht. The network, promised by Licht to ‘go a different way’ during a time ‘where extremes are dominating cable news’, appear to still be in the tank even during a month that saw the blockbuster January 6 hearings. Despite the hearings, which drew tens of millions of viewers across multiple networks, CNN had fewer viewers in June than it did in May, which continued a months-long downward slope for the network since the invasion of Ukraine lifted them in March. While the three major cable news outlets – CNN, Fox News and MSNBC – have all seem some declines since former President Trump left office, the numbers for CNN continue to disintegrate at an alarming rate.


CNN, which moved under Warner Discovery leadership in April, drew an average of just 654,000 viewers in primetime in June and 487,000 for one entire newsday, down one and three percent respectively. During the committee hearings week of June 13-19, the network averaged just 480,000 viewers, the network’s worst ratings week since November 2015 and down 13 percent from those May averages. Overall, June 2022 was the lowest-rated month for 24-hour viewership on CNN since July 2015, according to The Daily Beast. By contrast, MSNBC – which had the highest ratings for the hearings on cable – averaged 1.28 million viewers in primetime, up 26 percent from May. Fox News also had a better second quarter than they did in 2021.

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DeSantis mRNA

 

 

 

 

Canada Day
https://twitter.com/i/status/1543429525861711874

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1543170144595283968

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jun 232022
 
 June 23, 2022  Posted by at 8:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  28 Responses »


Georges Seurat Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” 1884

 

Why Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky Won’t Say Ukraine Is Winning the War (NW)
Jay Powell: Not Russia That Created U.S. Inflation, It Is Joe Biden Policy (CTH)
Exile on Main Street: The Sound of the Unipolar World Fading Away (Escobar)
Russia Says West Is Spreading Lies About Causes of World’s Food Crisis (R.)
Letter from Faina Savenkova (Saker)
Covid Vaccines More Likely to Put You in Hospital Than Keep You Out (DS)
We Must Never Forget (Siglaugsson)
The Neocon’s Dream – Decolonize Russia, Re-colonize China (MoA)
China’s Ties to Russia Looms Large at NATO’s Madrid Meeting (Celente)
Sri Lanka Economy Has ‘Completely Collapsed’ – PM (Sky)
Ghislaine Maxwell: US Prosecutors Urge 30-Year Minimum Prison Sentence (G.)
Extraditing Assange Would Be a “Legalized” Rendition to US Torture (Kanji)
Assange Put on Suicide Watch After Patel Decision (Lauria)

 

 

My initial take was slightly different: Get your photo taken with Ben Stiller, and you’ll be taken down shortly afterward…

 

 

Bottom Gun

 

 

 

 

“Germany shuts down nuclear reactors.
Then buys gas from Russia.
Then Russia cuts gas supply.
Then Germany reopens coal plants.
The coal is bought from Russia.”

 

 

Dore Tucker

 

 

 

 

 

 

Priceless. Newsweek outperforms itself.

Why Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky Won’t Say Ukraine Is Winning the War (NW)

Russia had lots of guns and materiel but it proved to be a hulking monster on the ground: poorly led, badly trained. Seventy-two hours became a week, then another, then the week after, then right after the next victory, then next month, and now, in the words of NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, “years.” Yet despite the setbacks, somehow the widespread notion has remained that mighty Russia will inevitably prevail over a weaker Ukraine. It won’t. At some turning point, after those 72 hours, after the bogged-down convoy, after the valiant and heartbreaking defense of Mariupol, after the failure to establish air superiority, after running low on precision weapons, after the withdrawal from the north, after more and more friends entered the fight on Ukraine’s side—Javelin, Stinger, Switchblade, M777—after deaths and injuries in the thousands, after desertions and refusals to fight, after failure upon failure on the battlefield, after one month, after two, after 100 days, the tide turned.

Yet scarcely anyone wants to say that Russia has lost. Ukrainian President Zelensky, desperate for external support and more guns, motivator of the people and rouser of the troops, has to keep the tension high and the prospects dire, lest all of the urgency and attention dissipate. President Biden and his fellow Western leaders speak of the defense of freedom and democracy, of the heightened threat to Europe and the free world, of the inevitability of China following Putin’s path, all to feed the military beast, excite the public, keep “national security” at the top of everyone’s agenda. And Putin obviously can’t admit it, determined equally to stay in power and to avoid the humiliation and danger of defeat. Putin doesn’t motivate the troops—he sends them. For weeks, Ukraine has been releasing snippets of intercepted conversations between these lowly soldiers and their parents, wives and girlfriends back home.

The soldiers complain that there is no information and no support. They are confused about the point of the war and its objectives. They are not allowed to take a break from fighting. They are poorly equipped and supplied. There is not enough medicine or doctors. “Our command has left,” one soldier told his wife, referring to platoon and company commanders who were deserting their units and the battlefield. “Well, they didn’t leave– they dropped their weapons.” It’s a myth, the soldier says, that “Russians do not let Russians down.” They’ve been let down and they all know it. Morale is so bad, British intelligence says, that there have been armed standoffs between political enforcers and individuals and even units on the battlefield that have refused to follow their orders. Russia is suffering “very heavy casualties, combat stress, continued poor logistics, and problems with pay,” the U.K. reported.

“Morale problems in the Russian force are likely so significant that they are limiting Russia’s ability to achieve operational objectives.” Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, head of the British Armed Forces was more blunt. “Russia will never take control of Ukraine,” he said. “Ukraine has shown how courageous it really is. Russia has vulnerabilities because it’s running out of people, it’s running out of hi-tech missiles,” Radakin said. “Any notion that this is a success for Russia is nonsense. Russia is failing. It might be getting some tactical successes over the last few weeks. And those might continue for the next few weeks. But Russia is losing.”

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Under the bus.

Jay Powell: Not Russia That Created U.S. Inflation, It Is Joe Biden Policy (CTH)

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell admitted the obvious in his senate testimony today when asked about U.S. inflation. However, his testimony directly contradicts the White House claims. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), member of the Senate Banking Committee, walked through the inflation timeline and asked Chairman Powell about the cause of the escalated inflation in 2021. Powell admitted the massive rise in inflation had nothing to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Jay Powell

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“The rupture with the West is irreversible and definitive. No pressure from the West will change it..”

Exile on Main Street: The Sound of the Unipolar World Fading Away (Escobar)

The era of the unipolar world is over. The rupture with the West is irreversible and definitive. No pressure from the West will change it. Russia has renewed with its sovereignty. Reinforcement of political and economic sovereignty is an absolute priority. The EU has completely lost its political sovereignty. The current crisis shows the EU is not ready to play the role of an independent, sovereign actor. It’s just en ensemble of American vassals deprived of any politico-military sovereignty. Sovereignty cannot be partial. Either you’re a sovereign or a colony. Hunger in the poorest nations will be on the conscience of the West and euro-democracy. Russia will supply grains to the poorer nations in Africa and the Middle East. Russia will invest in internal economic development and reorientation of trade towards nations independent of the U.S.

The future world order, already in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states. The ship has sailed. There’s no turning back. How does it feel, for the collective West, to be caught in such a crossfire hurricane? Well, it gets more devastating when we add to the new roadmap the latest on the energy front. Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, in St. Petersburg, stressed that the global economic crisis is gaining momentum not because of sanctions, but exacerbated by them; Europe “commits energy suicide” by sanctioning Russia; sanctions against Russia have done away with the much lauded “green transition”, as that is no longer needed to manipulate markets; and Russia, with its vast energy potential, “is the Noah’s Ark of the world economy.”

For his part Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller could not be more scathing on the sharp decline in the gas flow to the EU due to Siemens’ refusal and/or incapacity to repair the Nord Stream 1 pumping engine: “Well, of course, Gazprom was forced to reduce the volume of gas supplies to Europe by 20%+. But you know, prices have increased not by 20%+, but by several times! Therefore, I’m sorry if I say that we don’t feel offended by anyone, we are not particularly concerned by this situation.” If this pain dial overdrive was not enough to hurl the collective West – or NATOstan – into Terminal Hysteria, then Putin’s sharp comment on possibly allowing Mr. Sarmat to present his business card to “decision-making centers in Kiev”, those that are ordering the current shelling and killing of civilians in Donetsk, definitely did the trick:

“As for the red lines, let me keep them to myself, because this will mean quite tough actions on the decision-making centers. But this is an area that shouldn’t be disclosed to people outside the military-political leadership of the country. Those who deserve appropriate actions on our part should draw a conclusion for themselves – what they may face if they cross the line.”

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“..disrupting payment systems, shipping, insurance which had prevented many Russian exports of food and fertiliser..”

Russia Says West Is Spreading Lies About Causes of World’s Food Crisis (R.)

Russia on Wednesday said the West was spreading lies about the causes of the global food crisis which Moscow said was being stoked by the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and European Union due to the invasion of Ukraine.[..] Western sanctions, Zakharova said, had tipped agricultural markets towards the edge of the abyss by disrupting payment systems, shipping, insurance which had prevented many Russian exports of food and fertiliser. “It is illogical – on the one hand the European Union… says a threat to global food security is being created but at the same time they block the delivery routes of goods to themselves on their own continent,” Zakharova said. President Vladimir Putin and Russian officials do not use the words “war” or “invasion”. They cast the action as a “special military operation” aimed at preventing the persecution of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.


Putin also casts the war as a revolt against the United States, which he says has humiliated Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by pushing for the enlargement of the NATO military alliance westwards. Ukraine says it is fighting for its survival against a land grab by Russia and that it will fight to the end to free its territory from Russian control. Kyiv dismisses claims that Russian-speakers have been persecuted. Eritrea, Armenia, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Somalia, Belarus, Turkey, Madagascar, Lebanon, Egypt and Pakistan depend on Russia or Ukraine for more than 70% of their wheat imports in 2021, according to United Nations data. Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Serbia, Honduras and Ghana rely on Russia for 50% or more of their fertiliser imports in 2021, according to the data.

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“If there is chaos around, there must be people who can show the way out to the others..”

