Vincent van Gogh Kingfisher by the Waterside 1887
Kash Patel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1557007621403643906
Seagal
Zelensky was implicated in crimes against humanity" – the first shots from the documentary by Steven Seagal, who visited the pre-trial detention center in Yelenovka today pic.twitter.com/aXJ8dCNHXA
— Bethany cox CorbynOutrider# (@ARTESOSCURASBOO) August 10, 2022
“President George W. Bush in 2001 issued an executive order that “effectively rewrote the Presidential Records Act, converting it from a measure guaranteeing public access to one that blocks it..”
• FBI Trump Raid Exposes Washington’s Secrecy Shams (Bovard)
FBI agents raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday reportedly looking for boxes of classified material that Trump allegedly removed from the White House when his presidency ended in January 2021. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the raid showed the Justice Department’s “intolerable state of weaponized politicization.” Trump is accused of violating the Presidential Records Act. Congress enacted this law in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon claimed his secret Oval Office tapes and other records were his personal property. The law asserted, “The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.” “The Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people,” Archivist of the United States David Ferriero declared earlier this year.
In reality, the Presidential Records Act is the Presidential Damn-Near-Perpetual-Secrecy Act. Former presidents pocket multimillion-dollar advances for their memoirs while their records are mostly quarantined for decades from the citizens they often misgoverned. The Nixon Library did not release the final batch of his secret tapes until 2013 — 39 years after Nixon was driven from office. The Lyndon B. Johnson Library delayed releasing the final batch of his secret tapes of presidential conversations until 2016 — 47 years after he left office. President George W. Bush in 2001 issued an executive order that “effectively rewrote the Presidential Records Act, converting it from a measure guaranteeing public access to one that blocks it,” as law professor Jonathan Turley noted. Congress overturned parts of that order in 2014.
Obama White House lawyers repeatedly invoked the Presidential Records Act to “delay the release of thousands of pages of records from President Bill Clinton’s White House,” Politico reported. At the end of his presidency, Barack Obama trucked 30 million pages of his administration’s records to Chicago, promising to digitize them and eventually put them online — a move that outraged historians. More than five years after Obama’s presidency ended, the National Archives webpage reveals that zero pages have been digitized and disclosed. People can file requests via the Freedom of Information Act (a law Obama helped wreck) to access Obama records, but responses from presidential libraries can be delayed for years, even more than a decade, if the information is classified.
But what were they looking for? And did they get it?
• An Informer Told the FBI What Docs Trump Was Hiding, and Where (NW)
The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek. The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI’s deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump’s Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away. FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.
The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. “What a spectacular backfire,” says the Justice official. “I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action,” the official says. “They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite.” FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.
The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. “What a spectacular backfire,” says the Justice official. “I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action,” the official says. “They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite.”
Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson Goes SCORCHED EARTH: The FBI is BEYOND REDEMPTION. The agency must be BROKEN UP and its functions farmed out. pic.twitter.com/a4aCnUuiWg
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 10, 2022
“That is how they see us—destabilized and vulnerable. Our opponents are redoing their global risk-reward ratios. Incredibly, we are doing this to ourselves.”
“Trump II would be a four-year civil war. The Swamp wouldn’t drain. It would deepen. The rancor could drown us all.”
• Mar-a-Lago Search Shows the Swamp’s Trump Obsession (WSJ)
Let us assume that for 99.99% of the U.S. population in early August 2022, the last thing on their mind was Mar-a-Lago. Instead, a short list of real things preoccupying Americans would include inflation, crime, battles in Congress over spending, Ukraine fighting World War III for us in Europe, and China conducting massive live-fire military exercises around Taiwan. So it came as a surprise to discover Monday evening that the Justice Department and FBI decided the most important thing in the world just now was raiding former President Donald Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Among other thoughts, a three-letter acronym starting with W comes to mind. Forgive me for not spending more than a moment on the legal niceties of this event—the applicability of the Presidential Records Act, that it had be about “something big” involving classified documents, or that no one, including a former president, is above the law. They are all beside the point.
