Jan 162025
 


Marcel Duchamp The king and queen surrounded by swift nudes 1912

 

Trump Announces Israel-Hamas Ceasefire (RT)
Trump Envoy Swayed Netanyahu More In One Meeting Than Biden Did All Year (ZH)
“Turns Out, Presidents Matter”: Marc Andreessen (ZH)
Marco Rubio Urges End to Ukraine Conflict (Sp.)
Prepare For War – NATO Chief (RT)
What Trump Should Do (Paul Craig Roberts)
Trump Team’s Ukraine Predictions ‘Campaign Bluster’ – Reuters (RT)
Ban On Talks With Moscow Remains – Kiev (RT)
Moscow and Kiev Hold ‘Limited Talks’ – Bloomberg (RT)
German Military Retreats From X (RT)
Berlin Proves It Will Support Kiev To Its Own Detriment (Romanenko)
Biden SEC Sues Musk Over Twitter Purchase In 11th Hour “Sham” (ZH)
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg To Attend Trump Inauguration (JTN)
Trump Mulls Executive Order To ‘Save Tiktok’ – WaPo (RT)
Why Europe Fears Free Speech (Munchau)

 

 


A Final Toast – by Mr. Fish

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1879639928880943151

RFK

Cuomo

Bondi

Sheehy

Newsom

Palisades

Tucker

Sen. Kennedy

Gov. Taxes

 

 

Bibi doesn’t listen to Biden. He hears Trump loud and clear, though.

Trump Announces Israel-Hamas Ceasefire (RT)

Israel and Hamas have struck a deal that sees all hostages released, US President-elect Donald Trump has announced “We have a deal for the hostages in the Middle East,” Trump posted on his TruthSocial platform on Wednesday. “They will be released shortly.” According to multiple media outlets, the agreement approved in Qatar involves a 42-day ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners, including all Israelis taken captive in the October 7, 2023 Hamas incursion from Gaza. “This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” Trump added in another post.

His national security team will “continue to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven,” the president-elect added. “This is only the beginning of great things to come for America, and indeed, the World!” Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly joined the talks in Doha and played a key role in persuading the Israeli delegation to accept the deal. “This deal was achieved because of the help of many and demonstrates that a policy of peace through strength wins,” Witkoff told Israel’s Channel 12 on Wednesday. “Thank you to the Israeli negotiating teams, thank you to the Qataris, thank you to Egypt, thank you to the Biden administration, and most of all to Donald Trump, whose policy of peace through strength is the one that won.”

A “breakthrough” in the talks was said to have been reached early on Monday. Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani has met with senior Hamas officials to persuade the Palestinian group to accept the agreement. Egyptian and Turkish intelligence chiefs also took part in the negotiations, along with the heads of Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet.

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Bide demands praise for a whole year in which he failed. Trump simply says: I don’t want my 2d term to start with an ugly war.

Trump Envoy Swayed Netanyahu More In One Meeting Than Biden Did All Year (ZH)

Even Israeli media is very clearly attributing achievement of the Gaza ceasefire deal to President-elect Donald Trump and his team. President Biden too at one point in an afternoon press conference hailing the deal acknowledged that he spoke as ‘one team’ with Trump on the Gaza deal. According to The Times of Israel: “A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. Witkoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in the hostage negotiations, as mediators try to secure a deal before Trump’s January 20 inauguration. On Saturday, Witkoff flew to Israel for a meeting with Netanyahu at the premier’s Jerusalem office.

During the meeting, Witkoff urged Netanyahu to accept key compromises necessary for an agreement, the two Arab officials on Monday told The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity. Neither Witkoff nor Netanyahu’s office responded to requests for comment”. As expected, Biden disagrees with this assessment… Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to make a public statement. Interestingly, Trump was the first leader to hail the deal, attributing it largely to his election victory in November and anticipation of his entering the Oval Office next Monday. But Biden chalked it up to his own diplomacy: “This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much-needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity,” he said in the statement.

The US president further said Wednesday’s agreement “not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran — but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy,” he says. “My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done.” Many political analysts, including Glenn Greenwald, would beg to differ. An initial Hamas statement is meanwhile celebrating this as a ‘win’ over the Israeli military machine, which has been unable to root out the Islamist insurgency in the strip. Words from Hamas leadership praised “the legendary steadfastness of the great Palestinian people and the valiant resistance in the Gaza Strip.” Hamas is for the first time coming out publicly in the streets of Gaza, as a deal finally looks legit at this point…

Still there are reports of intensified Israeli bombing in parts of Gaza, merely hours before the deal is expected to go into effect, which will see the release of hostages and an exchange for many dozens of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Meanwhile, Nassim Taleb makes a great point, stating on X that …with Kamala there is a near-certainty of more wars coupled with a lot of bullshit about “peace” initiatives. With Trump (rather, Trump-Vance) there is a possibility of peace coupled with loud saber rattling. Indeed, if the truce holds, it will likely go down in the history books as a victory for Trump’s early diplomacy. Progressives too have been wondering what took the Biden White House so long, given also that virtually the same deal was on the table previously this summer, and it collapsed. Israeli lawmakers and ministers are expected to vote on approving the deal on Thursday morning, but a lot can happen between now and then.

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Andreessen: “He’s world-class at real estate and communications.” “He’s probably the first person in the world to be world-class in both things.” “He very deeply understands business.” “When Trump puts up one of these giant hotels, these are large-scale systems projects. There are many dimensions. A lot of things can go wrong. There’s technology change. You’ve got to manage these hands-on because they can always go sideways.” “He’s world-class at thinking things through systematically.” “There’s this video of him talking about the water situation in California on Joe Rogan six months ago. It’s one of those classic Trump things, where at the time, everybody’s like, why is he going on and on about the water situation in California?”

“And then, of course, LA is burning down in the last three days. And if you listen to what he talked about with the water situation in California. He is exactly 100% correct.” “In the first term, when he diagnosed the German energy situation at the United Nations. He said you will become dependent on Russian energy, and that will be a disaster for you, and it has been. It was an extremely precise, accurate, and prescient five-minute analysis of this system’s problem.” “In my energy conversation with him, he’s extremely sophisticated. The energy people that I know know that he’s sophisticated. So, he wraps his head around these things very quickly and easily.”

“Turns Out, Presidents Matter”: Marc Andreessen (ZH)

Marc Andreessen, the billionaire investor and co-founder of the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, joined the host of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson (former Reagan speechwriter), to discuss his pivotal role in shaping Silicon Valley and politics. For decades, Andreessen has supported Democrats, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. However, a troubling 2024 spring meeting with Biden administration officials spooked the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He said Biden officials explained their plan to control AI through government regulatory capture—a strategy reminiscent of Communist policies in China. Andreessen told Robinson that President-elect Donald Trump’s knowledge about problem-solving in business and energy is “extremely sophisticated” and “world-class on real estate and communications.”

“My analysis would be he is world-class in real estate and on communications … and he’s world-class on both which is like probably the first person in the world to be world-class on both of those things, right? The real estate industry is not historically known for its great communicators,” Andreessen continued. Robinson and Andreessen also discussed Silicon Valley’s technological and political evolution, Andreessen’s shifting political alliances from Clinton, Obama, and Biden to MAGA, and his vision for harnessing cutting-edge technology to advance societal progress. They also addressed energy challenges, border security, and national defense. In particular, Robinson and Andreessen spoke about China’s manufacturing dominance. Andreessen explained:

“And I’ll just tell you where I’m worried right now, where the problem is compounding. So you mentioned the, sort of, iPhone assembly, and that’s a big deal. But basically, there’s three industries that sort of follow phones that are kicking in right now. So, one is drones. And it’s sort of in a bizarre turn of events, the Chinese basically own the global drone market for all, basically, the consumer drones, all the cheap drones. Which by the way, numerically then are the drones that all the militarys also use in overwhelming numbers. And something over 90% of all drones used by the US military are made in China. No, no, it gets worse, it gets worse, it gets worse, it gets worse before it gets. So the drone thing is not just a company, it’s an entire ecosystem. It’s all of the componentry.

“We have a drone company that’s been trying to compete with the Chinese company. Number one, the Biden FAA has been trying to kill us this entire time, trying to do all kinds of things to make sure that American drone companies can’t succeed as part of their war on tech. It’s literally just another in the long list of ways that they’ve been just trying to absolutely kill us. But two is, China has figured this out. And so, the US has been sanctioning AI chips going to China, China is now sanctioning, they sanction our drone company for the battery, [LAUGH] cuz the battery is made in China, right? And so they have like significant leverage, not just for the drones, but for the entire supply chain. By the way, the drone supply chain is very analogous to the car supply chain. A self driving electric car is very similar to a drone, or for that matter, to an iPhone. It’s an electrical mechanical device, but it’s a lot of the same kind of battery technology, chip technology, sensor technology.

So they now have their version of what the Germans used to have, which is sort of, the thousands of mid market companies that make all the parts that go into a car. But the German ecosystem is still making them for old internal combustion cars, the Chinese ecosystem is making them for electric cars and self driving cars. And of course, that means the new Chinese cars that are coming out are really good and they have a giant advantage on cost. And they are starting to bring to market cars that are equivalent in quality to western cars at a third or a fourth of price. So that’s coming. And then the big one that follows phones, drones, and cars, logically, is robots.

Robinson asked Andreessen: And the Chinese are ahead of us there? Andreessen responded: 100%, now, we have the leading, this is important, we have the leading software,like we have the leading R&D. Like, we have the smartest, I’m convinced we have like the smartest robotics AI people. We have the best people, specifically for the design of the systems, but we don’t have anything resembling the manufacturing capability at all. Andreessen noted that these technologies are upstream from all the military applications because they are intertwined in the same supply chains. He said the US must confront this and reverse the fragmented approach, where the Biden administration would “hate the domestic American technology industry and is trying to kill it” one day and then, on other days, “thinks we’re gonna somehow develop some sort of competitive response to China on cars or on weapons in the future.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1879396919107313836

The takeaway from the interview is clear: Trump 2.0 must craft a coherent, competitive response to advancing technology under an ‘America First’ agenda. This is in contrast to the radicals in the Biden-Harris regime, who focused on de-growth policies (under the guise of climate change) that have allowed China to advance ahead of the US. “What’s the whole of government strategy on China? Zero, right? It turns out the president matters,” Andreessen concluded. One must ask: whose team was the Biden-Harris administration on? It doesn’t appear they prioritized an ‘America First’ agenda. This will change under Trump.

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Rubio presents the hawkish case.

Marco Rubio Urges End to Ukraine Conflict (Sp.)

The United States’ official position on the Ukraine conflict must be that it should be brought to an end, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, said on Wednesday. “I think it should be the official position of the United States that this war should be brought to an end,” Rubio said during a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when asked to elaborate on his decision late last year to vote against aid to Ukraine. The 53-year-old admitted that “this is not going to be an easy endeavor” and called for “everyone to be realistic.” He suggested that conflict settlement could start with “some ceasefire” and require concessions by both Russia and Ukraine.

Rubio pointed to a change in the dynamic of the Ukraine conflict, saying it has become a “war of attrition” and “stalemate.” He believes there is “no way Russia takes all of Ukraine.” “It’s also unrealistic to believe that somehow a nation the size of Ukraine — no matter how incompetent and no matter how much damage the Russian Federation has suffered as a result of this invasion — there is no way Ukraine is also going to push these people all the way back to where they were on the eve of the invasion,” Rubio added.

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NATO wants war. Nobody else does.

Prepare For War – NATO Chief (RT)

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has called on members of the US-led military bloc to adopt a “wartime mindset” and significantly increase defense spending, citing supposed threats from Russia and other nations. Rutte noted on Wednesday that NATO members have increased defense investments and conducted more frequent military exercises. However, he argued that these efforts are “not sufficient to deal with the dangers coming our way in the next four to five years.” The bloc’s “future security is at stake,” Rutte claimed in his opening remarks at a meeting of the Military Committee in Chiefs of Defense in Brussels. He accused Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran of attempting to “weaken our democracies and chip away at our freedom.”

“To prevent war, we need to prepare for it. It is time to shift to a wartime mindset,” Rutte asserted, urging NATO states to allocate more resources toward defense and develop “more and better defense capabilities.” He also stressed the importance of providing increased support to Ukraine to “change the trajectory of the war,” and called for enhanced cooperation with global partners. Moscow has repeatedly denied assertions that it represents a threat to any NATO member states and has instead accused the US-led bloc of waging a proxy war against Russia and encroaching on its territory. Last month, President Vladimir Putin said that practically all NATO states are currently at war with Russia.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also noted on Tuesday that history appears to be repeating itself, suggesting that there were “obvious parallels” between Moscow’s current confrontation with NATO and the attempts of Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler to take over Russia after subjugating dozens of European countries. On Tuesday, Rutte announced that NATO would bolster its presence in the Baltic Sea – a strategic area for Russian naval operations and energy exports – by launching a new mission under the pretext of protecting undersea infrastructure. The NATO chief revealed that this presence will involve frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, and a “small fleet of naval drones” that are expected to provide “enhanced surveillance and deterrence.”

