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Debt Rattle October 6 2024

Oct 062024
 
 October 6, 2024  Posted by at 8:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  130 Responses »


Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath 1798

 

• Biden Doubts US Presidential Election Will Be Peaceful (TASS)
• We Can’t Have The World Laughing At US – Trump (RT)
• Political Storm Rages Over FEMA Disaster Relief Weeks Before Election Day (JTN)
• Musk Accuses Biden Administration of Blocking Disaster Relief (RT)
• Biden/Harris Doctrine Has Brought the World Closer to World War III (AmG)
• Israel Should Strike Iran’s Nuclear Sites – Trump (RT)
• Soleimani Wins: Israel Falls Into The Trap of the Axis of Resistance (SCF)
• The Resistance Wants Victory (Pacini)
• Tanker Blown Up By Houthis As Disasters Mount For Biden-Harris (ZH)
• NATO Plans Major Force Buildup – Welt (RT)
• New NATO Chief Visits Ukraine (Antiwar)
• Kiev May Have To Accept Loss Of Territory – Stoltenberg (RT)
• Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico To Visit Russia For Victory Day (RT)
• Robert Fico Is A Rare Voice Of Sanity When It Comes To Russia (Amar)
• Le Pen Trial Chance for Establishment to Bring Her Party to Its Knees (Sp.)
• Alex Jones Creditors Target Future Assets – Which Could Include His Name (ZH)
• Argentina’s Milei Accused Of Copying Speech From The West Wing (RT)

 

 

 

 

FEMA sources
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842201497028689989

 

 

Rally

 

 

Biden press

 

 

Trump NC


Trump DEI
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842394029012480193

 

 

Fitton

Ashli Babbitt

Vivek Bolton
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842234866223436183

Liz Cheney Harris

 

 

 

 

• Biden Doubts US Presidential Election Will Be Peaceful (TASS)

US President Joe Biden is convinced that the upcoming presidential election in the United States will be free and fair, but doubts that it will be peaceful. “I’m confident it [the election] will be free and fair. I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” he said, answering to a reporter’s question at the White House. “The things that [former President and Republican candidate Donald] Trump has said and the things that he said last time around when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous.” Biden added that Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, had dodged the question of whether he will accept any outcome of the vote.

“They haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election. So, I’m concerned about what they are going to do,” he said. The US will hold a presidential election on November 5. Incumbent US President Joe Biden was expected to run on the Democratic Party ticket, but after his disastrous performance at the June debate with Trump, he decided to quit the race and instead supported the nomination of his Vice President Kamala Harris. Her candidacy was later formally endorsed at a Democratic Party Convention.

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“They respected us. They respected us more than they’ve ever respected us, and now they laugh at us. We can’t have them laugh at us.”

• We Can’t Have The World Laughing At US – Trump (RT)

The US has squandered respect on the world stage, becoming a laughing stock, former President Donald Trump said at a campaign event in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Trump held a rally to drum up support for his re-election in the city of Butler on Saturday, returning to the site where he nearly survived an assassination attempt in July. The Republican nominee vowed to lift up the US economy, combat violent crime and crack down on illegal immigration through the southern border. “Everything has to be the best,” he said. “We have to have the best schools. We have to have strong borders. We don’t want bad people coming in and hurting us,”“You deserve a nation that builds things again, makes things better, that aims for the stars once more, and that once again, commands respect, and we want to get respect like we had it four years ago,” he told the rally crowd.

The entire world respected us. They respected us. They respected us more than they’ve ever respected us, and now they laugh at us. We can’t have them laugh at us. Throughout his campaign, Trump has accused the “weak” administration of President Joe Biden and the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, of damaging America’s reputation. He claimed that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza would not have broken out if he was still in charge. Trump also argued that he had good relations with all of the world leaders, including presidents Vladimir Putin of Ukraine and Xi Jinping of China. He repeatedly claimed that he would quickly resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict if elected for a second term in November. Biden and Harris, meanwhile, have accused Trump of undermining NATO and failing to stand up to Russia. “Our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president,” Harris told Trump during a televised debate last month.

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FEMA just flatly denies. That’s one way to do it.

• Political Storm Rages Over FEMA Disaster Relief Weeks Before Election Day (JTN)

After the devastation of Hurricane Helene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) appears to be facing a storm of its own, as allegations of mismanagement and obstruction fly just weeks before the November election. A series of Republicans and alleged whistleblowers have accused the agency of mismanaging funds that were designated for disaster relief and using it for illegal immigrants at the southern border instead. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday admitted to reporters that FEMA does not “have the funds to make it through the [hurricane] season,” but said it does have enough to handle Hurricane Helene, which has resulted in over 200 deaths since making landfall in Florida last week. The secretary and FEMA have not indicated how much more money they would be needing to get through the rest of the season, which concludes at the end of November, but said the money approved through Congress’ continuing resolution would not be enough.

A group of Republican senators expressed concern on Friday over the allegations that FEMA’s “entanglement” with the border crisis could impact its ability to provide disaster relief. “FEMA’s continued entanglement in DHS’s efforts to respond to the border crisis could impact its readiness and emergency response mission,” the Republican lawmakers wrote to Mayorkas. “Rather than ensuring FEMA is ready to respond to hurricanes and other emergencies, FEMA has been pulled into a border crisis mission.” The senators also requested information on how many full-time FEMA employees have since been deployed at the border, and how much money FEMA reprogrammed to support its border-related mission duties. Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz backed up the senators’ concerns in his own letter to Mayorkas on Friday, in which he claimed FEMA whistleblowers said the agency used taxpayer funds marked for disaster relief on non-disaster-relief programs that housed and supported illegal immigrants on the country’s southern border.

Gaetz also said that he was told by whistleblowers that FEMA employees are on the ground in areas impacted by the hurricane, such as North Carolina, but do not have deployment orders so they are waiting on the clock in hotels. FEMA, the White House, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have denied all of the allegations of misappropriating its funds, claiming the money used for the border and for disaster relief are from two separate programs. The agency has even created a “rumor response” page on its website. “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs,” the agency said in a news release. “FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other non-disaster related efforts. “The funding for communities to support migrants is appropriated by Congress to Customs and Border Patrol – it has nothing to do with FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund,” it added.

FEMA has spent approximately $650 million on grants to non-profits and local authorities that resettle and aid migrants so far, per Fox News, and has sent employees down to the border to help address the increase in unaccompanied minors that began in 2021. But the money for grants is far less than the roughly $20 billion budget for the agency’s disaster relief fund. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday also criticized the federal response to Hurricane Helene, claiming that the government was blocking flights trying to bring Starlinks and aid to hurricane victims, after a source told Musk the airspace was shut down. The source texted Musk that FEMA is blocking shipments and seizing goods from volunteers. He also claimed the government is throttling private flights in the North Carolina airspace, which is making it harder to bring in supplies and Starlinks.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg denied the reports that they are making it harder for civilians to help with disaster relief, stating that “no one is shutting down the airspace and FAA doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights.” FEMA also denied the accusation, stating that reports they were confiscating aid meant for the survivors were “false” but that such rumors often spread after disasters. “FEMA does not take donations and/or food from survivors or voluntary organizations,” the agency said in its news release. “Donations of food, water, or other goods are handled by voluntary agencies who specialize in storing, sorting, cleaning and distributing donated items.”

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“As of Friday, FEMA had spent $45 million on relief efforts following Hurricane Helene, or 14 times less than it spent housing illegal immigrants last year..”

• Musk Accuses Biden Administration of Blocking Disaster Relief (RT)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has accused US President Joe Biden’s administration of “actively blocking” the supply of Starlink internet terminals and critical aid to areas of North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene. The administration has dismissed those claims as false. Hurricane Helene tore through the American southeast last week, killing more than 225 people and leaving hundreds unaccounted for. The damage was particularly severe in Georgia and western North Carolina, where bridges were washed away and tens of thousands of people are still without running water, power, and cellphone service. During a visit to Georgia on Monday, former US President Donald Trump said that he had been in touch with Musk, who would be delivering Starlink internet terminals to affected areas. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also said in a press release that it would be distributing Starlink terminals to local authorities.