You can hate Donald Trump until your eyes pop out, but let us be clear: He was elected the 45th president of the U.S. He served four years in office. No former president who was disliked by many—not Clinton, Reagan nor FDR—had his home invaded by a squad of FBI agents. This should never happen in the U.S. End of discussion. But it did happen. The Trump raid is now a wall-to-wall political disaster for the United States, doing more damage, if that’s possible, to the country’s internal divisions and even creating external risks. Consider the current spectacle the U.S. is presenting to foreign adversaries. Multiple members of the sitting president’s own party in the past week—such as Joe Manchin and Jerry Nadler—have openly abandoned Joe Biden for an election that is two years off. Days later, the previous president comes under explicit attack from the FBI.
Imagine what we would think of the stability of China or Russia if events like this were happening to Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin. That is how they see us—destabilized and vulnerable. Our opponents are redoing their global risk-reward ratios. Incredibly, we are doing this to ourselves. Correction: They are doing it to us. Who are “they”? They, as of Monday, are who much of the political right says they are—the Swamp, the Deep State, the Regime, the Establishment. [..] A second Trump term isn’t the last thing this country needs. But it’s about second to last. The raid on Mar-a-Lago proves that Trump Derangement Syndrome won’t go away until Mr. Trump is out of elective politics. Trump II would not be a replay of Trump I, a more substantive, policy-driven presidency than his critics will admit. Trump II would be a four-year civil war. The Swamp wouldn’t drain. It would deepen. The rancor could drown us all.
“I mean, if the subpoena worked the first time, then presumably a second subpoena would work the second time if there were remaining documents.”
• Trump Got Grand Jury Subpoena In Spring, Voluntarily Cooperated (JTN)
Two months before his Florida home was raided by the FBI, former President Donald Trump secretly received a grand jury subpoena for classified documents belonging to the National Archives, and voluntarily cooperated by turning over responsive evidence, surrendering security surveillance footage and allowing federal agents and a senior Justice Department lawyer to tour his private storage locker, according to a half dozen people familiar with the incident. While the cooperation was mostly arranged by his lawyers, Trump personally surprised the DOJ National Security Division prosecutor and three FBI agents who came to his Mar-a-Lago compound on June 3, greeting them as they came to pick up a small number of documents compliant with the subpoena, the sources told Just the News, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the visit was covered by grand jury secrecy.
The subpoena requested any remaining documents Trump possessed with any classification markings, even if they involved photos of foreign leaders, correspondence or mementos from his presidency. Secret Service agents were also present and facilitated the visit, officials said. Trump signaled his full cooperation, telling the agents and prosecutor, “Look, whatever you need let us know,” according to two eyewitnesses. The federal team was surprised by the president’s invitation and asked for an immediate favor: to see the 6-foot-by-10-foot storage locker where his clothes, shoes, documents and mementos from his presidency were stored at the compound. Given Trump’s instruction, the president’s lawyers complied and allowed the search by the FBI before the entourage left cordially.
Five days later, DOJ officials sent a letter to Trump’s lawyers asking them to secure the storage locker with more than the lock they had seen. The Secret Service installed a more robust security lock to comply. Around the same time, the Trump Organization, which owns Mar-a-Lago, received a request for surveillance video footage covering the locker and volunteered the footage to federal authorities, sources disclosed. The disclosure Wednesday to Just the News raised immediate new questions in legal and congressional circles about the necessity for the subsequent raid, including whether the judge who approved the warrant new of the earlier cooperation.
“The more we learn, the more confusing this gets,” George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News program Hannity. “….Did they relay this history to the magistrate? That, according to these sources, that the president had cooperated. ”I mean, the idea that he was subject to a subpoena, complied with a subpoena, didn’t challenge it, voluntarily showed the storage room to the agents, followed their advice, secured it to meet their demands. All of that is hardly a basis for saying now we need to send in 40 FBI agents on a on a raid,” he added. “I mean, if the subpoena worked the first time, then presumably a second subpoena would work the second time if there were remaining documents.”
