Apr 012024
 
 April 1, 2024  Posted by at 8:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


Caravaggio The Denial of Saint Peter 1610

 

Easter Becomes the Latest Flash Point in American Politics (Turley)
Jack Smith Handed a ‘Blank Check’ to Target Trump, Lawyers Argue (ET)
Jack Smith Seeks to Shield Names of Potential Witnesses in Trump Case (ET)
How America’s Top Spymaster Sees The World Is Rather Disappointing (Amar)
US Congressman Calls For ‘Hiroshima and Nagasaki’ in Gaza and Ukraine (RT)
A Genocide Foretold (Chris Hedges)
UK Govt Lawyers Conclude Israel In Breach Of Humanitarian Law (RT)
Biden Claims Arab States Are Ready to Recognize Israel (Sp.)
Moscow Demands That Kiev Surrender Terrorism Suspects (RT)
US House To Consider Ukraine Aid Bill In April (TASS)
Ukraine Turned Into Afghan Drug Lords Paradise Under Western Watch (Sp.)
Why Russia Didn’t Join NATO (Sp.)
The Assange Hearing Permission Appeal Judgment (Craig Murray)
61 Unexpected PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ Found in Food Packaging (SciAm)

 

 


Mr. Fish – Genocide

 

 

Sachs Russia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1774186219703869896

 

 

CCP bridge

 

 

 

 

Habba

 

 

Snowden: “Warren Buffett, the billionaire head of Berkshire Hathaway, will probably go down as the greatest investor in history… Berkshire shares have seen an average annual return of 20.0%…”

Meanwhile:


just some members of congress outperforming the greatest investor in history. we are surely fortunate to be represented by such extraordinary talents

 

 

 

 

Pot and kettle:

“Sadly, it’s unsurprising politicians are seeking to divide and weaken our country with cruel, hateful, and dishonest rhetoric..”

Easter Becomes the Latest Flash Point in American Politics (Turley)

It often seems like there is nothing left today that is not a battleground over our political and social differences. We can now add Easter. The Biden White House triggered a firestorm by picking Good Friday to announce that Easter Sunday will now be the “Transgender Day of Visibility.” At the same time, families objected to regulations on Easter egg designs, barring children from including any religious imagery or references on this religious holiday. There are even objections to the use of eggs at the annual White House egg roll. Despite the criticism from various politicians, including Speaker Mike Johnson, Jean-Pierre went on X Saturday to reaffirm that Sunday is to be designated as the “Transgender Day of Visibility.” Transgender Visibility Day actually began 15 years ago and many have noted that the overlap with Easter Sunday this year is a coincidence.

President Joe Biden has made no comment on the controversy and issued his Easter proclamation[..] White House spokesperson Andrew Bates did respond on Saturday: “As a Christian who celebrates Easter with Family, President Biden stands for bringing people together and upholding the dignity and freedoms of every American. Sadly, it’s unsurprising politicians are seeking to divide and weaken our country with cruel, hateful, and dishonest rhetoric. President Biden will never abuse his faith for political purposes or for profit.” In the meantime, the White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll is being called a celebration of “National Guard Families.” The 2024 “Call for Youth Art” flyer states that “Children should depict on an egg template (see Art Submission form) a snapshot of their life – a favorite activity, scenery in your state, your military family, a day-in-your life, etc.” However, under its restrictions list, the flyer noted, “The Submission must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements.”

One can understand the desire to bar “Let’s Go Brandon” eggs. Moreover, the Easter egg event has long been treated as open to people of all faiths and background. It has been treated more as a celebration of spring. However, some families have objected that the holiday does have a religious origin and that the bar on any religious references like a cross or other symbols is an affront. As a legal matter, there is no bar on religious displays in such White House events, which have included such symbols in celebrations of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim holidays. On the positive side, the egg roll will involve eggs. PETA has asked the First Lady to substitute potatoes for the eggs. PETA President Ingrid Newkirk objected that:

“Children love animals and would be sad to learn that the eggs used for fun and games at the White House come from tormented hens whose lives are spent in cages that afford them less space than a standard sheet of typing paper. Easter should be a time of renewal and joy for all sentient beings—and that means hens, too.” By having children decorate and roll spuds, Newkirk suggested, the First Lady could remove these little “cholesterol bombs” from the diet of children. Besides, she added, “potatoes are cheaper and healthier than eggs and leave birds in peace.” The head of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) added his own warning to people not to eat whole eggs and to cut back on the sweets to protect their health. However, the Easter Bunny appears to have been vindicated this week in a scientific study that found that eating 12 eggs a week did not increase one’s cholesterol. Indeed, it found possible heart benefits to egg consumption. That proposal was clearly rejected for now.

Read more …

“Mr. Smith’s actions as a notionally independent United States attorney are beyond the scope of what the Supreme Court has permitted, and therefore, his actions are unlawful..”

Jack Smith Handed a ‘Blank Check’ to Target Trump, Lawyers Argue (ET)

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump argued in his classified documents case that special prosecutor Jack Smith has been given too many resources while other parts of the Department of Justice haven’t. The former president faces dozens of charges that he allegedly illegally retained classified materials after he left office in 2021. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has sought to delay the trial, while U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has not set a firm date for when it will start. His attorneys earlier this week argued that Mr. Smith’s team was handed “a blank check” that has imperiled the former president’s rights. “To be clear, offering the Special Counsel a blank check has harmed President Trump’s substantial rights, and DOJ [Department of Justice] simply could not have funded the entirety of Jack Smith’s expansive politically motivated witch hunt from an alternative source,” Trump attorney Christopher Kise wrote in court to Judge Cannon earlier this week, adding:

“Since the founding, resource constraints on prosecutors have been regarded as an indispensable guarantee of substantive fairness.” Because there are no constraints, the lawyer wrote that the special counsel’s office can “engage in an unabashed political crusade with zero accountability” against President Trump. Mr. Smith was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022 to pursue the classified documents case and the federal election case in Washington. “The Special Counsel’s Office is pursuing two different cases in two jurisdictions in order to maximize interference in the ongoing presidential election,” Mr. Kise wrote. “This tactic is the luxury of a prosecutor facing no resource constraints. And it is far from a forgone conclusion.” The special prosecutor’s team has yet to file a response to the court motion.

Later in the motion, Mr. Kise wrote that other parts of the DOJ have been denied funding, including targeting Big Tech antitrust cases. “In 2019, for example, DOJ was forced to prioritize its antitrust review of Google over Apple because it could not afford to pursue both,” he wrote. Earlier, his attorneys and third parties have argued that Mr. Smith’s appointment by the U.S. attorney general violated the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause, noting that Congress has to approve his team’s expenditures. Last week, a law professor submitted a “friend of the court,” or amicus, brief in the case, arguing that Mr. Smith is not an “officer of the United States” due to how he was appointed.

“Simply being appointed by a department head does not elevate that position to the status of an inferior ‘Officer of the United States.’ Indeed, the mere fact that a person is appointed by the Head of a Department does not make that position an office at all,” Professor Josh Blackman of the South Texas College of Law in Houston wrote, referring to a brief that Mr. Smith had filed in which he described himself as an “inferior officer.” “Instead, precedents … provide that an office must be continuous.” “Mr. Smith’s actions as a notionally independent United States attorney are beyond the scope of what the Supreme Court has permitted, and therefore, his actions are unlawful,” he also wrote.

Read more …

“Mr. Smith also wants redacted, in addition to the names of potential government witnesses, “any pronouns revealing their gender..”

Jack Smith Seeks to Shield Names of Potential Witnesses in Trump Case (ET)

Special counsel Jack Smith on March 29 asked a federal judge to approve redactions to filings made by a co-defendant of former President Donald Trump. The briefs submitted by Walt Nauta, the co-defendant, contain information that should not be made public, Mr. Smith told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. That includes the names of people that government officials may call as witnesses in a trial, the special counsel, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, said. “Witness safety and privacy are paramount pretrial. The limited redactions of the names satisfy the good cause standard established in Chicago Tribune Co. v. Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., as well as the higher standard requiring a compelling interest for the redactions and the redactions being narrowly tailored,” Mr. Smith said in his request.

The Chicago Tribune case, decided in 2001 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, hinged on a federal rule that enables keeping information secret if there is “good cause” to do so. “Federal courts have superimposed a balancing of interests approach for Rule 26’s good cause requirement,” that ruling stated. “This standard requires the district court to balance the party’s interest in obtaining access against the other party’s interest in keeping the information confidential.” Mr. Smith also wants redacted, in addition to the names of potential government witnesses, “any pronouns revealing their gender,” according to the new filing.

And the special counsel is asking that information about sealed grand jury proceedings be kept secret, including one proceeding that happened before he was appointed. The proposed redactions come after Judge Cannon, who was appointed by President Trump, outlined a schedule for the parties in the case with respect to redactions. The proposals are for two filings from Mr. Nauta—a reply to the government on his assertion that the prosecution of him has been selective and vindictive, and a motion to suppress evidence. Other recent documents from Mr. Nauta and President Trump that have not been placed on the public docket do not require redactions, Mr. Smith said. Those documents include President Trump’s briefs in support of a motion to dismiss the charges based on prosecutorial misconduct and selective and vindictive prosecution.

The actual motions to dismiss based on selective and vindictive prosecution have still not been made available to the public, although Mr. Smith’s team described some of its contents in another recent filing. Prosecutors said that Mr. Nauta in his motion focused on a conversation that his attorney had over coffee with one of the prosecutors. During that discussion, the prosecutor was quoted as saying the government would not “accept anything less than Mr. Nauta’s full cooperation” in exchange for not being charged. Prosecutors say the decision to charge Mr. Nauta after he declined to cooperate does not “amount to vindictiveness as a matter of law.” In a related filing, Mr. Nauta said the government was focused only on himself and another former aide of President Trump while ignoring a “universe of other comparators who, unlike Mr. Nauta, were likewise never prosecuted.”

Read more …

Burns is a puppet.

How America’s Top Spymaster Sees The World Is Rather Disappointing (Amar)

There is no doubt that this CIA director is a smart and experienced man principally capable of realism, unlike all too many others in the current American elite. Famously, he warned in 2008, when serving as ambassador to Moscow, that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).” That makes the glaring flaws in this big-picture survey all the more remarkable. Burns is, obviously, correct when he observes that the US – and the world as a whole – is facing a historically rare moment of “profound” change in the global order. And – with one exception which we will return to – it would be unproductive, perhaps even a little churlish, to quibble over his ideologically biased terminology. His mislabeling of Russia as “revanchist,” for instance, has a petty ring to it. “Resurgent” would be a more civil as well as more truthful term, capturing the fact that the country is simply returning to its normal international minimum status (for at least the last three hundred years), namely that of a second-to-none great power.

Yet Burns’ agenda is more important than his terminology. While it may be complex, parts of it are as clear as can be: He is eager (perhaps desperate) to prevent Washington from ending its massive aid for Ukraine – a battle he is likely to lose. In the Middle East, he wants to focus Western aggression on Iran. He may get his will there, but that won’t be a winning strategy because, in part thanks to multipolar trend setters, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, Iran’s escape from the isolation that the US has long imposed on it is already inevitable. Regarding China, Burns’ real target is a competing faction of American hawks, namely those who argue that, bluntly put, Washington should write off its losses in Ukraine and concentrate all its firepower on China. Burns wants to persuade his readers that the US can have both its big fight against China and its proxy war against Russia.