The announcement follows an incident involving a Cook Islands-registered oil tanker, the Eagle S, which allegedly damaged the Estlink 2 power cable connecting Finland and Estonia last month. The EU has warned that it could impose sanctions on Moscow over what EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has described as the “deliberate destruction of Europe’s critical infrastructure” using a “shadow fleet” of tankers, which supposedly includes the Eagle S. While the tanker has been detained by Finnish authorities, no conclusive evidence has been presented regarding its involvement in the alleged sabotage.

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If Trump can deal with the real challenges [..], he will go down as the greatest American president in history.

What Trump Should Do (Paul Craig Roberts)

American security agencies have long used the cloak of national security to avoid accountability for their crimes, such as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, and the numerous assassinations of foreign leaders and screw-ups. Beginning with the Clinton regime, presidents and non-security appointees also began escaping accountability. The situation worsened in the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime, and it exploded in the Biden regime with the Attorney General, FBI, and Democrat state attorneys general and prosecutors using law as a weapon against Trump, his attorneys, and his supporters. Many people were ruined financially.

Many were falsely imprisoned, and Trump himself had his reelection in 2020 stolen by the most brazen and obvious vote theft in American history. The evidence is clear that Biden himself is guilty of selling vice presidential and presidential influence with his son, Hunter, being the marketer and sharing the revenues. Yet the US Department of Justice prevented any investigation and indictments The whore American media covered up the story. The practice of elevating high office holders to the privileged status of a king or an aristocracy above both the law and the US Constitution must not continue in the Trump regime. If it does, high officials will have gained squatters’ rights in being above the law, and the US Constitution will be reduced to a dead document.

At this point, the only way a collapse of the rule of law in the US can be avoided is for the Trump regime to relentless prosecute the Department of Justice, FBI, and White House officials who selectively applied law in the form of lawfare against political opponents. If those responsible avoid accountability, a legal precedent will have been established, and the differential rights and status based on race and gender that are already in place will be joined by special legal privileges for high government officials. It would mean the end of any possibility of accountable government. This should be the highest priority of the Trump regime. It is even more important than closing the border.

On the war front Trump should simply walk away from conflict with Iran and Russia. Wars distract from domestic matters and will prevent focus on making America great again. Wars will bring more propaganda about “terrorists” and more infringements of US civil liberty, which is not a path to making America great again. There is no reason whatsoever for American blood, taxpayers’ money, and more issuance of US debt in order to enrich the coffers of the military/security complex and to expand the frontier of Greater Israel. Trump should come to the realization that Israel is of no value to America. Israel is a deadweight burden around our necks, and the unconditional American support for Israel’s wars and genocide of the Palestinians has cost America’s reputation hugely. If America ever had a moral luster, it no longer does.

Iran and Russia do not threaten the US. The Middle East is full of problems for Iran, whose government doesn’t need problems with the US. Ukraine is Russia’s problem, not ours. Washington is responsible for the conflict. Trump should apologize and remove us from the conflict. The minute Trump stops sending money and weapons to Ukraine and Israel, peace will descend on the world. Trump should return to his original position that NATO is of no value to America. If NATO did not exist, Russia and Europe would be engaged in mutually beneficial economic ventures. These ventures would create financing and business opportunities also for Americans. All would prosper. It is Washington’s pursuit of hegemony–the control over others–that is suppressing economic activity worldwide and eroding the living standard of all Americans except the top one percent.

MAGA America has no interest in the agendas of special interest lobby group policies that benefit only a tiny percentage of people who are already so rich that they can’t possibly spend their huge amount of income and wealth. The problems of the world originate in Washington and they are institutionalized in the Israel Lobby, the military/security complex, Big Pharma and its control over high cost and ineffective American medicine that sacrifices Americans’ health and the integrity of doctors to Big Pharma’s profits. These are the real threats to America that if America is again to be great, these threats, not Russia and Iran, must be destroyed and eliminated. If the Trump regime can reestablish the respect for a rule of law by indicting and prosecuting DOJ, FBI, and other officials for their criminal behavior, and if Trump can disengage the US/Israeli war machine, he will have saved the world from nuclear war and re-established the United States as the principal nation to whom the world looks for leadership.

My concern is that Trump will love the war role. As Winston Churchill believed, there is nothing more exciting than being a war leader, especially if you imagine prospects of winning. Trump is extremely susceptible to getting into war based on advice that Putin has no red lines because Putin is too fearful of conflict. With Iran’s isolation from the destruction of Syria and a reformist government that wants to be free of religious restrictions and to make money in the West, Trump is being advised it is time to bring Iran down.

When the Ruling Elite have you blocked elsewhere, their agenda becomes your only choice. Has Trump fought so hard only for the sake of being used by the well-institutionalized American Establishment? The third thing Trump should immediately do is to shut down the US biowarfare labs Washington is operating all over the world. These labs are trying to create deadly pathogens that are highly contagious. The labs are even attempting to target the pathogens at specific ethnicities, collecting, for example, Russian DNA in the hopes of finding some material unique to Russians to which to attach the pathogen. These American labs are all illegal. Washington tries to avoid responsibility by locating its biowarfare labs in other countries. Trump should put an immediate halt to the activity and prosecute those responsible, including the US Congress if Congress authorized this illegal activity.

Those who profit from this evil activity claim that we have to do it because our enemies do it, but they never provide any documentation for their claim. Regardless, as the Covid experience proves, when a pathogen is released it goes everywhere. To use one as a weapon results in the same self-destruction as nuclear war. So much of science is committed to weapons. Science needs to be turned back to improving health and the human condition. If Trump can deal with the real challenges that we face instead of being led off to fake challenges serving special interests, he will go down as the greatest American president in history.

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If the shooting stops within 24 hours, there’s no bluster. Negotiations will come after.

Trump Team’s Ukraine Predictions ‘Campaign Bluster’ – Reuters (RT)

Donald Trump’s election promises to end the Ukraine conflict “in 24 hours” were driven by “a combination of campaign bluster and a lack of appreciation of the intractability” of the situation, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing sources close to the US president-elect. Trump repeatedly touted his ability to end hostilities between Russia and Ukraine while on the campaign trail, accusing President Joe Biden of mishandling the crisis. Privately, members of the Trump team expect the timeline for resolving the conflict to be measured in months, the news agency said. Reuters spoke with two individuals on condition of anonymity, who described themselves as Trump associates who have discussed the issue with him.

The view aligns with public remarks by members of the future administration. Keith Kellogg, whom Trump has tapped to serve as a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, told Fox News last week that he aims to mediate a resolution within 100 days after Inauguration Day on January 20. Trump expressed frustration that he has to wait to be sworn in before implementing his plans, speaking at a recent press conference at his residence in Florida. Asked whether he intended to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in the first three to six months of his presidency, the politician said such a meeting would hopefully be arranged “long before six months”. At the same event, Trump expressed empathy with Russian concerns over NATO’s expansion in Europe, which Moscow has cited as one of the key causes of the Ukraine conflict. He criticized the Biden administration for falling to effectively negotiate with Putin on the issue.

According to Reuters, Trump advisers generally support proposals that would take Ukraine’s bid to join NATO off the table for the foreseeable future, and push for a ceasefire along the current battle lines. They also advocate deploying European troops to monitor a potential demilitarized zone, the report said. The Kremlin has welcomed Trump’s recognition of Russian national concerns. However, Moscow expects a sustainable solution addressing the wider European security architecture. Moscow will not accept an agreement that would merely freeze the conflict and give Kiev time to rebuild its army for future hostilities, as happened with the Minsk Agreements of 2014-2015, officials have said.

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The talks won’t involve Ukraine.

Ban On Talks With Moscow Remains – Kiev (RT)

Kiev is maintaining its moratorium on direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga confirmed in an interview with European Pravda published on Wednesday. Two years ago, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree banning his government from any talks with Moscow. When asked if Russia should be involved in potential peace negotiations, Sibiga stated that at the moment, such a “modality” has not been considered. “Let us wait for official contacts with the US, where we will discuss further steps,” the diplomat added. Sibiga took up the post as Kiev’s chief diplomat in September, following the resignation of his predecessor Dmitry Kuleba, who stepped down amid a large-scale purge of Ukraine’s senior officials and took up a position at a Harvard-based research center.

In the interview, Sibiga claimed that US President-elect Donald Trump’s “peace through strength” approach aligns with Zelensky’s so-called “peace formula,” which is predicated on Russia withdrawing its troops from all territory claimed by Ukraine, paying reparations, and subjecting itself to a war crimes tribunal. Moscow has dismissed the plan, calling it “detached from reality.” Russia has repeatedly said it is open to talks on Ukraine, provided they take into account the territorial “reality on the ground,” an approach recently echoed by French president, Emmanual Macron. The Ukrainian leader, however, has recently shifted his rhetoric from emphasizing “victory” to demanding a “just peace,” underpinned by security guarantees from the West, including NATO membership, while leaving the status of the new Russian regions undetermined.

Last week, Zelensky expressed a desire to secure a peace agreement with Russia within the year, emphasizing the need for strong security guarantees from its Western supporters. Trump had repeatedly claimed while on the campaign trail that he could end the conflict within 24 hours. However, the president-elect recently said it might take up to six months after taking office to facilitate a deal between Moscow and Kiev. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow is ready to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine within a broader Eurasian framework in order to address larger geopolitical issues. The Russian president reiterated last month that Moscow is ready for negotiations with Kiev without any preconditions other than those agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022, which involved Ukraine agreeing to a neutral status and restrictions on the deployment of foreign weaponry in the country.

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Oh wait…

Moscow and Kiev Hold ‘Limited Talks’ – Bloomberg (RT)

Russia and Ukraine are holding “limited talks” in Qatar, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing sources on the Russian side. The negotiations are focused on preventing threats to nuclear facilities amid the ongoing conflict between the two neighbors, the media outlet claimed. Bloomberg’s Ukrainian sources maintained that the only talks held between the two nations are linked to prisoner exchanges. Earlier on Wednesday, Moscow and Kiev confirmed the latest POW swap, which involved 25 servicemen from each side. According to Bloomberg, the Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment. In August 2024, the Washington Post claimed that Moscow and Kiev were holding talks on a potential moratorium on striking energy infrastructure in the summer of that year, allegedly also mediated by Qatar. The negotiations were reportedly thwarted by the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk border region in early August, the US media outlet stated.

Moscow then refuted the report, saying that “no one has derailed anything.” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov brushed the information off as mere “rumors.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at that time that no “security regimes” for critical infrastructure had been discussed by the two sides. According to Zakharova, Moscow and Kiev have not engaged in any talks since spring 2022 when peace talks collapse, which Russia blamed on Western interference. In November 2024, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman, Majed bin Mohammed al-Ansari, told journalists that his nation’s mediation efforts in the Ukraine conflict go beyond the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping children affected by the hostilities to reunite with their families.

According to al-Ansari, Qatar has always pursued a policy aimed at “reaching peace.” The spokesman also stated that time that Doha was supporting all the efforts aimed at achieving a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Kiev has refused direct talks with Moscow ever since Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky banned direct talks in autumn 2022. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga confirmed in an interview with European Pravda published on Wednesday that the moratorium is still in place. He also said that Kiev would wait for further contacts with the US before making any moves. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it is ready for peace talks at any moment without any preconditions other than those agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022. The draft treaty involved Kiev agreeing to a neutral status and accepting restrictions on foreign weaponry deployment on Ukrainian territory.

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Who cares?

German Military Retreats From X (RT)

The German Defense Ministry and the Army (the Bundeswehr) have announced they will stop posting on X claiming that Elon Musk’s platform makes it “difficult to have a factual exchange.” Musk has lambasted the current German government for promoting the “woke mind virus” and leading the country to ruin, going so far as to endorse the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and interview its leader Alice Weidel live on his platform earlier this week. “We will leave our X-channel dormant until further notice and will not post anything actively for the time being,” the Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday. “We have decided to take this step because a factual exchange is becoming increasingly difficult here.”