On Friday, however, Musk claimed on his X platform that FEMA “is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!” Citing a SpaceX engineer in North Carolina, Musk claimed that FEMA personnel are confiscating Starlink terminals and other supplies arriving in the state. In a follow-up post, the billionaire shared text messages from the engineer, who alleged that the agency had “shut down the airspace to ‘regulate’ the private choppers we are riding in to deliver Starlink and supplies.” Replying to Musk’s post, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that “no one is shutting down the airspace and [the Federal Aviation Administration] doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights.” “If you’re encountering a problem give me a call,” Buttigieg added. The issue was apparently resolved late on Friday night, with Musk replying to thank Buttigieg and announce that “support flights are underway.”

Republican politicians and conservative pundits have accused the Biden administration of slow-walking relief to western North Carolina due to the fact that the region’s predominantly white population overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Trump visited Georgia and North Carolina before Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this week, and claimed at a rally on Friday that “a lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia and supposed to go to North Carolina” had been spent on “people that came into the country illegally.”

After FEMA spent $640 million on housing for illegal immigrants over the last fiscal year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced on Wednesday that the agency does not have enough money to make it through the rest of hurricane season, which typically runs until early December. However, the $640 million spent on illegal immigrants was not drawn from FEMA’s disaster relief fund, but from a separate fund authorized by Congress. As of Friday, FEMA had spent $45 million on relief efforts following Hurricane Helene, or 14 times less than it spent housing illegal immigrants last year, according to a White House statement.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1842331082139566081

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What? “Several experts, including Blinken and Sullivan, wrote that President Biden enhanced American foreign policy by strengthening the American economy..”

• Biden/Harris Doctrine Has Brought the World Closer to World War III (AmG)

By a strange turn of fate, on October 1, 2024, the day that Iran launched the largest ballistic missile attack ever against Israel, Foreign Affairs magazine published an article by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he claimed “the Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago” and that Iran is being held in check. A year earlier, Foreign Affairs published another tragically erroneous article by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, which said, “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.” Six days after this article was posted, Hamas launched a sneak attack against Israel, massacring more than 1,200 people and maiming and injuring many more. In a stunning violation of journalistic ethics, Foreign Affairs allowed Sullivan to revise his article after the Hamas terrorist attack. Here is a link to the original version.

In these articles, Biden officials are trying to rewrite history by manufacturing false narratives of a successful Biden national security doctrine that they claim has enhanced U.S. and global security. This is, of course, preposterous. Not only has there been a huge increase in global instability since Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has brought the world closer to World War III because of an increased chance Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the real prospect of an Israel-Iran War, a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea Axis, a growing chance that China will attack Taiwan, and other current and potential crises.

Several Biden allies have tried to invent a so-called Biden Doctrine since 2021. Most made fatuous claims that Biden was reversing the damage done by President Trump to the country’s alliances, deterrence, and global leadership despite clear evidence that Trump strengthened alliances and had a successful foreign policy that brought global stability and kept U.S. troops out of new wars. Others asserted that Biden “restored trust abroad for the U.S.,” a claim that many U.S. allies would dispute. Several experts, including Blinken and Sullivan, wrote that President Biden enhanced American foreign policy by strengthening the American economy. The huge advantage that Donald Trump currently has in the polls over Kamala Harris on the economy proves this isn’t true either.

In January 2024, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an article titled, “A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big” on a supposed new Biden Middle East peace initiative to quickly end the Hamas/Israel war. Under this plan, the Biden administration would bring peace to the Middle East with a tough stand on Iran, push for recognition of a Palestinian state, and greatly scale up the U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia. None of these things happened. Instead, Middle East security has deteriorated in 2024 to the worst level in decades.

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His big blind spot.

• Israel Should Strike Iran’s Nuclear Sites – Trump (RT)

Israel should carry out a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities to avenge Tehran’s recent missile attack on the Jewish state, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has argued. Earlier this week, Iran fired around 180 missiles at Israel, calling it retaliation for the assassinations of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, both of whom had close ties to Tehran. The attack killed one Palestinian in the West Bank, while the Israeli military acknowledged that some of the projectiles hit its air bases. The attack also followed what Israel called a “limited ground operation” in southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. Speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina on Friday, Trump, known for his hawkish stance on Iran, disagreed with US President Joe Biden, who had earlier refused to support an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“They asked him, what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran? And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right? I mean, it’s the biggest risk we have, nuclear weapons,” he said. “When they asked him that question, the answer should have been, hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later,” Trump added. As president, Trump spearheaded the US withdrawal in 2018 from the nuclear deal with Iran. Under the agreement, Iran had agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. At the time, however, Trump argued that the deal did little to permanently prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Following the Iranian strike on Israel, Axios reported that West Jerusalem is eyeing a “significant retaliation” for the missile barrage and that all options are on the table, including strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Other potential targets could reportedly include gas and oil rigs or air defense systems, while targeted assassinations could also be considered. Meanwhile, according to an Al Jazeera report, Iran warned the US that any Israeli attack could be met with an “unconventional response.” As tensions continue to soar in the Middle East, Politico reported that Biden is growing increasingly frustrated by Israel’s conduct, including recent attacks on Hezbollah and the war in Gaza, with the White House said to be acknowledging the possibility that it may not be able to prevent a full-scale “regional war.”

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“..one of the greatest military thinkers in history – the man largely responsible for creating the trap that Israel has just fallen into, four years after his death..”

“Soleimani’s strategy was focused on creating a prolonged war, wearing down the Zionist regime to the point of no return of its own state structure.”

• Soleimani Wins: Israel Falls Into The Trap of the Axis of Resistance (SCF)

In 2020, the U.S. military assassinated Iranian General Qassem Solemani in a terrorist attack with drones in Iraq. The purpose of the operation was simply to eliminate one of the greatest military thinkers in history – the man largely responsible for creating the trap that Israel has just fallen into, four years after his death. Much more than a mere military officer, Soleimani was a strategist and negotiator – perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to even call him a “war diplomat”. An expert in clandestine operations, intelligence and special forces’ tactics, Soleimani was responsible for enabling the network of anti-Zionist organizations known as the “Axis of Resistance”. Overcoming religious, ethnic and ideological differences between the various Islamic and anti-Zionist movements, Soleimani united different factions in a joint strategy against Israel.

Obviously, this strategy was centered on Iran and gave the Islamic Republic the leading role in the fight against the Israeli occupation and its regional proxies. However, one of the keys to the success of the Axis is precisely its largely decentralized nature, guaranteeing autonomy of action for its members, without tight Iranian control over all the acts of the coalition. The Axis of Resistance was victorious in Syria, where several militias, with the support of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), defeated ISIS and other Israeli proxies. At the time, Soleimani’s military diplomatic success was so great that even a dialogue with the Kurdish militias (historically supported by the West) was possible at a time of confrontation against more dangerous groups – such as ISIS itself. Soleimani’s survival was perceived as an existential threat by Israel, encouraging the Zionist lobby in the U.S. to push for a targeted assassination operation.

The main problem, however, is that targeted assassinations are rarely effective against highly ideological groups and countries with well-defined war strategies. Soleimani’s death did not dismantle the Axis, but rather further united the militias around Iran – including the Palestinian Sunni militias, which have historically suffered a struggle for influence between Shiites and Wahhabis. Today, no one can deny Iran’s great influence over the Palestinian Resistance. What few people know, however, is that this process is precisely the result of the diplomatic alliances achieved by Soleimani. By killing Ismail Hannyeh, the Hamas leader closest to Iran in the entire history of the Palestinian party and responsible for the peace between the Palestinian jihadists and the Syrian government, Israel also hoped to destabilize the Axis – reducing Iranian influence and expanding the pro-Wahhabi lobby in Palestine, which, as we know, did not happen.