He is also engaged in a massive act of CIA boosterism, clearly aiming to increase the clout of the already inordinately powerful state-within-a-state he happens to run himself. And last but not least, the spy-in-chief has unearthed one of the oldest tricks in the subversion and destabilization playbook: Announcing loudly that his CIA is on a recruiting spree in Russia, he seeks to promote a little paranoia in Moscow. Good luck attempting to pull that one on the country that gave us the term “agentura.” Moreover, after the horrific terror attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow, it is fair to assume that Burns regrets having boasted about the CIA expanding its “work” in Russia. Not a good look, not at all. What matters more, though, than his verbal sallies and his intriguingly straightforward, even blunt aims, are three astonishingly crude errors:

First, Burns insists on reading the emerging outcome of the war in Ukraine as a “failure on many levels,” for Russia, revealing its, as he believes, economic, political, and military weakness. Yet, as the acknowledged American economist James K. Galbraith has recently reiterated, the West’s economic war on Russia has backfired. The Russian economy is now stronger, more resilient, and independent of the West than never before. As to the military, Burns for instance, gleefully counts the tanks that Russia has lost and fails to note the ones it is building at a rapid rate not matched anywhere inside NATO. In general, he fails to mention just how worried scores of Western experts have come to be, realizing that Moscow is overseeing a massive and effective expansion of military production. A curious oversight for an intelligence professional. He also seems to miss just how desperate Ukraine’s situation has become on the ground.

Read more …

“We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid..”

US Congressman Calls For ‘Hiroshima and Nagasaki’ in Gaza and Ukraine (RT)

Michigan congressman Tim Walberg believes Washington should not waste money on humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza or Ukraine, and instead focus on supporting Israel and Kiev’s war efforts, to achieve “quick” victories. Walberg made his remarks during a meeting with members of the public in Dundee, Michigan last week. In a video posted on social media on March 25, the Republican congressman criticized President Joe Biden’s policies, telling a small audience that the US should better spend Gaza aid money on supporting Israel, which he labeled Washington’s “greatest ally, arguably, anywhere in the world.” “We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick,” Walberg could be heard saying.

“The same should be in Ukraine. Defeat Putin quick. Instead of 80% in Ukraine being used for humanitarian purposes, it should be 80-100% to wipe out Russian forces,” he added. After his statements went viral, Walberg claimed that his words were misreported and misinterpreted, arguing that he was merely speaking metaphorically and did not advocate for the actual use of nuclear weapons. “In a shortened clip, I used a metaphor to convey the need for both Israel and Ukraine to win their wars as swiftly as possible, without putting American troops in harm’s way,” Walberg said in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. “The use of this metaphor, along with the removal of context, distorted my message, but I fully stand by these beliefs and stand by our allies,” he added, arguing that the quicker these conflicts end, the “fewer innocent lives will be caught in the crossfire.”

Read more …

“Every horrifying act of Israel’s genocide has been telegraphed in advance. It has been for decades..”

A Genocide Foretold (Chris Hedges)

There are no surprises in Gaza. Every horrifying act of Israel’s genocide has been telegraphed in advance. It has been for decades. The dispossession of Palestinians of their land is the beating heart of Israel’s settler colonial project. This dispossession has had dramatic historical moments — 1948 and 1967 — when huge parts of historic Palestine were seized and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. Dispossession has also occurred in increments — the slow-motion theft of land and steady ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The incursion on Oct. 7 into Israel by Hamas and other resistance groups, which left 1,154 Israelis, tourists and migrant workers dead and saw about 240 people taken hostage, gave Israel the pretext for what it has long craved — the total erasure of Palestinians.

Israel has razed 77 percent of healthcare facilities in Gaza, 68 percent of telecommunication infrastructure, nearly all municipal and governmental buildings, commercial, industrial and agricultural centers, almost half of all roads, over 60 percent of Gaza’s 439,000 homes, 68 percent of residential buildings — the bombing of the Al-Taj tower in Gaza City on Oct. 25, killed 101 people, including 44 children and 37 women, and injured hundreds — and obliterated refugee camps. The attack on the Jabalia refugee camp on Oct. 25 killed at least 126 civilians, including 69 children, and injured 280. Israel has damaged or destroyed Gaza’s universities, all of which are now closed, and 60 percent of other educational facilities, including 13 libraries. It has also destroyed at least 195 heritage sites, including 208 mosques, churches, and Gaza’s Central Archives that held 150 years of historical records and documents.

Israel’s warplanes, missiles, drones, tanks, artillery shells and naval guns daily pulverize Gaza — which is only 20 miles long and five miles wide — in a scorched earth campaign unlike anything seen since the war in Vietnam. It has dropped 25,000 tons of explosives — equivalent to two nuclear bombs — on Gaza, many targets selected by Artificial Intelligence. It drops unguided munitions (“dumb bombs”) and 2000-pound “bunker buster” bombs on refugee camps and densely packed urban centers as well as the so-called “safe zones” — 42 percent of Palestinians killed have been in these “safe zones” where they were instructed by Israel to flee. Over 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes, forced to find refuge in overcrowded UNRWA shelters, hospital corridors and courtyards, schools, tents or the open air in south Gaza, often living next to fetid pools of raw sewage.

Israel has killed at least 32,705 Palestinians in Gaza, including 13,000 children and 9,000 women. This means Israel is slaughtering as many as 187 people a day including 75 children. It has killed 136 journalists, many, if not most of them deliberately targeted. It has killed 340 doctors, nurses and other health workers — four percent of Gaza’s healthcare personnel. These numbers do not begin to reflect the actual death toll since only those dead registered in morgues and hospitals, most of which no longer function, are counted. The death toll, when those who are missing are counted, is well over 40,000. Doctors are forced to amputate limbs without anesthetic. Those with severe medical conditions — cancer, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease — have died from lack of treatment or will die soon. Over a hundred women give birth every day, with little to no medical care. Miscarriages are up by 300 percent.

Over 90 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza suffer from severe food insecurity with people eating animal feed and grass. Children are dying of starvation. Palestinian writers, academics, scientists and their family members have been tracked and assassinated. Over 75,000 Palestinians have been wounded, many of whom will be crippled for life. “Seventy percent of recorded deaths have consistently been women and children,” writes Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, in her report issued on March 25. “Israel failed to prove that the remaining 30 percent, i.e. adult males, were active Hamas combatants — a necessary condition for them to be lawfully targeted. By early-December, Israel’s security advisors claimed the killing of ‘7,000 terrorists’ in a stage of the campaign when less than 5,000 adult males in total had been identified among the casualties, thus implying that all adult males killed were ‘terrorists.’

Read more …

“British authorities, however, have apparently opted to keep the findings out of the public domain..”

UK Govt Lawyers Conclude Israel In Breach Of Humanitarian Law (RT)

Lawyers for the UK government have established Israel has been breaking humanitarian law amid its ongoing conflict in Gaza with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a senior Tory is claiming, according to leaked audio revealed by the Observer newspaper on Saturday. Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Alicia Kearns, made the remarks earlier this month during a Conservative Party fundraising event. “The Foreign Office has received official legal advice that Israel has broken international humanitarian law but the government has not announced it,” Kearns, a former official with the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, who has been pressing the government on the matter, said during the event. The legal experts’ assessment effectively makes the UK complicit in the Israeli military’s violations, and defense cooperation should have been severed by London immediately after they produced their evaluation of the situation in Gaza.

“They have not said it, they haven’t stopped arms exports. They have done a few very small sanctions on Israeli settlers and everyone internationally agrees that settlers are illegal, that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing, and the ways in which they have continued and the money that’s been put in,” Kearns stated. During the event, Kearns insisted that she, like the UK Foreign Secretary James Cameron, strongly believes in Israel’s right to “self defense,” noting however that there were legal boundaries for exercising it. “The right to self defense has a limit in law. It is not limitless,” she explained, warning that Israel’s approach to handling the escalation may end up putting its own – and Britain’s – long-term security at risk. The authenticity of the recordings obtained by the Observer appears beyond question, given that Kearns has been rather vocal about her position on the matter.

On Saturday, she produced similar remarks as well, once again urging the government to make public its legal assessment of the Israeli actions. “I remain convinced the government has completed its updated assessment on whether Israel is demonstrating a commitment to international humanitarian law, and that it has concluded that Israel is not demonstrating this commitment, which is the legal determination it has to make,” she stated, arguing that “transparency” was absolutely needed to “uphold the international rules-based order.” Israel launched the operation in Gaza following an incursion by Hamas militants into the southern part of the country last October. During the attack, over 1,200 people were killed and scores of hostages were taken into Gaza. The Israeli campaign inflicted heavy damage on the Palestinian enclave, causing widespread destruction and leaving at least 32,000 people dead, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Read more …

“..Riyadh has repeatedly made it clear that it would not agree to establish relations with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state.”

Biden Claims Arab States Are Ready to Recognize Israel (Sp.)

Speaking at a recent campaign event in New York, US President Joe Biden announced the willingness of Arab nations to recognize the Jewish state, but remained mum on the status of a Palestinian state. “I’ve been working with the Saudis and with all the other Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan and Qatar. They’re prepared to fully recognize Israel. There has to be a post-Gaza plan, and there has to be a trade to a two-state solution. It doesn’t have to occur today. It has to be a progression and I think we can do that,” Biden said. As for Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom has repeatedly made it clear that it would not agree to establish relations with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state. The US president’s statement came as the Biden administration “quietly” approved the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel, amid Tel Aviv’s plans to launch a military offensive in southern Gaza that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Biden’s announcement reflects “a longstanding position rather than a novel development,” Dr. Imad Salamey, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at the Lebanese American University, said in an interview with Sputnik. He pointed to the 2002 Arab Summit in Beirut, which “highlighted the collective willingness of Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, to recognize Israel, contingent upon Israel’s recognition of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.” “The crux of the issue remains Israel’s reluctance to acknowledge a Palestinian state as per these terms. This impasse underscores the complexity of achieving peace and mutual recognition in the region,” the political scientist stressed. Salamey also underscored that while publicly calling for peace, the US “continues to affirm its strategic alliance with Israel, as demonstrated by the new supply of bombs and fighter jets.”

In 2002, regional states clinched the Arab Peace Initiative, which stipulates recognizing Israel in return for the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel rejected the proposal. 18 years later, in 2020, Israel signed the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, normalizing ties. Morocco and Sudan later signed on to the accords. While Washington voiced hope that Saudi Arabia would be the next signatory to the document, Riyadh has repeatedly made it clear that it would not agree to establish relations with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state.

Read more …

“..including Kiev’s domestic spy agency boss Vasily Malyuk..”

Moscow Demands That Kiev Surrender Terrorism Suspects (RT)

Moscow has demanded that Ukraine surrender everyone in the country it suspects of terrorism, including Kiev’s domestic spy agency boss Vasily Malyuk, and to immediately stop supporting any related activities such individuals and groups undertake, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday. The ministry said it had officially contacted Kiev with the demands under the UN-adopted International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. The demands include the “immediate arrest and extradition” of all the suspects which Moscow has identified and linked to the recent terrorist attacks against Russia. The deadly attack on the Crocus City Hall, which “shocked the whole world is, by far, not the first terrorist attack endured by our country recently,” the ministry noted.

”The investigations carried out by the competent Russian bodies indicate that the traces of all these crimes lead to Ukraine,” it stressed. Apart from the concert hall attack, which left at least 144 people dead and more than 500 injured, the ministry cited such incidents as the assassination of the military blogger Maksim Fomin (best known by his pen name Vladlen Tatarsky), the deadly bombing of the Crimean Bridge, as well as recent cross-border raids into Belgorod Region and elsewhere which have been attributed by Kiev to the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK). The paramilitary unit, advertised as composed of Russians collaborating with Ukraine, has been designated as a terrorist entity by Moscow.

The ministry did not reveal any of the names of those it has demanded due to their suspected involvement, aside from the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Vasily Malyuk. The spy boss “cynically admitted on March 25 that Ukraine organized the bombing of the Crimean Bridge in October 2022 and revealed details on the organization of other terrorist attacks in Russia,” it noted. Failing to meet Russia’s demands will constitute a breach of Ukraine’s international obligations with respect to fighting terrorism and “entail its international legal responsibility,” the ministry warned. “Fighting against international terrorism is the responsibility of every state. The Russian side demands that the Kiev regime immediately stop any support for terrorist activities, hand over the perpetrators and compensate for the damage done to the victims,” it stressed.