Letter from Faina Savenkova (Saker)

Truth is the way out of chaos. To Journalist Tucker Carlson. Hello, Tucker. I am 13 years old and I live in Lugansk. I think many people from the American authorities do not even know where it is, but they continue to supply weapons to Ukraine for the war with Russia. For a week now, Ukrainian artillery has been mercilessly shelling Donetsk, killing civilians in the Donbass. It’s one thing to fight with the army, and another to just shoot guns at schools, kindergartens and sleeping residents. Many will say that this is deception and propaganda, but it is not so. I was born and live in Lugansk. I spent the entire war – since 2014 – in my hometown. Living in a war for 8 years is very hard. It’s very scary when your childhood is spent in such conditions. 8 years of hope for peace, which never came. But it didn’t break me. I keep telling the truth about what’s going on here.

And I know that you do the same thing when you talk about America. I do not consider you a friend of Russia, but the fact that you are telling the truth and do not want a war with Russia pleases me. After all, if there is a nuclear war, there will be no winners in it. I’ve had to turn to world leaders a lot. I’ve been trying to stop the war for three years, but they, like musicians and politicians, are deaf and dumb. Perhaps someone wants to calmly meet old age, someone is afraid of change, and someone simply does not understand what war is. After all, it is not next to them. Last year, Ukrainian nationalists entered my personal data on the “myrotvorets.center” (english: “Peacemaker”) website, posting them in open access. After that, I started receiving threats. You may ask, “What is a myrotvorets.center?” Indeed, many in the US do not know what it is.

If we compare, imagine if the Ku Klux Klan in the USA created its own website and posted there the addresses, bank accounts and other personal data of all politicians, actors and musicians who disagree with them. And the authorities would help them at the same time. This is what is happening in Ukraine now. A lot of my friends from Ukraine faced the same problem: “myrotvorets.center ” published their personal data, including address and phone number. Can you imagine such a thing in the USA? No. It’s hard for me to say what will happen to me tomorrow. After all, I live in a war where shells arrive every day. But I believe that the war will end, just like the confrontation between Russia and the United States. And personally, Tucker, I want to wish you good luck. Thank you for trying to tell the truth, because someone has to do it. If there is chaos around, there must be people who can show the way out to the others.

Faina Savenkova, playwright and writer, 13-year-old girl, Lugansk

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“… BMJ Editor’s Analysis of Pfizer and Moderna Trial Data Finds..”

Whatever mistakes BMJ Editor Dr. Peter Doshi may have made, this is still significant.

Covid Vaccines More Likely to Put You in Hospital Than Keep You Out (DS)

A new paper by BMJ Editor Dr. Peter Doshi and colleagues has analysed data from the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccine trials and found that the vaccines are more likely to put you in hospital with a serious adverse event than keep you out by protecting you from Covid. The pre-print (not yet peer-reviewed) focuses on serious adverse events highlighted in a WHO-endorsed “priority list of potential adverse events relevant to COVID-19 vaccines”. The authors evaluated these serious adverse events of special interest as observed in “phase III randomised trials of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines”. A serious adverse event was defined as per the trial protocols as an adverse event that results in any of the following conditions:

• death; • life-threatening at the time of the event; • inpatient hospitalisation or prolongation of existing hospitalisation; • persistent or significant disability/incapacity; • a congenital anomaly/birth defect; • medically important event, based on medical judgement. Dr. Doshi and colleagues found that the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest of 10.1 events per 10,000 vaccinated for Pfizer and 15.1 events per 10,000 for Moderna (95% CI -0.4 to 20.6 and -3.6 to 33.8, respectively). When combined, the mRNA vaccines were associated with a risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated (95% CI 2.1 to 22.9).

The authors note that this level of increased risk post-vaccine is greater than the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalisation in both Pfizer and Moderna trials, which was 2.3 per 10,000 participants for Pfizer and 6.4 per 10,000 for Moderna. This means that on this measure, the Pfizer vaccine results in a net increase in serious adverse events of 7.8 per 10,000 vaccinated and the Moderna vaccine of 8.7 per 10,000 vaccinated. Addressing the difference between their findings and those of the FDA when it approved the vaccines, the authors note that the FDA’s analysis of serious adverse events “included thousands of additional participants with very little follow-up, of which the large majority had only received one dose”.

The FDA also counted ‘people affected’ rather than individual events, despite there being twice as many individuals in the vaccine group than the placebo group who experienced multiple serious adverse events. The authors wonder where the U.S. Government’s own studies of adverse events are. They note that in July 2021, the FDA reported detecting four potential adverse events of interest following Pfizer vaccination – pulmonary embolism, acute myocardial infarction, immune thrombocytopenia and disseminated intravascular coagulation – and stated it would further investigate the findings. However, no update has yet appeared. They also note that “while CDC published a protocol in early 2021 for using proportional reporting ratios for signal detection in the VAERS database, the agency has not yet reported such a study”.

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“There will be a scramble for alternative truths once the narrative starts crumbling..”

We Must Never Forget (Siglaugsson)

Recently the Icelandic chief epidemiologist said in an interview the lockdowns hadn‘t been stringent enough. And he blamed those few politicians who voiced their doubts and worried about the well-being of society as a whole, for undermining the solidarity behind the measures. As if he were the emperor, the politicians only his servants. And he is not alone. Many of those people will continue pushing the narrative even as it crumbles around them. They will be the first targets of people‘s anger. Then it will be the politicians, pharmaceuticals, media and big tech. There will of course be strong pushback. There will be a scramble for alternative truths once the narrative starts crumbling; for something to keep the veil on the lies and atrocities. The push for continued masking, lockdowns, vaccine mandates will continue for a while.

And we shouldn‘t forget there are huge interests at stake here, to certain very big business sectors, lockdowns are a godsend; human interaction is a threat to them. The censorship will be ramped up even further. But despite all the power, money and technology, the facts will emerge, the truth will prevail in the end. It always does. Some might say I‘m too optimistic, that we are already under the control of conspiring media, big-tech and corrupt officials, with no way out. But is it really so? Recently a US attempt at handing unprecedented powers over to the WHO was averted, thanks mostly to African leaders and strong public opposition. The vaccine mandates are disappearing and what will eventually come of the still existing plans for health passes is unclear. But of course the danger is still there.

What really matters is how we react as the narrative crumbles. Will we just shrug and move on with our daily lives, not caring about the threat to our freedom and humanity? Or will we face the consequences of our failure to think critically, of our gullibility, our lack of moral integrity, as the German people were forced to do after World War II, as the Icelanders had to do after 2008? Will we bring those responsible to court? Will we learn, once again the hard way, how the only thing that can prevent such catastrophes in the future is taking responsibility as thinking, doubting individuals?

And will we finally understand the true meaning of Hannah Arendt‘s conclusion in The Origins of Totaliarianism, that flawed as it may be, it is only a sovereign nation state of free people, governed by elected representatives who take their responsibility seriously; as they did in the tiny Faroe Islands during the pandemic; and not unelected officials, supranational organizations or huge corporations; that only the nation state is really able to protect universal human rights? We have to move on. We have to rebuild our societies, reestablish our moral values and our rights, rebuild trust in science and trust within our communities. But to truly move on, we must face, understand and act on the roots of the catastrophe, and take full responsibility for the part each of us played. This is why we must not forget. We must never forget.

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“Russia sells its oil to China and India where it gets refined. The resulting gasoline and diesel is then exported to the U.S.. That is good for India and China as they buy the oil with a rebate and sell the end products with a substantial margin..”

The Neocon’s Dream – Decolonize Russia, Re-colonize China (MoA)

The neo-conservatives are back using a new narrative to push their old agenda. Russian officials will love such talk: “Today’s panel is a further step forward in that it tells ordinary Russians that even regime change and democracy is not good enough for them. They require the partition of their country into smaller (more easily controlled) polities, so that they can be free. Needless to say, this is a propaganda coup for Putin and the Kremlin as it allows them to paint the conflict in Ukraine as an existential fight.” The Kremlin has no need to ‘paint’ the conflict as an existential fight. The Russians know that it is such a fight. Biden’s haplessness continues to tank the Democrats chances to keep house majority. In a meager attempt to tackle the high fuel price he will today call on Congress to suspend the tax on fuel for three month. It is just a gimmick which would have little effect at the pump and has no chance to pass Congress:

“GOP lawmakers have been hammering Biden and Democrats on the campaign trail over inflation and fuel prices. They argue that such measures are political theater that will do little to make long-term dents in oil prices. The best way to reduce oil prices, they say, is to loosen regulations and increase U.S. oil production. … California had the highest average gas price of any state at $6.398 per gallon. The gas tax suspension would reduce the cost of a gallon of diesel fuel by 24 cents.” The real reason for high fuel prices is Biden’s misguided foreign policy. Three of the biggest oil producers on the globe, Venezuela, Iran and Russia, are under U.S. sanctions that limit their oil exports:

The sanctions have made it more difficult for Russia to sell its oil. Biden has also banned the import of Russian oil, and last month Europe announced it was imposing a partial embargo on it. As of 2020, Russia was the world’s third-largest producer of petroleum, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As the New York Times correctly headlines: “Western Move to Choke Russia’s Oil Exports Boomerangs, for Now”. That move will continue to boomerang. Russia sells it oil to China and India where it gets refined. The resulting gasoline and diesel is then exported to the U.S.. That is good for India and China as they buy the oil with a rebate and sell the end products with a substantial margin. It is a ‘win’ ‘win’ ‘win’ for Russia, India and China with the sole loser being the ‘west’. Whatever NYT hope of sanction success is expressed in its ‘for now’ addition to the headline is not going to change that.

Meanwhile Russia is announcing the next target of its campaign to counter ‘western’ misbehavior – the reserve status of the U.S. dollar and the Euro: “MOSCOW, June 22. /TASS/. The issue of creating an international reserve currency based on currencies of BRICS member-states is under consideration, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday in the welcome address to BRICS Business Forum participants. “The matter of creating the international reserve currency based on the basket of currencies of our countries is under review,” the Russian leader said. BRICS currently consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Together those countries represent 3.2 billion people and a third of the world’s purchase power GDP. The new international reserve currency would therefore have a much larger backing than the U.S. dollar or the Euro.

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Still longing for total control.