In the same vein, by killing Hassan Nasrallah, then head of Hezbollah, Israel planned to once again destabilize the Axis, liquidating the leadership of the main Shiite paramilitary organization and thus possibly fomenting an institutional crisis within the group. Contrary to Zionist expectations, Hezbollah did not show any shock from the assassination of its leader, except to become even more organized and confident in its engagement against the occupation. Tel Aviv will not stop carrying out targeted assassinations. It is quite possible that the response to Iran’s recent attack will be through assassination attempts against other Iranian public figures. This Israeli method is due to a specific characteristic of the regime that was acutely perceived by General Soleimani: Israel’s inability to go to all-out war. Contrary to the myth of “Israeli invincibility” commonly propagated in the West, Tel Aviv has a natural weakness due to its own geographical limitations.

The policy of targeted killings was developed by Israel to try to destabilize its enemies psychologically and institutionally, avoiding prolonged military engagements. Without the capacity for continuous replenishment of troops and resources and having a very small territory with very exposed targets, Israel fears a large-scale war – and this was precisely Soleimani’s assessment. By creating the Axis of Resistance, the Iranian general has condemned Israel to perpetual war. There will be no peace at any time. If Israel defeats Hamas and the other Palestinian militias, there will still be Hezbollah and the Syrian militias in the north. On the naval front, Yemen will continue to capture ships and strike on strategic targets throughout occupied Palestine. In Iraq, the Resistance will not stop its operations at any time. And in the end, even if it defeats all these enemies, Tel Aviv will still have to face Iran itself – the largest military power in the Middle East, which, unlike Israel, has a large population and a gigantic territory, rich in resources and protected by a complex mountainous geography.

In other words, the existence of the Axis of Resistance is Israel’s death sentence. Soleimani’s strategy was focused on creating a prolonged war, wearing down the Zionist regime to the point of no return of its own state structure. The time will come when Israel becomes unviable as a country and will have to accept negotiating terms to create a demilitarized and non-ethnic state (joint between Jews and Palestinians), putting an end to apartheid. Otherwise, years of war will destroy all the country’s resources and create an irreversible migration crisis, leading millions of citizens to flee the Middle East forever.

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“..on the eve of one of the most delicate lunar transits of the century – with the Moon entering Libra with an eclipse attached with Mars opposed to Pluto retrograde in Capricorn, which will perfect the opposition at the end of the month, a conjunction harbinger of great clashes..”

• The Resistance Wants Victory (Pacini)

This is it. Something has happened. And this ‘something’ was for many unexpected, for others much hoped for. Now we have to reckon with what will happen. There are choices that cannot be made without considering certain esoteric data, the influence of which can be decisive for the success of a strategic operation. Israel knows this well, applying the notions of the Jewish Kabbalah to all political and military choices. This time the timing was not lacking even in the response: on the eve of one of the most delicate lunar transits of the century – with the Moon entering Libra with an eclipse attached with Mars opposed to Pluto retrograde in Capricorn, which will perfect the opposition at the end of the month, a conjunction harbinger of great clashes and which opens a two-year period of important battles – the Islamic Republic of Iran took the step of responding to the Zionist fury.

The attack was claimed as a legitimate response to the assassination of Haniyeh, Nasrallah and other members of the Resistance, following what the United Nations had also declared in recent months, when Israel had violated Iran’s territorial sovereignty by attacking Tehran directly. From a technical military point of view, it was an attack that could be described as modest. Certainly not focused on gaining significant strategic advantage, the operation involved some 400 hypersonic missiles that reached targets in Israel within approximately 15 minutes, all of them strategic in nature, i.e. military bases, weapons depots, and supply platforms. No civilian targets were tracked in the executed attack, confirming the military precision and legitimacy of the attack under International Law and Ius in bello, a necessary clarification given the Israeli use of targeting civilian targets.

What this attack has shown is that Iran has succeeded in overcoming Israel’s multi-layered air defence, somewhat like it did in April under similar circumstances. This time, however, the missile attack was significantly more successful than the previous one, with more warheads impacting the targets. The missiles employed were – according to the official release of the Iranian institutions – Fatteh-1s, defined as hypersonic, employed for the first time. Bear in mind that the term ‘hypersonic’ means that the missile maintains a speed of Mach 5 (or higher) for the entire duration of the flight, not just for part of it as is the case with non-hypersonic missiles. They are missiles with a weight of 450 kilos and a range of more than 1400 kilometers. From the recovered fragments, it appears that Cheibar Shekan missiles, which are particularly fast and have a longer cruise range, were also used.

The attack was followed by a series of ‘diplomatic clarifications’: if Israel counter-attacks, Iran is ready to strike more heavily. In the meantime, the U.S. condemned the attack and deployed its armed forces in support of Israel, which had also been present in the area for some time, both with the regular missions already there and the reinforcements sent since the beginning of the fight with Hamas in October last year. The quality of this attack is perhaps to be understood more on the level of international relations than on the strictly military level. Such a ‘partial’ attack was not helpful in clearing the way for ground troops, let alone in tampering with the enemy’s systems. The affected bases had already been evacuated hours in advance and Israel was waiting for the promised retaliation. What has changed is at the international level. The U.S. barefacedly confirmed its sine qua non protection to Israel, while, let us remember, Netanyahu was in New York at the UN plenary when he issued the order to attack to kill Nasrallah and shortly afterwards invade Lebanon, starting the Third Lebanon War.

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“..This chaos has sparked global supply chain snarls for the shipping industry as commercial vessels are rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope.”

• Tanker Blown Up By Houthis As Disasters Mount For Biden-Harris (ZH)

The Biden-Harris administration is facing several disasters this week. From FEMA’s botched response in the hurricane-ravaged US Southeast to elevated WW3 risks in the Middle East, one major and ongoing crisis that went underreported this week was multiple attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on commercial ships in the critical maritime chokepoint of the southern Red Sea. On Wednseday we penned a note, citing intelligence firm SynMax, which specializes in maritime and energy intelligence, about two commercial vessels targeted by Houthis: “Two ships targeted by Houthis in the Red Sea yesterday—Panama-flagged CORDELIA MOON and Liberian-flagged MINOAN COURAGE—the first such attacks since September,” SynMax wrote on X.

Fast forward to late week, the maritime news website gCaptain released footage showing one of the vessels, Panama-flagged tanker M/T Cordelia Moon, being hit by a Houthi unmanned surface vessel. Here’s more from the gCaptain: The incident, which occurred on October 1, involved multiple missile strikes and a hit by an USV. The vessel was unladen and in ballast condition at the time of the attack. According to the Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC), the vessel was targeted while navigating the southern Red Sea, approximately 64 nautical miles from Al Hudaydah, Yemen. The attack unfolded in several stages, according to the ship’s Master:
At 0150 UTC, three projectiles landed near the ship’s port bow.
At 0253 UTC, a fourth projectile splashed 100 meters from the aft starboard quarter.
At 0500 UTC, the ship was struck by a USV on its port side.

The JMIC confirmed that the Cordelia Moon sustained damage but did not require assistance. All crew members are reported safe, and the vessel is proceeding to its next port of call. It also assesses that vessel was likely targeted due to affiliations within the vessel’s operation structure. The current threat assessment indicates that vessels with Israeli, United States, or United Kingdom associations are at the highest risk, but ships within company structures that have been identified as making port calls to Israel are also potential targets. As tensions continue to rise in the Red Sea, this latest incident underscores the dangers to vessels and their crews in the region, particularly those with connections to countries perceived as adversaries by the Houthi rebels. Dramatic footage.