Read more …

Mike Johnson’s seat is at stake.

US House To Consider Ukraine Aid Bill In April (TASS)

Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner, said on CBS television that House Speaker Mike Johnson plans to put the bill on aid to Ukraine to a vote in April. “The speaker has made it clear that he supports Ukraine both directly to [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky – publicly, he’s made these statements – and to the secretary general of NATO. The speaker has made very clear statements that when we get back [from a recess], it’s the next top agenda, after having just passed all the bills that fund the federal government. I believe this is going to have overwhelming support in Congress, and we’ll put a bill on the president’s desk,” he said in an interview.

Turner was asked whether the current legislation will need to be tweaked to either include loans that Ukraine would have to pay back or incorporate clauses about border security to gain approval. He said, “There already is a significant and very strong support among Republicans.” “As this package moves, certainly there are going to be some discussions, you know, in both the Senate and the House,” he went on to say. “I’ve had discussions about the border itself. And certainly there have been discussions about the manner in which the non-military, humanitarian aid is structured.”. Turner also said that Washington is close to greenlighting supplies of ATACMS ballistic missiles to Ukraine.

“We need to give them longer range weapon systems. The White House has been hesitant to do so. Congress has called for that. President [of Ukraine Vladimir] Zelensky has called for that,” he said. “It’s the ATACMS and I think it’s long range <…> ATACMS. Those I think the administration is on the verge of being willing to provide.” Earlier this week Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Charles Q. Brown held a meeting with the Washington-based Defense Writers Group, of which TASS is a member, where he commented on the prospect of supplying Kiev with ATACMS missiles. When asked whether a transfer of ATACMS missiles from the US to Ukraine would carry an unacceptable risk of escalating the conflict, he said the risk is now not as high as it used to be.

Read more …

Smells like CIA. A lot.

Ukraine Turned Into Afghan Drug Lords Paradise Under Western Watch (Sp.)

Under the West’s watch, Ukraine has morphed into a gangsters’ paradise with all sorts of illicit drugs passing through its territory and the domestic production and consumption of synthetic narcotics booming. Back in June 2002, the US Justice Department emphasized Ukraine’s growing importance as a transit point for heroin trafficking largely originating from Afghanistan which went through the Balkan and Northern routes. The US-backed 2014 coup in Ukraine exacerbated the problem and was followed by a spike in corruption, gang crime, and weapons smuggling. The role of Ukraine as a transit point for extremists and illicit drugs to Europe has also increased. In July 2015, Italian MEP Matteo Salvini drew attention to ISIS* sympathizers fighting on the side of the Kiev regime in Donbass in an official letter to the EU leadership.

In 2019 and 2020, British, Polish and Ukrainian investigative journalists revealed that ISIS jihadists originating, in particular, from post-Soviet space used Ukraine as a transit point to and out of the Middle East in the course of the civil war in Syria which started in 2011. Having sustained defeat from the Russian Air Forces in Syria, ISIS started to use Ukraine as a safe haven. Ukraine’s role as a hub for ISIS terrorists could be closely connected with drug trafficking. Establishing a foothold in Afghanistan in 2015, ISIS militants used the Afghan opiate trade as a source of income since at least 2014, according to the Russian Federal Service for Drug Control. “The large-scale transit of Afghan heroin acts as a renewable financial base for the functioning of the Islamic State, which extracts fabulous profits by providing half of the total volume of heroin supplied to Europe through destabilized Iraq and some African countries,” the Russian agency stated on November 26, 2014.

“In 2015, the Afghan branch of ISIS officially declared its establishment,” Andrey Serenko, director of the Analytical Center of Afghanistan policy, told Sputnik. “[ISIS-Khorasan*] emerged from the ruins of some groups of dissatisfied Taliban** fighters whose leaders for some reason did not agree on interests with the Taliban leadership. From the first months of its existence, the Afghan branch of ISIS began to fight for jihad resources. The large Afghan ‘jihad industry’, then, and even now, relies heavily on the drug business. If in Syria and Iraq such sources of economic power of jihad were the illegal trade in petroleum products, then in Afghanistan it was drugs.” “In [Afghanistan’s] provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar [infamous for heroin production – Sputnik], ISIS reached an agreement with the local tribes who joined ISIS and still sympathize with the terror group. Accordingly, in several counties, for example, Achin County, ISIS was able to seize control of laboratories producing heroin,” the expert continued.

Read more …

“But in the evening, when we had dinner, he said, ‘you know, I’ve talked to my team, no-no, it’s not possible now.”

Why Russia Didn’t Join NATO (Sp.)

On March 31, 1954, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov shocked his US, French and British counterparts with a diplomatic note expressing Moscow’s readiness to join NATO. If the USSR joined, the note said, “the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would cease to be a closed military grouping of states” and, opening its doors to other European powers, facilitate the creation of “an effective system of collective security in Europe, which would be of utmost importance for strengthening universal peace.” Chewing over the shock Soviet proposal for over a month, Washington eventually responded, sending Moscow a note on May 7, 1954 citing the “unrealistic nature of such a proposal” and stressing that “it contradicts the very principles on which the defense system and security of Western states depend.”

Founded in April 1949, NATO’s official goals centered around “deterring Soviet expansionism” through collective defense for its members, which originally numbered 12 countries. Behind the scenes, the post-war security architecture created by the United States had other goals, including control over European countries’ domestic affairs. As Lord Hastings Ismay, the alliance’s first secretary-general, once famously put it, the purpose of NATO was to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Before sending the March 1954 note, Soviet diplomats made several other attempts to convey to Washington the USSR’s interest in joining NATO as a mechanism for European collective security. As veteran Soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko put it in 1951, “if this pact was aimed against the restoration of German aggression, the USSR would join NATO.”

In 1952, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin reportedly told French Ambassador Louis Joxe that if NATO was the peaceful, UN Charter-abiding organization President Charles De Gaulle described it as, the USSR might consider membership. The same year, Stalin sent Western powers a series of diplomatic cables proposing the reunification of Germany as a neutral power in the center of Europe separating the Eastern and Western blocs. Austria became such a country in 1955, with the USSR withdrawing troops in exchange for a commitment from Vienna for neutrality (which, incidentally, it continues to hold this day). In the post-Cold War period, both in the early 1990s and early 2000s, the Russia that emerged from the ashes of the USSR would again express its interest in membership in, or at least partnership with, the Western alliance, in the overarching interests of peace and security in Europe.

President Boris Yeltsin and his first Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, who famously quipped that Russia “has not national interests” apart from abstract “universal human values,” held intense negotiations with the Clinton administration through the early to mid-1990s on the prospects of Russian membership in the Western alliance. Clinton successfully pulled the wool over Yeltsin’s eyes, with the Russian leader swallowing as “brilliant” US assurances that Russia would be treated as an “equal partner,” and begrudgingly accepting the first round of eastward expansion by the alliance to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. After becoming president, Vladimir Putin too decided to probe US intentions vis-à-vis Russia at the dawn of the 21st century, recalling in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson that he had asked Clinton point blank what he thought about the idea of Russia in NATO.

“I became president in 2000. I thought: okay, the Yugoslav issue is over, but we should try to restore relations. Let’s reopen the door that Russia tried to go through…At a meeting here in the Kremlin with the outgoing President Bill Clinton, right here in the next room, I asked him, ‘Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?’ Suddenly, he said ‘you know, it’s interesting, I think so’,” Putin recalled. “But in the evening, when we had dinner, he said, ‘you know, I’ve talked to my team, no-no, it’s not possible now.” “If he had said yes, the process of rapprochement would have commenced, and eventually it might have happened if we had seen some sincere wish on the side of our partners. But it didn’t happen. Well, no means no, okay, fine,” Putin said.

Read more …

“..Those grounds would explicitly gag the defence from ever mentioning again in court inconvenient facts..”

The Assange Hearing Permission Appeal Judgment (Craig Murray)

The latest judgment by the High Court in the Assange case achieved completely the objectives of the UK and US states. Above all, Julian remains in the hell which is Belmarsh maximum security prison. He is now safely there alone and incommunicado, from the authorities’ point of view, for at least several more months. Importantly, the United States has managed to keep him detained without securing his actual appearance in Washington. It is crucial to grasp that the CIA, who are very much controlling the process, do not actually want him to appear there until after their attempt to secure the re-election of Genocide Joe. No matter what your opinion of Donald Trump, there is no doubt the CIA conspired against him during his entire Presidency, beginning with the fake Russiagate scandal and ending with their cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop story. They do not want Trump back.

Biden is politically in deep trouble. Biden’s lifelong political support for Israel has been unwavering to the point of fanaticism. In the process he has collected millions of dollars from the Zionist lobby. That always seemed a source of political strength in the United States, not of weakness. The current genocide in Gaza has changed all those calculations. The sheer evil and viciousness of the Israeli state, the open and undisguised enthusiasm for racist massacre, has achieved the seemingly impossible task of turning much American public opinion against Israel. That is particularly true among key elements of the Democratic base. Young people and ethnic minorities have been shocked that the party they have supported is backing and supplying genocide. The mainstream media have lost control of the narrative, when the truth is so widely available on mobile phones, to the point that the MSM have actually been forced to change course and occasionally tell truths about Israel. That also was unthinkable a few months ago.

Precisely the same groups who are outraged by Biden’s support for genocide are going to be alienated by the attack on a journalist and publisher for revealing true facts about war crimes. Assange is not currently a major public issue in the United States, because he is not currently in the United States. Were he to arrive there in chains, the media coverage would be massive and the issue unavoidable in the presidential election campaign. The extradition proceeding has therefore had to be managed in such a way as to keep Assange locked in a living hell the whole time, without actually achieving the extradition until after the presidential election in November. As the years of hearings have rolled by this has become increasingly difficult for the British state to finesse on behalf of their American masters. In this respect, and only in this respect, Dame Victoria Sharp and Lord Justice Johnson have done brilliantly in their judgment.

Senior British judges do not have to be told what to do. They are closely integrated into a small political establishment that is socially interlinked, defined by membership of institutions, and highly subject to groupthink. Dame Victoria Sharp’s brother Richard arranged an £800,000 personal loan for then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and subsequently became chairman of the BBC despite a complete lack of relevant experience. Lord Justice Johnson as a lawyer represented the intelligence services and the Ministry of Defence. They did not have to be told what to do in this case explicitly, although it was very plain that they entered the two-day hearing process knowing nothing except a briefing they had been given that the crux of the case was the revelation of names of US informants in the Wikileaks material.

The potential danger of an appeal, the granting of which would achieve the United States’ objective of putting the actual extradition back beyond the election date, was that it would allow the airing in public of a great catalogue of war crimes and other illegal activity which had been exposed by Wikileaks. Sharp and Johnson have obviated this danger by adjourning the decision with the possibility of granting an appeal, but only on extremely limited grounds. Those grounds would explicitly gag the defence from ever mentioning again in court inconvenient facts, such as United States war crimes including murder, torture and extraordinary rendition, as well as the plans by the United States to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange. All of those things are precluded by this judgment from ever being raised again in the extradition hearings. The politically damaging aspect of the case in terms of the Manning revelations and CIA behaviour has been cauterised in the UK.

Read more …

Yikes.