“worried about civil war or extreme civil unrest in 2023 in America.” Armstrong is seeing a “world war coming in 2024 or after.”
• Trump Raid Deathblow to Democracy – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
Armstrong says the Democrats are in “dire straits” at the polls–and they know it. Armstrong thinks the Trump raid by the FBI is an act of desperation, and it will “backfire,” but that’s not the only play in the Democrat playbook for the midterms in November. Armstrong says, “I have been warned that the Democrats have been maneuvering, and the reason they are allowing all the illegal aliens to come in is they intend to allow them to vote. You already had the Justice Department go after one state that said you had to prove you are an American to vote, and they filed a suit against them saying that they violated their civil rights. At that stage of the game, hey, all of Europe, Australia, everybody should just send in a vote.”
Armstrong’s says forget what the mainstream polls are saying about voter support for Democrats and Joe Biden because the real numbers are much lower than the public is told. Armstrong’s “Socrates” computer program shows Joe Biden has just 12% of support in America. Maybe this is why Democrats are desperate and realize they have to cheat and break the law to stay in power. It’s not going to get any better, and the entire world is in the same sinking boat. Armstrong says, “We basically are sitting here in the middle of the collapse of Western civilization. It’s socialism that is collapsing because these people have done nothing but borrow money to bribe them to vote for them . . . There is no way to pay it back, and they had no intention of paying it back. . . . Europe is, just forget it.
You have emerging markets collapsing around the world because to sell their debt, they had to put it into dollars. Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Pakistan, Argentina are falling apart on a global scale.” Armstrong thinks the dollar will be strong for now and not to expect a collapse in the USA anytime soon because America will be the last man standing. That said, Armstrong does see the possibility of a “stock market collapse in September.” Armstrong is also “worried about civil war or extreme civil unrest in 2023 in America.” Armstrong is seeing a “world war coming in 2024 or after.” Armstrong also said, “My computer warns that there may not even be an election in America in 2024. It’s reaching that critical period. So, this raid on Trump is like throwing down the gauntlet. Everything is gone.”
“Yet the declassification of such documents is the president’s prerogative, in which case the issue may not be as it appears.”
• Millions Will Freeze This Winter; Or Fall Into Debt To Avoid Doing So (Every)
UK household power bills are now likely to soar to as much as £4,200 from January, a staggering increase. Indeed, the government, which is not going to do anything about it until a new PM is chosen, holds a “reasonable worst case scenario” (that is “highly unlikely to materialise”) for losing a sixth of the electricity grid, meaning enforced blackouts that will close down rail networks and public buildings. What is highly likely is that millions will freeze this winter; or fall into debts to avoid doing so; and the result will be deflationary demand for everything else, along with cost-push price increases for everything; and yet government help will just mean the latter inflation and less of the former.
(Relatedly, yesterday on Twitter I saw more bitter political satire speaking to how inflation is being handled in the UK, ostensibly through the eyes of a media correspondent from Papua New Guinea. It begins: “To the island of Shakespeare, where energy companies ring 400% profits, and energy consumers are reduced to ringing Jeremy Vine. In the home of blank verse, nobody can afford to use a meter.” It only gets better from there.) But don’t worry: headline inflation is slightly lower this month. Meanwhile, other headlines are about the FBI’s raid on former President Trump’s home. It would appear the potential crime is the removal of classified documents from the White House, a serious, albeit obscure, charge. Yet the declassification of such documents is the president’s prerogative, in which case the issue may not be as it appears.
Clearly, the raid has implications for 2024 because if found guilty, Trump could be barred from seeking federal office. At the same time, the (social) media coverage is again exposing deep polarisation. We have the *very* valid argument that all are equal before the law (even Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton); on the other, muttering that “If they can go after the former president, they can go after anyone.” Even neutral (and some anti-Trump) observers say that unless concrete charges emerge, all the raid will likely do is cement Trump’s base. The parallel with the inflation print is that what we see right now is not necessarily what we are going to be seeing in the medium-term.