For one year, Houthi rebels have launched over 80 attacks on commercial ships in the critical maritime chokepoint, sinking two ships and killing four sailors. [..] This chaos has sparked global supply chain snarls for the shipping industry as commercial vessels are rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope. Even more concerning is the Biden-Harris administration’s failure of ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’ to ensure freedom of navigation and maritime security in the critical chokepoint. Meanwhile, the clogged chokepoint is causing major supply chain disruptions at top global ports. [..] In August, former Navy Seal and Blackwater founder Erik Prince issued this dire warning about what the clogged Red Sea actually means for the West: America’s “credibility and deterrence” are quickly eroding.

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49 additional combat brigades of 5,000 soldiers each.

• NATO Plans Major Force Buildup – Welt (RT)

NATO is planning to dramatically increase the number of its combat units amid tensions with Russia, the daily Die Welt reported on Saturday, citing a confidential planning document it obtained from the German Defense Ministry. Entitled the “Minimum Capability Requirements,” it was reportedly written by two top commanders of the US-led bloc: American General Christopher Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and French Admiral Pierre Vandier, who is responsible for the bloc’s doctrinal and transformation issues. The document outlines the basic requirements NATO has to fulfil if it plans to defend “every centimeter” of its territory in a potential conflict with Moscow, Die Welt said. Cavoli and Vandier explain that the current number of the bloc’s combat brigades is insufficient for this task and should be increased from 82 to 131.

Under German army standards, the strength of such new formations should be around 5,000 soldiers each, the newspaper said, without explaining if the NATO strategy paper outlined any specific requirements. The number of corps and divisions is also to be increased from six to 15 and from 24 to 38 respectively, according to the document. The number of ground-based air defense units equipped with systems such as US-made Patriots or the German-made IRIS-T should be expanded fivefold from 293 to 1467, the outlet said. Each of the 32 NATO members would reportedly have to contribute to these new “minimum capabilities” depending on its population. It is unclear how quickly NATO countries would be able to meet the new requirements. According to Die Welt, the German Armed Forces – the Bundeswehr – currently has eight combat brigades and one more is being formed. Berlin plans to field one more brigade by 2031.

The buildup would require “significant further funding,” the authors said, as cited by Die Welt. The plan would “probably demand significantly more than two percent” of member states’ national GDP to be spent on defense, they added. Western nations have repeatedly called Russia a major threat to their security since the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The Kremlin has denied any plans to attack NATO. President Vladimir Putin has dismissed talk of a ‘Russian threat’ as “nonsense” and propaganda by Western governments aimed at scaring European populations “to extract additional expenses” from them. However, Russian senior officials have warned that the West’s ever-increasing involvement in Ukraine via weapons shipments and other military assistance creates the risk of a direct confrontation between Moscow and the bloc.

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“Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before. And we will continue on this path until you become a member of our alliance. I very much look forward to that day..”

• New NATO Chief Visits Ukraine (Antiwar)

Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited Ukraine on Thursday, just two days after replacing Jens Stoltenberg as the head of NATO, demonstrating the alliance’s commitment to the proxy war. “This is now my fifth time in Ukraine since the full onslaught of Russia started in February 2022,” Rutte said alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “But this is my very first time as NATO Secretary General, and it was important to me that I come to Ukraine at the start of my mandate.” Rutte vowed he would work to support Ukraine’s continued move closer to NATO and eventual membership in the alliance. “Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before. And we will continue on this path until you become a member of our alliance. I very much look forward to that day,” he said.

Rutte’s visit comes as Ukraine continues to lose territory to Russian forces in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. On Wednesday, Ukraine announced it was withdrawing from the strategic Donetsk town of Vuhledar, and Russian troops are closing in on Pokrovsk. Fighting is still raging in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, but the invasion has failed to distract Russia from eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have been slowly pushing the Ukrainians back in Kursk since launching a counteroffensive a few weeks ago. Zelensky is still pushing hard for the US to allow NATO missiles to be used in long-range strikes inside Russian territory, a step that would risk a direct NATO-Russia war and nuclear escalation.

“The frontline must be strengthened, and long-range capabilities must finally be provided in the way necessary to end this war. Everyone in the alliance understands the needs,” Zelensky said in his nightly address after meeting with Rutte. Last month, the US appeared poised to approve the decision on long-range strikes but may have backed down after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned it would mean NATO is at war with Russia and ordered changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

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“The West should “make the conditions” that would enable Ukraine to “sit down with the Russians and get something which is acceptable… something where they survive as an independent nation”.

• Kiev May Have To Accept Loss Of Territory – Stoltenberg (RT)

Ukraine may have to recognize the loss of some of its territory to Russia in order to achieve peace and security guarantees, Jens Stoltenberg said in his first long interview after stepping down as NATO secretary-general. Stoltenberg ended his ten-year tenure as the chief of the US-led alliance on October 1. In a conversation with the Financial Times published on Friday, he said that Kiev may be forced to rethink seeing the restoration of the 1991 borders as a prerequisite for any peace deal. Stoltenberg suggested that “a kind of new momentum” would come after the US presidential election in early November, possibly ushering in “ways to try to get movement on the battlefield combined with movement around the negotiating table.” The West should “make the conditions” that would enable Ukraine to “sit down with the Russians and get something which is acceptable… something where they survive as an independent nation”.

Asked what he would propose to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, the former NATO chief offered a comparison to the resolution of the Soviet-Finnish war nearly 85 years ago. “Finland fought a brave war against the Soviet Union in ‘39. They imposed much bigger costs on the Red Army than expected,” he said. “The war ended with them giving up 10% of the territory. But they got a secure border.” Under the March 1940 treaty, Finland ceded a large portion of the Karelia region and Viipuri, its second-largest city at the time (known as Vyborg in Russia). Stoltenberg argued that Ukraine could obtain security guarantees from NATO even “if there is a line that is not necessarily the internationally recognized border.” He noted that the US defense pact with Japan does not cover Tokyo’s claim on the Kuril Islands, which are part of Russia, and that West Germany was admitted to NATO despite the fact that East Germany was controlled at the time by a separate, Soviet-aligned government.

“When there is a will, there are ways to find the solution. But you need a line which defines where Article 5 is invoked, and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border,” Stoltenberg said, referring to the section of the NATO treaty, which outlines the duty of member states to defend each other. Russia has said that it would not accept Zelensky’s ten-point ‘peace formula’ and not relinquish control over Crimea and four other regions, which Kiev and its backers continue to view as Ukrainian territory under illegal occupation. Kiev’s hopes of imposing its terms appear more distant after the failed 2023 counteroffensive and Russia’s new victories in Donbass, where Moscow’s troops have been making steady progress throughout 2024. During its renewed advances, the Russian Army pushed the Ukrainians out of several heavily fortified towns, including Avdeevka, which fell in February, and Ugledar, which was captured earlier this week.

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“..he recently reiterated to authorities in Kiev that he does not understand why they continue to fight the Russians..”

• Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico To Visit Russia For Victory Day (RT)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Saturday announced his intention to visit Moscow to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Speaking to the host of the ‘Saturday Dialogues’ show on Slovakia’s RTVS radio, Fico said the event should have nothing to do with today’s conflicts. “Who will stop me next year, when it will be the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, from going to a peaceful demonstration in Moscow? I think I will go. And why wouldn’t I go. What does it have to do with the present time?” Fico stated, responding to a question from the host about his possible attendance. Fico said he would not let anyone forget that “freedom came from the East,” apparently referring to the liberation of Slovakia from Nazi occupation by the Soviet Army in spring 1945.

With regard to present-day Ukraine, he said he recently reiterated to authorities in Kiev that he does not understand why they continue to fight the Russians. Since returning to power in 2023, Fico has stopped Slovak weapons deliveries to Ukraine. He has also repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. At a press conference earlier this week, the premier vowed to do everything in his power to restore relations with Moscow once the fighting ends. Earlier this month, Fico lambasted the West for condemning the atrocities committed by the Third Reich during WWII while turning a blind eye to Ukrainian troops wearing Nazi symbols. In a speech the former site of Sered concentration camp in western Slovakia, he called on the global community to stop “silently tolerating” Kiev’s forces using Nazi insignia.