According to a statement posted on the ministry’s website, it will continue to communicate with the public via press releases, a WhatsApp group, YouTube, Instagram, and “other social media.” The Bundeswehr reserves the right to post on X “in the case of disinformation campaigns,” it said. The move comes after over 60 German universities and research institutes announced their departure from X, alleging “increasing radicalization” on the site. Two labor unions and the top federal court have also departed the platform in a huff. Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, citing the previous management’s out-of-control censorship, and has since rebranded the platform as X. Subsequent revelations have shown that Twitter’s previous executive team worked closely with the government to suppress opposition narratives.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will continue to use X “for the time being,” his spokesman told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday. “It’s a difficult balance to strike,” the official representative said, describing X as “not without controversy.” The “controversy” in question appears to be Musk’s endorsement of AfD and an interview with Weidel. He did the same last year to back Donald Trump’s presidential bid in the US, which saw him triumph in November. The German establishment has long tarred AfD with accusations of “extremism,” but its popularity has surged in recent months due to its positions on immigration and the economy. Scholz’s “traffic light” coalition collapsed in November and Germans will have to vote for a new parliament in late February. Since Musk’s $44 billion purchase, proponents of “fact-checking” and censoring “disinformation” have tried to set up alternatives such as Threads and Bluesky, but failed to make an appreciable dent in X’s user base.

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“..each new pledge to Ukraine serves as a stark reminder of Berlin’s neglect of its own citizens..”

Berlin Proves It Will Support Kiev To Its Own Detriment (Romanenko)

As Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius proudly announced the delivery of RCH 155 self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine – even before the Bundeswehr receives them – Berlin’s priorities have once again come under scrutiny. The decision to ship this state-of-the-art artillery system to Ukraine highlights a glaring paradox: Germany’s commitment to modernizing its own armed forces seems secondary to its zeal in arming Kiev for a war increasingly serving as a proxy for Western interests against Russia. “We are standing by Ukraine in this existential fight. The RCH 155 represents not only our technical capabilities but also our steadfast support,” Pistorius declared. Yet, for many Germans, each such statement lands like a hammer blow to national confidence in their government.

Comments online have laid bare the growing resentment, with users describing each new arms shipment as “another 0.5% boost for the AfD.” This remark reflects a troubling but undeniable trend in German politics: the ruling coalition’s unwavering support for Ukraine is alienating voters at home. The RCH 155 is an advanced artillery system mounted on a Boxer wheeled vehicle, boasting a range exceeding 40 kilometers and cutting-edge mobility. It was intended to play a key role in modernizing Germany’s military – a long-overdue initiative for the Bundeswehr, which has been plagued by underfunding and outdated equipment. Instead, these cutting-edge weapons will first see action in Ukraine, leaving Germany’s armed forces waiting. Critics argue that this decision exemplifies the government’s misguided priorities. “The Bundeswehr is not only defending Germany but also the NATO alliance,” said one military analyst.

“If we are not equipped to fulfil that role, it weakens the very foundation of our defense strategy.” The irony is inescapable: while Pistorius makes sweeping promises to Kiev, German soldiers continue to train on aging and inadequate equipment. This frustration is not confined to military circles. Across the political spectrum, Germans are increasingly questioning their country’s role as a financial and military backer of Ukraine. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a far-right populist party, has capitalized on this discontent, surging in the polls to become a significant political force. Recent state elections have seen the AfD achieve double-digit gains, fueled by voter dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of domestic issues. Energy prices remain high, inflation eats into wages, and public infrastructure continues to crumble.

Many Germans feel that resources and attention should be directed inward, not outward. For them, each new pledge to Ukraine serves as a stark reminder of Berlin’s neglect of its own citizens. The government’s unwavering support for Ukraine – a proxy for Western interests against Russia – is also being called into question. Pistorius’ rhetoric about an “existential fight” may resonate with international allies, but for many Germans, it rings hollow. They see a government that appears more concerned with maintaining its standing in Washington and Brussels than with addressing the needs of its own people. Comments on Die Welt reports about the transfer often highlight this disconnect. One user wrote, “We’ve become the arms supplier for the world while our own army remains underfunded and ill-equipped. How long will this madness continue?” Another opined, “Every tank, every howitzer we send is another nail in the coffin of this coalition’s credibility.”

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I read he had a 10-day grace period and filed the docs after 11 days. So one day late. Enough for Gensler to sue.

Biden SEC Sues Musk Over Twitter Purchase In 11th Hour “Sham” (ZH)

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued Elon Musk in connection to his $44 billion purchase of Twitter (now X) in October 2022. In a Tuesday press release, the agency claims that by delaying the filing of a beneficial ownership report by 11 days, Musk saved $150 million, or 0.34% on several subsequent tranches of stock he bought before filing the disclosure on April 4, 2022. According to the agency, Twitter shares surged by 27% after Musk filed the ownership report – by which time he already owned 9% of the company’s shares. “Investors who sold Twitter common stock during this period did so at artificially low prices and thus suffered substantial economic harm,” reads the complaint. The agency wants Musk to disgorge any profits he incurred due to the late filing, along with pay a civil fine.

In response, Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, told the Epoch Times that Musk did nothing wrong – calling the SEC’s lawsuit a “sham.” “Today’s action is an admission by the SEC that they cannot bring an actual case,” he said, adding that Musk “has done nothing wrong and everyone sees this sham for what it is.” As the Epoch Times notes further, Spiro accused the SEC of running a “multi-year campaign of harassment” against Musk and insisted the agency was blowing the alleged late disclosure filing out of proportion, adding that this type of infraction carries a nominal penalty.

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in Musk’s contentious relationship with the SEC. In 2018, the agency sued him for posting on social media that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share, a claim that was later revealed to be exaggerated. The SEC contended that Musk’s “misleading” post caused Tesla’s stock price to jump by over 6 percent and led to “significant market disruption.” That case was settled with Musk agreeing to pay a $20 million fine and step down as Tesla’s chairman for three years. The settlement did not require Musk to admit to any wrongdoing.

Musk’s “funding secured” post also sparked another lawsuit by a group of Tesla investors, who claimed that it was materially misleading and led them to suffer as much as $12 billion in financial losses. During a three-week trial in the case, Musk’s attorneys argued that he believed his statements about taking Tesla private were truthful, citing discussions with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) as evidence of potential funding. Musk testified that PIF representatives showed strong interest in the deal, which led him to claim that the funding was secured.

“I had no ill motive,” Musk said in court. “My intent was to do the right thing for all shareholders.” The jury sided with Musk in the case. Jurors delivered a unanimous verdict in February 2023, finding that Musk and Tesla were not liable for misleading investors with the posts. The investors appealed the decision, arguing that the judge gave erroneous instructions to the jurors. The appellate court upheld the jury’s decision, clearing Musk of securities fraud.The SEC’s current chair, Gary Gensler, plans to step down from his post on Jan. 20, the day President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for a second term. Meanwhile, SEC Chief Accountant Paul Munter will retire from the agency effective Jan. 25 – making it unclear if the agency will even proceed with its filing against Musk.

JD Vance Gensler

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“All three CEOs are expected to be seated with Trump and his administration officials on the platform.”

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg To Attend Trump Inauguration (JTN)

Tech giants Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg will all attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week, and will be featured in a prominent spot together on the stage, according to NBC News. The three CEOs have all donated at least $1 million to Trump’s campaign or the Trump-Vance inaugural committee, and Musk is considered a close Trump ally. Musk, who runs and owns multiple companies including the social media platform X, will be co-leading the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during the second Trump administration, and has donated more than $250 million to getting Trump reelected.

Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and is the owner and founder of Amazon, instructed his paper not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 elections. Amazon has also donated $1 million to the inaugural fund. Zuckerberg, who runs and founded the social media platform Facebook and its parent company Meta, recently reshuffled his company’s moderation policies in a move that some believe was done to appease the incoming Trump administration. He will also co-host a black tie reception on Monday night with Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson, per the Associated Press. Trump will officially be sworn into office on Capitol Hill on January 20. All three CEOs are expected to be seated with Trump and his administration officials on the platform.

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Trump wants TikTok as a negotiating tool with China.

“For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump. The other side is closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok.”

Trump Mulls Executive Order To ‘Save Tiktok’ – WaPo (RT)

President-elect Donald Trump is considering issuing an executive order to delay the enforcement of a US law that mandates the sale or shutdown of TikTok, potentially granting the popular social media platform a temporary reprieve, according to The Washington Post. The current legislation, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden last year, requires ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest from its US operations by January 19, 2025. Failure to comply would result in TikTok being removed from US app stores and losing access to essential infrastructure, effectively ceasing its operations in the country.

Trump has reportedly been “mulling ways to save the day,” including potentially issuing an executive order that would extend the compliance deadline by 60 to 90 days, allowing for further negotiations, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the matter. TikTok has already devised a plan to “go dark” for 170 million US users on Sunday. According to anonymous insiders cited by Reuters, the app would greet American users with a pop-up message explaining the ban and providing an option to download their data. This move would exceed the law’s requirements, which permit existing users to continue using the app without new downloads. The Supreme Court has yet to issue a ruling on TikTok’s appeal against the law. During recent oral arguments, the justices appeared to prioritize national security concerns over potential free speech implications.

During his first term, Trump attempted to ban TikTok, citing national security risks due to its Chinese ownership. However, during the recent campaign, he changed his mind, stating: “For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump. The other side is closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok.” In December, Trump reportedly met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, further signaling a shift in his stance toward the platform. Trump’s legal team has also requested the Supreme Court to halt the ban’s implementation, seeking additional time to pursue a political solution.

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“I am struggling to spot the difference between the extremists of the Right, and those who are trying to fight them.”

Why Europe Fears Free Speech (Munchau)

We all know the old joke: when a European referendum delivers the “wrong” outcome, the country votes again until they get it “right”. The EU thought this would be the case after Brexit. But so far, no one’s laughing. If anything, things have got worse. Take Romania, which recently cancelled its presidential election when Calin Georgescu, leader of a nationalist Right coalition, won the first round. Thierry Breton, former French European Commissioner, revealed the EU’s mindset during a damning recent TV interview. “We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary,” he said. In other words, if you can’t beat the far-Right, ban them.

I disagree with almost everything Breton has ever said, but I am grateful to him for stating his case with such revealing clarity. During his time as industry commissioner in Brussels, from 2019 until last summer, when Emmanuel Macron replaced him with a more compliant figure, he was the driving force behind a series of laws designed to keep Europe in the digital dark ages. The most extreme of which is the Digital Services Act (DSA) which compels “very large online platforms”, such as X and Meta, to check facts and filter out fake news. But, thanks to Breton, the truth is out there. Europe’s ultimate aim isn’t to save public discourse, it is to suffocate far-Right parties by depriving them of the oxygen of information. The DSA isn’t even the last word in the EU’s anti-digital jihad. One of Ursula von der Leyen’s big ideas last year during the European election was the so-called “democracy shield” — effectively launching even more legislation to prevent outside interference in EU affairs.

This notion conjures up images of laser beams and light-sabre fights. And in some respects it’s not far from the truth: a frightened bloc needs a shield to protect itself from the encroaching enemy. Mark Zuckerberg is certainly on the attack. Last week he announced that he is abandoning fact-checking on his platforms — effectively defying the DSA. And he is betting on Donald Trump to protect him from the legal consequences. Given that J.D. Vance, the Vice President-elect, has already threatened to end US support for Nato if Europe tries to censor Elon Musk’s X, surely the same will apply to Facebook. And the EU is far too dependent on the US to be able to mount an effective campaign against any of America’s social media platforms once Trump is president. The DSA, hastily drawn up during the pandemic, not only misjudges the nature of the social media, it misjudges political power. It exposes Europe’s essential weakness before America.

This isn’t just a geopolitical battle, though. It is also a European one. The attempted clampdown reveals that there is something the bloc fears more than free speech: populism. MEPs found it hard enough to stomach Nigel Farage’s brutal outbursts when he was a member of the European Parliament. Now they have Musk breathing down their neck, endorsing candidates from the AfD, a party that sits on the far-Right in the European Parliament’s benches and which supports German withdrawal from the EU. The German media had a collective breakdown when Musk tweeted an endorsement for the AfD, interviewed Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, on X, and then endorsed her in an article for Die Welt. The op-ed editor of the German daily resigned in protest. And an article in another newspaper hysterically described Musk’s intervention as unconstitutional. That journalists would advocate censorship seems shocking, until one understands the role of journalism in continental European society. It operates firmly inside a narrow centrist political consensus, which spans all the parties from the centre-left to the centre-right. Naturally, the AfD does not get much airtime in the German media.