“We’re not running a casino. We’re making food, which gives us a big responsibility to get it right.”
• Energy Costs Pushing Europeans Into Food Poverty – Bloomberg (RT)
Food producers across Europe are contending with soaring energy prices, with that increase quickly felt in the pockets of consumers grappling with a cost-of-living crisis, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. According to the report, citing a Bank of England forecast, a third of UK households are set to spend more than 10% of incomes on energy, and now surging grocery costs are driving up food poverty. “It is the domino effect that has happened with us having to take a huge increase on energy,”Ryan Peters, managing director of Brioche Pasquier UK, told the outlet. “We have to try and raise our prices to retailers a little bit, and unfortunately that goes on to consumers,” he said. Kona Haque, head of research for commodities trader ED&F Man, warned: “I think the worst is still to come as energy prices rise. This winter will be a game changer and processing costs will likely go up.”
Europe’s largest sugar beet producer Suedzucker AG has reported its first quarter revenues had been hit by a “substantial rise” in raw material, energy and packaging costs. Companies turning soybeans, rapeseed and sunflower seeds into cooking oils have reportedly been slowing output in the UK and Europe and shifting production to other regions with lower energy prices. Meanwhile, energy-intensive food factories across the continent could be forced to shut down if natural gas shortages spark rationing, Bloomberg warned. “Just like people are grappling with their home budgets, we’re having to manage highly volatile energy and input costs, making sure every penny our business spends and gets as income is actively managed in real time,” Tate & Lyle Sugars senior vice president Gerald Mason was quoted as saying by the outlet. “We’re not running a casino. We’re making food, which gives us a big responsibility to get it right.”
“..the stream of announced (if not yet delivered) “packages” of military aid is really starting to scrape the barrel of NATO inventories..”
• Only NATO Could De-Militarise Itself! (Tweedie)
In their rush to arm the Ukraine since before the start of Russia’s ‘demilitarisation’ operation there, several eastern member-states have managed to demilitarise themselves without Moscow having to lift a finger. Poland has sent 232 T-72 main battle tanks, almost half its entire tank fleet, over the border into the Ukraine. The Donbass militias have already captured some examples with almost no miles on the clock. Warsaw has ordered 1,000 K2 ‘Black Panther’ tanks from South Korea and 366 M1 Abrams from the US as replacements, but deliveries won’t be completed until 2026. The Czech Republic has reportedly handed over all 15 of its Mi-24 helicopter gunships — one of the types Russia is using to pound the Ukrainian army — along with 56 infantry fighting vehicles, 40 self-propelled artillery vehicles and 20 Grad-style 122mm multi-launch rocket system (MLRS) trucks.
After donating an S-300 surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, neighbouring Slovakia is weighing up sending its one squadron of 11 MiG-29 fighter jets. The government is seeking guarantees from neighbouring countries that their air forces will defend its airspace until it can find replacements if it decides to give up its entire fixed-wing combat capability. Meanwhile the defence ministry has ordered 14 F-16 multi-role fighters from the US — an aircraft from the 1970s that the MiG-29 was built to outfly — but the first aircraft won’t arrive until 2024. At least the Slovaks had the sense not to give up 30 T-72s after Germany only offered them 15 Leopard-2 tanks to replace them.
And just last week it emerged that North Macedonia, one of the newest balkanised statelets in the Balkans, transferred four Su-25 ground attack jets it bought from the Ukraine in 2001 back there, along with 31 Russian T-72s — disbanding its army’s only armoured battalion in the process. In return, the US will give the country’s army some Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, an oversized four-seat jeep with just enough armour to stop a rifle bullet. If Russia really did decide to roll the tanks into the former Warsaw Treaty countries, like their increasingly-hysterical politicians claim Moscow is planning, they would likely face little more opposition than infantrymen armed with rifles and machine-guns. The battalion-sized ‘tactical groups’ of troops from the US, UK and other ‘big boy’ NATO members stationed in eastern Europe would make no difference. They’re only there to provide the pretext for ‘escalation to the nuclear threshold’, as Andrei Martyanov says.