Moscow has long tried to draw the attention of the global community to the growing influence of Nazi ideology among the Ukrainian public, and has made the “denazification” of Ukraine one of the goals of the military operation it launched in February 2022. Russian Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev accused the West earlier this year of nurturing and supporting modern Nazis by backing Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin also recently slammed the West for “forgetting the lessons of World War II” and “mocking history” by justifying the actions of current followers of the Nazis.

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“..he is heading to a meeting with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss how to continue the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine so that the Slovak economy does not go the way of Germany’s..”

• Robert Fico Is A Rare Voice Of Sanity When It Comes To Russia (Amar)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has done something very normal that in today’s West is highly unusual – speaking at a press conference in Bratislava, Fico said that when a war ends, actual peace should follow. This sensational idea is the essence of his statement that if the Ukraine War “ends during the [2023-2027] mandate of this government,” he will do “everything possible for the renewal of economic and normal relations with Russia.” What an outrageously reasonable idea! Especially for the leader of a small state that belongs to both the EU and NATO. And all the more so as he is heading to a meeting with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss how to continue the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine so that the Slovak economy does not go the way of Germany’s – a slow, then increasingly rapid collapse by energy strangulation at the hands of Washington and Kiev.

Fico made the remarks about re-establishing normality with Russia – which would go far toward re-establishing normality in Europe in general – at a press conference on his government’s new tax policies, namely increases. They are needed, Fico argues, to lower a fiscal deficit that has grown bad enough to lead to a downgrade by Fitch International at the end of last year due to what the ratings agency called a “deterioration in public finances and an unclear consolidation path.” In other words, like all other EU countries, Slovakia is struggling with economic problems. Its government seeks to tackle them by deficit reduction; the opposition does its part and disagrees. So far, nothing unusual. But there is something that is very unusual in the Slovak case – namely, the clearsighted and open acknowledgement of two facts by the leader.

First, that Slovakia has no good reason to make its problems worse by giving up on comparatively inexpensive energy from Russia, whether in the shape of oil or gas. Never mind that the EU exerts, in Fico’s words, “huge pressure” to bend Slovakia to its will. Indeed, as Fico has correctly pointed out, grand gestures of cutting yourself off from Russian energy tend to end up with buying it anyhow, only at a higher price and via middlemen. And secondly, that the eventual end of the Ukraine conflict should lead to a rapid re-establishment of normal commercial and political relations with Russia. Unfortunately, there as well, the Slovak leadership is a lonely voice; the only comparably sane positions on these questions are to be found in Hungary. It is true that there are more and more voices among yesterday’s ultra-hardliners in the West who are beginning to strike a different, more timid tone now that Moscow is winning the war against both Ukraine and NATO.

Germany’s Olaf Scholz is begging for a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is slowly dawning on NATO’s former figurehead, Jens Stoltenberg, that Ukraine will lose territory; and France’s Emmanuel Macron is becoming gloomy about the potential ‘end’ of the EU. But unfortunately, there are enough obstinate hardliners left, and even those who are beginning to get cold feet are still nurturing delusions such as a territorially (and otherwise) reduced Ukraine inside NATO.Even if and when the EU finally learns its lesson, things will not be easy at all. Though Fico could hardly be expected to say anything to the contrary, there is one part of his statement that is not quite as realistic as the rest – that the “European Union needs Russia, and Russia needs the European Union.” In principle, yes – as neighbors, the EU and Russia should derive great mutual advantages from stable and persistent cooperation.

But in reality, as shaped by Western economic warfare via sanctions, Russia has ever less interest in the EU, for two reasons: The EU has revealed itself as knowing no limits, not even of elementary self-interest, in its obedience to the ongoing US attempts to degrade Russia; from Moscow’s perspective, it is an entirely unreliable actor since it does not even act rationally. Second, in response to the sanctions attack, Russia has succeeded in re-casting and re-orienting its economy in a manner that makes the EU much less important for it. None of this means that there is no potential for future cooperation. But it won’t be the same as in the past, it won’t be symmetrical, and Russia will emerge with a stronger position than the EU which it will not hesitate to use.

Fico is to be commended for his good sense and the persistent courage to speak it, especially in view of the fact that he barely survived an assassination attempt by a deranged Ukraine fan, who may or may not have been just that – a crazed loner. The Slovak leader is not giving up and he should not. Yet he is up against something extraordinarily resistant to reasonable arguments – a form of mass delusion among the West’s elites. The real problem is that so many Western leaders have not simply lost their connection to reality – they are proud of having proactively abandoned it. That’s why, in the final analysis, their obstinate refusal to give up on misguided wishful thinking is not really even about Russia.

They are in rebellion against having to heed facts as such, and what annoys them most about the Russian leadership is its insistence on living in the real world. Think of this Western syndrome as the real-life equivalent of something Orwell foresaw in his novel ‘1984’, which is all too often misunderstood as a silly Cold War pamphlet. In his drab, imaginary future, which is at least as much about the abyss of human hubris as about politics, the ruling elites practice what one of them describes as “collective solipsism.” If we all believe we are levitating, then we are levitating. Gravity be damned. That is as concise a description of the state of mind that prevails in Washington, Brussels, and London as we will get.

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“The alleged facts date back to a time when Ms. Le Pen’s party had few elected members, but had major funding needs because of its solid foothold in France, the need to finance a party machine etc… ”

• Le Pen Trial Chance for Establishment to Bring Her Party to Its Knees (Sp.)

Prosecutors in the case against Marine Le Pen and her colleagues allege that between 2004 and 2016, the populist right party, then known as the National Front, misused millions of euros in EU moneys, spending cash doled out for parliamentary aides on personnel including a bodyguard for Ms. Le Pen and her father, a chief of staff, a secretary, and a graphic designer. Le Pen denies any wrongdoing, accusing the prosecution of “fabricating” “preconceived ideas” about the case, assuring that the party has “not violated any political and regulatory rules of the European Parliament,” and promising to present “serious and extremely solid arguments” in the party’s defense in the coming months. “Parliamentary assistants do not work for the parliament. They are political assistants to elected officials, political by definition,” Le Pen maintains. “I have the impression that [preconceived ideas] have been fabricated by the prosecution, the European Parliament,” she said in her testimony Wednesday.

The European Parliament wants €2.7 million in compensation from the National Rally for “financial and reputational damages,” accounting for €1 million already paid back by the party following a probe. The 56-year-old politician served as National Rally president between 2011 and 2021, worked as a member of European Parliament between 2009 and 2017, and ran for president three times between 2012 and 2022, taking 41.5% of the vote in the 2022 race in the runoff against incumbent Emmanuel Macron. Separately, Le Pen and her colleagues could now face up to 10 years in jail and a €1 million fine, if found guilty of misusing the EU funds. Le Pen could also be banned from running for office for five to ten years, which would bar her from running in the 2027 presidential election. Notably, the National Rally and its allies won some 142 seats in snap French legislative elections in July, taking 53 additional seats in the 577-seat parliament as pro-Macron centrists saw their numbers drop by 86 seats, to 159 total.

The populist right party emerged as kingmaker capable of bringing down the Macron-appointed government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier this week after the populist left New Popular Front filed a no-confidence motion over the government’s undemocratic representation and austere budgetary plans. Le Pen had earlier promised to keep Barnier “under surveillance,” but to give his government a chance, on the condition that any new tax hikes are complemented by measures to assist the lower and middle classes, and measure are taken to tighten controls on immigration and measures against crime, including narcotics and human trafficking. Mainstream observers expect the trial to push the National Rally to focus its attention and resources on defending themselves instead of fully playing their opposition role, with some suggesting that Le Pen’s years-long campaign to successfully broaden the party’s base could be seriously marred if she or her colleagues are found guilty.