But while marginalised by traditional media, the AfD thrives on TikTok, where it has large following. So what irks the German media, and politicians from other parties, is that the censorship cartel is no longer functioning as well as it once did. In the US and in the UK, the once mighty legacy media have already lost their power. Hillary Clinton expressed the frustration perhaps most clearly when she said that social media companies must fact check, or else “we lose total control”. But Europe still lives in a twilight zone where the traditional media still basks in the dwindling sunset of power, trying to ignore social media rising on the other horizon. Like all the modern political battles in Europe, this is about protecting vested interests.

The Romanian case demonstrates how these restrictions on freedom of speech are the first salvos in a greater war of repression. The presidential elections there were cancelled on the grounds that a Russian-infested TikTok had misinformed voters. I am sure that the Russians were active. But it is shocking to think that an election was cancelled because someone lied on TikTok. Let’s be clear, there was no suggestion of any vote rigging. Georgescu won the first round of the election fair and square. But as with the laughable misperception in Brussels after the Brexit vote, the presumption behind the EU’s support for the nullification of the result, was that voters were too stupid to make up their own mind. The rerun is to take place on 4 May, followed by a run-off between the most successful candidate two weeks later. Georgescu is still the most likely candidate to win according to opinion polls, but the Romanian political establishment is still determined to find ways to disbar him, the most promising of which is the hope that he may have received undeclared funds.

There are similar patterns elsewhere. Marine Le Pen faces potential disqualification from the 2027 presidential elections following accusations of irregularities regarding her assistants in the European Parliament. More recently, Brussels was spooked by the victory in Austria of the Freedom Party, which managed to obtain 28.8% of the vote in the September general election. It surpassed a threshold at which point it became politically impossible for the other parties to form coalitions. Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ’s leader, is now likely to become Austria’s next chancellor. Meanwhile, in Germany, a group of 113 MPs has ganged up to ban the AfD. Their story is that the far-Right wants to destroy democracy. While the party is not yet polling high enough to frustrate yet another centrist coalition in Berlin after next month’s elections, Germany may only be a few percentage points away from an Austrian-style impasse.

Surely, though, the sensible approach to the rise of the AfD, the FPÖ and other parties of the Right is not to censor them, but to address the underlying problem that has made them so strong: persistent economic uncertainty, loss of purchasing power, and dysfunctional policies on migration. Failing that, why not co-opt parties of the far-Right as junior coalition partners as they did in Sweden and Finland? If Weidel were suddenly thrust into the job of economics minister, we would see whether she could defend her record in government. But the centrist parties in Germany and France do neither. They have erected political firewalls against the far-Right. And they are doubling down with the same old policies.

It’s an approach that will inevitably backfire. A banned Le Pen would be far more dangerous for the centrist establishment, and possibly even more extreme when she eventually gets to power. Likewise the AfD would surely be radicalised after a ban. Until then, the EU’s blunt weapons of choice — the legal bans, political firewalls, and censorship — will inflict more self-harm than good. In the pecking order of democratic rights, freedom of speech has a relatively low priority in Europe. Like the creatures in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, I am struggling to spot the difference between the extremists of the Right, and those who are trying to fight them.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Garland

 

 

Rescue

 

 

Encantadora

 

 

Shark attack

 

 

Snow cats

 

 

Penguin

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 132022
 
 December 13, 2022  Posted by at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  73 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Female bust 1943

 

The Alarm Bells Go Off (Kunstler)
Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested In Bahamas After US Files Criminal Charges (CNBC)
SEC Chair Gensler Scrubbed Evidence Of Clinton, Soros And Pelosi Meetings (ZH)
Twitter Trust And Safety Team Found Trump Tweets Did Not Violate Policy (ZH)
The Banning of President Trump by Bari Weiss: Just a Few Rogue Actors (CTH)
Germany Should Do Business With Russia Again – Scholz (RT)
50% Of Ukraine’s Energy Facilities Destroyed – Zelensky (Az.)
Russia Has No Right To Security Guarantees – Poland (RT)
Increased Heart Failure Deaths Linked To Extreme Hot And Cold (CTV)
European Parliament Lawmaker Denies Taking Bribes From Qatar (R.)
Assets of Greek MEP Accused Of Graft Frozen (K.)
Von der Leyen Ducks Questions On Qatar Corruption Scandal (Pol.eu)
Wars – How They Start and End? (Salamah)
The End of Europe: The Sad Conclusion of a Long Historical Cycle (Ugo Bardi)
Biden Faces Growing Pressure To Drop Charges Against Julian Assange (G.)

 

 

 

 

Unicef

 

 

And then you get the coldest night of the year…

 

 

First ever recorded snowball fight (1897)

 

 

 

 

“Everything appears to be veering out-of-control, including thought itself.”

The Alarm Bells Go Off (Kunstler)

Here’s another awful reality (better fasten your seatbelts): What also emerged in the tweet record of Yoel Roth, the company’s chief censor (former “Head of Trust and Safety”), begins to look like a gay mafia assault on the collective American psyche. Having gained official federal government sanction and protection, a statistically tiny homosexual demographic left in charge of the country’s main public forum has been out for revenge against their perceived enemy, political conservatives — Americans disinclined to join the cheerleading for drag queen story hours, “minor-attracted persons,” transsexuals in the military, and other LBGTQ cultural pranks. In the process, that gay mafia running the public dialogue supported every lie that the government, its protector, put out, to keep the Deep State happy and well-fed. Shocking, I’m sure… but there it is.

That means the gay mafia also helped promote the most-deadly psy-op in world history: the Covid-19 scare and the mass “vaccination” crusade that will end up killing many millions world-wide, after destroying the economies of the Western Civ nations. The whole package looks like an attempt to turn the world upside down and inside out. Is it any wonder that so many feel the USA has gone crazy? Of course, these revelations aroused the widespread suspicion that these now-exposed nefarious operators in social media were merely tools for some murky plutocrat elite led by the likes of the WEF, Bill Gates, and George Soros. Could that be the greatest “conspiracy theory” of all? More likely, I hesitate to suggest, all these characters in one way or another are merely tools of history itself, as the world enters the darkest days of a Fourth Turning secular winter.

As T.S. Eliot observed: “Humankind cannot bear too much reality.” Thus, so many sense we live in dangerous times. Everything appears to be veering out-of-control, including thought itself. Disorder incites more disorder. While all this madness is going on in-country, the US government, led by the phantom president “Joe Biden,” continues to prosecute its insane proxy war in Ukraine in order to antagonize Russia. Lately the US has sent drones hundreds of miles inside Russia to blow up military airfields. How is that not an escalation of hostilities, and exactly how far do the American people want their government to take this crazy project?

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SBF could have been arrested, and charges filed, anytime over the past, what has it been, 6 weeks?! But they pick the day before his virtual hearing in Congress. Which now won’t happen.

Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested In Bahamas After US Files Criminal Charges (CNBC)

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested by Bahamian authorities Monday evening after the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York shared a sealed indictment with the Bahamian government, setting the stage for extradition and U.S. trial for the onetime crypto billionaire at the heart of the crypto exchange’s collapse. His arrest is the first concrete move by regulators to hold individuals accountable for the multibillion-dollar implosion of FTX last month. Before his arrest was announced, Bankman-Fried had been expected to testify virtually before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, but his attorneys told CNBC that he will not appear.


Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who oversees that committee, said that she was “surprised” at his arrest, and disappointed that Congress would not be able to hear from him on Tuesday. Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Twitter that the federal government anticipated moving to “unseal the indictment in the morning.” The charges include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering, according to the New York Times, citing a person familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission has initiated a separate set of charges against Bankman-Fried, relating to “violations of our securities laws, which will be filed publicly tomorrow in the Southern District of New York,” enforcement director Gurbir Grewal said in a statement.

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What was SBF going to talk about? His links to Gensler, Ukraine, Democrats?

“The charges include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering – NYT”

Securities fraud. Wait, that’s Gensler…

SEC Chair Gensler Scrubbed Evidence Of Clinton, Soros And Pelosi Meetings (ZH)

Sunlight is the best disinfectant – unless you’re Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler – who scrubbed evidence of a meeting with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from his calendar, along with key details of a meeting with Billionaire leftist-operative George Soros. He also concealed September 21 meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and former Bill Clinton White House official-turned-DC consultant, Minyon Moore. Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs executive, Obama administration official, Clinton’s 2016 campaign CFO, and FTX associate, essentially had two calendars. His public calendar showed that on Aug. 7, 2021, he only had a staff meeting, while his private calendar lists a meeting with Hillary Clinton, Fox News reports.

Thirteen days later on Aug. 20, 2021, Gensler’s public calendar does list a meeting with Soros, but the agenda was hidden. His private calendar reveals that the meeting was held to discuss an upcoming WSJ op-ed Soros was planning to write in which he slammed BlackRock for launching investment products for Chinese customers, while also applauding the company’s ESG policies. “Gensler’s private calendar revealing the discrepancies was obtained by the watchdog group Energy Policy Advocates and shared with Fox News Digital. The group was only able to obtain the internal records after filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the SEC. In recent days, around the time Fox News Digital contacted the SEC, the agency updated Gensler’s public calendar to include his meeting with Clinton in August 2021. As recently as Wednesday the public calendar didn’t include the meeting, and archived copies of the webpage from April also list just a meeting with staff. -Fox News ”

When contacted for comment, the SEC initially lied – saying that the Clinton meeting was visible on Gensler’s public calendar. When confronted with screenshots to the contrary, the spokesperson said that the agency updates calendars “from time to time” when inaccuracies are discovered (by watchdog groups?). Gensler also concealed several September 2021 meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Minyon Moore – both of which have been now updated on Gensler’s public calendar. “That even George Soros is calling out progressive darling BlackRock for craven blundering is striking — even if it did carry the requisite, tribal praise for BlackRock’s truly damaging ‘ESG’ (environmental, social and governance) campaigning to impose their shared ‘climate’ agenda on the U.S., an agenda also much to China’s delight,” said Chris Horner, a lawyer representing Energy Policy Advocates. “That it appears Soros received counsel from Gary Gensler on the mega-donor’s call for more SEC powers as a result is truly astonishing.”

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“We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.”

Twitter Trust And Safety Team Found Trump Tweets Did Not Violate Policy (ZH)

The new drop reveals that Twitter employees did not believe former President Trump had violated Twitter’s policies. “I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer in an internal message, adding: “It’s pretty clear he’s saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?)…” Another staffer agreed, writing: “Don’t see the incitement angle here.” “I also am not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet,” wrote Anika Navaroli, a Twitter policy official. “I’ll respond in the elections channel and say that our team has assessed and found no vios”—or violations—“for the DJT one.”

4. For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate. 5. “Our mission is to provide a forum that enables people to be informed and to engage their leaders directly,” the company wrote in 2019. Twitter’s aim was to “protect the public’s right to hear from their leaders and to hold them to account.” 6. But after January 6, as @mtaibbi and @shellenbergermd have documented, pressure grew, both inside and outside of Twitter, to ban Trump.

7. There were dissenters inside Twitter. “Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.” 8. But voices like that one appear to have been a distinct minority within the company. Across Slack channels, many Twitter employees were upset that Trump hadn’t been banned earlier. 9. After January 6, Twitter employees organized to demand their employer ban Trump. “There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,” said one Twitter employee. 10. “We have to do the right thing and ban this account,” said one staffer. It’s “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,” said another.

11. In the early afternoon of January 8, The Washington Post published an open letter signed by over 300 Twitter employees to CEO Jack Dorsey demanding Trump’s ban. “We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.” 12. But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies.“I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer. 13. “It’s pretty clear he’s saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.” 14. Another staffer agreed: “Don’t see the incitement angle here.”

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sundance still doesn’t buy it. He wants to see what government officials are involved, not just the Twitter employees..

The Banning of President Trump by Bari Weiss: Just a Few Rogue Actors (CTH)

The fifth installment of the Twitter Files release drops today courtesy of Ms. Bari Weiss. The focus of Ms Weiss was on the decision to ban President Donald Trump from the platform, and her outline walks through the events leading up to the decision to remove him. After a review of internal discussions, slacks and conversations within the social media platform, ultimately the officers within the company decided to protect their view of democracy by removing their biggest ideological opponent. The Twitter executives justified their actions by echo-chambering a belief that President Trump was tweeting “coded messages,” the secret transmission of thoughts that can only be received by those wearing red hats, tuned to a specific psychological frequency.