In fact the stream of announced (if not yet delivered) “packages” of military aid is really starting to scrape the barrel of NATO inventories. The UK announced on July 21 it was sending 20 155mm self-propelled guns — although those had already been accounted for months earlier when they were bought from Belgium’s reserves. The Ministry of Defence also pledged 36 105mm (four-inch) artillery pieces, not even more the much-vaunted six-inch (155mm) M777s partly made in the UK. The 105mm shells hold about a quarter as much high explosive as the 155s, and can reach a maximum 12 miles compared to 19 for the bigger guns. The US has promised four more of the holy HIMARS, plus another 72,000 155mm shells for guns which have mostly been bombed already. Russia also claims to have hit six out of the 12 HIMARS launchers the US has already sent — and which have failed to turn the tide of the war.
“..Russia is not engaged in a war against the Ukraine, but against the entire united and consolidated West…”
• Why Have I Stopped Posting Maps Of The Situation In The Ukraine (Saker)
Did the Russians expect such a massive reaction from the West? The term “expect” is very misleading. That is not how these things work. Operational and strategic plans are not based on a single scenario which you “hope” will materialize. Here are also two things which we should always remember: • It is the job of the intelligence agencies and the operations planning departments to prepare and model for as many possible scenarios (or scenarii?) as reasonable imaginable. • Operational and strategic plans do not deal with tactical issues and they CONSTANTLY change depending on a feedback and decision making loop.
One example: Putin admitted during a TV interview that when the Russians moved into Crimea he had placed Russian nuclear forces on maximal alert. Does that meant that anybody in the Kremlin or the General Staff “expected” the US to nuke Russia? Of course not! But they DID consider that possibility and took the needed action to try to prevent it. Same here. I am very confident that the Russians were fully prepared for the West’s insane and, frankly, suicidal reaction to the SMO. In fact, that “maximal” response was one of the MANY contingencies which the Russians must have prepared for. As a former intelligence analyst, I can tell you that military analysis does look at as many options as possible and then the operational planning folks make their own preparations for any contingency.
It is now abundantly clear that the West is determined to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. Hence the truly idiotic order given to the best and most capable Ukrainian forces to not engage in a mobile defense but to hold their ground in the Donbass until they are totally destroyed. Furthermore, it is also abundantly clear that the western countries are willing to destroy not only its own economies, but the entire international financial system to try to hurt Russia (and China) as much as possible. In other words, Russia is not engaged in a war against the Ukraine, but against the entire united and consolidated West.
“We understand very well that we are not fighting against Ukraine in the Ukrainian territory, and certainly not against the Ukrainian people…”
• West Would Love To Fight Russia ‘To The Last Ukrainian’ – Moscow (RT)
Ukraine’s leadership has sold out its own people to fight on behalf of NATO against Russia, Sergey Kirienko, the deputy head of the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said. He added that Western nations are happy to see Ukrainians die as long as it serves their interests. “We understand very well that we are not fighting against Ukraine in the Ukrainian territory, and certainly not against the Ukrainian people. The entire NATO bloc is at war with Russia in Ukraine with Ukrainians’ hands,” Kirienko said in a speech on Wednesday. He blamed the government in Kiev for the violence, accusing it of offering the country and its people to be sacrificed in a “fundamental confrontation of the Western community against Russia.”
“NATO will gladly fight against Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’ as they say themselves without hesitance. Why not? They don’t feel sorry about it.” Kirienko was addressing a forum for young Russian political scientists, which launched this week in the Moscow Region. Speaking via video link, he told attendees that it will be up to them to find new ideas and narratives to help the country take a prominent place in the future world, the shape of which is being determined by the ongoing conflict. The Russia-West stand-off goes far beyond the kinetic conflict in Ukraine, the official said. Unprecedented economic sanctions imposed by the US and its allies on Moscow and “info-psychological attacks” directed at it are essential parts of the conflict too, he noted.