China’s Ties to Russia Looms Large at NATO’s Madrid Meeting (Celente)

Less than a month after President Joe Biden was sworn into office, he took a 10-minute drive from the White House to the Pentagon to meet with his top military leaders, including Lloyd Austin, his new defense secretary. Biden was there for one reason: China. Biden told workers there that he was briefed about a Defense Department-wide task force headed by Austin that would look at “operational concepts, technology, and force posture,” to counter the growing competition from Beijing. Biden said the U.S. will “meet the China challenge” by taking a “whole-of-government effort, bipartisan cooperation in Congress, and strong alliances and partnerships.” No presidency is ever without surprises, but even with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems that it’s China that keeps Washington awake at night.

Need proof? About a month before Russia’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine, Biden announced that U.S. troops will not fight Russians in Ukraine, which was not protected by NATO’s Article 5. But he said twice -in roughly the same time frame – that U.S. would defend Taiwan against China. (The White House on both occasions corrected the record and said Washington’s position of strategic ambiguity has not changed, but the sentiment was there.) China has recognized Russia’s security concern over an expanding NATO while calling an end to the conflict. Hua Chunying, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said the invasion of Ukraine was not what Beijing hoped to see. “China has taken a responsible attitude and persuaded all parties not to escalate tensions or incite war,” she said.

“Those who follow the U.S.’s lead in fanning up flame and then shifting the blame onto others are truly irresponsible.” Beijing has lashed out at the U.S. over its interference over Taiwan. It is widely believed that Putin informed his Chinese counterpart about his intention to invade Ukraine during their meeting at the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. “The Chinese side stands ready to work with the Russian side to push for steady and long-term development of practical bilateral cooperation,” President Xi JinPing said, after a phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Xi said trade with Russia over the first half of this year has been [in the tens of billions of U.S. dollars] and we “can expect new records in upcoming months, which is a testament to the great cooperation between our two nations.”

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Test case?!

Sri Lanka Economy Has ‘Completely Collapsed’ – PM (Sky)

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said the country’s economy has “completely collapsed”, leaving it unable to pay for essentials such as oil imports. It follows months of shortages of food, fuel, and electricity, and the realisation that even the credit lines from neighbouring India that have sustained the country so far will not be enough. Mr Wickremesinghe told Sri Lanka’s parliament: “We are now facing a far more serious situation beyond the mere shortages of fuel, gas, electricity and food. “Our economy has completely collapsed – that is the most serious issue before us today.” Mr Wickremesinghe said that the state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation is $700m (£572m) in debt, adding: “As a result, no country or organisation in the world is willing to provide fuel to us.

“They are even reluctant to provide fuel for cash.” Sri Lanka has been struggling under the weight of its debt, combined with the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, including a loss of tourism revenue and the rising cost of commodities. In April, it suspended payment on the equivalent of £9.8bn in foreign debt. Mr Wickremesinghe said that efforts to turn the situation around had failed, adding: “If steps had at least been taken to slow down the collapse of the economy at the beginning, we would not be facing this difficult situation today. “But we lost out on this opportunity. “We are now seeing signs of a possible fall to rock bottom.” Previous prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned in May after months of protests and clashes between government supporters and those demanding a change in leadership.

This brought veteran Mr Wickremesinghe to the role for a sixth time, in a move that opposition politicians said was aimed at protecting President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family from protesters’ anger. A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrived in Colombo earlier this week and talks with them have made progress, Mr Wickremesinghe said on Wednesday, adding that an agreement was likely by the end of this month. “We have discussed multiple points including fiscal policy, debt restructuring and direct cash transfers,” he said. “Parallel to this, we have also started talks on a debt restructuring framework, which we hope will be completed in July.”

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“She will be sentenced on 28 June..” How about her clients?

Ghislaine Maxwell: US Prosecutors Urge 30-Year Minimum Prison Sentence (G.)

Ghislaine Maxwell should get at least 30 years’ imprisonment for sex trafficking when she is sentenced next week for her role in facilitating the abuse of teenage girls by Jeffrey Epstein, New York federal prosecutors have said in court filings. “Ghislaine Maxwell sexually exploited young girls for years. It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of her crimes and the harm she caused. Her crimes demand justice,” they said in a court filing on Wednesday. “The government urges the court to impose a sentence within the applicable guidelines range of 360 to 660 months’ imprisonment.” The prosecution’s filing comes one week after Maxwell’s lawyers argued that she should receive “well below” the 20-year sentence recommended by sentencing officials.


Although Maxwell’s defense attorneys and prosecutors each make their arguments for an appropriate sentence, the decision ultimately rests with Alison Nathan, the judge. “Maxwell’s conduct was shockingly predatory,” prosecutors said in arguing for a lengthy sentence. “She was a calculating, sophisticated, and dangerous criminal who preyed on vulnerable young girls and groomed them for sexual abuse. “Not only did her conduct exhibit a callous disregard for other human beings, but her practice of targeting vulnerable victims reflects her view that struggling young girls could be treated like disposable objects.” Maxwell was convicted on 29 December for her role in the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of girls, some as young as 14, who she brought into his orbit. She will be sentenced on 28 June. She maintains her innocence.

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Very good angle.

Extraditing Assange Would Be a “Legalized” Rendition to US Torture (Kanji)

As the British government moves ever closer to extraditing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, the pantomime of “justice” cloaking his persecution in the regalia of the “rule of law” continues to unfold: a torture rendition by another name, inching forward as the world watches in real time. On June 17, the U.K.’s Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition of Assange to the United States, following the magistrate court’s order that the transfer should proceed. In this fundamentally skewed process, Assange’s capacity to meaningfully defend himself has been systematically assaulted by government smear campaigns; surveillance of his lawyers; and stultifying, arbitrary rules and restrictions obstructing him from participating in his own case — as documented in detail by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer in his recent book, The Trial of Julian Assange.

Previously, U.S. officials discussed “options” for kidnapping Assange and assassinating him by poison — tactics ultimately dismissed as “something we’d do in Afghanistan,” Egypt or Pakistan, but not the U.K. Therefore, they’ve opted for the more “civilized” alternative. Instead of kidnapping, extradition. And instead of assassination, entombment in the torturous U.S. carceral system, where Assange faces a death-in-prison sentence of 175 years for exposing U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. How is this, in essence and effect, anything but the “legal” equivalent of an extraordinary rendition — defined by the American Civil Liberties Union as “the practice of capturing people and sending them to countries that use torture or abuse in interrogations”?

While the U.S.’s infamous extraordinary rendition program has (now) been officially condemned and supposedly ceased, rendition to torture via legalized means is enduringly embraced. In “extraordinary” rendition, hundreds of “war on terror” detainees were secretly imprisoned and brutalized in CIA black sites around the world. In “legalized” rendition, the torture chambers are not foreign black sites but prisons transformed into “Guantánamo Norths” within the U.S. itself. In “extraordinary” rendition, victims were seized off the streets extrajudicially by the CIA. In the “legalized” version, the condemned are delivered into U.S. hands through judicially sanctioned means such as extradition — abusive processes accorded an aura of legal legitimacy.

U.S. courts have upheld transfers into U.S. custody even when the targets have been abducted at gunpoint, severely beaten, burned, kept in secret offshore captivity for weeks or months (an increasingly popular practice with U.S. law enforcement), and electrocuted in their feet and genitals: acts of violence for which the courts have refused to provide any legal redress because they occurred outside the U.S. In “legalized” rendition, as in “extraordinary” rendition, detainees have been subjected to intensive solitary confinement, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, sensory deprivation, extreme light and temperature exposure, and other mechanisms of deliberate “psychic demolition”; although the degree of isolation and control achieved in domestic U.S. prisons under regimes such as “special administrative measures” is in many ways even more totalizing than at Guantánamo Bay.

Dail Assange

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Sweet Jesus….

Assange Put on Suicide Watch After Patel Decision (Lauria)

After British Home Secretary Priti Patel signed Julian Assange’s extradition order on Friday the authorities in Belmarsh prison stripped Julian Assange and threw him into a completely empty cell in an attempt to prevent his suicide, Assange’s father has said. It was just one more instance in which the prison humiliated his son, Shipton told a rally on Tuesday night at the offices of the junge Welt newspaper in Berlin. About 300 people attended, with an overflow crowd watching on close circuit TV in the courtyard. Testimony was heard from expert defense witnesses during Assange’s extradition hearing that he might try to end his life in prison once he learned he was going to the United States.

It is not the end of the road for Assange legally, however. His lawyers have until July 1 to file for an appeal of Patel’s decision to the High Court. They also intend to apply for a cross appeal of issues such as the political nature of the charges, the threat to free speech and the reported C.I.A. plot to kidnap or kill Assange before his arrest. Shipton and Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, are in Berlin to lobby the German government to put pressure on the United States to drop the case against Assange. On Monday, the Shiptons met with Tobias Lindner, the minister of state, at the German foreign ministry. “It was a practical and appropriate step for Tobias to take, to welcome Julian Assange’s father and bother into the foreign ministry,” John Shipton said.

“The invitation in itself and the meeting in the foreign ministry indicates that the German government is sincere in bringing about the freedom of Julian Assange.” But Shipton said he would like to hear a public statement from Germany in support of his son. “We’d like Tobias to confirm what he’s said.” A German government spokesman on Monday said however that Germany was unlikely to intervene with either the U.K. or the U.S. “This is a legal process that is already in motion, so I would be a little wary of political intervention,” he said, the French Press Agency (AFP) reported.

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Imagine the collapse of this…..

 

 

Mike Lynch

 

 

Cave of El Castillo, Spain. Hands and a Bison. Some of the hand stencils, mostly near the front and middle sections of the cave, were painted more than 37,000 years ago, but some of the more recent hand stencils are 24,000 years old.