As Weiss notes: “Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be “coded incitement to further violence.” President Trump tweeted the term “American Patriots,” which would be viewed by the Twitter ideologues as something akin to “the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.” It did not take long for the narrative to embed as the most senior Twitter regulatory officers assembled. “One hour later, Twitter announces Trump’s permanent suspension “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

The entirety of Twitter File #5 release surrounds this internal Twitter dynamic, carefully avoiding any discussion or sunlight from outside government actors who may have been in direct contact with the senior Twitter team. Indeed, the documents chosen to provide evidence of the debate and decision to remove President Trump are transparently devoid of any inbound government contact to the Twitter organization. Thus, at the end of Ms. Weiss carefully written expose’, she concludes with this:

See, it’s only “a handful of people at a private company“…. Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along. Apparently, DHS, FBI and CISA officials were involved in direct contact with Twitter through their DHS “trusted partnership” portal to get rid of innocuous rebel voices and influence agents like Dan Bongino, Q conspiracy theorists, and various COVID doctors who were providing information against the interests of the government. However, when it came to removing the most powerful voice of President Donald John Trump, there was nothing but static radio silence from the government side of the DHS portal. You getting this? Do you see how this is presented? “A handful of people at a private company,” that’s the story and they are sticking to it. Swear.

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Presumably only after NATO has defeated them.

Germany Should Do Business With Russia Again – Scholz (RT)

Once Russia ends the conflict in Ukraine, it should be given a chance to do business with Germany again, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday. He repeated that Moscow must and will not win, however. A Russian government that ends the hostilities “needs a chance to restart economic cooperation, in another time when this is possible,” Scholz said in Berlin, at the meeting of the Eastern Committee for German Business (OA), a trade association focused on relations with eastern Europe. “Now is not that time.” “At the moment, the relationships we have are being scaled back,” Scholz said, according to the weekly Zeit. The EU is “tightening the sanctions” now, but Russia will remain the largest country on the European continent after the conflict is resolved. “It is therefore very important that we make preparations for this time.”

Scholz described the current conflict as an attempt by President Vladimir Putin to re-create a Russian Empire that is destroying the country’s future instead, and accused Moscow of atrocities against the Ukrainian civilians. Russia must not win “and Russian will not win, either,” he told the business group. Berlin’s determination to ditch Russian energy imports – pushed mainly by Scholz’s Green coalition partners – created troubles for Germany even before the gas deliveries were disrupted by the sabotage on Nord Stream pipelines in September. Germans are now trying to make up the shortages from elsewhere, though unsuccessfully. Earlier this month, Germany’s ambassador in Washington admitted to the economic troubles, but said this was a small price to pay for a “profound transformation” of her country into a remilitarized continental power, more hostile to Russia and closer to the US.

For all of Scholz’s promises to help Ukraine, Kiev has continued to browbeat Berlin about deliveries of tanks and even more artillery. Last week, the chancellor’s predecessor Angela Merkel admitted that the 2014 Minsk agreement was not aimed at resolving the conflict in Donbass, but to “give Ukraine time” to arm against Russia. Putin said he was disappointed by Merkel’s admission and that the trust between Moscow and Berlin was now “almost at zero.”

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Trying to escalate.

50% Of Ukraine’s Energy Facilities Destroyed – Zelensky (Az.)

Missile strikes have destroyed 50% of Ukraine’s energy facilities, the country’s President Vladimir Zelensky said in a call with US President Joe Biden, according to a statement published on the Ukrainian leader’s website on Monday. The Ukrainian leader also highlighted US assistance in restoring Ukraine’s energy grid and hoped that the parties would deepen cooperation on this track. In addition, Zelensky urged Biden to help Kiev establish air defenses.

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Poland wants its part of Ukraine.

Russia Has No Right To Security Guarantees – Poland (RT)

Russia cannot expect security guarantees from other nations, a senior Polish diplomat has said. Calls to address Moscow’s concerns about NATO expansion in Europe have come from former and serving leaders of EU nations, including ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron. People should not “let themselves be persuaded … that Russia has the right to expect security guarantees from anyone,” Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski told journalists ahead of a meeting of top diplomats of EU member states, which kicked off in Brussels on Monday. “It’s just a strategic mistake – that kind of consideration. It is not Russia that needs security guarantees today, but Europe needs security guarantees from Russia,” he said, adding that the Polish delegation will call for the harshest sanctions possible on Russia during the ministerial meeting.

Moscow has for years told the US and its allies that the expansion of NATO poses a threat to Russian national security, and warned that by ignoring its objections on issues such as Ukraine’s potential membership in the US-led bloc, Western nations were crossing a red line. A last-ditch attempt to defuse tensions came last year, when Moscow offered an agreement which it said would address this concern. The proposal was rejected, with Western leaders doubling down on NATO’s open-door policy. Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February, citing, among other reasons, the bloc’s creeping expansion to the east. While EU nations condemned the move as an act of supposedly unprovoked aggression, some politicians acknowledged that the lack of a European security architecture that would alleviate Russia’s concerns was a major destabilizing factor.

In her first interview after stepping down as chancellor, Merkel said that the failure to build such an arrangement was something “we should think about” when discussing Ukraine. Her successor, Olaf Scholz, said that “we have to go back to the agreements which we had in the past decades and which were the basis for peace and security order in Europe.” He also claimed that Russia broke these arrangements and that there was “no aggression coming from NATO.” Macron argued this month that the US-led bloc needs to prepare an offer of security guarantees for Moscow to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. He said the concerns that “NATO will deploy weapons that will threaten Russia” were understandable.

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Ha! It’s not the vaccines, it’s climate change.

Increased Heart Failure Deaths Linked To Extreme Hot And Cold (CTV)

New research has found extremely hot and cold temperatures increase the risk of death among people with cardiovascular diseases, particularly heart failure. An international study, published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, looked at more than 32 million cardiovascular deaths over four decades from more than two dozen countries. It found people with heart failure experienced the most additional deaths from extreme temperatures compared to those with other heart conditions. “The decline in cardiovascular death rates since the 1960s is a huge public health success story as cardiologists identified and addressed individual risk factors such as tobacco, physical inactivity, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and others,” Dr. Barrak Alahmad, a research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a faculty member at the College of Public Health at Kuwait University, said in a news release.


“The current challenge now is the environment and what climate change might hold for us.” The study used health data, pulled from 567 cities in 27 countries across five continents between 1979 and 2019, through the Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative Research Network. Researchers compared cardiovascular deaths on the hottest and coldest 2.5 per cent of days for each city with cardiovascular deaths in those same cities on days that had optimal temperatures or when death rates were lowest. The study found that for every 1,000 cardiovascular deaths, extreme hot days accounted for 2.2 additional deaths, while extreme cold days accounted for 9.1 additional deaths.

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Europe has a nice scandal. Allegedly, €600,000 was found in this woman’s father’s home. Cash, in bags.

European Parliament Lawmaker Denies Taking Bribes From Qatar (R.)

European Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili, a suspect in an investigation into money laundering and corruption at the parliament, has denied receiving money from Qatar, one of her lawyers said in Greece on Tuesday. Kaili, one of 14 vice presidents of the parliament, was among four people arrested and charged in Belgium at the weekend over allegations that Qatar lavished them with cash and gifts to influence decision-making. “Her position is that she is innocent, I can tell you that,” Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, a lawyer representing Kaili in Greece, told Open TV. “She has nothing to do with financing from Qatar, nothing – explicitly and unequivocally. That is her position,” Dimitrakopoulos said. He added that Kaili had “undertaken no commercial activity in her life.” Greece on Monday froze Kaili’s assets in the country. The European Parliament has suspended her from her duties.

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Yes, “one of 14 vice presidents of the parliament..” Wonder what they all get paid.

Assets of Greek MEP Accused Of Graft Frozen (K.)

Greece’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority has issued a general order to freeze, until further notice, all assets that MEP Eva Kaili, 44, and her husband or her immediate family members (parents, siblings) may have in Greece. Kaili, a vice president of the European Parliament, and her husband were among four people arrested on Sunday on charges of corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organization. Police carried out raids at 16 houses in and around Brussels and seized €600,000 on Friday as a part of the investigation into a corruption scandal involving Qatar and prominent European politicians, dubbed Qatargate.

The order by the head of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, former Supreme Court deputy prosecutor Haralambos Vourliotis, has already been forwarded to all Greek credit institutions to identify accounts, control movements, existence of safe deposit boxes, possession of other financial products, while at the same time an order was given to all land registry offices to freeze all real estate of the above persons. The move of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, in addition to the broader control, which will be carried out anyway, aims, as sources told Kathimerini, to identify any cash that may be in the possession of the persons under investigation, and to ascertain whether they are products of legitimate origin or bribes.

As this investigation began on Monday morning, a real estate company set up about a month ago by the MEP and her husband in Kolonaki was identified and audited, and its entire activity has been frozen. The authority has also ordered and conducted a check on the assets of Kaili’s father. In the event that incriminating evidence is also found in Greece, Kaili could, in theory at least, request to be tried in Greece, but sources said this is unlikely. Under Belgian law, the charges against the MEP and her husband are punishable by three to five years in prison, while under Greek law the sentences range from15 years and can exceed 20 years, even reaching life sentences in very exceptional cases. However, legal sources have stressed that it is still too early to make assessment as the investigations are still in full swing and no one can predict what will emerge and what will be revealed.

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More Greeks connected to Qatar.

Von der Leyen Ducks Questions On Qatar Corruption Scandal (Pol.eu)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declined to answer questions about her Vice President Margaritis Schinas’ relations with Qatar at a press briefing Monday, triggering fury from the Brussels press corps seeking answers on the biggest corruption scandal to hit the EU in years. The Greek commissioner represented the EU at the opening ceremony of the World Cup last month, and has been criticized by MEPs over his tweets in recent months, lavishing praise on Qatar’s labor reforms. Asked about the Commission’s response to the Qatar corruption scandal engulfing the European Parliament, and in particular the stance of Schinas, von der Leyen was silent on the Greek commissioner.

The decision by deputy European Commission spokesperson Dana Spinant to shut down questions from journalists, sparked a furious reaction from reporters in the room, who called for more answers. “You didn’t answer a single one of the questions,” one reporter shouted as Spinant tried to close a session with reporters. “This is not the way to organize a press conference here,” Spinant responded through a chorus of protest. While von der Leyen did respond to further questions on the scandal, she did not address reporters’ questions about the circumstances surrounding Schinas’ visit to Qatar. Instead, she pointed to a proposal for a new ethics body to police all EU institutions — something she committed to more than three years ago, but which has gained little traction within any of the main institutions.

Referring to the European Commission’s transparency register, a database which lists representatives who carry out activities to influence EU policy and decision-making, she said: “We have one with very clear rules internally in the European Commission. There I think it is time to discuss whether we could not establish this over all for all EU institutions.”

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Borders change all the time.

Wars – How They Start and End? (Salamah)

Most countries have different religions, cultures, customs, values, local laws, practices, and political systems. Not only does changing other countries’ cultures not qualify as fair and just national interests, but also borders on the ridiculous when some countries unilaterally appoint themselves as heaven’s guardian on earth and incorporate such metaphysical concepts into their national interests. Does changing other people into one’s image make them more humane or Godlier? Or does it make them more pliable for exploitation? History confirms that such attempts have never been successful in perpetuating themselves, as evidenced by Alexander’s Hellenistic empire, Great Rome, Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde, the Crusades, the Islamic conquests, etc. – they were all eventually expunged or melded into the cultures that they tried to change, at a huge human and physical cost.

Undoubtedly, an exploiter’s rewards can be attractive in the short term, subject that the infringement or exploitation being successful. But in the longer term, pressure will continue to be exerted to return to the original status, or a semblance of it, and again, at a huge human and physical cost. Defending a country’s national territory is considered a paramount national interest (is also a security objective). Consequently, territorial or border disputes are the most popular reasons for starting wars, especially for smaller nations. But if we dig only skin-deep into the history, we will quickly find that almost no country has, throughout the ages, maintained its theoretical or historical borders – it has always been a continuous ebb and flow of territory usurped or lost, more so in Europe and the ex-colonialized world.

Nevertheless, many falsely justify this as a casus belli, or a rallying call, to regain what they regard as usurped national land. They do this with total disregard to the views and wishes of the current inhabitants of the territories in dispute, thus lending credence to the likelihood that it, in reality, is a camouflage to exploit another nation’s land. The sad part is that these wars regularly flare up despite the presence of the UN and the International Court, which were created, among other things, to adjudicate the validity of such territorial disputes and, unless a gross miscarriage of justice occurs, all grounds for territorial wars are unjustified.

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I know Ugo is Italian. But ignoring the entire Greek civilization is a step too far.

“..On the Southern coast of Europe, a lively network of commercial exchanges emerged, made possible by transportation over the Mediterranean Sea. Out of this network, the Roman Empire was born..”