Moscow’s opponents had miscalculated when they decided on their response to Russian military action in Ukraine, Kirienko said, citing classified Western documents. “They seriously debated in early March whether they needed five million people protesting in the streets in Russia or should better go for ten million and when to expect that: by the end of March or in mid-April at the latest,” he said. The planners believed that Russia “would be too busy to defend its geostrategic interests” when facing the anticipated protests, he added. Despite this, Kirienko advised against relaxing, saying that the pressure on Russia will remain high and may become more efficient. Moscow’s opponents “are pretty smart and competent people, who can learn from their mistakes,” he said.
“..Russia has extended its own invitation to IAEA monitors to visit the powerplant and summoned a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the situation..”
• Ukraine, West Must Be Held Accountable For Nuclear Powerplant Attack (Ritter)
The Ukrainian attack on the Zaporozhye nuclear facility was, in typical Orwellian fashion, forecasted by the United States four days before it took place. During an August 1 news conference at the United Nations, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of using the nuclear facility as a base from which it conducted artillery strikes against Ukraine. Blinken declared that the act of firing artillery rockets from proximity to the nuclear power plant was “the height of irresponsibility,”implying that these rockets could land on the power plant itself. Blinken also added that the Russians were using the nuclear facility as a “nuclear shield” which prevented any Ukrainian attack out of fear of striking the nuclear reactors.
Blinken’s brazen parroting of Ukrainian government talking points was made more absurd by the absolute dearth of evidence to back up his powerful pronouncements. Normally, when someone of the stature of the Secretary of State speaks in such a public manner about issues of this importance, there is some intelligence information that is released – for instance, overhead imagery showing Russian troop locations near the Zaporozhye nuclear plant – to sustain the allegation. No such data was provided, however, because Blinken had ceased functioning as the head of the American diplomatic service, and instead was functioning as little more than a Ukrainian propagandist. For its part, Russia has made it clear that there were no Russian forces located in the vicinity of the Zaporozhye nuclear facility save for a small contingent of troops for security purposes (it is, after all, an active nuclear power plant.)
Again, while Russia can clearly provide overhead imagery of its force disposition in the vicinity of the plant, operational security precludes it from doing so. It is, after all, the job of the accuser to provide the evidence of a crime, not the accused. Blinken’s August 1 statement served as the initiation of a public relations campaign which culminated in the Ukrainian artillery attack on the Zaporozhye nuclear facility. The goal of this campaign appears to be twofold – first, to put Russia in a bad light, and second, to allow Ukraine to accomplish that which it could not achieve through military force – the eviction of Russian troops from Zaporozhye. The calls for international intervention emanating from the West point to a concerted effort in promoting a pro-Ukrainian narrative even when all parties know the underlying facts sustaining this narrative are not true. To counteract that, Russia has extended its own invitation to IAEA monitors to visit the powerplant and summoned a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the situation.
When’s the last time Ukraine said anything true?
• Russia Summons UN Security Council Over Nuclear Emergency (RT)
Russia has summoned an emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss the situation at Ukraine’s Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which has been the subject of regular shelling attacks. Moscow wants the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to brief the council on the situation. The move, which was reported by Russian media on Tuesday, was confirmed by the deputy head of Russia’s mission to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, who said the public needed to learn about “Ukrainian provocations.” The meeting is expected to take place on Thursday. Russia says Ukraine has been responsible for a series of drone attacks and artillery strikes at the nuclear site. The latest shelling was reported last weekend.
Kiev denies the allegations and claims that Russia has shelled the facility itself to discredit Ukraine. Kiev’s National Security Council has also alleged that Moscow was using the power plant as a military base, keeping heavy weapons and personnel there. The IAEA has not had access to the site since before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict escalated in late February and relies on reports from Ukraine to assess the situation on the ground. The Zaporozhye plant is manned by Ukrainian nuclear workers despite being under Russian control. On Saturday, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi expressed the IAEA’s concern over the artillery strikes, stating that they underlined “the very real risk of a nuclear disaster that could threaten public health and the environment in Ukraine and beyond.”