 

 

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

 

 

 

Apr 052022
 


Vincent van Gogh Tulip fields 1883

 

Zelensky Rejected German Security Proposal Before Russian Invasion (Antiwar)
Questions Abound About Bucha Massacre (Lauria)
Pentagon Can’t Independently Confirm Atrocities In Ukraine’s Bucha (R.)
Russia Threatens to Limit Exports of Ag Products to ‘Friendly’ Countries (ET)
NATO’s Internal Gold War (Vilches)
A Theory of the Case (Kunstler)
Sri Lanka Inflation and Food Crisis Results in Widespread Social Chaos (CTH)
Clinton, DNC Pay FEC Fines in Effort to Bury Story: Kash Patel (ET)
Media ‘Caught in a Coverup’ of Hunter Biden’s Laptop Story: Sen. Johnson (ET)
‘Big Guy’ Reemerges In Hunter Biden Grand Jury (WE)
White House Won’t Rule Out Pardon For Hunter, James Biden (ZH)
A Generation of Toddlers Struggling With Speech and Social Skills (SN)

 

 

 

 

Musk Twitter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1511209796531281921

Musk Trump

Bring them all back

 

 

 

 

Who are Zelensky’s handlers?

Zelensky Rejected German Security Proposal Before Russian Invasion (Antiwar)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected a proposal from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz just days before the Russian invasion. The February 19 offer called on Kyiv to renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality. At the time, Zelensky rejected the security plan saying Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be trusted to uphold the agreement. Under Berlin’s plan, Putin and American President Joe Biden would sign the deal and jointly guarantee Ukraine’s security. The Wall Street Journal, which initially reported the proposal, said that Zelensky rejecting the offer “left German officials worried that the chances of peace were fading.”


The day after the meeting, French President Emmanual Marcon appealed to Biden in a call between world leaders to make another push for diplomacy. “I think the last person who could still do something is you, Joe. Are you ready to meet Putin?” Macron said to Biden. However, Washington appeared uninterested in a push for diplomacy. While the full details of the German offer are unknown, it appears similar to proposals Zelensky has outlined in recent weeks. Ukraine’s top negotiator David Arakhamia said Russia had “verbally” agreed to several of Kyiv’s positions. On Sunday, Russia’s top negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said the two sides are not close enough to an agreement for a meeting between Putin and Zelensky. “The draft agreement is not ready for submission to a meeting at the top,” the Russian chief negotiator said.

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“..photos now show many of the bodies out in the open on the streets of the town, something that presumably would be difficult to miss.”

Questions Abound About Bucha Massacre (Lauria)

Last Wednesday, all Russian forces left Bucha, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. This was confirmed on Thursday by a smiling Anatolii Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, in a video on the Bucha City Council official Facebook page. The translated post accompanying the video says: “March 31 – the day of the liberation of Bucha. This was announced by Bucha Mayor Anatolii Fedoruk. This day will go down in the glorious history of Bucha and the entire Bucha community as a day of liberation by the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the Russian occupiers.” All of the Russian troops are gone and yet there is no mention of a massacre. The beaming Fedoruk says it is a “glorious day” in the history of Bucha, which would hardly be the case if hundreds of dead civilians littered the streets around Fedoruk.

“Russian Defence Ministry denied accusations by the Kiev regime of the alleged killing of civilians in Bucha, Kiev Region. Evidence of crimes in Bucha appeared only on the fourth day after the Security Service of Ukraine and representatives of Ukrainian media arrived in the town. All Russian units completely withdrew from Bucha on March 30, and ‘not a single local resident was injured’ during the time when Bucha was under the control of Russian troops,” the Russian MOD said in a post on Telegram. What happened then on Friday and Saturday? As pointed out in a piece by Jason Michael McCann on Standpoint Zero, The New York Times was in Bucha on Saturday and did not report a massacre. Instead, the Times said the withdrawal was completed on Saturday, two days after the mayor said it was, and that the Russians left “behind them dead soldiers and burned vehicles, according to witnesses, Ukrainian officials, satellite images and military analysts.”

The Times said reporters found the bodies of six civilians. “It was unclear under what circumstances they had died, but the discarded packaging of a Russian military ration was lying beside one man who had been shot in the head,” the paper said. It then quoted a Zelensky adviser, who said: “’The bodies of people with tied hands, who were shot dead by soldiers lie in the streets,’ the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Twitter. ‘These people were not in the military. They had no weapons. They posed no threat.’ He included an image of a scene, photographed by Agence France-Presse, showing three bodies on the side of a road, one with hands apparently tied behind the back. The New York Times was unable to independently verify Mr. Podolyak’s claim the people had been executed.’” It is possible that on Saturday the full extent of the horror had yet to emerge, and that even the mayor was unaware of it two days before, though photos now show many of the bodies out in the open on the streets of the town, something that presumably would be difficult to miss.

In Bucha, the Times was close to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, whose soldiers appear in the newspaper’s photographs. In his piece, McCann suggests that Azov may responsible for the killings: “Something very interesting then happens on [Saturday] 2 April, hours before a massacre is brought to the attention of the national and international media. The US and EU-funded Gorshenin Institute online [Ukrainian language] site Left Bank announced that: ‘Special forces have begun a clearing operation in the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region, which has been liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The city is being cleared from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces.’

The Russian military has by now completely left the city, so this sounds for all the world like reprisals. The state authorities would be going through the city searching for ‘saboteurs’ and ‘accomplices of Russian forces.’ Only the day before [Friday], Ekaterina Ukraintsiva, representing the town council authority, appeared on an information video on the Bucha Live Telegram page wearing military fatigues and seated in front of a Ukrainian flag to announce ‘the cleansing of the city.’ She informed residents that the arrival of the Azov battalion did not mean that liberation was complete (but it was, the Russians had fully withdrawn), and that a ‘complete sweep’ had to be performed.” Ukraintsiva was speaking a day after the mayor had said the town was liberated.

Scott Ritter

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“We have no reason whatsoever to refute the Ukrainian claims about these atrocities..”

Pentagon Can’t Independently Confirm Atrocities In Ukraine’s Bucha (R.)

The U.S. military is not in a position to independently confirm Ukrainian accounts of atrocities by Russian forces against civilians in the town of Bucha, but has no reason to dispute the accounts either, a senior U.S. defense official said on Monday. “We’re seeing the same imagery that you are. We have no reason whatsoever to refute the Ukrainian claims about these atrocities — clearly, deeply, deeply troubling,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The Pentagon can’t independently and single handedly confirm that, but we’re also not in any position to refute those claims.” The Kremlin has denied accusations related to the murder of civilians in the town.

Escobar

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“We will supply food and crops only to our friends (fortunately, we have a lot of them, and they are not at all in Europe and not in North America)”

Russia Threatens to Limit Exports of Ag Products to ‘Friendly’ Countries (ET)

A senior Russian government official has threatened to limit exports of agriculture products to “friendly” countries only amid sanctions from Western nations in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Dmitry Medvedev, who previously served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy secretary of the country’s security council, took to Telegram on April 1 where he warned of the potential move. Medvedev said that many counties depend on supplies of food from Russia, a major global wheat exporter, writing: “It turns out that our food is our quiet weapon. Quiet but ominous,” according to Breitbart. “The priority in food supplies is our domestic market. And price control,” he continued. “We will supply food and crops only to our friends (fortunately, we have a lot of them, and they are not at all in Europe and not in North America). We will sell both for rubles and for their national currency in agreed proportions.”


He then explained that Russia would not supply products and agricultural products to those countries it deems as “enemies.” “And we won’t buy anything from them (although we haven’t bought anything since 2014, but the list of products prohibited for import can be further expanded),” he continued. Russia previously imposed a ban on imports of certain agricultural products from the EU and other Western countries in 2014 after its annexation of Crimea. Russia serves as a major global exporter of several commodities, including sunflower oil, barley, and wheat; the latter of which it mainly supplies to Africa and the Middle East. It is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, having exported $10.1B in wheat in 2020 alone, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic and various supply chain issues.

Lavrov

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Grand theft. Ominous.

NATO’s Internal Gold War (Vilches)

Brexitology focused keenly on UK fish but fully ignored the EU´s gigantic gold reserves supposedly still vaulted in custody at the Bank of England. Adding insult to injury, a UK-EU no-deal financial services crash-out divorce went by almost unnoticed… not only without the bang of the still postponed “financial equivalence” protocol… but also without a mere whimper from specialized media and Remainers. Now, the Ukraine crisis with its new payment requirements for the badly needed Russian oil & gas…overlapping with essential yet unfinished Brexit business…will necessarily evolve into a vicious NATO internal gold war. Paraphrasing James Carville spiced with some traditional British flavor, “It´s the bloody gold, stupid”

Rule Britannia As UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson would have it, the physical repatriation of the EU gold supposedly still vaulted in London would “mightily” affect the future of Europe with very deep, high-voltage political impact both sides of the English Channel. In this scenario No.10 Downing Street would easily negotiate the EU gold bullion availability only under specific Brexit conditions favorable to the UK. Actually, doing this could turn out to be absolutely necessary and should go far beyond the enormous intrinsic value of the EU gold supposedly still vaulted at the BoE. Let me explain.

NATO gold in London Russia´s new rubles or gold payment requirements for any of its goods or services will necessarily prompt a major gold war between the UK and the EU probably resulting in NATO´s first-ever internal head-on gloves-off confrontation. After WW2 the idea was to keep Europe´s gold bullion safely away from the former Soviet Union and Josef Stalin, just in case. So decades ago current EU member states deposited most of their gold in custody at the Bank of England (BoE) in London. Now, the UK will dare to weaponize the approval of EU gold repatriation requests and other gold-related issues as a very convincing bargaining tool for lots of still unfinished yet most important Brexit business. So, (a) Whitehall could indefinetly delay the EU gold delivery unless Brexit pending issues are agreed in favor of the UK.

(b) Or, quite simply, the BoE would not ever return such EU gold supposedly kept in custody for the past decades because it has been partially or totally sold off or loaned out or compromised as explained below with former UK Prime Minister James Gordon Brown knowing about it all too well. If history is any guide, hostilities will explode the instant the EU member states individually or collectively rightfully demand a yet-non-existant fully independent world-class functionally detailed audit of the EU gold supposedly still in ´custody´ at the BoE. This should take plenty of time and is the perfect excuse for delaying the whole process always under the exclusive perview of London, not Brussels.