The End of Europe: The Sad Conclusion of a Long Historical Cycle (Ugo Bardi)

The latest (and perhaps the last) attempt to unify Europe was the European Union. The creators of the Union understood that it was impossible to unify Europe by military means, so they tried to do it in the form of an economic free zone and an elected parliament. It was a bold attempt, but it didn’t work. It could not have worked. The Union faced enormous hostile forces, both internal and external. Britain and France were supposed to be balancing the German power, but when Britain left, in 2020, the Union suffered an economic defeat equivalent to the military one suffered by Germany in the Battle of Britain, in 1940. In both cases, they had tried to absorb Britain into continental Europe, and they had failed.

The defection of Britain left the European Union with Germany dominating it. Just like during WW2, the German government never understood that throwing its weight around was not the way to endear itself with the neighboring states. The result was the growth of anti-European forces all over the continent — the movement called “sovereignty” that aimed to restore the power of nation-states and get rid of the EU bureaucrats. So far, this movement has played only a marginal role in politics, but it has succeeded in making the EU deeply hated by everyone who is not getting their salaries from Brussels. Just as it had happened in 1941, Europe is now engaged in a desperate battle on two different fronts, but the struggle is now mainly economic and cultural, not military: it is a “full spectrum dominance” war.

The struggle is still ongoing, but it seems already clear that Europe is being defeated. Just like Germany had destroyed itself with a military attack on Russia in 1941, the European Union is destroying itself with its economic sanctions against Russia. Effectively, Europe is committing a slow and painful suicide. But that’s how full spectrum dominance works: it destroys enemies from the inside. And now? It was unavoidable that Europe would cease to be an Empire. The human and material resources that had made European dominance possible are not there any longer. But it was not unavoidable that Europe would destroy itself. Europe could have survived and maintained its independence by remaining on good terms with the other Eurasiatic powers, China, Russia, and India,

But, choosing to break the commercial, cultural, and human relations with the rest of Eurasia was not just an economic suicide. It was a cultural and moral suicide. So, what’s going to happen to poor Europe? History, as usual, rhymes: do not forget that in 1945 the official US plan was to destroy the German economy and exterminate most of the German population. Fortunately, the plan was shelved, but could that idea become fashionable again? We cannot exclude this possibility. In any case, an impoverished Europe could go back to something not unlike what it was during the early Middle Ages: depopulated, poor, primitive, a mere appendage of the great Eurasian Continent. And, yet, Europe has rebounded more than once from terrible disasters. It may happen again. Not soon, though.

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The Guardian on Assange again. Feels uncomfortable. Their smear pieces are still up.

Biden Faces Growing Pressure To Drop Charges Against Julian Assange (G.)

The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump. The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”. But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.

Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press. Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution. Five major media organizations that relied on his trove of government secrets, including the Guardian and the New York Times, put out an open letter earlier this month saying that his indictment “sets a dangerous precedent” and threatens to undermine the first amendment.

At the same time, officials in Australia, where Assange was born and remains a citizen, met with American counterparts to appeal for his release. “My position is clear and has been made clear to the US administration: that it is time that this matter be brought to a close,” Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told the Australian parliament late last month. In Brazil, meanwhile, President-elect Luis Inácio Lula da Silva demanded an end to what he called the “unjust imprisonment” of Assange after a meeting with WikiLeaks editors lobbying for his freedom. Some of Assange’s defenders, who have attacked his prosecution as a trampling of the first amendment, say they are optimistic that the case may have reached a turning point that could ultimately lead to his freedom.

“This case is hugely significant,” the Columbia University law professor Jameel Jaffer, who runs the Knight First Amendment Institute at the university, said in an interview. “At the end of the day, I find it hard to believe that the Biden administration wants this case to be its press freedom legacy, and it will be its legacy if they continue to pursue it. That will overshadow everything else when it comes to press freedom.” Justice department officials aren’t tipping their hand about where Assange’s prosecution might eventually lead, as he continues to challenge his extradition to the US before a British appeals court. The justice department declined to comment on all the outside calls to drop the case, but one official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Garland “has made clear that he will follow the law wherever it leads”, as he has in other politically charged cases.

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Hot water
https://twitter.com/i/status/1602254557329108993

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nov 142022
 
 November 14, 2022  Posted by at 9:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Let the little children come to me 1627-28

 

The Role Of “Useful Idiots” In Modern PSYOPS (Saker)
G20 Host Urges West To Soften Anti-Russia Rhetoric – Politico (RT)
SBF’s Disgrace Awkward For Gary Gensler And The Democrats (Fortune)
Ukraine Invested In Top Dem Donor’s Crypto Company FTX (PM)
America’s Neo-Nazi Bedfellows In Ukraine Latest In a Long Line (Tony Cox)
The Road to Totalitarianism -Revisited- (CJ Hopkins)
White House Launches ‘Climate Gender Equity Fund’ (RT)
The ‘Garden Vs Jungle’ Worldview Is Not Only Racist, It’s Delusional (Hryce)
Washington Attempts to Bully India into Cutting Ties with Russia (NC)
IMF Says Global Economic Outlook Getting ‘Gloomier’ (Az.)
German Retailers Face Nightmare Before Christmas (RT)
Twitter Starts Massive Reductions In Contractors (RT)
US Senator Threatens Elon Musk (RT)
COVID-19 Mortality in England ‘Extremely Rare’ Among Under-20s (ET)

 

 

 

 

A Freeze in the Conflict?

 

 

 

 

Chappelle

 

 

Footprint

 

 

 

 

“doubleplusgoodshiteaters”

The Role Of “Useful Idiots” In Modern PSYOPS (Saker)

The second thing I need to address is what I believe is an analytical mistake by Bernhard on Moon of Alabama. He wrote that “This move is operationally sound” and yet he added “Strategically the move is bad“. We could wonder how a move could be operationally sound but strategically bad, but let’s not even go there. Bernhard’s argument is that “It closes for now the possibility of moving into Nikolaev (Mykolaiv) and further towards Odessa“. The problem here is that when we look at a map of the region we realize something very important: there are plenty of streams and rivers which flow north to south and which flow into the Black Sea. So any move along the coastline would imply having to get across quite a few river. Is this possible? Yes, absolutely.

But is that the best option? I am not so sure at all. I will simply say that this is the option the Ukronazis and NATO have been preparing for. Another option might be to move not West but North and then turn West to basically take all the NATO defenses around the Black Sea coastline from behind. Did I mention that there is now a joint Russian-Belarussian force deployed in Belarus which seems to worry NATO a lot and which could be used to pin down NATO forces near and north of Kiev. Is that what the Russians are planning? I don’t know. All I know is that it is wrong to assume that the only way to get to Odessa is by fighting along the coastline. Last, but not least, there is the (inevitable) rumor of a deal having been made between Putin and… … huh… well… somebody in the West (who? Brandon? Sunak? Macron?).


Now that is pure, unadulterated bullshit which only true doubleplusgoodshiteaters could swallow (though clickbaiters will use it to get their clicks and visibility!). Russia and the West have been locked into an existential war for survival since AT LEAST 2013 and we are very close to a possible nuclear war, but some folks still think that Putin works for the US, the WEF, Klaus Schwab, Bibi Netanuyahu. etc. etc. etc. My position on that is simple: anybody seriously believing this crap is not worth talking to, you would have better success arguing with a door nob. I sure won’t bother with them. I would also note that IF a real behind-the-scenes deal was made, the chances of Putin finalizing that deal with Western leaders at the G20 would be a perfect opportunity to finalize a deal. Yet, in reality, Putin is not even going to attend. Reach your own conclusions.

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German PM Scholz says he wishes Putin were in Bali, so the west can tell him what they think of him.

Scholz is fully blind to the fact that the west is a minority.

G20 Host Urges West To Soften Anti-Russia Rhetoric – Politico (RT)

G20 Summit host Indonesia is reportedly seeking to prevent the gathering of world leaders from becoming a Russia-bashing fest, urging Western politicians to temper their criticism of Moscow so all members can be brought on board with a communique at the end of the event. Indonesian President Joko Widodo and other officials in his government have asked Western leaders to make concessions on the extent of their anti-Russia rhetoric over the Ukraine crisis, Politico reported on Sunday, citing three unidentified diplomats with knowledge of the talks. The two-day summit will begin on Tuesday in Bali, and Widodo hopes to find enough common ground that all G20 members, including Russia and China, can agree to a group declaration.

Widodo also aims to prevent the group from following in the footsteps of the G8, which kicked out Moscow and became the G7 after Crimea voted to become part of Russia in 2014. A G7 statement earlier this month condemned Russia for its “war of aggression” against Ukraine and called for all Russian forces to be withdrawn from the former Soviet republic. The group also accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine and blasted the Kremlin for “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric.” Such a statement wouldn’t likely find consensus in Bali, where Russia will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Several other G20 members, including China, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, would be reluctant, at the least, to sign on to a communique rebuking Russia. Politico said one possibility would be to issue a more general joint statement calling for “upholding international law.”


“Obviously we can’t be as tough as we do it in G7 when you need the Russians, Chinese and Saudis to agree,” a Western diplomat told the media outlet. “The question is how much we need to delete.” The US, Canada, Japan, Australia and major European countries are among the G20 members that Indonesian officials are targeting with their pleas for softer rhetoric. Widodo also hopes to avoid controversy over a group photo, like those typically taken at G20 meetings to show solidarity, given that some members might be reticent to line up in the same image with Lavrov. Last month, before Moscow announced that President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t attend the summit, Politico reported that White House officials were taking steps to ensure that Biden wouldn’t cross paths with the Russian leader.

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“@GaryGensler runs to the media while reports to my office allege he was helping SBF and FTX work on legal loopholes to obtain a regulatory monopoly.”

SBF’s Disgrace Awkward For Gary Gensler And The Democrats (Fortune)

Gary Gensler blew it again. After his agency failed to warn investors about Terra and Celsius—whose collapses this spring sparked a trillion-dollar investor wipeout—the Securities and Exchange Commission chair allowed an even bigger debacle to unfold right under his nose. I’m talking, of course, about the revelation this week that the $30 billion FTX empire was a house of cards and that its golden boy founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is the crypto equivalent of Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes. To be fair, Gensler was not the only one suckered by SBF. Nearly everyone else—myself included—fell for the narrative that SBF, with his cute afro and aw-shucks demeanor, was exactly the savior crypto needed to shake off its dodgy reputation and emerge as part of the mainstream financial system.

The problem is that cop-on-the-beat Gensler not only failed to spot the crime—he appeared set to go along with a legislative strategy that would have given SBF a regulatory moat and made him king of the U.S. crypto market. According to Washington insiders I spoke with, the reason behind SBF’s decision this summer to obtain control over BlockFi was to benefit from the troubled crypto lender’s recent settlement with the SEC—basically extending the amnesty BlockFi had received to FTX. Meanwhile, FTX’s recent tie-up with securities exchange IEX (of Flash Boys fame) would also help SBF’s empire come under the U.S. regulatory umbrella. All of this would clear FTX to have the U.S. market to itself as the company lobbied for legislation that could have torpedoed competitors like Binance as well as the emerging DeFi sector.


This appears to be what prominent House member Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) was referring to when he tweeted on Thursday that “@GaryGensler runs to the media while reports to my office allege he was helping SBF and FTX work on legal loopholes to obtain a regulatory monopoly.” Gensler, a former campaign finance chair for Hillary Clinton, is of course not the only prominent Democrat who may have been willing to flex his influence on behalf of FTX. SBF, you may recall, was one of the biggest donors to President Joe Biden, while his parents—both Stanford law professors—have ties to the party. His mother, Barbara Fried, leads a group called Mind the Gap that helps raise Silicon Valley cash for Democrats, while his father, Joseph Bankman, drafted tax legislation for the powerful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass). It’s not a stretch to imagine SBF sought to exploit these political ties to his benefit.

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“It’s fascinating to see that the majority of the net equity in the Alameda business is actually FTX’s own centrally controlled and printed-out-of-thin-air token..”

Ukraine Invested In Top Dem Donor’s Crypto Company FTX (PM)

Roughly $5 billion was withdrawn from FTX on Sunday. The trouble began for FTX last week when rival crypto company Binance said they were selling off their holdings of FTT, which is the proprietary coin of FTX. After Binance said that, FTX was in financial trouble, and essentially sought a bailout from other firms, Binance among them. The New York Post reports that FTX’s implosion followed revelations “that co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried had been funneling money to a sister trading company run by his girlfriend.” That company, Alameda Research, is run by Bankman-Fried’s girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, and is also based in the Bahamas. Binance announced that they would buy the company, then pulled out of the deal, saying that after some due diligence, they decided it would not be a good investment.