“I condemn any violent acts carried out at or near the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant or against its staff,” he stressed. Grossi is expected to lead an inspection of the facility for an independent assessment of the situation and verification that non-proliferation safeguards remain in place. The Zaporozhye plant is the largest in Europe and stores tens of tons of enriched uranium and plutonium in its reactor cores and spent fuel storage, according to the IAEA. The watchdog chief earlier said he was alarmed that the security of the radioactive materials may be compromised amid Russian-Ukrainian hostilities.
“..if the leadership in Kiev really decided to use force against the peninsula “the Day of Judgment will come to them all simultaneously – a swift and hard one.”
• Zelensky Makes Prediction On Conflict’s End (RT)
Ukraine will keep fighting against Russia until it regains control over the Crimean Peninsula, President Vladimir Zelensky has promised. “This Russian war against Ukraine, against the whole of free Europe, began with Crimea and it should end with Crimea – with its liberation,”Zelensky said in a video address on Tuesday. “Crimea is Ukrainian, and we’ll never give up on it,” the president vowed, insisting that the peninsula, which overwhelmingly voted to reunite with Russia in a 2014 referendum in response to a coup in Kiev, has been “occupied” by Moscow all those years. There will be no peace in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean regions “as long as Russia is able to use our peninsula as a military base,” he claimed.
However, Zelensky acknowledged that it was currently “impossible to say” when exactly will Ukraine be able to reclaim Crimea. “But we’re constantly adding new components to the formula of liberating” the peninsula, he added. Last month, Ukrainian deputy defense minister Vladimir Gavrilov claimed that Kiev is going to use Western-supplied weapons to destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which is based in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, and take the peninsula back. Such an operation is going to be carried out “sooner or later,” he told the UK media.
Other Ukrainian officials also came up with threats against Crimea recently, one of them being Zelensky’s top aide Alexey Arestovich, who said that Kiev could strike the 19-kilometer-long Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar Region as soon as it gains technical capability to do so. Moscow has been insisting that Crimea is well-protected from any attack by the Ukrainian side. However, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now deputy chair of the country’s National Security Council, warned that if the leadership in Kiev really decided to use force against the peninsula “the Day of Judgment will come to them all simultaneously – a swift and hard one.”
“If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza.” That hell is entirely manmade – by Israel.”
• Contenders For Boris Johnson’s Crown Stress Fealty To Israel (Cook)
Israel unleashed a surprise wave of air strikes on Gaza last Friday, the two remaining Conservative politicians vying to replace disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson publicised letters vowing fealty to Israel. Their timing underscored the degree to which British politicians on both sides of the aisle have now joined their American counterparts in making commitment to Israel a defining issue in their campaigns for highest office. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, trumpeted their pro-Israel credentials over the weekend, as Israel killed 45 Palestinians, including 16 children, and injured hundreds more. Israel said several Islamic Jihad leaders – the intended targets – were among the dead. A ceasefire went into effect late on Sunday night.
As expected, western leaders came out solidly in support of Israel, even though on this occasion there was not even the pretence that Israel was “retaliating” for rockets fired out of Gaza. Israel initiated the hostilities, claiming its strikes were meant to prevent an alleged attack by the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad with an anti-tank missile. One can imagine how politicians in the United States and Europe would have reacted had a Palestinian faction justified firing rockets into Israel unprovoked on the basis that it wished to deter future Israeli air strikes. But in any case, if deterrence really was Israel’s aim, its attack had precisely the opposite effect. Entirely predictably, Islamic Jihad responded by firing hundreds of rockets into Israel.