Or unmanageable problems would arise as soon as EU nations require immediate repatriation of at least some of such ´theoretical´ bullion, most probably all of them at the same time in view of circumstances. Then, either (1) some gold could possibly slowly be returned here and there (albeit with great delay ) but only under very vague London terms and changing the unfinished Brexit aftermath to levels yet unheard of, or (2) no gold would be returned as it has been sold off or compromised in different ways as explained hereinafter. And the UK better not decide to pay Russia even with a single gold coin as the EU would rightly wonder who owns it.

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“Russia has been the all-purpose hobgoblin that every US agency and many political personages turn to when they are caught doing something nefarious.”

A Theory of the Case (Kunstler)

[..] since the State Department is most of all responsible for the Russian clean-up operation now underway in Ukraine, you can bet that CBS-News is in on the info-grift to protect State, its patron. What Russia had to clean-up was the long-building after-effects of now Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s 2014 engineered Maidan coup against the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych. The issue of that bygone day was a tug-of-war between the US and Russia, with Ukraine as the flag in the middle of the rope. Russia wanted Ukraine in the orbit of its economic “customs union” and the US was affecting to pull Ukraine into the Eurozone and NATO — or, at least, use Ukraine as a forward base for NATO, in order to antagonize Russia.

Russia has been the all-purpose hobgoblin that every US agency and many political personages turn to when they are caught doing something nefarious. When Hillary Clinton’s email trove was purloined through her poorly-defended illegal home server, Russia was to blame. That fiasco spawned the multi-year RussiaGate operation that bamboozled half the nation and ended up tainting the FBI, the DOJ, the FISA Court, and both the House and Senate Intel committees. Then, along came Hunter Biden’s laptop, infamously labeled “Russian disinformation” by every retired senior intel spook still drawing a fat pension. The news about the laptop and its lurid contents was strenuously suppressed by every mainstream media company except The New York Post, and its coverage was banished from Facebook and Twitter which so many Americans rely on for news — an obvious and true conspiracy between government, high tech, and the news media.

All this coincided you understand, with the horror-show official response to Covid-19 coming on the scene at exactly the same time: winter of 2019-2020. By then, half the country had already been groomed into a mass formation psychosis over the RussiaGate narrative that declared President Donald Trump was a stooge for Vladimir Putin… thus, Trump derangement.

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“Food inflation in Sri Lanka reached 30%…. things start immediately collapsing.”

Coming soon to a place near you.

Sri Lanka Inflation and Food Crisis Results in Widespread Social Chaos (CTH)

I have stated for the past year ‘the absence of food will change things‘. The inflation and food affordability crisis has now surfaced in Sri Lanka. Global media is paying attention, even sending out warnings about what this might represent for other nations. Sri Lanka has a debt to GDP ratio of 120%, approximately the same as the United States. However, Sri Lanka does not have the benefit of their currency being supported as the global trade currency; therefore, the debt and domestic inflation rate are directly tied together. The rate of food inflation in March has exceeded 30%…. the absence of the public being able to afford food has now surfaced and the government is collapsing. Read the news from Sri Lanka through the prism of what could happen in U.S. cities if we lose the dollar as the global trade currency.

(Via Reuters) – Reuters Breakingviews) – “Sri Lanka’s collapse is front of mind for many. Protesters fed up with crippling shortages of essential food and fuel items are on the streets, prompting multiple members of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s cabinet to offer to resign late on Sunday. Social unrest will probably accelerate a restructuring of some $44 billion of international sovereign debt. Though Sri Lanka’s problems follow years of mismanagement, its speedy unravelling is a warning to sturdier economies from Europe to Asia suddenly grappling with a spike in the cost of living.

A current account crisis read more has intensified after the West fired its sanctions bazooka at Russia as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine. Rolling blackouts and a state of emergency are frightening away remaining tourists, a crucial source of foreign exchange. Food inflation hit an eye-watering 30.2% in March. The currency’s 40% depreciation against the U.S. dollar in one month, including a central bank managed devaluation, is blowing out leverage ratios: Public debt estimated by the International Monetary Fund at 120% of GDP is perhaps some 40 percentage points more than might be deemed sustainable, guesses Citi.

[…] It’s a reminder of the political implications of high prices. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, few Asian countries had consumer inflation in double digits. The standouts were Sri Lanka and Pakistan, whose Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday dodged a no-confidence vote and called fresh elections. Poorer countries are more vulnerable to surging global food prices because their populations spend more on food than discretionary items.” Food inflation in Sri Lanka reached 30%…. things start immediately collapsing. Consider the recent projected rate of food inflation in the United States (wave 2, this summer):

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Admission of guilt?!

Clinton, DNC Pay FEC Fines in Effort to Bury Story: Kash Patel (ET)

The lead investigator for the House Intelligence Committee’s 2018 probe into the FBI’s investigation of alleged Trump–Russia collusion, Kash Patel, said the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign is paying a penalty to Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an admittance of guilt. Clinton and DNC are doing so to bury the narrative and prevent more media coverage of these illegal activities, said Patel. “I think the public sees what that is. It’s their way of burying the narrative, because if they contested what happens, more media coverage, more people start looking into these things,” Patel said. “So the Hillary Clinton campaign is not contesting it, they’re paying the fine. It’s basically admitting that they did this and they’re out is: ‘we just don’t want a protracted legal deal, as if the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC ever shied away from taking something or someone to court,” Patel added.

Clinton’s campaign and the DNC agreed to pay a combined $113,000 to the FEC, according to documents made public on March 30, after the commission found probable cause that the entities violated federal law by describing payments that ultimately went to the Fusion GPS research group as going toward legal services and consulting. “It shows them how wrong they were to violate the law and spend political campaign dollars on hit job, opposition research pieces for then-candidate Trump, all of which, [to] remind the audience, was then used intentionally by the FBI—even though they knew it was false—to go to a federal secret court and surveil a presidential candidate and later a president of the United States.”

The FEC, which is responsible for overseeing federal elections, including the presidential election, found that the Hillary Clinton campaign broke FEC rules about how donations can be used. “What we knew when we ran the Russiagate investigation, Chairman Nunes and I, we exposed that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the Steele dossier, an opposition research hit job. We had proven that some years ago,” said Patel. “What the Coolidge Reagan Foundation did … based on our investigation, said ‘wait a second FEC, you as a political campaign cannot spend political dollars launching opposition research, false or otherwise,’” said Patel.

Dan Backer, an attorney who lodged the complaint with the election commission against the Clinton campaign and the DNC, told The Epoch Times that it’s the first time Clinton “has actually been held accountable for misconduct,” calling the fines “a great step for accountability.” “So they fined them, that’s the FEC’s job. And the Hillary Clinton campaign could have said: ‘We disagree with your finding. We’re going to go to court.’ What did the Hillary Clinton campaign do? … They agreed to the finding of probable cause by the FEC, which means they’re basically agreeing that it happened. … Like we’ve always said, ‘follow the money.’”

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Make sure he gets re-elected.

Media ‘Caught in a Coverup’ of Hunter Biden’s Laptop Story: Sen. Johnson (ET)

Johnson said that some outlets had participated in “what they call a limited hangout, or in [President Richard] Nixon’s case, a modified limited hangout. You’ve let out just enough information, just enough truth to try to get you by the moment.” A modified limited hangout is a public relations or propaganda technique in which the individual or official involved releases some information that was previously hidden, albeit still retaining important key facts, in an effort to prevent more important details from being exposed. According to former CIA official Victor Marchetti, the technique results in the public being “so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.”


“We can’t allow our intelligence agencies, the Department of Justice, the FBI, or the media to get away with this,” Johnson said. “This is serious business. This is incredible corruption at the highest levels of government and within our media. “We are all being snookered by them. This has been a—from my standpoint—a massive diversionary operation to, you know, to try to take the American public’s attention away from their wrongdoing, their lies, their cover-ups.” He said that “now we have actual bank records that verify what we reported” and that Hunter Biden’s “laptop is obviously a treasure-trove of additional corroborating evidence as well.”

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Special counsel required.

‘Big Guy’ Reemerges In Hunter Biden Grand Jury (WE)

A grand jury witness was asked to identify the infamous “big guy” mentioned in discussions regarding a Chinese business deal involving the president’s son Hunter Biden, according to a new report. The question came up after this person, who was not identified, was shown a piece of evidence before the grand jury, located in Wilmington, Delaware, a source told the New York Post. The answer that was given was not reported, though some have claimed the “big guy” is President Joe Biden, raising the prospect that the commander in chief could be drawn into a federal criminal investigation. So far, the White House has been adamant in asserting that the president is not involved and that Hunter Biden, 52, did not commit any crimes.

The New York Post has led the charge in reporting on the contents of an abandoned laptop that is believed to have belonged to Hunter Biden. While other major media outlets sought to cast doubt on its authenticity and Big Tech companies even took steps to suppress its spread in the final weeks of the 2020 election, in recent weeks, the New York Times and Politico have come forth with reports saying at least some of the contents on the laptop have been authenticated. At issue is one particular email, dated May 13, 2017, from investor James Gilliar to himself, Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker, and James and Hunter Biden detailing a “provisional” business deal with a Chinese company called CEFC. The email, in part, asks about “10 held by H for the big guy,” as well as “10” for “Jim.” It appears “H” is a reference to Hunter Biden, “Jim” is Joe Biden’s brother, and “10” is a reference to 10%.

Hunter Biden’s ex-business partner Tony Bobulinski, a Navy veteran, corroborated the authenticity of the email in October 2020 and insisted the “big guy” was then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. The Washington Post recently reported on “verified emails illuminating a deal Hunter Biden developed with a fast-growing Chinese energy conglomerate, CEFC China Energy, for which he was paid nearly $5 million, and other business relationships.” The elder Biden has distanced himself from his son’s foreign business dealings. Over the weekend, a White House official claimed the president is certain his son did not break the law or do anything unethical as it relates to China.

“Of course the president is confident that his son didn’t break the law,” Ron Klain, the president’s chief of staff, said during an interview on ABC’s This Week. “But most importantly, as I said, that’s a matter that’s going to be decided by the Justice Department, by the legal process. It’s something that no one at the White House has involvement in.”

Solomon Hunter

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No pardon needed without an investigation.