The trial is a chance for the establishment to cast shade on her party, and “a good opportunity to bring what is now France’s leading party to its knees,” Dr. Edouard Husson, a historian and publisher of Le Courrier des Strateges – a French geopolitical affairs journal, told Sputnik. “I can’t comment on the facts of the case. But I can talk about the context. The alleged facts date back to a time when Ms. Le Pen’s party had few elected members, but had major funding needs because of its solid foothold in France, the need to finance a party machine etc… The French system for financing political parties is disadvantageous for small parties or parties on the rise, such as the Front National/Rassemblement National at the time – since it grants funding on the basis of the number of votes obtained. I therefore assume that what Ms. Le Pen and the other defendants are accused of is using European Parliament funding beyond what is reasonable. Obviously, the Rassemblement National’s fear is that it may be judged more severely than other parties,” Husson explained.

Read more …

One goal: Shut him up.

• Alex Jones Creditors Target Future Assets – Which Could Include His Name (ZH)

Lawyers targeting Alex Jones over a $1.4 billion judgement to Sandy Hook families have asked a Texas court to appoint a receiver to manage assets he acquired after his recent Chapter 7 bankruptcy conversion. The move seeks to control any new ‘non-exempt’ assets or endeavors that Jones might generate in the future. If the receiver deems that Jones’ name, as a business entity or brand, holds value – they could seize control of any profits or business activity generated under it to satisfy the debt. Jones explained the situation on Friday: Non-exempt assets are properties and income streams that bankruptcy protection does not cover. In the Jones’ case, this could include future earnings from personal appearances, digital content revenues, or any new business ventures initiated after the conversion of his bankruptcy case from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7.

Jones has raised just under $80,000 as of this writing in a GiveSendGo campaign to foot his legal bills. In response, InfoWars said the following: “As President Trump has rightly stated hundreds of times, “They’re not after me, they’re after you—I’m just in the way,” when you stand with Alex Jones in the face of the globalist onslaught you are standing up not only for yourself but your family, your country, and God. Again, your desperately needed donations will fund Alex Jones’ legal defense and expenses associated with staying on the air that are essential to him being able to stay on the air regardless of what happens to InfoWars. We the people have turned the tide but evil is striking back. Without your support the enemies of humanity will win.

Thank you,
Alex Jones & Crew

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“..Milei’s adviser, Santiago Caputo, who is reportedly a big fan of The West Wing and was said to have made watching the show a condition for joining his political consulting firm.”

• Argentina’s Milei Accused Of Copying Speech From The West Wing (RT)

Argentine President Javier Milei has been accused of plagiarizing the hit US political drama ‘The West Wing’ during his recent speech at the UN. According to the Buenos Aires Herald, Carlos Pagni, a journalist with the newspaper La Nacion, was the first to notice the “remarkable resemblance” between parts of Milei’s fiery address and the monologue delivered by fictional US President Jed Bartlet. “We believe in freedom of expression for all. We believe in freedom of worship for all. We believe in freedom of commerce for all and we believe in limited governments, all of them,” Milei told the UN General Assembly on September 24.

“We believe that everyone should live free of tyranny and oppression, be that in the form of political oppression, economic slavery, or religious fanaticism. This fundamental idea cannot remain merely as words. It must be supported in facts, diplomatically, economically, and materially,” he continued. Nearly identical words were spoken by Bartlet, who was portrayed by actor Martin Sheen, to his cabinet in episode 15 of season four of the show. Pagni suggested that the speech was written by Milei’s adviser, Santiago Caputo, who is reportedly a big fan of The West Wing and was said to have made watching the show a condition for joining his political consulting firm.

Created by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing ran from 1999 to 2006, winning multiple awards, including three Golden Globes and 26 primetime Emmys. Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who is known for using brash and sometimes eccentric language, has not commented on the matter. Speaking from the podium in New York last month, he described the UN as a “Leviathan with multiple tentacles” that attempts to trample on the sovereignty of countries and impose a “socialist” agenda.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Walz fraud

 

 

AI

 

 

Expecting

 

 

Chicken coop

 

 

Gosling
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842443112779518343

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 30 2024

Aug 302024
 
 August 30, 2024  Posted by at 8:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  69 Responses »


M. C. Escher The Tower of Babel 1928

 

• God Wants Me To Save The World – Trump (RT)
• Kamala Blows Pre-Taped Interview Question With Walz Right Next To Her (ZH)
• US Will Be ‘Crypto Capital Of The Planet’ – Trump (RT)
• UK Bankers Hoping Trump Regains White House – Politico (RT)
• Jim Rogers: Durov’s Arrest Could End France’s Appeal for High-Tech
• The Sound of Enforced Silence (Patrick Lawrence)
• Terrorists Planned To Kill ‘Tens Of Thousands’ At Taylor Swift Concert – CIA (RT)
• ‘Karbala Is The Path To Al-aqsa’: An Iraq Diary (Pepe Escobar)
• X Warns Of Brazil Shutdown ‘Soon’ (ZH)
• Ukrainian Army Shoots Down Its Own F16 Jet, Pilot Killed (ZH)
• Suspected Nord Stream Bomber Used Ukrainian Gov’t Car To Flee – Spiegel (RT)
• Hungarian FM Slams EU’s Borrell Over Ukraine (RT)
• Ukrainian Impunity Could Result In Major Nuclear Incident – Moscow (RT)
• The Lies of the US Empire Will Be Its Undoing (DeMartino)
• Houthis To Allow Salvage Crews To Access Oil Tanker They Hit In The Red (OP)

 

 

 

 

Voting
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829220119437836777

 

 

Zuck

 

 

Trump2024

 

 

Stossel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828842472472023063

 

 

Benz

 

 

Rogan


https://twitter.com/i/status/1829213201919099070

 

 

Jack Smith
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829092127478890756

 

 

Tulsi

 

 

Fitton

 

 

Shit
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828974088817127779

 

 

Furniture

 

 

 

 

Not how he said it. But if you believe in God, living in a nation under God, it’s inevitable you try to find a purpose in such a experience.

The craziest thing here is not Trump, it’s the media silence.

• God Wants Me To Save The World – Trump (RT)

US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said it was God who spared his life in last month’s assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The GOP firebrand claimed that he has a mission to save America, and perhaps the whole world. Trump narrowly escaped death when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at him on July 13. The would-be assassin had taken position on a nearby rooftop that gave him an unobstructed view of his target. Crooks fired off several shots, one of which grazed the former president’s right ear. One rally attendee was killed and two others were seriously injured. The shooter was subsequently killed by return fire from the Secret Service. In an interview on Tuesday with psychologist and TV host Phil McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil, Trump argued that “there had to be some great power” at play on that fateful day.

“The only thing I can think is that God loves our country and he thinks we’re gonna bring our country back,” Trump explained. “It has to be God. I mean how can you say it’s luck when it’s, you know, twenty million to one?” he insisted. Commenting on the Democrats replacing Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee for the November 5 election, Trump lamented that he now had to face a “nice fresh opponent.” The Republican went on to suggest that if he prevails, it would mean that “there’s some incredible power up there that wanted me to be involved in saving, and maybe it’s more than saving the nation, maybe it’s saving the world.” Speaking of the Secret Service agents’ performance during the incident, Trump expressed gratitude and admiration for their bravery, but noted that there appeared to have been a lack of communication between them and local law enforcement.

The GOP nominee went on to allege that Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden are partly responsible for last month’s attempt on his life. He accused the top-ranking Democrats of “making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service.” According to the former president, Harris and Biden have also been routinely portraying him as a “threat to democracy,” which “can get assassins or potential assassins going.” “Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric,” Trump suggested. The former president doubled down on his claims about alleged voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, telling Dr. Phil that he had won in California. “If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California,” Trump insisted.

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“..deadlines around time..”