61 Unexpected PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ Found in Food Packaging (SciAm)

Food packaging from around the world contains at least 68 “forever chemicals” that can seep into what we eat, a new study finds. And 61 of them are not even supposed to be used in such products. This kind of packaging may include coated paper wrappers, plastic containers and aluminum foil. Scientists behind the paper say it’s not clear why the latter chemicals, which are not on lists of those authorized for use in food containers, are in such packaging. “It’s very hard to explain where they come from,” says the study’s senior author Birgit Geueke, senior scientific officer at the nonprofit Food Packaging Forum Foundation in Zurich. That’s especially concerning because her team was only able to find data on potential hazards for 57 percent of the chemicals the researchers found in food packaging.

The study, published on Tuesday in Environmental Science & Technology, focused on a class of chemicals called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). For decades, these substances have been used in a wide range of consumer products, from cookware to pesticides to cosmetics, because of their ability to repel water and grease. PFASs are sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down readily in the environment or in the body. That’s because their characteristic carbon-fluorine bond—part of what makes them so useful in the first place—is one of the strongest in nature. PFASs have been found in human blood and breast milk, drinking water, soil and other startling places around the world. In March 2023 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a drinking water standard for six PFAS compounds.

Exposure to some of the most studied PFASs has been associated with cancer, reproductive problems and lessened responses to vaccines. “There’s an incredible body of scientific evidence linking these chemicals to health harms,” says David Andrews, a chemist and toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization, who was not involved with the new study. The paper adds to recently growing concerns about the prevalence of PFASs—and about an overall dearth of knowledge as to what chemicals are found in many everyday products. “Food packaging may not be the only way we are exposed to PFAS, but food packaging could contribute” to these exposures, Geueke says.

She and her team found a mismatch between what they detected in actual products and a database of chemicals assembled by compiling information on PFAS that regulatory agencies (including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) have authorized for use in food packaging, and PFAS that industrial manufacturers have listed for use in food packaging. About 140 PFASs are known to be used in food packaging, but only seven of the 68 chemicals in the study were on this list. Geueke says it’s unclear how or why the other 61 chemicals turned up. Andrews suggests that it’s possible that unknown impurities emerged during the manufacturing of the authorized chemicals or that the authorized PFASs degrade over time. This class of chemicals includes many long-chain molecules, and they can break into shorter chains that are simply different types of PFASs.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Skunk

 

 

Babies
https://twitter.com/i/status/1774336548865024294

 

 

Mom dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1774156744651854012

 

 

Lion dachs

 

 

5 days

 

 

Snow angels

 

 

Polar bear walrus
https://twitter.com/i/status/1774406767977316815

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 202023
 
 October 20, 2023  Posted by at 5:32 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  14 Responses »


Mondriaan Amaryllis 1910

 

Scott Ritter: US Not Ready for War With Iran (Sp.)
Israel Plans to Turn Gaza Into ‘Hiroshima’ Without Nukes – Sy Hersh (Sp.)
The US, Israel Dare Russia, China To Go To War To Save Arab Palestine (Helmer)
Pepe Escobar: Russia, China Map Out New Economic Order in Beijing (Sp.)
Israeli Gaza Operation Could Be ‘Mogadishu On Steroids’ – Petraeus (RT)
Mike Huckabee: Speaker Battle Shows Some Politicians Don’t Want Change (JTN)
Third Vote for Jim Jordan as Speaker Nominee Friday at 10:00am ET (CTH)
Iran In The White House (Kanekoa)
US Shaping Israel’s Ground Campaign Against Hamas – Bloomberg (RT)
Dem. Billionaire: Trump Foreign Record ‘Pretty Incredible’ In Hindsight (JTN)
Trump Offers To Visit Israel (RT)
Health Canada Confirms Undisclosed Presence of DNA Sequence in Pfizer Shot (ET)

 

 

We had some technical glitches today, hope they’re gone now. Danny and Willie are invaluable. But also, as I wrote to John Day earlier, “Don’t you love life, just for all the crazy stuff? Where would we be without chaos?”

Somewhere along the line, some techie changed the “theme” we use. Big deal, because it changes all fonts and spaces and you name it. We’ll be back to “normal” as soon as Danny’s back from his doctor’s appointment.

 

 

 

 

Nap Maersheimer

 

 

Israeli man Where is your brother?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1714724578797515077

 

 

Archbishop

 

 

Hospital

 

 

Al Jazeera

 

 

Channel4

 

 

Nasr

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..trying his best to muster the steely-eyed stare of a man who means business, “if we don’t, who does?” The answer, it seems, is no one.”

US Not Ready for War With Iran (Scott Ritter)

Generating combat power is one thing. Deploying it in a manner that is logistically sustainable is another. The US was able to deploy some 750,000 troops into the Middle East in 1990-1991 only because it had access to friendly ports and airfields in the region where troops and military material could be offloaded in uncontested fashion. Any general war between Iran and the US would inevitably result in Iran challenging any major US military deployment, which means the airfields and ports that would normally be used to support such a deployment would be under constant Iranian attack. As a result, the US would need to execute a forced entry option into Iran, seizing a major Iranian port city, such as Chah Bahar or Bandar Abbass. This would require a major amphibious effort where the ships containing the landing force would have to run a gauntlet of Iranian missiles that would cripple or destroy the landing force before it got within striking distance of Iran.

In short, the US cannot physically defeat Iran using conventional military power without undergoing a massive mobilization of resources that would be politically unsustainable. This leaves the option of an air campaign. Israel has long advocated for a military strike using air power against Iran. One of the major problems facing Israel is the physical distance between Israel and Iran, which would necessitate the kind of large-scale air-to-air refueling support that only the United States possesses. Israel and the US have carried out joint military training involving the air-to-air refueling of Israeli strike aircraft by US refueling aircraft as part of a training exercise known as “Juniper Oak,” conducted in January 2023. This training also included US bombers and ground forces.

The problem facing the US, however, is that Iran is a huge country which is not conducive to the delivery of a knock-out blow, even if delivered by the combined resources of Israel and the United States. Lindsey Graham’s threat to “knock Iran out of the oil business” may sound good to the opponents of Iran, but it is simply empty rhetoric. If the US and/or Israel were to target Iranian oil infrastructure, Iran would unleash a retaliation which would cripple the oil production infrastructure of the entire Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Such an action would throw the US and global economies into chaos. Moreover, Iran would retain sufficient strike capacity to devastate US military bases in the region and Israeli cities alike. In short, there is no military option available to either Israel or the United States, individually or working in tandem, that can defeat Iran.

In a recent interview, CBS News’ reporter Scott Pelley asked President Biden if the wars in Israel and Ukraine were “more than the United States can take on at the same time.” “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake,” Biden responded, with his trademark bellicosity, “the most powerful nation in the history—not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense. We have the capacity to do this and we have an obligation to. We are the essential nation, to paraphrase the former secretary of state. And,” he concluded, trying his best to muster the steely-eyed stare of a man who means business, “if we don’t, who does?” The answer, it seems, is no one.

Read more …

“Gaza City is in the process of being turned into Hiroshima with no nuclear weapons used..”

Israel Plans to Turn Gaza Into ‘Hiroshima’ Without Nukes – Sy Hersh (Sp.)

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have every intention of staging in the Gaza Strip something similar to the US destruction of the Japanese city of Hiroshima, only without nuclear weapons, American journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in an article on Substack. “Gaza City is in the process of being turned into Hiroshima with no nuclear weapons used,” Hersh cited sources as telling him. Furthermore, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has every intention “to wipe out Hamas,” with little concern for hundreds of thousands of citizens of Gaza that were told to evacuate and move south of the enclave on October 12, underscored Sy Hersh, referencing unnamed intelligence analysts in Washington. Netanyahu formed an emergency unity government a few days ago with ex-military Chief of Staff Benny Gantz to bring his National Unity party into the governing coalition and join the war cabinet including Defense Minster Yoav Gallant.

Israel has vowed to “destroy” the Hamas movement ruling in the Gaza Strip after its attacks on Southern Israel. After calling up a reported 350,000 army reservists — totalling around a tenth of the country’s workforce — since October 7, Israel appeared to be holding back on an invasion. [..] While the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt remains closed, at some point, “American-made bombs in the Israeli arsenal, including those known as “bunker busters,” may be targeted on the underground tunnel systems where Hamas manufactured the weapons and conducted planning for the horrific attacks in southern Israel on October 7,” wrote Hersh. “Under the Israeli plans, there would be no need for a massive ground invasion,” insiders had informed Hersh, while Israeli troops, “would be needed for hunting down those Hamas members underground who choose to surrender.”

However, the orders to the Israeli military, according to a cited official, would be “shoot on sight,” with surrender not an option. “The official told me that the Hamas soldiers who would emerge from the tunnels desperate for food were seen by the Israelis as starving rats who would be met with poisoned food. The fate of the nearly two hundred hostages, most of them Israeli but known also to include a few Americans, was left unsaid,” wrote Sy Hersh. Accordingly, Netanyahu’s plan, as per the official referenced by Hersh, is to ensure that the Israeli Army destroys the Hamas tunnel system, along with every member of the militant group they can hunt down. After that, the remnants of Gaza City would be purportedly barricaded at the southernmost end. Hamas “stragglers” would be tracked down as Israeli soldiers scored every block in the destroyed city.

Sy Hersh also weighed in on the visit paid by US President Joe Biden to Israel on Wednesday. After earlier sending to the eastern Mediterranean near Israel two US Navy carrier strike groups led by the USS Gerald Ford and the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, Biden pledged support to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s operation in the Gaza Strip. Recalling Biden’s Sunday interview for US media, where he conceded that while Hamas “must be eliminated entirely,” while adding that there “needs to be a path to a Palestinian state,” Hersh suggested that the latter was “not on Israel’s agenda.” His visit had come a day after an attack on the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in northern Gaza, where locals were sheltering from Israeli airstrikes on the enclave.

On October 17, a deadly attack on the al-Ahli Hospital killed hundreds of people. Palestinian authorities and the Israeli army have since been pointing fingers at one another for the disaster. Hamas said that the missile was launched by the IDF, while Israeli officials put the blame on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement. The entire international community was shocked by the catastrophe, with citizens across the globe rallying in support of Palestine and urging for a ceasefire. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stressed that the attack on the hospital is an “act of dehumanization.”

Read more …

“The new southern zone will be cordoned off by an Israeli ring of fire, and everything north of the line, including Gaza City will be destroyed, hospitals included.”

The US, Israel Dare Russia, China To Go To War To Save Arab Palestine (Helmer)

Call it a repeat of the SS ultimatum to the Warsaw Ghetto of April 1943 — evacuate and we’ll give you a small chance of surviving, or stay and we’ll kill you for certain. Following the embrace of President Joseph Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US has endorsed the Israeli plan to force the evacuation of the Palestinians from Gaza City to designated camps in the south. There Israeli forces will allow convoys of humanitarian aid to enter from Egypt and unload after Israeli forces have inspected the cargoes. The new southern zone will be cordoned off by an Israeli ring of fire, and everything north of the line, including Gaza City will be destroyed, hospitals included.

This formula has been pressed on Egypt, the other Arab states, China, and Russia to accept by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, a Portuguese government retiree, and his deputy for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, a British government retiree. They have emphasized there is no alternative to the destruction of Gaza, and its full absorption into the state of Israel. Reinforcing them, the US has cast its veto of all resolutions proposed in the UN Security Council (UNSC) by Russia, China and the Arab states to create humanitarian corridors under a ceasefire. China is preparing a new UNSC resolution to face the US veto shortly, according to a statement by Zhang Jun during Wednesday’s UNSC debate in New York. In Beijing, President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping discussed between themselves what they plan to do jointly and publicly.