White House Won’t Rule Out Pardon For Hunter, James Biden (ZH)

The White House won’t rule out granting pardons to Hunter Biden or James Biden, the son and brother of President Joe Biden, as investigations over their international dealings heat up. “That’s not a hypothetical I’m going to entertain,” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield told reporters last week when asked during the daily press briefing. “I don’t have anything to add from this podium.” Bedingfield was reluctant to address any aspect of the Hunter Biden story, after CNN, The Washington Post, and the New York Times recently published stories about the federal tax probe into Hunter Biden and his foreign business deals. When asked additional questions about Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden, Bedingfield would only reply, “I don’t have anything further to add from this podium.” -Breitbart


Two weeks ago, the New York Times confirmed Hunter Biden’s controversial laptop exists, and is legit – and confirmed several previously reported aspects of the story, including correspondence between Hunter and his business partner Devon Archer, both of whom served on the board Ukrainian energy giant Burisma. Contained on the laptop were a trove of emails, text messages, photographs and financial documents. Last week, the Washington Post and CNN piled on – with the post reporting on Hunter’s “multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company,” and CNN running a blistering segment and reporting that the federal investigation into Hunter is ‘heating up.’

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As their parents have their own vaccine related handicaps.

A Generation of Toddlers Struggling With Speech and Social Skills (SN)

Lockdown restrictions, including adults wearing face masks, has left a generation of babies and toddlers struggling with speech and social skills, according to an official report. Inspectors working for Ofsted found that infants being surrounded by adults wearing face masks for significant periods of time over the last two years has damaged their learning and communication abilities. Those turning two “will have been surrounded by adults wearing masks for their whole lives and have therefore been unable to see lip movements or mouth shapes as regularly,” the report found. “Some providers have reported that delays to children’s speech and language development have led to them not socialising with other children as readily as they would have expected previously,” it added.


The restrictions also left toddlers struggling with crawling, using the toilet independently and making friends. Delays in learning had also regressed some children to the stage where they needed help with basic tasks such as putting on their coats and blowing their noses. “I’m particularly worried about younger children’s development which, if left unaddressed, could potentially cause problems for primary schools down the line,” said chief inspector Amanda Spielman. We previously highlighted another study out of Germany which found that the reading ability of children has plummeted compared to pre-COVID times thanks to lockdown policies that led to the closure of schools. Speech therapist Jaclyn Theek said that mask wearing during the pandemic has caused a 364% increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers. “They’re not making any word attempts and not communicating at all with their family,” she said, adding that symptoms of autism are also skyrocketing.

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French doctor

 

 

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Mar 082022
 
 March 8, 2022  Posted by at 9:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  53 Responses »


Jean-François Millet The Gleaners 1857

 

The Biggest Global Food Crisis That Any Of Us Have Ever Seen (Snyder)
The American Empire Self-Destructs (Michael Hudson)
Pity the Nation (Scott Ritter)
A Proposed Solution to the Ukraine War (Mello)
US Secretary Of Defense Orders 500 Additional Us Troops Deploy To Europe (CNN)
Ukraine Fighter-jet Deal Appears Doomed (Axios)
Blinken Invokes Putin’s Dead Brother (ABC)
Ukraine’s Top Negotiator Says Kiev Open to ‘Non-NATO Models’ (Antiwar)
Nowhere Left to Hide (Kunstler)
Australia Targets Hardcore Putin Extremists Spreading Hate About Ukraine (DM)
Florida Department of Health to Advise Against COVID Vax for Healthy Kids (NW)
Leaders Who Got Covid Wrong Must Admit It And Apologize (NYP)
From Sore Arms To Sudden Death (Eugyp)
Los Angeles Suing Monsanto For Chemicals In Waterways (Y!)

 

 

“And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”
– George Orwell, 1984

 

 

 

 

Biden 1997

 

 


Nickel price


Spain electricity prices

 

 

India

 

 

Famines loom.

The Biggest Global Food Crisis That Any Of Us Have Ever Seen (Snyder)

By the end of 2022, we are going to witness very serious shortages of food in many parts of the globe. In fact, World Bank President David Malpass is openly admitting that we are now facing “a huge supply shock” as a result of the war in Ukraine. Of course we were already moving into a global food crisis even before the war erupted. According to the UN, worldwide food prices in February 2022 were 20.7 percent higher than they were in February 2021, fertilizer prices have gone absolutely nuts, crop production is down all over the planet due to crazy weather patterns, and supply chain problems caused by the pandemic continue to create ongoing headaches. But now World War 3 has erupted, and that is going to push this rapidly growing global food crisis to a level that none of us have ever seen before.

Under normal conditions, Ukraine exports tremendous amounts of food and is considered to be one of the most important “breadbaskets” on the entire planet. Unfortunately, everything has changed now, and this has pushed the global price of wheat up 55 percent since a week before the invasion happened… “Ukrainian farmers have been forced to neglect their fields as millions flee, fight or try to stay alive. Ports are shut down that send wheat and other food staples worldwide to be made into bread, noodles and animal feed. And there are worries Russia, another agricultural powerhouse, could have its grain exports upended by Western sanctions. While there have not yet been global disruptions to wheat supplies, prices have surged 55% since a week before the invasion amid concerns about what could happen next. If the war is prolonged, countries that rely on affordable wheat exports from Ukraine could face shortages starting in July, International Grains Council director Arnaud Petit told The Associated Press.”

I really don’t like that “shortages starting in July” part. That definitely sounds rather ominous. Right now, the global price of food is the highest that it has ever been, and Russia and Ukraine normally account for “nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports”. Now that exports from Russia will be greatly reduced and exports from Ukraine will be virtually non-existent, some countries will almost immediately be facing extreme stress. [..] Things are going to be very challenging in Europe as well, because Ukraine normally provides almost 60 percent of the corn that Europeans use… “Ukraine supplies the EU with just under 60% of its corn and nearly half of a key component in the grains needed to feed livestock.” Meanwhile, crops all over the world are in surprisingly poor shape because weather conditions have been so strange.

Earlier today, I was stunned to learn that it is being projected that China’s winter wheat crop could be “the worst in history”… “The condition of China’s winter wheat crop could be the “worst in history”, the agriculture minister said on Saturday, raising concerns about grain supplies in the world’s biggest wheat consumer.” And the USDA is reporting that a whopping 71 percent of all winter wheat in the United States has been affected by drought… “A limited supply of soft white wheat, the primary type of wheat grown in the Inland Northwest, has helped lead to a six-year low for wheat exports from the United States. That’s according to the USDA wheat report for February. The report also states that 71 percent of U.S. winter wheat is being hit by drought in 2022.”

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“But nobody thought that it would happen this fast.”

The American Empire Self-Destructs (Michael Hudson)

Empires often follow the course of a Greek tragedy, bringing about precisely the fate that they sought to avoid. That certainly is the case with the American Empire as it dismantles itself in not-so-slow motion. The basic assumption of economic and diplomatic forecasting is that every country will act in its own self-interest. Such reasoning is of no help in today’s world. Observers across the political spectrum are using phrases like “shooting themselves in their own foot” to describe U.S. diplomatic confrontation with Russia and allies alike. For more than a generation the most prominent U.S. diplomats have warned about what they thought would represent the ultimate external threat: an alliance of Russia and China dominating Eurasia. America’s economic sanctions and military confrontation has driven them together, and is driving other countries into their emerging Eurasian orbit.

American economic and financial power was expected to avert this fate. During the half-century since the United States went off gold in 1971, the world’s central banks have operated on the Dollar Standard, holding their international monetary reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury securities, U.S. bank deposits and U.S. stocks and bonds. The resulting Treasury-bill Standard has enabled America to finance its foreign military spending and investment takeover of other countries simply by creating dollar IOUs. U.S. balance-of-payments deficits end up in the central banks of payments-surplus countries as their reserves, while Global South debtors need dollars to pay their bondholders and conduct their foreign trade. This monetary privilege – dollar seignorage – has enabled U.S. diplomacy to impose neoliberal policies on the rest of the world, without having to use much military force of its own except to grab Near Eastern oil.

The recent escalation U.S. sanctions blocking Europe, Asia and other countries from trade and investment with Russia, Iran and China has imposed enormous opportunity costs – the cost of lost opportunities – on U.S. allies. And the recent confiscation of the gold and foreign reserves of Venezuela, Afghanistan and now Russia, along the targeted grabbing of bank accounts of wealthy foreigners (hoping to win their hearts and minds, along with recovery of their sequestered accounts), has ended the idea that dollar holdings or those in its sterling and euro NATO satellites are a safe investment haven when world economic conditions become shaky. So I am somewhat chagrined as I watch the speed at which this U.S.-centered financialized system has de-dollarized over the span of just a year or two.

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“..the soul of a nation that once was defined by the life and works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Lenin, Stalin, Sakharov, and Gorbachev was distilled into a shallow caricature of one man — Putin..”

Pity the Nation (Scott Ritter)

In the past few months, the United States has undergone a kind of transformation that one only reads about in history books — from a nation which imperfectly, yet stolidly, embraced the promise, if not principle, of freedom, especially when it came to that most basic of rights — the freedom of expression. Democracies live and die on the ability of an informed citizenry to engage in open debate, dialogue and discussion about difficult issues. Freedom of speech is one of the touch-stone tenets of American democracy — the idea that, no matter how out of step with mainstream society one’s beliefs might be, the retained right to freely express opinions thus derived without fear of censorship or repression existed. No more.

In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russophobia which had taken grip in the United States since Russia’s first post-Cold War president, Boris Yeltsin, handed the reins of power over to his hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, has emerged much like the putrid core of an over-ripe boil. That this anti-Russian trend existed in the United States was, in and of itself, no secret. Indeed, the United States had, since 2000, pushed aside classic Russian area studies in the pursuit of a new school espousing the doctrine of “Putinism,” centered on the flawed notion that everything in Russia revolved around the singular person of Vladimir Putin.