In fact, though it is never mentioned by western politicians or media, Palestinians, unlike Israel, actually have a right in international law to resist Israel militarily – and not only because Israel has been belligerently occupying their lands for decades. Israel has additionally subjected Gaza to a 15-year blockade that has tightly controlled who and what is allowed in and out of the tiny, heavily overcrowded coastal enclave. Gaza has been left in ruins by a series of Israeli attacks over more than a decade – what the Israeli army calls “mowing the lawn”. Gaza’s trapped 2.1 million inhabitants suffer serious shortages of food, clean water, medicines and electricity. Malnutrition and poverty are endemic. Last year, the head of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, observed: “If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza.” That hell is entirely manmade – by Israel.
Where’s the research into the vaccines?
• UK Excess Non-Covid Deaths Top 12,500 in 14 Weeks (DS)
There have now been 12,517 excess non-Covid deaths registered in England and Wales in the 14 weeks since April 23rd, according to the latest official data from the Office for National Statistics, released on Tuesday. In the week ending July 29th, the most recent week for which data are available, 11,013 deaths were registered in England and Wales, which is 1,678 (18%) above the five-year average for the week. Of these, 810 mentioned COVID-19 on the death certificate as a contributory cause and 531 mentioned COVID-19 as underlying cause, leaving 1,147 deaths from a different underlying cause. Note that this was the week following the brief but intense heatwave (with recorded temperatures topping 40°C for the first time in some areas), so some of these will be heatwave deaths, as will many of the additional Covid deaths (being people who happened to have Covid at the time).
At the Daily Sceptic we have been following what appears to be a correlation between the spring fourth dose booster rollout among over-75s in England and a wave of now over 12,500 non-Covid excess deaths that are currently unexplained. If all of these deaths were a result of the spring boosters (of which 4,201,990 have been delivered up to July 29th) it would be a rate of one every 336 doses. That figure is likely an upper bound, as not all the additional deaths may be due to the boosters (some may be due to the pressures on hospitals and emergency services, for example). We saw last week that these U.K. data are broadly in line with data from the Netherlands, as highlighted by leading vaccine scientist Dr. Theo Schetters.
Deaths by date of occurrence spiked even further in the week ending July 22nd, which is likely to be connected with the heatwave of July 18-19th. One oddity is that the spike began in the previous week, before the heatwave occurred, the reason for which is not immediately obvious. More generally, excess non-Covid deaths have remained at a high level as the spring vaccination campaign has wound down, meaning the close correlation has not continued. This may be an indication of ongoing vaccine injury, perhaps in conjunction with injury from previous Covid infection, or of the operation of another cause which has not yet been identified.
Here is some research. From Pfizer itself.
• Cumulative Number of Case Reports Reported to Pfizer for BNT162B2 (Smalley)
Obtained by Freedom of Information request from the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration because that’s the only way to get public data nowadays. I manually converted the PDF to a datafile so anyone can analyse the data for themselves. This is the data that Pfizer has. If you were responsible for reviewing this, what action would you take?
Through 15th April 2022 (around 16 months):
• Total cases reported 1,348,078.
• 75% of cases reported are under the age of 65.
• Over 68% of cases are female.
• 387,675 (29%) of cases are described as “serious”.
• 17,156 reported cases for pregnant or breastfeeding women.
• 45,523 paediatric cases.
• 4,563,768 adverse events (average 3.4 per case).
• 646,837 nervous system disorders.
• 503,108 musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders.
• 299,486 gastrointestinal disorders.
• 209,213 skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders.
• 176,907 respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders.
• 162,086 reproductive system and breast disorders.
• 114,375 cardiac disorders.
• 93,097 blood and lymphatic system disorders.
Syria oil
New footage of a US military convoy smuggling stolen oil out of Raqqah, Syria.
The US army has been consistently looting the country's oil and smuggling it into their Iraq bases.
Washington steals over 80 percent of Syria's oil output per day
MORE https://t.co/s1z2uIjzJk pic.twitter.com/ko7EsxTRdh— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 10, 2022
Ode to Joy
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is about bringing people together and not about division, Mr Sunak!pic.twitter.com/eTkIrxiJYe
— Fred Wuest (@WustFred) August 9, 2022
Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.