• Kamala Blows Pre-Taped Interview Question With Walz Right Next To Her (ZH)

Kamala Harris had one job – don’t blow your first sit-down interview with the press. No word salad. No ‘unburdened by what has been’ mantra. Don’t cackle to cover up for a lack of brain cells. She couldn’t even do that… Sitting down with running mate Tim Walz for a pre-taped CNN interview set to air at 9 PM Thursday, a preview clip reveals she’s still an absolute moron. Dana Bash (whose CIA ex-husband signed the Hunter Biden disinfo letter) tossed Harris what should have been a well-rehearsed softball; asking how voters should “look at some of the changes you’ve made.”

“Is it because you have more experience now and you’ve learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you’re saying now is going to be your policy moving forward?” In other words, why shouldn’t you believe you’re full of shit over your dramatic shift in positions towards moderate policies? There are a million ways to answer that spoon-fed question, but Harris chose more word salad. “I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” she replied. “You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed – and I have worked on it – that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.” Yes, deadlines around time.

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Right at the center of decentralization.

• US Will Be ‘Crypto Capital Of The Planet’ – Trump (RT)

US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has promised to unveil a plan that will make America the world cryptocurrency capital. In a post on X on Thursday, the former US president shared a video of himself with the voiceover: “This afternoon, I’m laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet.” “They want to choke you. They want to choke you out of business,” Trump says in the video, without specifying who “they” are. “We’re not going to let that happen,” he concluded. The post included a link to World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance project that his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, have been promoting recently. Trump Jr. has said previously that the platform would rival the traditional banking system. The project’s Telegram channel has been quickly gaining subscribers, with more than 53,000 followers as of Thursday.

Trump is the first major presidential candidate to accept donations in cryptocurrency. He was the featured speaker at a Bitcoin conference last month, where donors were asked to pay $844,600 for a seat at a round table with him. Trump has said that crypto is essential to his vision of America in the future. Last month, he pledged to ensure that the US government never sells off its Bitcoin holdings and creates a Bitcoin “strategic reserve,” if he returns to the White House. On Tuesday, Trump launched a fourth collection of nonfungible tokens (NFTs), which feature images ranging from the former president in a superhero costume to figurative Bitcoins. The NFTs sell for $99 each. According to CNBC, the crypto platform and the NFTs are a private Trump family enterprise in the digital currency space, and are not officially connected to Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump, who in 2019 wrote on social media that Bitcoin’s value is “based on thin air” and in 2021 warned that cryptocurrencies were a “disaster waiting to happen,” made a U-turn in his rhetoric early in the current election campaign. The Republican candidate’s embrace of crypto has led to endorsements from some well-known venture capitalists and executives in the sector, such as Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

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“The political appointments determine the political agenda in terms of trade for financial services and more..”

• UK Bankers Hoping Trump Regains White House – Politico (RT)

British business would prefer to see Republican nominee Donald Trump prevail over Vice President Kamala Harris in the US presidential election in November, Politico has reported, citing finance experts from the City of London. While there are concerns that a Trump presidency could bring a protectionist approach towards global trade, his “laissez-faire” policies could make access to the US market easier for British companies, the outlet said on Tuesday. This is something the City of London is reportedly looking for as it seeks avenues for growth after losing a major share of its EU business after Brexit. “You could have a White House that may want to have a less restrictive regulatory framework for financial services, which might indirectly engender more financial flows across the Atlantic,” a senior UK financial lobbyist told Politico on condition of anonymity.

A senior City of London lawyer described Trump as “pro-business,” noting that Harris’ policies are expected to be “less helpful” to British business. Even though the former US president was “wild and unpredictable” in his first term, his financial policies “did not lead to a run on the dollar or any major problems in financial markets even though a number of his policies were controversial.” Meanwhile, a Harris presidency is “the big unknown” and her economic agenda reportedly involves attacking big business for alleged price gouging, according to the lawyer. Earlier this month, Trump blasted his Democratic rival over the current administration’s record on inflation, which has consistently remained at over 3% since Joe Biden became president. City of London experts also hailed the appointments to top regulatory roles Trump made during his first term, highlighting their competence and experience in the industry.

Under the Trump administration (2017-2021), former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin was appointed secretary of the Treasury, while Randal Quarles, a private equity investor and Treasury veteran, was given a key banking oversight position at the Federal Reserve. “The political appointments determine the political agenda in terms of trade for financial services and more,” Angus Canvin, director of international affairs at UK Finance, which represents British banks, told Politico. Trump and Harris are currently neck-to-neck in most polls, with Harris holding a narrow lead over the former president, according to recent surveys.

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“..Andy Yen warning that if they are sustained, he doesn’t see “how tech founders could possibly travel to France, much less hire in France.”

• Jim Rogers: Durov’s Arrest Could End France’s Appeal for High-Tech

The fallout from Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s surprise arrest in France over the weekend continues to reverberate, with observers asking what the move means for free speech in Europe. But money talks too, and right now it’s saying that the French Republic is no longer a safe place for business, especially in the tech sector. Pavel Durov was transferred to a Paris court for “initial questioning and possible indictment” on Wednesday, days after his arrest at Paris’s Bourget Airport Saturday in connection with a long list of dubious charges, from looking the other way on fraud, money laundering and illegal cryptography to abetting or facilitating drug trafficking and child pornography, to refusing to respond to requests by authorities in criminal investigations. The charges against Durov have been slammed by some in the tech world with Proton VPN founder and tech entrepreneur Andy Yen warning that if they are sustained, he doesn’t see “how tech founders could possibly travel to France, much less hire in France.”

“This is economic suicide and is rapidly and permanently changing the perception of founders and investors” toward France, Yen wrote in an X post on Tuesday. Macroeconomist and UnHerd contributor Philip Pilkington echoed these concerns, warning in an article this week that Paris’s move could drive investors of all stripes out of France, and Europe in general. “The damage that this could do to France’s image in the eyes of the technology and entrepreneurial communities is profound,” Pilkington wrote, pointing out that Durov’s detention has opened a Pandora’s Box in which the French state begins to systematically bring criminal charges against the developers of internet communication platforms. “Europe is already destroying its international competitiveness in its manufacturing sector through sanctions and counter-sanctions on Russian energy.

Now, it seems, securocrats in the European bureaucracies want to turn the continent into a place where technologists fear the creation of platforms that allow for communications,” Pilkington warned. The Durov case will likely lead to an exodus of entrepreneurs from Europe – a far cry from French President Emmanuel Macron’s promises in 2017 to make France a “startup nation,” the observer added. “Whenever a country starts arresting high-level executives, especially [in] technology, or in an industry which is international and usual, it attracts attention, and many people will think it is unjustified and many people will say it’s unjustified,” Jim Rogers, renowned investor and chairman of Beeland Interests and co-founder of Quantum Fund, told Sputnik.

“So I don’t know, I hope that France knows what it’s doing. If France has an ironclad 100% case, then it probably will not hurt them. Otherwise, many people will say ‘wait a minute, we don’t want to do anything in France. It is too dangerous,’” Rogers stressed. “I don’t know the facts. I don’t know if anybody’s guilty or not, but I will say this will make many people wonder about doing business in France. This will make many people check to see that everything they are doing in France is okay. It’s an added level of expense. It’s an added level of operation. Nobody wants to be caught doing something wrong in the country. And if people now worry about France, it’s another expense. Another level of caution,” the veteran investor and predictor of global financial trends said.

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“It is now hard to tell where the Democratic Party ends and the national-security state begins.”

• The Sound of Enforced Silence (Patrick Lawrence)

Is there some connection, — not quite official but it may as well be— between censorship and presidential politics? I pose the question as a survivor of the Russiagate years, when illiberal liberals started talking about “free-speech absolutists,” and when corporate journalists cheered the censoring of unincorporated journalists so long as it was called “content moderation.” I cannot answer my own question, honestly. But as this November’s elections draw near, a new and aggressive campaign to suppress dissent — in social media, at airports, on campuses, and elsewhere — is hard upon us. This is a trans–Atlantic, trans-national operation. Let us not fail to take note. Straight off the top, you probably noticed that the Democratic Party’s openly undemocratic elite refused to allow any speaker of Palestinian background to address the convention in Chicago last week.