“As a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations, we have decided that we will not pursue the potential acquisition of http://FTX.com,” Binance said on Twitter. “In the beginning, our hope was to be able to support FTX’s customers to provide liquidity, but the issues are beyond our control or ability to help. Every time a major player in an industry fails, retail consumers will suffer. We have seen over the last several years that the crypto ecosystem is becoming more resilient and we believe in time that outliers that misuse user funds will be weeded out by the free market. As regulatory frameworks are developed and as the industry continues to evolve toward greater decentralization, the ecosystem will grow stronger,” Binance said.


Part of the issue for Binance is that Alameda Research, helmed by Bankman-Fried’s girlfriend, holds a great deal of their assets in FTT, and FTX had invested their customers’ funds into Alameda through a “back door,” without oversight. “Late on Friday evening, it has since been confirmed that a total of around $10 billion was moved from FTX to Alameda Research by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF),” Cryptoslate reported. Bitcoin Archive tweeted this out, which Cryptoslate noted was “used to move assets in the billions of dollars without triggering alerts to staff and external auditors.” “It’s fascinating to see that the majority of the net equity in the Alameda business is actually FTX’s own centrally controlled and printed-out-of-thin-air token,” said Cory Klippsten, CEO of investment platform Swan Bitcoin.

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Must Read?! “Dulles went so far as to send a rescue team to save Wolff when the general’s villa was surrounded by Italian partisans.”

America’s Neo-Nazi Bedfellows In Ukraine Latest In a Long Line (Tony Cox)

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was furious when he found out in March 1945 that his supposed World War II ally, Washington, was negotiating with the German Nazis behind his back. In fact, by the accounts of some historians, American spy and future CIA director Allen Dulles essentially kicked off the Cold War when he held secret talks with Waffen SS General Karl Wolff as Hitler’s regime was nearing its collapse. Stalin, US President Franklin Roosevelt, and UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill had agreed that they would accept only unconditional surrender from the Nazis because of the Hitler regime’s monstrous crimes. When the Dulles-Wolff talks came to light, FDR repeatedly and falsely told Stalin that no one was negotiating with the Germans. The Georgian generalissimo was unconvinced and suspected that his Western allies were maneuvering to contain the USSR and occupy territory that might otherwise fall to the Red Army.

The Soviets had reason to be suspicious. Some in Washington, including Dulles, viewed the USSR as America’s biggest long-term threat even as the countries worked together to defeat Germany. As confirmed by documents that were finally declassified more than half a century later, US intelligence agencies were soon to hire upward of 1,000 Nazis as Cold War spies. By then, America already had a history of finding common cause against Moscow with unseemly allies. As the Soviets remembered well, the US had invaded Russia in 1918 in a failed effort to help overthrow the Bolshevik government. At the time, Washington was allied with White Army counter-revolutionaries, some of whom had a nasty taste for pogroms and other murderous atrocities.

Even as then-President Woodrow Wilson moralized to world leaders about self-determination and opposing external aggression – principles that would be applied only according to US self-interest in the generations ahead – he sent American forces to intervene in the Russian Civil War. He was to set a precedent that has continued to play out to this day, from Germany to Central Asia to the current Ukraine crisis. The pattern was clear: Portray America as the virtuous champion of freedom while working with anyone — however abhorrent their deeds and views might be — as long as they share Washington’s burning desire to hurt Russia.

In 1945, Dulles got his way with Wolff, formerly Heinrich Himmler’s right-hand man. The general and his group of SS officers, which was called the Black Order, agreed to surrender northern Italy to Allied forces. The deal didn’t avail much for the US, coming just six days before the full German surrender, and it sowed seeds of distrust with the Soviets and other allies. For his part, Wolff was spared the gallows, as the Nuremberg prosecutors mysteriously took him off their list of major war criminals and treated him as a “witness” to Nazi atrocities, rather than a perpetrator, according to historians. Dulles went so far as to send a rescue team to save Wolff when the general’s villa was surrounded by Italian partisans.

[..] Obama’s administration offered no condemnation when at least 48 people were killed and hundreds injured in an attack on anti-Euromaidan protestors in Odessa. Most of the victims were burned to death by a far-right mob when they tried to take shelter in the city’s union hall. Others were shot or beaten when they tried to escape the burning building. Ukraine’s fascist Right Sector group reacted by celebrating the massacre as “yet another bright page in our fatherland’s history.” Ukrainian MP Lesya Orobets, who had been praised by US media outlet Daily Beast as a “rising star” of the anti-Yanukovych opposition, also celebrated the killings, reportedly calling the Odessa incident a “liquidation” of pro-Russia enemies.

To this day, the perpetrators of the massacre haven’t been held accountable. The Council of Europe concluded in November 2020 that the Kiev government had failed to properly investigate and prosecute those responsible for the killings. Ukraine has continued to embrace its World War II Nazi collaborators, including Stepan Bandera, who is venerated in public marches. Two years after the coup, one of the main avenues in Kiev was renamed Stepan Bandera Street. Lviv also boasts a Stepan Bandera Street. In the eyes of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, one of Yanukovich’s sins was his decision to revoke an earlier government declaration honoring Bandera as an official “Hero of Ukraine.”

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“Everything is back to normal, right? Wrong. Everything is not back to normal. Everything is absolutely New Normal.”

The Road to Totalitarianism -Revisited- (CJ Hopkins)

It feels like it’s finally over, doesn’t it, the whole “apocalyptic pandemic” thing? I mean, really, really over this time. Not like all those other times when you thought it was over, but it wasn’t over, and was like the end of those Alien movies, where it seems like Ridley has finally escaped, but the alien is hiding out in the shuttle, or the escape pod, or Ridley’s intestinal tract. But this time doesn’t feel like that. This time it feels like it’s really, really over. Go out and take a look around. Hardly anyone is wearing masks anymore (except where masks are mandatory) or being coerced into submitting to “vaccinations” (except where “vaccination” is mandatory), and the hordes of hate-drunk New Normal fanatics who demanded that “the Unvaccinated” be segregated, censored, fired from their jobs, and otherwise demonized and persecuted, have all fallen silent (except for those who haven’t).


Everything is back to normal, right? Wrong. Everything is not back to normal. Everything is absolutely New Normal. What is over is the “shock-and-awe” phase, which was never meant to go on forever. It was always only meant to get us here. Where, you’re probably asking, is “here”? “Here” is a place where the new official ideology has been firmly established as our new “reality,” woven into the fabric of normal everyday life. No, not everywhere, just everywhere that matters. (Do you really think the global-capitalist ruling classes care what people in Lakeland, Florida, Elk River, Idaho, or some village in Sicily believe about “reality”?) Yes, most government restrictions have been lifted, mainly because they are no longer necessary, but in centers of power throughout the West, in political, corporate, and cultural spheres, in academia, the mainstream media, and so on, the New Normal has become “reality,” or, in other words, “just the way it is,” which is the ultimate goal of every ideology.

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Sometimes I don’t recognize the world I live in.

WTF is “gender-responsive climate action?”

White House Launches ‘Climate Gender Equity Fund’ (RT)

US President Joe Biden has announced the launch of a Climate Gender Equity Fund to promote female “climate leaders.” He unveiled the new initiative at the United Nations COP 27 conference on Friday. A partnership between online retail company Amazon and government agency USAID, the fund will “leverage private sector contributions to provide women climate leaders with technical skills, networks and capital to develop and scale climate solutions,” the White House noted in a statement. To help solve climate change, according to Amazon worldwide sustainability vice president Kara Hurst, “we must address the gender inequalities that persist in climate finance, and ensure female entrepreneurs have an equal seat at the table and access to the funding, networks and technical support they need to scale climate solutions.”

Outlining the gravity of gender inequity in the climate space, Amazon revealed that “female-founded companies typically receive a fraction of total venture capital, and that percentage fell during the pandemic.” The online shopping giant, which saw its profits skyrocket during the pandemic, promised to supply an additional $50 million from its Climate Pledge Fund for investments in women-founded and -led climate technology firms. Apart from that, it is contributing $3 million toward the Climate Gender Equity Fund’s initial seed funding. The fund launches with $6 million in total, with USAID matching Amazon’s $3 million contribution.


The White House announcement states that the fund was also “enabled” by a $21 million appropriation by USAID from the Biden administration’s Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund with the aim of underscoring its “commitment to gender-responsive climate action.” The latter program, established last year with $100 million in taxpayer funds, an amount set to double for this year, is supposed to “advance economic security for women and girls globally.” A $430 billion spending package Biden signed in August included $386 billion in green energy subsidies and tax credits. The president’s speech at COP27 committed to several more ambitious green initiatives, including “establishing an international Climate Hub for climate-smart agriculture,” tightening emissions standards on the oil and natural gas industry, and using Ukraine as a showcase for small modular reactor (SMR) “advanced nuclear” technology.

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“..Borrell’s extraordinary Pollyanna-like assertion that in Europe and the West “everything works” and that the “garden” nations are havens of political, economic, and social stability.”

The ‘Garden Vs Jungle’ Worldview Is Not Only Racist, It’s Delusional (Hryce)

[..] let us start with Borrell’s extraordinary Pollyanna-like assertion that in Europe and the West “everything works” and that the “garden” nations are havens of political, economic, and social stability. This pronouncement will no doubt have come as a surprise to many citizens in Europe and the West. Has Borrell not noticed the recent rise of powerful right-wing political movements in a number of European countries? Is he not aware of the recent election results in Italy and Sweden? Have Borrell’s advisors not informed him of the political instability that has engulfed the United Kingdom in recent months, let alone the crisis in democracy that has crippled the United States for the past two years?

Has Borrell not noticed the dramatic recent rise in energy prices; rising inflation; rising interest rates; long-term wage stagnation; and the looming economic recession that is predicted to engulf many Western nations in the near future? Has Borrell not seen the tens of thousands of demonstrators marching in European capital cities in recent months? Is he unaware of the effects that EU austerity programs have had in many of the bloc’s member nations in recent years? Does Borrell really believe that the “garden” nations will sail through the upcoming European winter unscathed?


Has Borrell never heard of the so-called ‘culture wars’? Has he not noticed the collapse of liberal institutions and values throughout the West in recent decades? Has the immigration crisis that has bedevilled Europe in recent years, and has recently engulfed the United Kingdom, not yet been brought to his attention? Borrell, of course, pointedly fails to mention that all of the problems listed above have been severely exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In fact, Borrell does not seem to appreciate that the increasing political and economic instability within the “garden” nations makes it increasingly difficult – if not impossible – for them to pursue his misguided foreign policy agenda.

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“From Dec. 5, tankers and shipping insurance linked to EU and G7 countries — which dominate oil shipping globally — will be barred from trading Russian crude unless those volumes are sold under the price cap, as yet undetermined.”

Washington Attempts to Bully India into Cutting Ties with Russia (NC)

For months the US has repeatedly tried to coerce India into cutting ties with Russia, thereby abandoning its national interests. New Delhi, however, continues to spurn American attempts to subject its economy to Washington’s dictates. The latest fuss concerns the G7 price cap on Russian oil and EU and UK bans on shipping and related services for Russian crude. India continues to have no interest in joining the US-led initiative as it gets a steep discount on oil from Russia and wants to maintain the relationship with a long-time strategic partner. Indian Foreign Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was just in Moscow on Nov. 8 to discuss continued sales of oil. From the South China Morning Post:

“India’s foreign minister hailed New Delhi’s “strong and steady” relationship with Moscow on Tuesday, during his first visit there since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar also declared India’s intention to continue to buy Russian oil, again disregarding the US appeal to allies and partners to isolate Russia from the global markets.” The G-7 plans are likely to send oil prices higher (despite US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claiming the opposite) and reduce tanker availability, both of which will threaten India’s energy security and hurt its economy as India is the third-largest consumer and importer of oil worldwide. Russia has said it will not sell to any countries that participate in the price cap scheme, and Jaishankar has repeatedly stated that India cannot afford to buy oil at high prices – at least not without undermining its economic growth, which is forecast to be 6.1 percent in 2023, the fastest-growing major economy in the world.

According to Energy Intelligence: “Russia emerged as India’s top crude supplier in October, shipping over 900,000 barrels per day or roughly a fifth of India’s demand. The two countries’ biggest concern is ensuring that Russian oil continues to flow after the Dec. 5 EU and UK bans and related G7 price cap. But despite Jaishankar’s bullish stance in Moscow, India’s state refiners have not placed orders for crude lifting beyond Dec. 5 due to uncertainties about whether shipping and insurance will be available, Energy Intelligence understands. And a recent attempt by an Indian buyer to use the price cap in negotiations with a Russian seller prompted the latter to abandon the deal, market sources said.”