“Over a cup of tea”, Putin told Russian reporters on Wednesday evening, “we talked for another hour and a half, maybe two hours, and discussed some very confidential issues face to face. It was a very productive and informative part of our meeting.” “Informative” in Russian means they were unable to agree to make a public declaration of a Sino-Russian action plan. Instead, Putin announced he is deploying supersonic Kinzhal missiles within range of the US naval and air forces positioned in the eastern Mediterranean and in Jordan. “They have upped and dragged two carrier task forces to the Mediterranean. I want to say – what I am going to say and inform you about is not a threat – that I have instructed the Russian Aerospace Forces to start patrolling the neutral zone over the Black Sea on the permanent basis. Our MiG-31 aircraft carry the Kinzhal systems that, as is common knowledge, have a range of over 1,000 kilometres and can reach speeds of up to Mach 9.”

Read more …

Different worlds.

Pepe Escobar: Russia, China Map Out New Economic Order in Beijing (Sp.)

President Xi announced that participants of the business summit at the Forum clinched new infrastructure deals worth a whopping $97.2 billion. That’s the new paradigm. Compare it with the old Forever Wars paradigm: the White House working on a $100 billion package to fund the Ukraine-Israel wars. The 3-hour-long face to face meeting between Putin and Xi was crucial in more ways than one. It was a graphic illustration of Russia-China co-hosting the drive towards a multipolar world. And of BRI working side by side with the upcoming BRICS 11 (in effect on January 1, as Russia starts its BRICS presidency). Putin, sly as a fox, commented that he could not tell us “everything” he discussed with Xi. What he could say is that they went through “the entire bilateral agenda, a lot of issues there: it’s the economy, finance, political interaction, and joint work on international platforms.”

Additionally, “we discussed in detail the situation in the Middle East as well. I also briefed the president on the situation on the Ukrainian track in detail. All these external factors are common threats (italics mine). They strengthen Russian-Chinese interaction.” China-Russia signed the largest deal in their shared history for the supply of grain; 2.5 trillion rubles for 70 million tons of grain, leguminous and oilseed cargo delivered for 12 years. That completely destroys serial US Think Tankland wet dream scenarios advocating a naval blockade as the key strategy for the containment of China, to starve it of food and raw materials. On the energy front, Xi expected the extended Power of Siberia II, or Russia-Mongolia-China gas pipeline to make “substantial progress” as soon as possible. As much as Putin stressed both Russia and China’s “respect for civilizational diversity” as well as the right of each civilization-state to its own development model, what really stood out was his detailed explanation of connectivity corridors.

Putin stressed how “a North-South corridor is being formed in the European part of Russia – from the Baltic to Iran. Seamless railway communication will be organized there.” That was a direct reference to the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), whose main hubs are Russia, Iran and India. That will interconnect, in the medium and long term, with BRI’s central Eurasian corridors. Putin added that “other sections will pass through Siberia, the Urals and Yamal. The Northern Sea Passage will be built – to the Arctic Ocean. The railway routes will run from central Siberia to the south – to the Indian and Pacific Oceans (…) A corridor will also pass from the Arctic to the south – a railway line from BAM to Yakutia will be built, bridges across the Lena and Amur, highways will be modernized, and deep-sea terminals will be created.”

Putin’s characterization of the Northern Sea Route is particularly crucial: “All these transportation corridors from north to south in the European part of Russia, in Siberia, and in the Far East open up the possibility of directly connecting and integrating the Northern Sea Route with major logistics hubs in the south of our continent, on the coast of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. As far as the Northern Sea Route is concerned, Russia is not just inviting its partners to actively use its transit potential. Let me say more: we invite interested states to participate directly in its development and are ready to provide reliable ice navigation, communication and supply. As early as next year, navigation for ice-class cargo ships along the entire length of the Northern Sea Route will become year-round. The creation of the above-mentioned international and regional logistics and trade routes objectively reflects the profound changes that are taking place in the global economy.”

Read more …

“..he doesn’t believe the IDF’s operation could be won quickly, and might even take over a decade.”

Israeli Gaza Operation Could Be ‘Mogadishu On Steroids’ – Petraeus (RT)

Israel’s conflict with Palestinian militant group Hamas could become even more violent and drag on for years to come if Israeli forces launch a group operation in Gaza, former CIA chief David Petraeus warned in an interview with Politico on Thursday. Speaking on the outlet’s Power Play podcast, the US general, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, claimed that a ground invasion of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “could be Mogadishu on steroids very quickly.” Petraeus was referring to the 1993 incident in which three US Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in the capital of Somalia, leading to a fierce battle between local militants and American forces who attempted to rescue the crash survivors.

The former spy chief suggested that if Hamas turns out to be “as creative in the defense” as they were in the “horrific, barbaric, unspeakable attack” on Israel on October 7, “then you’ll see suicide bombers, you’ll see improvised explosive devices, there will be ambushes, booby traps, and the urban setting, again, could not be more challenging.” Petraeus noted that given his personal experience leading armies engaged in counterinsurgency campaigns, he doesn’t believe the IDF’s operation could be won quickly, and might even take over a decade. “It’s hard for me to imagine a more difficult setting than this particular one, and I was one who commanded forces in a number of major urban operations,” the general told Politico. “You don’t win counterinsurgencies in a year or two. They typically take a decade or more, as we saw in Iraq, as we saw in Afghanistan.”

Additionally, Petraeus stated that Israel already needs to think about how it intends to eventually restore and rebuild Gaza once it considers its battle against Hamas won. Meanwhile, Israel’s former defense chief, Benny Gantz, also admitted on Wednesday that the conflict between Palestinian militants and the IDF is unlikely to end anytime soon, and will probably last “for months,” while rebuilding Gaza could take “years. The latest violent conflict between Hamas and Israel erupted on October 7 when the militant group launched a surprise missile and ground attack into the country. In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country was at war, vowing massive retaliation. So far, the conflict has claimed the lives of more than 3,700 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis, according to official data.

Read more …

The real swamp.

Mike Huckabee: Speaker Battle Shows Some Politicians Don’t Want Change (JTN)

Former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee says that the ongoing battle regarding the next House speaker demonstrates how some politicians are subject to the donor class and don’t want change in Washington, D.C. “In many ways, it is a power play,” Huckabee said on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast. “Some of it is not ideological, but there is an ideological tinge to it. There are people who want to make sure that Washington does not significantly change. And by change, I’m not talking about from the left to right, the Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives. They don’t want the donor class to lose the power that the donor class has.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Kevin McCarthy R-Calif., was ousted by eight Republicans. Many of them initially opposed McCarthy’s speakership, and cited recent budget negotiations as the reason for ousting him. As of now, the House does not currently have a speaker. Rep. Jim Jordan R-Ohio, has lost two rounds of voting. He decided Thursday not to move forward with his bid and instead threw support behind a proposal to elevate Rep. Patrick McHenry R-N.C., from his post as speaker pro tempore to unelected speaker with the powers of the office for a period of time. “There are many members of Congress that are there because of the donor class,” Huckabee explained.

“They have remained there because of the donor class. They’re in power and they have positions because of the donor class. The last thing they can afford is for there to be a downgrading or even a demise of the donor class.” When asked if those opposing a Jordan speakership are doing so because they are afraid Jordan would actually cut government spending, Huckabee said he wouldn’t be too surprised if that were the reason. “There’s no doubt that that’s a part of it,” he said. “If it’s all about that, I don’t know. But I do think that there are people who fear that there could be a level of transparency that we simply don’t have and haven’t had, in probably forever, where the citizens can know exactly when they watched the votes who voted for what and how did that money actually get used? It’s a messy process.”

Read more …

“This internecine professionally Republican stuff has nothing to do with principle centered leadership, and everything to do with self-indulgences and personal affluence.”

Third Vote for Jim Jordan as Speaker Nominee Friday at 10:00am ET (CTH)

After a lengthy and often combative GOP conference earlier today, Jim Jordan’s office has announced there will be a 3rd vote for House Speaker Friday at 10:00am. “The House will vote Friday at 10 a.m. on a third speaker ballot, according to Jordan’s spokesman.” The UniParty Republicans had earlier floated an interim proposal to grant temporary House Speaker Patrick McHenry with additional authorities which would gain Democratic vote support. The concept was to get the House through a round of funding for Israel and Ukraine aid and avoiding a shutdown, until January. However, that effort fell short as the non UniParty Republicans would not agree to the plan.

(Via Politico) – “[…] Republicans are split. Jordan, for now, isn’t ready to call it quits, and some of his backers are gearing up for trench warfare. “I can tell you, nobody in our conference can get to 217 on two rounds, and three legislative days. So I think he deserves more time,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a Jordan ally, told reporters. “I’m in favor of trying. For Jordan, I would go at least another week.” Yet his opponents insist there is no negotiation to be had that would result in him winning the gavel. They’ve already detailed death threats and intimidation efforts that they say have only hardened their anti-Jordan stance.”

The House GOP Speaker’s race is a system of conniving and positioning for a cushy committee assignment, indulgences from the lobbyist control apparatus, office locations and Machiavellian influence for the best junkets and largest leadership PAC deposits. That’s the truth, the non-pretending truth about the system at work behind the GOPe House Speaker vote. This internecine professionally Republican stuff has nothing to do with principle centered leadership, and everything to do with self-indulgences and personal affluence.

Read more …

X thread. Pretty crazy what Patel has to say.

Iran In The White House (Kanekoa)

Kash Patel highlights the unbelievable connections between three senior Biden intelligence officials—Robert Malley, Ariane Tabatabai, and Maher Bitar—and their associations with Hamas and Iran. On June 29, 2023, Robert Malley was placed on unpaid leave from his role as Joe Biden’s special envoy to Iran, and his security clearance was suspended due to an ongoing investigation into the potential mishandling of classified materials. On September 29, 2023, Semafor reported that Malley was involved in funding, supporting, and directing an Iranian intelligence operation to influence the United States and allied governments, as revealed by a collection of Iranian government emails.

These emails suggested that Malley facilitated the placement of an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai in sensitive positions within the U.S. government, initially at the State Department and later at the Pentagon, where she has been serving as Chief of Staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations. On October 16, 2023, Revolver News reported that Maher Bitar, who is Senior Director for Intelligence Programs on Joe Biden’s National Security Council, was also an executive director of the “Students for Justice in Palestine” group that reportedly responded to the recent Hamas terror attack on Israel by organizing a “Day of Resistance” in support of Hamas’ “historic win” against Israel. Bitar was photographed wearing a black and white “keffiyeh,” a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, and standing in front of a sign that reads, “Divest from Israel Apartheid.”

Kash Patel has pointed out that Maher Bitar plays a significant role in determining intelligence prioritization for President Biden, even though there is a photo of him wearing Palestinian attire, calling for the economic and political boycott of Israel. Robert Malley, who recently had his security clearance suspended by the FBI, installed Ariane Tabatabai at the Department of Defense as the Assistant Chief of Staff for the Special Operations Office.Do you know what she did in 2014? “She emailed Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and asked for permission as a U.S. citizen to take a trip on behalf of the US government. This individual is still employed at the DOD.” Unbelievable.

Kash Patel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1715019075653394819

Read more …

“..the role and influence of the US in the Israel-Hamas conflict are “deeper and more intense than any exerted by Washington in the past.”

US Shaping Israel’s Ground Campaign Against Hamas – Bloomberg (RT)

The US is exerting unprecedented influence over Israel’s plans for a ground campaign against Hamas in Gaza, fearing that a massive attack could result in other regional actors joining the conflict, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing sources. According to the news outlet, while early into the conflict, Israel promised “coordinated strikes from the air, sea and land” on Hamas; its military later indicated that the ground operation “might be something different from what you think.” Bloomberg notes that this change in tone came after an unprecedented string of visits to Israel by high-ranking US officials, including President Joe Biden himself. According to three unnamed senior Israeli officials interviewed by the news agency, the role and influence of the US in the Israel-Hamas conflict are “deeper and more intense than any exerted by Washington in the past.”