The more the United States struggled with the reality of a Russian nation unwilling to allow itself to be once again constrained by the yoke of carpetbagger economics disguised as “democracy” that had been prevalent during the Yeltsin era, the more the dogma of “Putinism” took hold in the very establishments where intellectual examination of complex problems was ostensibly transpiring — the halls of academia which in turn produced the minds that guided policy formulation and implementation. Outliers like Jack Matlock, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Cohen were cashiered in favor of a new breed of erstwhile Russian expert, led by the likes of Michael McFaul, Fiona Hill and Anne Applebaum. Genuine Russian area studies was supplanted by a new field of authoritarian studies, where the soul of a nation that once was defined by the life and works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Lenin, Stalin, Sakharov, and Gorbachev was distilled into a shallow caricature of one man — Putin.

[..] As a former chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998, I was uniquely positioned to comment on the veracity of the claims made by the United States that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction capability in violation of its obligation to be disarmed of such. When my stance was deemed convenient to a narrative attacking a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, I was readily embraced. However, when my fact-based narrative ran afoul of the regime-change policies of Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, I was cast aside as a pariah.

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Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group.

A Proposed Solution to the Ukraine War (Mello)

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, what was a regional conflict has become a global hybrid war with ever-greater stakes, not least the risk of nuclear war. Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the difference of motives between parties, which is also the fundamental cause of this war: Russia seeks security, while the U.S. and its NATO allies have been using Ukraine to deny that security — to “break Russia,” in Henry Kissinger’s 2015 phrase. The U.S. does not want peace, unless it be the peace of a conquered Russia. That is why there is no obvious end to the escalations and counter-escalations. The U.S. and NATO see opportunity in the war they have been trying so hard to provoke.

The tragedy is that few people seem to understand that at the root of the Ukraine crisis is a specific strategy known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine, named after Paul Wolfowitz who, as under secretary of defense in the administration of George H. W. Bush, was one of the authors of a 1992 document that laid out a neo-conservative manifesto aimed at ensuring American dominance of world affairs following the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Our first objective,” stated the document, “is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival [to the United States], either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere. … This is a dominant consideration underlying [a] regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

The Wolfowitz Doctrine triggered the post-Cold War use of NATO as an instrument of bloody aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. It declared, in effect, that diplomacy was dead and that American power ruled by violence if necessary. A resurgent Russia led by Vladimir Putin was next, and on the horizon, a risen China. The 2014 Washington-engineered coup in Ukraine that removed an elected leader who sought to reinforce his country’s relationship with neighboring Russia, was a product of the 1992 Doctrine and the extremism it represented. Victoria Nuland, a neo-conservative ideologue and President Barack Obama’s “point person” in Ukraine, has played the same role in President Joe Biden’s State Department.

The 1992 Doctrine is elaborated in an infamous RAND study on how to overextend and, in Kissinger’s words, “break Russia.” This is U.S. foreign policy today: a fact well understood by the Russian leadership who regard their country as effectively under siege by the United States. The potential of American missiles pointed at Moscow from former Soviet satellite countries, together with NATO troop deployments, is the reality they see. A militarized and virulently anti-Russian Ukraine being used as a tool by the U.S., with an expressed wish for nuclear weapons, on the brink of invading Russian-sympathizing provinces on the Russian border — all that was too much for Russia. What, do you suppose, the U.S. would do if such a situation arose in Mexico or Canada?

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Enablers.

US Secretary Of Defense Orders 500 Additional US Troops Deploy To Europe (CNN)

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered additional troops and US military assets to be deployed to different parts of Europe amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine to further support the US’s NATO allies, a senior US defense official told reporters on Monday. The Defense Department will send a total of 500 troops in this new deployment, the official said. The deployment will include sending KC-135 refueling aircraft to Greece, but the official could not say how many aircrafts would be sent or where in the US they will be coming from. An air support operation center will be deployed to Poland and Romania, and an ordinance company and a maintenance company will be sent to Germany, the official said.

The ordinance and maintenance companies will provide “additional logistic support to the first armored brigade combat team, third infantry division” in Germany which is already deployed there, the official said. “It’s only 500, small units, enablers, we said at the get-go of deploying forces that we would not rule out additional forces to include enablers, and these units are very much in support of forces that were already sent forward,” the official said. With these additional deployments, the US now has about 100,000 US military personnel either on rotational or permanent orders stationed in Europe right now, the official said. The decision to send these troops and military assets were “based on conversations that the secretary had with the chairman and with Gen. (Tod) Wolters,” the commander of US European command, “that these additional enablers would be useful for the forces that are already” in Europe, the official said.

The additional deployment “were already kind of queued up to go, and again fully in support of our efforts to help defend NATO airspace if needed,” the official added.

CIA in Ukraine – Douglas Valentine

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“..the U.S. would be in “no way opposed” to Poland’s “sovereign decision” to transfer its planes..”

Ukraine Fighter-jet Deal Appears Doomed (Axios)

Efforts to push the Biden administration into supporting the transfer of Russian-made fighter jets to Ukraine appear doomed for both technical and geopolitical reasons. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded for the jets on Saturday during a Zoom call with more than 300 members of Congress, saying they were badly needed if NATO wouldn’t establish a “no-fly” zone. Those jets would likely be Soviet-era MiG-29s possessed by Poland, which Ukrainian pilots are capable of operating. The U.S. would, in turn, backfill Poland’s fleet with American-made F-16s. White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated Monday the U.S. would be in “no way opposed” to Poland’s “sovereign decision” to transfer its planes but stressed there are a number of logistical hurdles.


Those include how the planes would actually enter Ukraine’s heavily contested airspace, as well as how to accelerate the years-long U.S. procurement process for “serious weapon systems” like the F-16. The Russians have also been bombing Ukraine’s airports, raising the specter of the planes having to be based in Poland or other NATO territory — increasing the risk of a Russian attack on soil that would have to be defended by the alliance. Zelensky’s appeal produced an immediate and bipartisan groundswell of support. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) sent a letter on Monday calling on the Biden administration to “do everything we can to compensate countries that heed Ukraine’s desperate call for fighter jets to defend their homeland.” His Republican counterpart, Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), tweeted: “There is absolutely no reason we can’t supply airplanes to Zelensky and the Ukrainians. Our allies are willing and able to provide them, the admin needs to get out of the way.”

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1501024225854902273

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This will now define any further communications.

Blinken Invokes Putin’s Dead Brother (ABC)

As Russian forces continue to advance across Ukraine, the U.S. is accusing the Kremlin of “starving” besieged Ukrainian cities, in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who on Monday appealed directly to Russian leader Vladimir Putin to “end the war, end it now.” Blinken even appealed to Putin’s family history, comparing the Kremlin’s siege of Ukrainian cities to Nazi Germany’s siege of Russian cities during World War II, which killed Putin’s one-year-old brother Viktor. But amid calls like his, the Ukrainian government, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is urging U.S. and Western leaders to do more — beyond condemnations and the historic amount of defensive aid and provide warplanes, missile defense systems, and a no-fly zone. U.S. allies in the Baltics are increasingly nervous about Putin’s advances in Ukraine, with Lithuania’s president warning Monday that the strongman leader “will not stop.”


[..] These sieges echoed Nazi Germany’s siege of Leningrad, Blinken said, where Nazi forces “systematically starved and intentionally destroyed” the city, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, Blinken said. “That siege affected millions of Russian families, including President Putin’s, whose one-year-old brother was one of the many victims. Now, Russia is starving out cities like Mariupol. It is shameful. The world is saying to Russia stop these attacks immediately. Let the food and medicine in. Let the people out safely, and end this war of choice against Ukraine,” he said. Putin’s older brother Viktor died of diphtheria during the siege of Leningrad before Putin was born.

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But NATO is not.

Ukraine’s Top Negotiator Says Kiev Open to ‘Non-NATO Models’ (Antiwar)

In an early sign of compromise following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine late last month, a senior member on Kiev’s negotiation team said his country is open to remaining outside of the NATO military bloc – a key security concern raised by Moscow time and again. Speaking to Fox News’s Nana Sajaia about the progress of the talks on Saturday, Ukraine’s chief negotiator David Arakhamia said little had been accomplished so far. With another meeting set for Monday, however, he outlined certain tradeoffs Kiev is willing to make, including its membership in the North Atlantic alliance. “We are ready to discuss some non-NATO models. For example, there could be direct guarantees by different countries like the US, China, UK, maybe Germany and France,” Arakhamia said. “We are open to discuss such things in a broader circle, not only in bilateral discussions with Russia, but also with other partners.”


The negotiator went on to state that, currently, the bloc’s leading members are “not ready to even discuss having us in NATO, not for the closest period of five or 10 years,” despite repeated assurances that Ukraine would be admitted – a promise first made in 2008 but reiterated as recently as last summer. While closing the door on Ukrainian NATO membership could be a step in the right direction and signal flexibility ahead of the next round of talks, it is unlikely to satisfy all of Russia’s demands. In addition to concerns over NATO expansion, Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted that Kiev cede its claims to the Crimean Peninsula and the breakaway Donbass region, where separatist forces have been under siege by the Ukrainian military for eight years. “I don’t think that we have a choice now to even discuss some models where we would recognize those territories [as independent],” he said. “Our position is firm. We are ready to discuss any other dynamic options, but not recognition of those territories.“

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“..cutting off your leg to punish yourself for walking into harm’s way..”

Nowhere Left to Hide (Kunstler)

Time, they say, is nature’s way of making sure that everything doesn’t happen at once. If that’s so, then maybe time has stopped because all of a sudden everything seems to be happening at once. Three things, actually: 1) a Russian military operation in Ukraine that a lot of people in America want to turn into World War Three; 2) an epic crack-up of the world financial system; and 3) the breakdown of the fishy Covid-19 affair and especially the story behind its holy avatar: the mRNA vaccine. In a sane society, that might be enough to trip the institutional reality-test apparatus, but we are not a sane society these days, so we plunge ever-deeper into a hurly-burly of wrongful endeavor vectoring toward self-destruction. The immediate problem is a nation (us) that is powerfully bamboozled, led by a figurehead nobody believes in, backed by a hidden coterie of actors who appear to hate our country enough to try to sink it.