The ongoing lack of clarity on the G-7 could be by design. Russian oil exports have already begun to dip, and Bruce Paulsen, a sanctions expert and partner at law firm Seward & Kissel, told American Shipper, “ If guidance on [price cap] compliance doesn’t come soon, some industry players may sit on the sidelines until they can determine that shipments under the price cap are safe.” The US, in a neat sleight of hand, quit pressuring India to adhere to the price cap, and Yellen now says Washington is “happy” for New Delhi to continue buying as much Russian oil as it wants, including at prices above a G7-imposed price cap. But there are just a few caveats: India wouldn’t be able to use western insurance, finance, or maritime services to transport the oil. “Russia is going to find it very difficult to continue shipping as much oil as they have done when the EU stops buying Russian oil,” Yellen told Reuters on Friday. “They’re going to be heavily in search of buyers, and many buyers are reliant on Western services.”

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You don’t say.

IMF Says Global Economic Outlook Getting ‘Gloomier’ (Az.)

The global economic outlook is even gloomier than projected last month, the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday, citing a steady worsening in purchasing manager surveys in recent months, Reuters reported. It blamed the darker outlook on tightening monetary policy triggered by persistently high and broad-based inflation, weak growth momentum in China, and ongoing supply disruptions and food insecurity caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a blog prepared for a summit of G20 leaders in Indonesia, the IMF said recent high-frequency indicators “confirm that the outlook is gloomier,” particularly in Europe. It said recent purchasing manager indices that gauge manufacturing and services activity signaled weakness in most Group of 20 major economies, with economic activity set to contract while inflation remained stubbornly high.

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They will simply nominate Putin for the Grinch. Everything that goes wrong with the western world is now exclusively his fault. And they can all hide their failures behind him.

German Retailers Face Nightmare Before Christmas (RT)

Shop owners in Germany are worried about the upcoming Christmas season, expecting a slump in sales in price-adjusted terms, as double-digit inflation driven by energy prices forced people to shop less in the third quarter, the German Retail Association (HDE) says. According to the latest report, sales will face a 4% drop in price-adjusted terms, despite an expected increase by 5.4% year-on-year in nominal terms projected for the last two months of 2022. The association surveyed 500 companies, and 70% of the respondents said they expect worse business conditions in the upcoming Christmas season than last year.


“There is a great deal of uncertainty among both companies and customers in view of the difficult situation with enormous energy price increases. High inflation and poor consumer sentiment do not really bode well for the Christmas season,” HDE Managing Director Stefan Genth said. In October, the German Federal Statistical Office reported that the harmonized inflation rate in Europe’s largest economy climbed to 11.6%, raising fears that the country will slide into a recession this winter.

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To repeat @JordanSchachtel:”Elon is blowing things up at Twitter because it is necessary to save the company. The old Twitter was a state-sponsored propaganda operation. Twitter as a private company will not have the privilege of unlimited resources.”

That is what Musk is up against. And of course the press.

Twitter Starts Massive Reductions In Contractors (RT)

After laying off half its staff earlier this month, Twitter has started culling its vast ranks of contract staff, sources confirmed to Axios, Report informs.Many contractors’ status has been in limbo since Twitter cut half its staff earlier this month, with some not knowing whom to even report to, since their counterparts inside the company have been laid off. Now some worry about their final paychecks since their teams no longer have any full-time Twitter employees to sign off on their time cards, sources tell Axios. The contractor cuts were noted earlier by Platformer’s Casey Newton. In at least some cases, if not all, workers did not get any direct communication from Twitter saying that their work had ended.


They instead found out by seeing their access to Twitter computer systems had been shut off. This parallels the scene when full-time employees found out they had lost their job, not from a promised e-mail on Friday, but overnight on Thursday as they lost access to e-mail and other corporate computing systems. Twitter has since reached out to re-hire some full-time employees after realizing their skills were critical to existing projects, including new features that were a priority to the company.

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“Are you suggesting the senator will abuse his political power to attack me?”

US Senator Threatens Elon Musk (RT)

US Senator Edward Markey has responded to a snarky tweet by Twitter owner Elon Musk by threatening congressional intervention if the billionaire doesn’t “fix” his companies to the lawmaker’s satisfaction. The row began on Friday, when Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, demanded answers from Musk as to how a Washington Post reporter was able to create a verified account on the platform impersonating the senator. “I’m asking for answers from Elon Musk, who is putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation. Twitter must explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again.” Musk, who acquired Twitter in a $44 billion takeover that was completed late last month, replied to Markey on Sunday, saying, “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody.” He posted another tweet asking why Markey’s profile picture shows him wearing a mask.

The Tesla CEO’s flippant response clearly didn’t sit well with the career politician, who warned, “One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies, or Congress will.” Markey’s threat came amid leftist allegations that Musk’s takeover would make Twitter a “direct threat to public safety” by allowing “harmful” content. President Joe Biden, also a Democrat, suggested last week that his administration may need to investigate whether Musk’s cooperation with foreign countries created a “national security threat.”


Reacting to Musk’s spat with Markey, a Democrat activist group called People for Bernie said it was a bad idea for the billionaire to “troll a high-ranking senator with a history of taking down rich people.” Musk replied, “Are you suggesting the senator will abuse his political power to attack me?” Journalist Glenn Greenwald reacted by posting a 2020 clip of Markey calling for increased social media censorship. “Here’s Senator Markey demanding tech companies censor in accordance with his political views, all in the context of his party threatening social media companies with legal and regulatory reprisals if they fail to obey their censorship orders.”

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Just stop the nonsense. We’re tired of it.

COVID-19 Mortality in England ‘Extremely Rare’ Among Under-20s (ET)

Deaths from COVID-19 remain “extremely rare” in people under the age of 20, according to a study of follow-up data in the UK. Between March 2020 and December 2021, while there were 185 deaths in England among children and young people (CYP) within 100 days of a lab-confirmed COVID-19 infection, fewer than half died directly because of the virus, the study found. The peer-reviewed study, published on Nov. 8 on the PLOS Medicine Journal website, was conducted by researchers from the UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA). Studying the 22-month follow-up data on all 6,790 under-20s deaths, the team corroborated findings from a number of previous analyses that looked at data from a shorter period of time.

Excluding two stillbirth/intrauterine deaths, 81 (43 percent) deaths were attributed to COVID-19. It accounts for 1.2 percent of all-cause CYP deaths, with a COVID-19 infection fatality rate of 7 per million (using estimated infections number) and an overall mortality rate of 6 per million (estimated CYP population). Of the 81 deaths from COVID-19, one in four (20) were otherwise healthy, while 61 had “significant underlying health conditions,” including neuro-disability, immunocompromising conditions, Down syndrome, Edward syndrome, chronic heart disease, and four premature birth, meaning the COVID-19 mortality rate for otherwise healthy CYP was 1.5 per million. COVID-19 deaths were also clustered among older teens and infants, with more than half (47) occurring among those aged between 16 and 19, and 22 under a year old.


Eight children from the 1- to 4-year-old group died from COVID-19, along with 12 children aged between 5 and 11, and 15 children aged between 12 and 15. More than half (45) of the COVID-19 deaths occurred when the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus was dominant, while 21 died during the wild-type-dominant period, and 15 died during the Alpha wave. But the Delta variant was the least deadly in terms of infection mortality rate (6 per million) compared to Alpha (8 per million), and the wild-type (10 per million) as it was more infectious than the previous variants. The Omicron variant, which became dominant this year, wasn’t included in the study. Dr. Shamez Ladhani, pediatric infectious disease consultant at St. George’s Hospital London and consultant epidemiologist at the UKHSA who co-authored the study, told The Telegraph that “emerging data suggest that the Omicron variant is even less fatal in children compared to previous variants.”

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Fitts

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burzinsky

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nov 122022
 



Ivan Aivazovsky Palace rains in Venice by moonlight 1878

 

 

Me, personally, I can’t get rid of the notion that all the stablecoins and shitcoins and altcoins that have been initiated and “legalized”, are just a way of “shining” bitcoin in a light of uninvestable darkness. And for that, a bunch of “trading places” (pun intended) were called for. One of the biggest, FTX, just went from $32 billion to $0 in a single day. Not even Enron could beat that.

Dr. D., yes him again, ties together an interesting history behind it. Which in turn ties into the DNC too. And Dr. D. doesn’t even mention yet that just this morning, FDX claimed they were hacked: “FTX Possibly Hacked, $895m Drained From Customer Wallets.” Should I believe that? How do you drain $895m out of $0?

“Early Saturday morning, Mr Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive officer and FTX commenced Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings due to a massive liquidity crunch. A rescue deal with rival exchange Binance fell through earlier this week, precipitating crypto’s highest-profile collapse in recent years. Mr Bankman-Fried’s quant trading business (aka quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm) Alameda Research has also filed for bankruptcy.”

Here’s thinking that the DNC links will sink this as a story. Bankman-Fried will be renditioned to Barbados -or Gitmo-, and we all live happily ever after. Except for those who put their money into FTX. But then, what were they thinking in the first place? Crazy thought: was Hunter Biden a investor? Or The Big Guy?

 

 

Dr. D.: We really need to keep a rogue’s gallery. It’s like Dick Tracy and Batman. Bernie Made Off. Mr. Kash-n-Karry. Sam the Bank Man, Fried. You can’t make this up.

Am I hearing this right, FTX was invented 16 days after the Biden Campaign? In a foreign nation not of his birth or residency, the Bahamas? His mother is involved with Vote Blue and other DNC money people? Then within a month or two, Sam has made so many billions he was the single largest donor to Biden? With this A-Mazing multi-billion influx that come out of nowhere? But everybody, all the “good” people instantly and telepathically KNEW they had, HAD to invest there? People like the Teacher’s Union?

And other exchanges knew they needed to invest too! Like Citi just KNEW the best investment was to buy Morgan stock, to give money, capital, to their direct competition. Really? When does it happen that Home Depot’s top investment is Lowes?

And how did “all the ‘right’ people” know to invest? Well The Bank Man was hanging out in a group house,coding away like any college kids! Financial knowledge, level = pizza. Give this man $10,000,000,000.00!!! Shut up and take my money! Why? Um, well, it seems Bank Man is related not only to DNC funding and the Biden administration, but also to Gary Gensler, the proposed and self-styled REGULATOR of all Crypto. The one who tied up Morgan, Barclays, BoA’s co-project XRP and has frozen it in the courts, unresolved, for YEARS? Who, so it would seem, would like to take down not just XRP but the entire Crypto world as a concept and going concern? A competition to his backers in Stocks and Banking?

So all the kids of all the Regulators, politicians, bankers, insiders, all HAPPEN to be involved in what may be the biggest money laundering, heist, and political funneling operation maybe ever? Where’d the Pension money of the Teacher’s Union go? Where go? It was there, an “Exchange” takes a FEE for each transaction. Your MONEY, like SIPC, is YOURS. It’s your account, your trades. They just facilitate them. It’s a money-minting machine, no need for leverage.

But like MF Global, they just took ALL the money in ALL the accounts and put it in their own? On day 1? AND all the money from “the Usual Suspects”, SoftBank, Pardigm, Sequoia? Their own co-company Alameda, and another largest insider scam ever called “Tether”? Tether being another insider-of-insiders, convicted felons, law-never-touches group like EOS (? check me?) was?

Yes. That’s not an accident, that’s not a blow up, that’s not an over leverage, that’s pre-meditated THEFT. Arranged by Gary Gensler, DNC, and other insiders. From day 1, since they haven’t been around long enough to slowly drift into danger. They were invented yesterday.

So if you wonder where the Ukraine money is going, to be back-laundered into the midterms, BY the same party GIVING Ukraine the money, here you go.

Says the Sam: “Oops. Sorry. I f—ked up. I should have done better.” Oh, in that case, well I guess no problem! We won’t look into your extensive, amazing, and some might say “unbelievable” list of insiders, contacts, and arrangers. All of whose money was stolen more or less the instant it hit your books. As one big amazing “accident.”

I’m sure the media will cover all this shortly because of the salacious names and DNC careers involved. NOT.

Okay, given this, who blew the whistle on them? This scam was going perfectly: who blew it? The GOP’s like-kind fund? But after the election, not before? Powell? Was it really organic ponzi and they just don’t care, didn’t even try to cover it? Who?

And it’s not the “Money”. They can print the money. You know what they can’t print? ETH. BTC. So when you’re an exchange and scalp coins as they fly across your books, and when you vanish, where’s the money, but more importantly, WHERE ARE THE COINS?

Why? Because you need ACTUAL coins to manipulate the market. You can get a run started, it’ll blow the stops and start a cascade collapse, but to get it started, you have to have an ACTUAL ante of ACTUAL product. That’s the cost of manipulation. And the blow up of FTX means someone, these same insiders who wish to halt and/or destroy all crypto as a concept, have the nuclear pre-charge somewhere to make a run on the markets.

 

 

 

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