While the US reportedly wants to see Hamas’ military infrastructure in Gaza destroyed, it seeks to limit civilian casualties in the Palestinian enclave, which is home to over two million Palestinians. In addition, Washington is concerned that Israel’s ground campaign could draw Hezbollah into the conflict; the Lebanon-based Islamist militant group maintains close ties to Iran, the report noted. This could potentially open a second front in the conflict, which could throw the entire region into turmoil and derail the White House’s efforts to stabilize the Middle East by promoting peace between Israel and Arab countries, the article says. While Biden on Friday condemned the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians and signaled that he would ask the US Congress to approve additional security aid for Israel, he cautioned the Middle Eastern country “not to be blinded by rage.”

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with his country’s service members stationed near Gaza, telling them to “get organized, be ready” for the offensive. “Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside,” he said. The conflict between Hamas and Israel erupted on October 7 when the Palestinian militant group launched a surprise missile and ground attack on the country, with hostilities resulting in thousands of dead and injured. In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Israel to be in a state of “war” and vowed retaliation. According to the latest official data, the fighting has claimed the lives of more than 3,800 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis.

Read more …

“So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right. And that’s what’s so frustrating for me..”

“The work on the border wall, we didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right.”

Dem. Billionaire: Trump Foreign Record ‘Pretty Incredible’ In Hindsight (JTN)

Amid ongoing chaos in the Middle East and American involvement in multiple conflicts on the global stage, one Democratic billionaire is reevaluating the Trump administration’s tenure, which notably saw the U.S. enter into no new major wars. Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, a Democrat who increasingly leans toward the political right, said that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” has prevented people from honestly evaluation the administration in a recent episode of the All-In Podcast. “What those guys did was pretty incredible, in hindsight,” he said. “To really be able to, like, find long-lasting peace is just a real example for the world.” Palihapitiya cohosts the podcast with his friends. He had previously been critical of the administration, calling him an “an idiot savant, minus the savant” last year, according to the Epoch Times.

The billionaire went on to highlight the Abraham Accords, a landmark diplomatic agreement that saw Israel normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, while paving the way for similar developments with other neighboring nations. Apart from the Trump administration’s international accomplishments, Palihapitiya conceded that Trump’s efforts to build a border wall had largely been vindicated amid a broader surge in illegal crossings. “So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right. And that’s what’s so frustrating for me,” he said. “The work on the border wall, we didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right.”

Read more …

Trump and Israel is not a great combination.

Trump Offers To Visit Israel (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has said that he may visit Israel in the near future. Trump’s statement came after he harshly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his apparent failure to predict Hamas’ attack on the Jewish state. “I may, I may go,” Trump told reporters outside a courthouse in New York, where he is facing a civil fraud lawsuit. “But I believe in letting them do what they have to do,” Trump continued, “They have to straighten it out. What’s happening in Israel is all of those people dead would have never happened… if I were president.” During his term in the White House, Trump oversaw the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the signing of the Abraham Accords, under which Israel normalized relations with Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump often touted his close personal relationship with Netanyahu, and described himself as “history’s most pro-Israel US president.” That relationship has since deteriorated. Speaking to Fox News last week, Trump claimed that Netanyahu “was not prepared” for Hamas’ surprise attack. “He was not prepared, and Israel was not prepared,” Trump said, adding that the Israeli PM “has been hurt very badly because of what’s happened.” At a campaign rally in Florida several days later, Trump said that Israel needs to “straighten out” its intelligence agencies, and that Netanyahu “let us down” by declining to participate in the 2020 airstrike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

Trump’s comments about a potential trip to Israel came a day after President Joe Biden returned from the country. Biden met with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, where he promised additional military aid to Israel, and cautioned the prime minister not to become “consumed with rage” in responding to the Hamas attack. Israeli warplanes have been striking Gaza for almost two weeks, killing almost 3,800 Palestinians and wounding more than 12,000, according to the latest figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry. At least 1,300 Israelis have been killed in the same period, according to the Israeli military.

Read more …

Open the windows! People have a right to know what they’re dying of.

Health Canada Confirms Undisclosed Presence of DNA Sequence in Pfizer Shot (ET)

Health Canada has confirmed the presence of a Simian Virus 40 (SV40) DNA sequence in the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, which the manufacturer had not previously disclosed. There is debate among scientists with regards to the significance of the finding, with some saying it has the potential to cause cancer, and others saying it poses little to no threat. “Health Canada expects sponsors to identify any biologically functional DNA sequences within a plasmid (such as an SV40 enhancer) at the time of submission,” the agency said in an email to The Epoch Times. “Although the full DNA sequence of the Pfizer plasmid was provided at the time of initial filing, the sponsor did not specifically identify the SV40 sequence.”

The regulator said that after scientists Kevin McKernan and Dr. Phillip J. Buckhaults publicly raised the presence of SV40 enhancers in the vaccines earlier this year, “it was possible for Health Canada to confirm the presence of the enhancer based on the plasmid DNA sequence submitted by Pfizer against the published SV40 enhancer sequence.” Both scientists have made waves after discovering plasmid DNA in the mRNA COVID-19 injections, warning it could potentially alter the human genome. However, the two share different degrees of concern about the significance of an SV40 sequence—which is used as an enhancer to drive gene transcription during the vaccine manufacturing process—being present in the shots.

Mr. McKernan, a former researcher and team leader for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Human Genome Project, told The Epoch Times he suspects Pfizer didn’t disclose the presence of the DNA sequence due to the association of SV40 with polio vaccines. He said while there is no evidence the sequence is carcinogenic, he has concerns about its integration into the human genome. The polyomavirus Simian Virus 40, an oncogenic DNA virus, was previously removed from polio vaccines due to concerns about a link to cancers. Polio vaccines used in the late 1950s and early 1960s were found to be contaminated with SV40 as the virus was present in monkey kidney cells that were used to grow the vaccine.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Climate

 

 


Both blocks are the same color. use your finger to cover the middle line. An example of the Cornsweet illusion using shading and gradients to challenge perception, an optical illusion that was described in detail by Tom Cornsweet in the late 1960s

 

 

Cat. Door.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

May 222023
 
 May 22, 2023  Posted by at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  39 Responses »


Piet Mondriaan Mill 1905

 

Ukraine Claims It’ll ‘Win War’ After Getting F-16s (RT)
US Approval Of Crimea Strikes Proves Lack Of Interest In Peace – Envoy (TASS)
Trump’s Victory Would Be ‘The End Of Ukraine’ – Hillary Clinton (RT)
Zelensky Compares Artyomovsk To Hiroshima (RT)
Destruction Of Both Hiroshima, Artyomovsk Led By White House – Zakharova (TASS)
How Russia Forced Ukrainians To Retreat From Artyomovsk (RT)
Lula Says Zelensky Didn’t Show Up To Scheduled Meeting (RT)
Durham Report: Clinton, Not Trump, Colluded With Russians – Hanson (Fox)
The Durham Report Indicts the Deep State—and the Media (RCI)
EU ‘Offer’ To Global South Must Be Better Than China’s – Ursula (RT)
Hunter Biden Faces Call for the Appearance of Key Business Associates (Turley)
White House Blasts GOP Over Debt Ceiling Talks (RT)
Biden Thinks He Has Authority To Use 14th Amendment On Debt Ceiling (Hill)
DE-Dollarization Made Simple -Even For Millennials (Vilches)
Greece’s Debt Is More Unsustainable Than Ever (Varoufakis)

 

 

 

 

Biden 100k
https://twitter.com/i/status/1660240874851168259

 

 

 

 

Conyers

 

 

 

 

Nobody is safe

 

 

 

 

CoronaThrax

 

 

 

 

The sudden rush into the 50-year old F-16s shows us just how badly Ukraine is losing.

Ukraine Claims It’ll ‘Win War’ After Getting F-16s (RT)

F-16 fighter jets could become a game changer in the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force Command, Yury Ignat, claimed in remarks to Ukraine’s Espreso TV broadcaster on Saturday. “When [we] have F-16, we will win this war,” Ignat said, adding that Kiev has repeatedly told its Western backers that the air defense systems it has already obtained from the West are insufficient to protect all of Ukraine’s territory against Russian air strikes. “The territory of the country and the length of the state border are big and the frontline … is over 2,500 kilometers [long],” the Air Force spokesman said, counting Ukraine’s border with Belarus, its Black Sea shores, and the border with Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria as parts of the “frontline.”

It would be impossible to cover such an expanse with air defense systems, Ignat maintained. He also said that the US-made F-16 fighter jets would become “a part of the air defenses” and would be used in areas not covered by the ground-based systems. The Air Force spokesman also admitted that the Soviet-made jets that Ukraine has been using until now cannot effectively counter Russian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and cruise missiles. He said that Kiev also plans to use the US-made jets in offensive operations and that the aircraft would significantly increase the effectiveness of anti-radar HARM missiles and JDAM precision-guided munitions, which Western nations have already handed over to Ukraine. Ukraine would also use the F-16s to strike the command centers and logistical networks of Russian forces, Ignat said, adding that such attacks would allow Kiev to “quickly” seize territories that it considers “occupied” by Russia.

His words came just days after Washington said it would support a joint program to train Ukrainian pilots on modern jets such as F-16s and would allow allies to transfer the US-made aircraft to Kiev. On Saturday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told journalists that President Joe Biden had “informed his G7 counterparts” that Washington would let its Western allies supply advanced jets to Ukraine. Moscow blasted the decision as a “movement up the escalation ladder” that is “fraught with colossal risks” for the West itself. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also accused the US of “waging a hybrid war against the entire region” and of using Ukrainian territory to achieve its own goals.

Read more …

“..when US planes will take off from NATO airfields, piloted by foreign ‘volunteers’..”

US Approval Of Crimea Strikes Proves Lack Of Interest In Peace – Envoy (TASS)

Washington’s approval of Ukraine’s strike on Crimea with Western weapons indicates that the US has no interest in peace, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said Sunday. “Washington has totally bent G7 members to its will in regards to the conflict in Ukraine. Moreover, it has seriously tightened its approaches on two important issues. I am referring to the handover of F-16 planes to the Kiev regime, as well as unconditional approval of strikes on Crimea with American and other Western weapons. Such steps once again make it clear that the US has never been interested in peace,” he said. The envoy added that Russia will view strikes on Crimea “as an attack on any other region of the Russian Federation,” and called on the US to consider potential response measures from Russia.


Antonov also pointed out that Ukraine lack infrastructure to use F-16 planes, as well as the required number of pilots and maintenance crews. According to Antonov, all this raises concerns about NATO’s future involvement in the conflict “when US planes will take off from NATO airfields, piloted by foreign ‘volunteers’,” he said. Earlier, US President Joe Biden told his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima that the US and its allies will start training Ukrainian pilots in use of F-16 fighter. Previously, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the US and its allies will discuss which states exactly will send F-16 planes to Ukraine. He also noted that F-16s are not on the list of priority shipments for preparation of Kiev’s counteroffensive.

Read more …

“..the end of democracy in the United States” and the “end of Ukraine..”

Trump’s Victory Would Be ‘The End Of Ukraine’ – Hillary Clinton (RT)

If ex-US President Donald Trump is re-elected in 2024, it would be the downfall of both Ukraine and democracy in America, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned on Saturday. Speaking to the Financial Times, Clinton, who served as secretary of state under Barack Obama and lost to Trump in the 2016 election, said she does not believe that her former rival will be successful this time. However, she claimed that if Trump does win in 2024, it will be “the end of democracy in the United States” and the “end of Ukraine,” as he will withdraw the country from NATO. Clinton went on to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin believed Trump would do so had he won the 2020 election. “Trump was the gift that kept giving to people like [Chinese leader Xi Jinping] and Putin,” she said, accusing him of being “enamored of authoritarians” and “inept in any kind of strategic approach to China.” She added that Trump was “clearly going to do whatever Putin wanted on NATO.”