Forgive me for re-stating the premise of the Ukraine situation but one must counter the propaganda emitted like poison gas by a perfidious news media: Russia objected to the expansion of NATO to its very border, based on long-standing prior agreements about it. “Joe Biden” had every chance to formally recognize that reality and stupidly demurred. The Ukrainian government, ditto. Our side (the USA) had already created enough mischief there in mounting the 2014 coup against a government friendly with Russia, and then arming its replacement to harass Ukraine’s own citizens in its easternmost provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk. Two weeks ago, Russia moved in to forcefully correct all that. After all, Ukraine had been a part of Russia since they wrested it from the Ottoman (Turkish) empire in the 1700s, and in any other sense Ukraine is within Russia’s sphere-of-influence, as such things are defined in geopolitical history.

The US-led response to the Russian op was an attempt to dismantle the complex interbank payment systems of the global economy in order to punish one region (Russia) of the global economy — that is, cutting off your leg to punish yourself for walking into harm’s way. The result of that now is mayhem in the financial markets and in currencies, with global commodities like grain, oil, and ores acting as hostages. This hostage-taking has far-reaching effects because the nations of the world can’t operate without food, energy, and stuff to make products out of. Interfere with the rational distribution of them and you’ll get chaos and death.

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How to embarrass your entire country.

Australia Targets Hardcore Putin Extremists Spreading Hate About Ukraine (DM)

Australia will impose a fresh round of sanctions against Russia, targeting people who disseminate propaganda and disinformation about the invasion of Ukraine. Ten Putin supporters will be sanctioned for encouraging hostility towards Ukraine and driving false claims that a genocide was taking place against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. The men targeted are journalists, authors or Putin’s press officers. In addition, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said financial sanctions will be imposed on Russia’s armed forces, as well as six senior military commanders responsible for attacks on Ukraine. ‘Together with partners, we will drive Russia out of our economies, supply chains and airwaves,’ she said in a statement released on Tuesday.


The invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by a widespread disinformation campaign within Russia. Putin has claimed he invaded to ‘de-nazify’ the country, which the West rejects as a false justification. ‘Tragically for Russia, President Putin has shut down independent voices and locked everyday Russians into a world characterised by lies and disinformation,’ Senator Payne said. ‘The addition of sanctions on those responsible for this insidious tactic recognises the powerful impact that disinformation and propaganda can have in conflict.’ The foreign minister said Australia was working alongside major social media companies to help remove propaganda from their platforms. ‘The assertion that there is a genocidal action happening in Ukraine against Russia, that there is a ‘denazification’ required in Ukraine, is an obscene suggestion,’ Senator Payne told Sky News.

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But Newsweek picks the CDC.

Florida Department of Health to Advise Against COVID Vax for Healthy Kids (NW)

The Florida Department of Health will now tell parents not to give their children the COVID-19 vaccine if they are healthy. Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo made the announcement Monday during a roundtable discussing “failures” of the COVID-19 response in the state. The announcement goes directly against the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which strongly recommends vaccination in children ages 5 and older. The CDC claims that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus has become “one of the top 10 causes of death” for young unvaccinated children. The move, which will be the first taken in any state in the country, has not been officially announced by the Florida Department of Health. However, Ladapo was confident in its future.

“The Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children,” he said. “We’re kind of scraping at the bottom of the barrel, particularly with healthy kids, in terms of actually being able to quantify with any accuracy and any confidence the even potential of benefit.” More than 12 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in children since the beginning of the pandemic, accounting for 19 percent of all U.S. infections, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The week ending on February 24 saw children make up 26.2 percent of COVID-19 infections in the country. However, health experts have begun pushing back against the potential recommendation.

When asked by Newsweek for comment, the CDC reiterated how children need to be vaccinated against COVID-19, citing its previous research. It is not only the CDC affirming the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market, but Florida-based healthcare professionals, as well. “The data [is] clear,” UF Health professor Dr. Sonja Rasmussen, who studies epidemiology and pediatrics, told Newsweek in an email, “the benefits of COVID-19 vaccine in children outweigh the very small risks associated with it.”

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Is there anyone left who thinks that would be enough?

Leaders Who Got Covid Wrong Must Admit It And Apologize (NYP)

You, Rochelle Walensky at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, allowed Weingarten to craft absurd, unscientific policies that kept kids out of school. You let her block the schoolhouse door because you were on the same political team. You broke the trust Americans had in their health agencies and we will all suffer the repercussions of that for a long time. Apologize to the children whose lives you’ve stunted and who may never recover from the educational loss. Apologize to the kids who received speech therapy through masks because you refused to acknowledge that masking had been pointless in stopping COVID-19 spread. You may have permanently damaged these children because you refused to admit that you had been wrong for so long. Apologize.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, you fell in love with your own image and could not stay off the TV even as it caused us all harm. In November 2021, you said that people who were criticizing you were “really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous.” What’s dangerous is if you really believe that. You frequently got things wrong on TV or reversed your previous comments with no explanations. The science hadn’t changed, you made political calculations to support the diktats of the Biden administration. You actually argued for the passage of the stimulus bill as if you were some kind of lobbyist and not the director of one of our national health agencies. Worst of all, you shut down dissenting opinions from other scientists because you knew yours could not withstand scrutiny. You have been a disaster for this country in leading us through the pandemic. Apologize. Then exit stage left and let us never hear from you again.

You fearful, quiet politicians who let extended lockdowns destroy businesses, fray the fabric of our cities and cost us all so much: We saw you maskless, at concerts and parties, while our 2-year-olds stay masked to this day. We know that you didn’t actually think masking was important like you implored us it was. You loved your power and nothing else mattered. Apologize. And you, compliant media, the disaster of the last two years is at your feet. You created heroes out of people like Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose nursing home directive cost thousands of lives, while demonizing Gov. Ron DeSantis, who used all of his political capital to correctly force schools open, a decision everyone now pretends was easy but certainly was not. You ran stories about high case numbers in Florida “as schools open” to project that schools were somehow unsafe. You were incurious and did not ever challenge the corrupt health care agencies. You let us down.

Don’t apologize, we don’t believe you anyway.

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“Rough calculations from VAERS data suggest that they’re at least several hundred times more dangerous than flu shots.”

From Sore Arms To Sudden Death (Eugyp)

It is undeniable: The Corona vaccines cause a wide array of adverse events, not all of them understood. Right now it’s hard to assess their population-wide impact, but it is no longer reasonable to doubt that they’re substantially more dangerous than ordinary vaccines. Rough calculations from VAERS data suggest that they’re at least several hundred times more dangerous than flu shots. In addition to acute vaccine reactions – fever, myalgia, swollen lymph nodes and injection site soreness in the days following vaccination – many of you also discussed an array of more disturbing symptoms, including serious tinnitus, heightened blood pressure, chest pains, irregular menstrual bleeding and shortness of breath.

I also had many letters describing shingles and Bell’s Palsy following vaccination; and of more puzzling and potentially more serious neurological problems, from vertigo to muscular tremors to seizures. For the most part, milder acute symptoms disappeared in days, but some you report sore arms and tinnitus lasting many months. Among the severe reactions, myocarditis and stroke have a prominent place in your reports; I had fewer reports of miscarriages, but they were also present. Consistent with internet discussion elsewhere, some of you also report the sudden development or resurgence of cancer following Corona vaccination. Broadly speaking, dose 3 seems to have been worse than dose 2, and dose 2 worse than dose 1. Many, many of the vaccinated among you caught Corona following vaccination.

There are the preponderance of infections in the week following the first and third doses, which we already knew about, but these are but a fraction of post-vaccine infections overall. Probably a big thing that has stalled the political momentum driving mass vaccination, is the prevalence of bad booster reactions followed by breakthrough infection. Another point that emerged from your letters, is the generally high threshold for obtaining an exemption from further vaccination following an adverse reaction. It was disturbing to read several stories of people who were essentially vaccinated to death – dying after dose 3, following a rough reaction to dose 1 and a near-miss with dose 2.

Finally, almost all of you were vaccinated under duress. Some of you accepted vaccination simply to end the medical surveillance or to win back some freedom of movement. That was surprisingly uncommon, though; those who gave in to the petty harassments of the vaccinators generally said they didn’t appreciate the risk of the vaccines, or the outrageousness of the legal regime surrounding them, until later. Most often, people gave in to keep their jobs or to appease insistent family members. Some parents accepted vaccination so that they could attend school events involving their children; other people wanted to see elderly relatives in hospital or care homes.

It looks like death
https://twitter.com/i/status/1500633804830121984

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“.. the company knew as early as the 1950s that PCBs were harmful to humans, ordering staff not to eat near the chemicals.”

Los Angeles Suing Monsanto For Chemicals In Waterways (Y!)

Chemical company Monsanto found itself in the horns of yet another lawsuit Monday, as Los Angeles sued the firm for allegedly knowingly polluting waterways in one of the biggest cities in the United States. The suit — filed last week against three companies including Bayer, the German agro giant that now owns Monsanto Company — comes after a raft of legal action over weedkiller Roundup. The latest legal filing claims Monsanto polluted waterways in Los Angeles with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) up until 1979. PCBs — a toxic chemical that does not break down easily — were used in paint, ink, paper products, fireproofing products, hydraulic fluids and industrial equipment. “It’s time for Monsanto to clean up and pay up,” said Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer.

“The health and environmental impacts of PCBs — impacts the city has been working hard to reduce in waters throughout LA — are just jaw dropping.” “We allege Monsanto knew decades ago that PCBs are toxic and inevitably would cause widespread contamination,” he charged. “It’s infuriating that Monsanto continued to manufacture and sell them — and, we allege, deceive the public about them.” The lawsuit says exposure to PCBs can lead to cancer, as well as to damage to the liver, thyroid and eyes. It says the chemical can hamper brain development and impact birth weight. City officials, who are seeking payment from Monsanto to clean up waterways, say the company knew as early as the 1950s that PCBs were harmful to humans, ordering staff not to eat near the chemicals.

The lawsuit names three companies that Monsanto spun off in the 1990s: Monsanto Company, now owned by Bayer; Solutia Inc., now owned by Eastman Chemical Company; and Pharmacia LLC., now owned by Pfizer.

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Marketing genius

 

 

 

 

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