Clinton also said she once believed that China was preparing to “make [a] move against Taiwan” within a few years, but the Ukraine conflict discouraged Beijing from attempting to reclaim the island, which it regards as part of its sovereign territory. She went on to address widespread concerns that the current president, Joe Biden, 80, who confirmed that he would run again in late April, is too old for the job. While acknowledging that age is “an issue,” she urged voters to compare him to the man he is running against. Trump, who announced last November that he would run again in 2024, has been critical of Biden’s approach to the Ukraine conflict. In January, he claimed that the president “is systematically, but perhaps unknowingly, pushing us into what could soon be World War III.” Trump has described himself as the “only candidate” capable of stopping the US from sliding into a global conflict, promising he would settle the conflict in Ukraine “very quickly” if elected.

Read more …

And why not? Anything goes.

Zelensky Compares Artyomovsk To Hiroshima (RT)

The devastation left by the months-long battle for the Donbass city of Artyomovsk is reminiscent of the destruction resulting from the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told journalists on Sunday while attending the G7 summit hosted by the Japanese city. “The photos of Hiroshima remind me of Bakhmut,” said Zelensky, using the Ukrainian name of the city. He laid wreaths at the memorial to the victims of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima during his visit. “Absolute total destruction. There is nothing, there are no people,” he said, adding that “all the buildings are destroyed” in the city captured by Russia over the weekend. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed seizing Artyomovsk late on Saturday.

On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Wagner fighters and the servicemen of the regular Russian Army for successfully taking the city. Kiev continues to deny losing control of it. Zelensky himself sent mixed signals about the situation on the ground. Early on Sunday, he said the city “is only in our hearts” when asked if Ukraine still controls Artyomovsk. Later, he denied the city was “occupied by Russia.” Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group private military company, told journalists on Sunday that “no Ukrainian fighters had been left” in Artyomovsk. The US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima killed between 70,000 and 80,000 civilians, or around 30% of the city’s population at that time, according to various estimates. Another 70,000 people were injured. The blast also killed an estimated 20,000 Japanese military personnel.

The ‘Little Boy’ bomb that exploded about 580 meters above the city right over the Shima Surgical Clinic destroyed everything within a some 1.6-kilometer radius from the center of the blast. It also caused a massive blaze that engulfed 11 square kilometers. According to Japanese officials, almost 70% of the city’s buildings were destroyed. The salt-mining city of Artyomovsk had been the scene of intense fighting for some eight months as Russian forces gradually pushed Ukrainian troops out. The city, which spreads over some 41.6 square kilometers, was largely destroyed in the process. In 2017, the total population of Artyomovsk amounted to just over 71,000 people. Most residents were evacuated before the battle began or earlier in the fighting. However, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, some 10,000 people were still living in the city in late March. Kiev also stated that the battle for Artyomovsk claimed the lives of some 4,000 civilians. Russia did not comment on these estimates.

Read more …

Zakharova has the real link between the two..

Destruction Of Both Hiroshima, Artyomovsk Led By White House – Zakharova (TASS)

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed out that both Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) and Japan’s Hiroshima were destroyed by the official Washington, commenting on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s comparison of the aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima to hostilities in Artyomovsk. She pointed out that the Ukrainian president “compared Hiroshima, destroyed by an American nuclear bomb to Artyomovsk” on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan. “Well done, because the White House orchestrated both things,” Zakharova said on her Telegram channel Sunday.

Read more …

A very lenghty timeline of a very lenghty battle.

How Russia Forced Ukrainians To Retreat From Artyomovsk (RT)

Nine months of battles for a symbolic site in Kiev’s attempt to regain control of the region have ended with another triumph for Moscow’s forces Screenshot from social media video= The battle for Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut by the Ukrainians) began in August 2022, and gradually turned into the epicenter of fighting between Russia and Ukraine. While other parts of the front remained relatively stable, both sides actively brought forces to this small city. For Kiev, which in May 2022 suffered a defeat at Azovstal that helped undermine its image, Artyomovsk became the new Mariupol. Ukrainian propaganda labeled it ‘the Bakhmut Fortress’, and attempted to give an air of heroism to those fighting there.

Despite the fact that the city has no strategic importance for advancing westward, Russian troops accepted the challenge posed by Ukrainian propaganda. So what did Moscow gain from the nine-month-long ‘Bakhmut meat grinder’? In the nineteenth century, Artyomovsk was a provincial town in the Russian Empire and the administrative center of the developing Donbass region. As other cities grew, however, its role became less prominent. By the beginning of the Russian offensive in February 2022, the city had a population of about 70,000. It was home to several industrial facilities including a sparkling wine factory where battles took place in early 2023. According to the Ukrainian authorities, by that time 60% of the city had already been destroyed.

The importance of the city grew tremendously after the start of Russia’s military operation in February 2022. Initially, when Russian troops broke the first line of fortifications in the area of Popasnaya, Zolotoye, and the Lisichansk-Severodonetsk agglomeration, Artyomovsk was an important transport hub. It kept the Ukrainian front line connected with the rest of the country. After the Russians managed to break this line of defense and completely removed Kiev’s forces from the territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), Artyomovsk went from being a transport hub to becoming Ukraine’s second line of defense around the Bakhmutka River. This strip ran from Ukrainian positions opposite Gorlovka – since 2014 controlled by the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) – in the south up to Seversk in the north, running straight into the Seversky Donets, the main river in Donbass.

Read more …

Zelensky knows where Lula stands. Peace. Negotiations.

Lula Says Zelensky Didn’t Show Up To Scheduled Meeting (RT)

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said that his Ukrainian counterpart, Vladimir Zelensky, had failed to show up for a scheduled bilateral meeting during the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. “I had an interview, a bilateral one with [Zelensky] here in this room at 3:15 pm. We waited and received the information that he was late,” the president, who is commonly referred to as just Lula, said on Monday, as cited by Reuters. He added that Zelensky “did not show up” because “clearly he had appointments and he couldn’t come.” AFP cited Lula as saying that he was “upset” that the meeting fell through. A face-to-face meeting with the Ukrainian leader was absent from the itinerary published by Lula’s office ahead of his trip to Japan.


However, Bloomberg cited unnamed Brazilian officials as saying on Saturday that the Brazilian delegation felt pressured to arrange a meeting between Lula and Zelensky, whose travel plans are not usually publicly announced in advance. Zelensky later told reporters that “everyone has their schedules, so we couldn’t meet with the Brazilian president.” The two leaders previously spoke over the phone in March. Lula has condemned Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, but refused to join Western sanctions imposed Moscow and declined to provide weapons to Kiev. He has stressed that the Russia-Ukraine conflict should be resolved through negotiations. “No solution will last if it is not based on dialogue. We need to work to create the space for negotiations,” Lula said on Sunday.

Read more …

How much longer till she’s indicted?

Durham Report: Clinton, Not Trump, Colluded With Russians – Hanson (Fox)

The Durham report suggests there are more questions about Hillary Clinton’s overtures toward Russian entities than former President Donald Trump’s, Victor Davis Hanson claimed. Hanson, a historian and fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, told “Life, Liberty & Levin” that Durham’s findings showed that “far from being a Trump-Russian connection, there was a Hillary-Clinton–Russian connection.” Hanson analyzed the findings, saying they showed Clinton was using a Moscow-based “source,” Democrat-linked PR executive Charles Dolan Jr., to collect purported intelligence on Trump. Dolan, who served twice as former President Bill Clinton’s Virginia state campaign chairman, was “feeding” information to Igor Danchenko, a Russian national working at the Brookings Institution at a time the thinktank was being led by Nelson “Strobe” Talbott, Hanson said.

Talbott, who also served as Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of State, had been made privy to “briefings and inquiries on the development of the dossier” by Steele, according to a Fox News analysis by law professor Jonathan Turley. “Strobe Talbott… was introduced to Christopher Steele through Fiona Hill of impeachment fame, and the basic story mark was that they were fabricating everything in this dossier, and Dolan was trying to pass on rumors to Danchenko, who was corroborating with Steele,” Hanson said. In a 2019 Politico op-ed, Talbott notably claimed in-part, “[W]e already know that the Kremlin helped put Trump into the White House and played him for a sucker.”

Hanson said the purported “pee tape” — which supposedly was to have shown prostitutes urinating on a Moscow hotel bed at the behest of Trump to spite the Obamas, who reportedly previously slept there — was “all made up.” “[A]nd worse yet, the FBI knew it was made up, and yet they continued to pay Danchenko in hopes that he might find some credibility because they were using this material to get a FISA warrant to spy on [then-Trump campaign aide] Carter Page, and yet they knew that it was false.” “Even in the case of Steele, they offered him $1 million, apparently, if he could just reify or substantiate just one point and he couldn’t. So the FBI was knee-deep in it, and Durham suggests that they didn’t want to investigate Hillary or monitor her communications,” he said.

The reason the feds didn’t probe Clinton as they had Trump, he surmised, was because they were certain she was soon to be elected president. “And they were terrified that anybody, I guess, who would concoct such a conspiracy might do the same to them if she was in the White House,” he said. “So it’s damning to the FBI. It’s damning to the Hillary Clinton campaign. It’s damning to the media, because it’s all out there and then nobody’s refuted it… it really shows that Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russian government through intermediaries, and the FBI knew about it and blamed Donald Trump, who was innocent of it.”

Read more …

“..Russiagate’s aim from the jump was to delegitimize, destabilize, and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency..”

The Durham Report Indicts the Deep State—and the Media (RCI)

Russiagate’s aim from the jump was to delegitimize, destabilize, and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency. Hatched by the Hillary Clinton campaign, this would be her revenge for losing to Trump—an attempt to make his victory a Pyrrhic one. This would be the deep state’s way to sabotage and subvert a commander in chief who threatened to upend its agenda, and that of the entire political establishment. Neither fidelity to the law and truth, nor any sense of shame, nor any fear of consequences could temper the zealous would-be vanquishers of the “bad orange man.” We know this because, as Durham’s report spells out, and as even casual observers have long been aware, the story of Trump-Russia collusion was a farce from the very beginning and in virtually every respect.

It was born of hearsay, ludicrous innuendo, and laughable inferences. Its sources were biased, unscrupulous, and shady. The investigators acted corruptly, lawlessly, and violated basic practices and time-honored norms in pursuing a probe of the highest stakes. They could not corroborate the key pillars on which they “built” their “case” and covered their eyes and ears in the face of exculpatory evidence at every turn. The lack of due diligence and carelessness is staggering—if you were to assume the FBI and Justice Department were operating in good faith. Despite the glaring deficiencies in their case and the blatant violation of the rights of innocent Americans, including among them true patriots, nothing would slow them down.

It did not have to be this way. Were American journalists at our nation’s most storied publications adversaries of the ruling class rather than its stenographers—had they even a modicum of skepticism, curiosity, or intellectual honesty, they could have stepped in to defend our republic. They could have exposed one of the greatest scandals in American history: that our national security and law enforcement apparatus effectively sought to halt the transfer of power to a president they feared and loathed by pursuing him as a traitor, based on crackpot conspiracy theories borne of his political opponent’s research. Consider Gen. Michael Flynn’s purported Logan Act violations; George Papadopoulos’ comments to an Australian diplomat; Carter Page’s supposed Russian ties; the contents of the Steele dossier; Sergei Millian’s significance; the secret Alfa Bank back channel to Russia. The list of shoddy stories pertaining to purported Russian collusion is virtually endless, and as the Durham Report shows—as did reporting from independent, contrarian journalists at the time—such stories would fall apart under the slightest scrutiny.

Read more …

EU and G7 are 10 years late. Or is that 20? Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, they’ve lost it all. And they’re so full of hubris they never even noticed.

EU ‘Offer’ To Global South Must Be Better Than China’s – Ursula (RT)

The EU needs to offer a real alternative to China’s economic projects for the countries of the Global South, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Saturday. The EU and likeminded nations must use the “window of opportunity” as “many countries of the Global South are looking for alternative funding options,” she said at the G7 summit in Japan’s Hiroshima. Von der Leyen claimed that China’s Belt and Road Initiative – a global infrastructure investment strategy unveiled ten years ago – has been losing its appeal because many countries had “bad experiences with China.” “They took Chinese loans and ended up in a debt crisis,” the EU official stated, adding that the European bloc and the G7 must fill the void.


“We want to put a better offer on the table. If we are in a race, we are in a race to the top,” von der Leyen said. She added that the EU is rolling out 90 “flagship projects” on different continents as part of its Global Gateway investment scheme. Von der Leyen’s words came as G7 countries adopted a joint statement that accused Beijing of “economic coercion” and technology theft. China, in turn, has repeatedly accused G7 members of abusing trade regulations in order to impose their will on others. Beijing has also denied claims that the Belt and Road project hurts other nations. “The so-called Chinese debt trap is a lie made up by the US and some other Western countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said last year.

Read more …

“On the list are business partners who are connected to millions of dollars acquired from foreign interests in China, Ukraine and other countries…”

Hunter Biden Faces Call for the Appearance of Key Business Associates (Turley)

There is a new and interesting development in Arkansas where attorneys for Lunden Alexis Roberts have prepared a list of witnesses for the upcoming proceedings involving Hunter Biden’s daughter, Navy. As previously discussed, Hunter Biden is seeking to reduce child support payments and has balked at Navy being able to use the Biden name. If successful, this could get a lot worse for Hunter in his allegedly efforts to conceal his past incomes. On the list are business partners at the center of the influence peddling scandal. (Thank you to the reader who sent this possibly prophetic intersection picture). On the list are business partners who are connected to millions of dollars acquired from foreign interests in China, Ukraine and other countries. Also on the list is New York City art gallery owner Georges Bergès who continues to sell his art.

Bergès has reportedly pushed back on congressional efforts to reveal details on these proceeds and buyers even though former government ethicists have raised concerns over the sales. The costs of these proceedings and high-priced legal team would seem to undermine claims of financial distress by Biden. However, by putting his financial worth at issue, Hunter has opened up a new front in battling over the disclosure of his past dealings. Some of his part associates are reportedly cooperating with House investigators in tracking foreign payments. Even the Washington Post has belatedly published an editorial admitting that this is all a serious concern over influence peddling. In an editorial titled “Millions flowed to Biden family members. Don’t pretend it doesn’t matter.”

It was a bittersweet moment for many of us who have been writing about these dealings for years as newspapers like the Post downplayed the scandal or the authenticity of the laptop. Media outlets like National Public Radio (NPR) declared NPR declared that it “not want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” These disclosures have been forced into the public despite the best efforts of the Post and other media. Indeed, recently the Post’s Philip Bump derided the House investigation as a “fishing expedition . . . it’s nearly all innuendo, a big corkboard with lots of pictures but little interconnecting string.” His “witchhunt” attack was then repeated by others at the Post.

Despite these efforts, Hunter Biden appears to going his level best to force the issue in Arkansas. It is not clear if the court will call any of these witnesses. However, since Hunter has put his finances at issue, some disclosures will need to be made. As for Navy, she is still uncertain if the court will allow her to use the Biden name despite her father’s efforts to the contrary. While it does not appear that Hunter (who lives in a California mansion) is financially broke, his actions (and those of the President and First Lady) toward this little girl show a moral deficit and delinquency that is abundantly obvious.

Read more …

MAGA?!

White House Blasts GOP Over Debt Ceiling Talks (RT)

The White House has hit out at a Republican congressional leadership it says has become increasingly beholden to fringe ‘MAGA’ elements for obstructing talks designed to raise the US debt ceiling and avoid putting the country into default for the first time in its history. In a statement posted to the White House website on Saturday, a spokesperson for the administration of President Joe Biden described a deal offered by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Friday as a “big step back” and said that it contained a set of “extreme partisan demands.” “The President has over and over again put deficit reduction proposals on the table, from limits on spending to cuts to Big Pharma profits to closing loopholes for oil and gas,” the statement from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

“It is only a Republican leadership beholden to its MAGA wing – not the President or Democratic leadership – who are threatening to put our nation into default.” The proposal offered by McCarthy on Friday included significant cuts to domestic programs while increasing defense spending. It also imposed work requirements on some aid programs, while making it more difficult for states to waive work requirements for people in areas of high unemployment who rely on federal food assistance. The GOP deal also refuses Democratic requests to increase tax revenue to help pay for future budget deficits. “I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects wealthy tax cheats and crypto traders while putting food assistance at risk for nearly one million people,” Biden said on Sunday in comments delivered from Hiroshima, Japan, where he was attending the G7 summit.

Biden also accused Republicans of engaging in political theater in their handling of the negotiations to extend the debt ceiling. “I think there are some MAGA Republicans in the House who know the damage this would do to the economy, and because I am president, and the president’s responsible for everything, Biden would take the blame,” he said. Unless an accord is struck, the Treasury Department has indicated that the US could default on its $31.4 trillion debt as early as June 1. This would lead to a scenario where Washington is unable to borrow more money or pay all of its bills.

Read more …

“The idea hinges on a phrase in the 14th Amendment that says the public debt “shall not be questioned,” which proponents of the idea argue means the president could unilaterally continue to issue debt..”

Biden Thinks He Has Authority To Use 14th Amendment On Debt Ceiling (Hill)

President Biden on Sunday said he believes he has the authority to use the 14th Amendment to unilaterally address the debt ceiling, but he acknowledged potential legal challenges could still lead the nation to default if he went that route. “I’m looking at the 14th Amendment as to whether or not we have the authority — I think we have the authority,” Biden told reporters at a press conference in Hiroshima, Japan. “The question is, could it be done and invoked in time that it would not be appealed, and as a consequence past the date in question and still default on the debt. That is a question that I think is unresolved.”

Biden added that all four congressional leaders said in a recent White House meeting that they agreed the nation would not default, signaling that he hoped talk of the 14th Amendment would ultimately not be necessary. “So I’m assuming that we mean what we say and we’ll figure out a way to not have to default,” Biden said. Sunday’s remarks were Biden’s strongest to date on the 14th Amendment, which has been a point of debate among legal experts and administration officials as the U.S. gets closer to the risk of default. The Treasury Department has warned the U.S. could default as early as June 1 if no action is taken to raise the debt ceiling.

The idea hinges on a phrase in the 14th Amendment that says the public debt “shall not be questioned,” which proponents of the idea argue means the president could unilaterally continue to issue debt if Congress does not act. Biden earlier this month said he had been “considering” the 14th Amendment as a way to unilaterally work around the debt ceiling, but he acknowledged that it would not be a viable short-term solution. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen previously warned that using the 14th Amendment could trigger a “constitutional crisis,” calling it “one of the not good options” if Congress failed to act.

Read more …

“This is happening now because the USA today no longer manufactures and/or renders anywhere remotely near enough products or services..”

DE-Dollarization Made Simple -Even For Millennials (Vilches)

Dollars are just failing I.O.U´s (more on that later) issued by the US which until today were still exchangeable for (1) goods and/or (2) services and/or (3) payment of debts the three of which could be either of US origin (that´s okay) or also from elsewhere (that´s NOT okay). In a nutshell, that´s what the current DE-dollarization process is all about, which translated means that US dollars will progressively be dumped onto the US economy´s front lawn as time goes by leading to an unstoppable hyperinflationary process. So, as we speak, many commercially and industrially, and technologically important economies (actually essential for the world and individual countries) have decided that transactions amongst themselves should be paid for in something different from US dollars as the USA is not involved in any part of such process.

Why would Argentina or Brazil export their grains to China payable in US dollars rather than Yuans while both need tons of Yuans to pay for Chinese imports? Accordingly, Saudis now allow China to pay for their oil in Yuans. So with growing impetus, many countries are now paying – and planning to pay in increasing quantities — for transactions amongst themselves with their own currencies and/or physical gold bullion which thru 6000 years of history has clearly proved that it has long-lasting intrinsic value in and of itself as accumulated labor duly acknowledged by third parties. So bullion´s role would be to compensate for the differences in the exchanging BRICS+ currencies used to settle import-export balances between non-US trading partners. BTW, the Central Bank of China does not waste any time reducing its exposure to US Treasuries now lowest since early 2010 and getting lower by the hour.

Since 2018 Russia holds practically 0 (zero) US Treasuries. This is happening now because the USA today no longer manufactures and/or renders anywhere remotely near enough products or services to cancel the humongous amount of IOU dollars already issued with total impunity. An “exorbitant privilege“ per former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing´s brilliant definition many decades ago. The US deal is “you work hard as hell and we´ll just print” follow? You raise cattle till cows are fat and healthy enough to export us your beef – meaning years of investments and hard labor – and we´ll just copy-paste some more pretty Benjamins and hand them over to you in exchange, okay? Please be advised in case you didn´t notice that Walmart today does not carry “Made in USA” goods because everything now is most efficiently manufactured somewhere else.

Read more …

Ruling center-right won the Greek elections yesterday. They can now continue to sell off the country.

Greece’s Debt Is More Unsustainable Than Ever (Varoufakis)

Greece is deeper in the hole of insolvency today than it was in 2010, when the whole world of finance — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission — said we were bankrupt. Back then, our debt was something like €295 billion and our income €220 billion, whereas today the debt is €400 billion and our national income, in real terms, €192 billion. Most of our debt is owed to the troika and to foreign investors. So, our dependence on the kindness of strangers is greater than ever. Greece’s population today has, on average, 20 percent lower living standards than in 2010; if you look at the working class, the reduction of GDP per capita is 45 percent. As for private sector debt, around two million out of ten million Greeks have negative equity and nonperforming loans.

It’s a world record: it didn’t even happen in the US in 2008–09, during the subprime mortgages crisis. But how come I acknowledge that from the perspective of foreign investors, Greece is doing better than any other country? Well, government bonds are trading at 3.6 to 3.7 percent yields — a very nice spread over German ones at 2.2 to 2.3 percent. Everyone knows that the Greek state is bankrupt and the bonds are junk. So, why do they buy them? The European Central Bank (ECB) has announced that it will back Greek bonds. It’s a political decision to declare Greece solvent, just as it was a political decision to declare it insolvent in 2010. Christine Lagarde and her minions are making a nod and a wink to investors.

Why is the ECB standing behind bonds, when it didn’t in 2012 or 2015? Recent years saw a world first, a mechanism for extracting wealth from the bankrupt. The powers that be have instituted the so-called Hercules plan, taking bonds off the books of banks and selling them to vulture funds based in the Cayman Islands. They belong partly to foreign investors, partly to people who run the Greek banks, partly to the extended families of the political class. They can, for instance, buy a nonperforming loan of €100,000 but for just €3,000. They don’t expect to get the money back; but if they can sell the collateral for €50,000 they have extracted €47,000 in rent to the Caymans without paying a cent in tax. This can extract around €70 billion from a sub-€200-billion-a-year economy.

So, it may sound like a paradox that the financial press is hailing an economy whose public and private sectors are more bankrupt than ever. But seeing the gains foreign investors can draw from this situation, it is no paradox. Greece is a goose laying golden eggs: such profit rates don’t exist anywhere else. To boot, this Hercules scheme, passed by the Greek parliament, guarantees a minimum of €23 billion. The Greek state — and thus the ECB itself — stands behind the vultures’ interests, if they don’t manage to extract enough in dispossessions.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Anne Heche
https://twitter.com/i/status/1660121425846435840

 

 

Thai ducks

 

 


The revenge of the duck

 

 

How?

 

 

Ibex

 

 

Cheetah
https://twitter.com/i/status/1660009782349111296

 

 

Lunch

 

 

 

 

 

 

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