We can read this, disgraceful in itself, as an indication of how the Democrats intend to deal with the Gaza crisis and other such foreign policy matters if they succeed in extending their power another four years. Yes, they will continue supporting terrorist Israel and the Nazi-infested regime in Ukraine just as they have to date, but they will avoid talking to you and me about the imperium’s gruesome business as they conduct it. Silence on such matters will be as gold to these people, especially between now and Nov. 5. Kamala Harris, or the cynical operatives busily inventing Kamala Harris, are selling “joy” this political season, not any kind of sober, responsible view of our circumstances. Harris is supposed to ride into the White House on a carpet of good vibes. Gaza, the war in Ukraine, Washington’s provocations at the other end of the Pacific: Nah: All such questions are bad vibes.

One of the things the Russiagate years exposed was the close collaboration between the Democratic Party and the national-security state. People who know their history have long understood that “the intelligence community” — so odious, this term — has been, from its beginnings in the late–1940s, more liberal than conservative in its culture and sensibilities. Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing defeat in 2016 consolidated this relationship. It is now hard to tell where the Democratic Party ends and the national-security state begins.

I have been, since the Russiagate years, perfectly comfortable with the term “Deep State.” And here it comes again, reliant as always upon its appendages in the Big Tech social media platforms and the more repellant quadrants of corporate media as they attempt to extinguish all other-than-approved opinions and perspectives. Of the many recent incidents of censorship, suppression and intimidation, the one that got me to the keyboard concerns Sharmine Narwani, who founded, three years ago this month, an online journal of news and comment called The Cradle, as in “the cradle of civilization.” Narwani, based in Beirut, now writes columns regularly and edits features for the English-language version of the site. She calls The Cradle a collective effort, “an online magazine covering the geopolitics of West Asia from within the region.” Those last four words are the ones that matter most to me.

Last week — on the first day of the Democratic National Convention, indeed — Meta permanently banned The Cradle from Facebook and Instagram, the holding company’s most trafficked social media properties. Narwani now stands accused of “praising terrorist organizations” and engaging in “incitement to violence.” This ruling came without warning. All Narwani got was this: Your account, or activity on it, does not follow our community guidelines. No one can see or find your account and you can’t use it. All your information will be permanently deleted. You cannot request a review of this decision. How’s this for the sound of liberal authoritarianism? Big Brother could not have got down the poetry of fascistic finality any better.

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Not possible. Israel killed 40,000 in ten months in Gaza. They were going to do it in an afternoon? “..using knives as well as a homemade explosive device..”?

• Terrorists Planned To Kill ‘Tens Of Thousands’ At Taylor Swift Concert – CIA (RT)

Terrorists aimed to kill “as many people as possible” using homemade explosives and knives at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna earlier this month, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen has said, adding that the US spy agency warned the Austrian authorities about the impending attack. According to Cohen, the attackers, who are said to have been connected with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), “were plotting to kill a huge number – tens of thousands of people, including, I am sure, many Americans – and were quite advanced in this.” He noted that Austrian security forces were able to arrest the suspects because the CIA and “our partners in the intelligence community provided them information about what this ISIS-connected group was planning to do.”

“I can tell you within my agency, and I’m sure in others, there were people who thought that was a really good day for Langley, and not just the Swifties in my workforce,” he said, speaking at an intelligence summit outside Washington D.C. The plotters reportedly planned to attack one of three Swift concerts in Vienna, which were set to begin on August 8 as part of the European leg of her Eras Tour. However, the shows were canceled by the event organizers, Barracuda Music, after the authorities informed them of the foiled plot. The main suspect in the alleged plot was taken into custody on August 6, along with a 17-year-old accomplice, according to Austrian officials. On August 8, another suspect, 18, was also detained.

The authorities said the unnamed mastermind behind the attack, reported to be 19 years old, had pledged allegiance to IS after being self-radicalized online. The attack was supposedly set to take place outside the stadium where as many as 65,000 people were expected to attend the show. The terrorists are said to have been planning to carry out the attack using knives as well as a homemade explosive device, police said after reportedly finding chemical substances and special technical devices at the home of the 19-year-old. The main suspect is also said to have confessed to planning to “kill as many people as possible outside the concert,” according to Austrian officials.

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“Twenty-one million walking pilgrims..”

• ‘Karbala Is The Path To Al-aqsa’: An Iraq Diary (Pepe Escobar)

Arriving in Baghdad today comes as an electric shock to any visitor who remembers recent, somber Iraqi history. There are virtually no checkpoints, apart from sensitive government areas. None of those ghastly cement blocks from the time of the American occupation, forcing a slow slalom every few minutes. No sense of unpredictable danger capable of striking at any minute. Lush greenery thrives all over the capital city. Haifa Street has been rebuilt practically from scratch. Bustling commerce, from non-stop action in Karrada to a complex of restaurants by the Tigris called (most appropriately) Thousand and One Nights. After over three decades of unspeakable horrors inflicted on the cradle of civilization, for the first time, Baghdad exudes a sense of normalcy. This has much to do with the new administration, led by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, that has been in power for just over two years.

Last week, the Office of the Prime Minister sponsored a unique conference titled The Road to Al-Aqsa Flood, inviting popular bloggers and influencers from the Arab world – Palestine, Kuwait, Jordan, Sudan, and Lebanon, among others – and only a few westerners. The bloggers were all young; most had never been to Iraq and, thus, had no memories of Shock and Awe and the occupation – at best, some hazy recollection of the ISIS years. They were all stunned by the hospitality, the dynamism, and, most of all, the hope now firmly embedded in Baghdad life. The Iraqi government actually came up with a titillating concept, tying a serious discussion about all aspects of today’s ongoing Palestinian tragedy not only to Baghdad but to Arbaeen in Karbala.

Arbaeen marks the 40th day after Ashura, the Shia rite to honor the martyrdom of Hussein Ibn Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, who was brutally murdered alongside his entire family by the Umayyad Caliph Yazid Ibn Muawiya. For Shia Muslims, this dishonorable slaughter represents the ultimate embodiment of injustice and betrayal, considered foundational evils by the religious sect. It’s all about Resistance – without explicitly mentioning the Axis of Resistance. The martyrdom of Imam Hussein at the Battle of Karbala was – in Baghdad today – directly tied to the ongoing Israeli genocide of tens of thousands of Palestinians, in a “twenty-first-century Karbala.” lying right before sunset on a Soviet helicopter from a military base by the Tigris in Baghdad to a mini-base in Karbala, some 10 kilometers away from the magnificent Hazrat Abbas shrine, is an astonishing experience.

Irrepressible commander Tahsin, in Karbala, had ordered the pilot to follow the Arbaeen pilgrim route – one of the multiple axes crisscrossing Iraq and leading to the shrine. The feeling is of a long cinematic traveling shot. Rows and rows of pilgrims, mostly dressed in black, with their backpacks, carrying banners, walking at a steady pace, going through a collection of stalls, resting places, and mini-restaurants, mingling with volunteers offering free water bottles and free drinks to quench the thirst on this spiritual, yet, arduous journey during a scorching Iraqi summer. As we approach Karbala, the crowd gets much thicker. It’s a sort of community spirit moveable feast. Spontaneous chants pop up, punctuated by infectious rhythm, and above all, there’s this relentless drive to keep walking, to try get as close to the shrine as possible.

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Darth Vader is pretty crazy.

• X Warns Of Brazil Shutdown ‘Soon’ (ZH)

On Thursday night, X’s Global Government Affairs account posted a dire warning over service availability in Brazil, after dictatorial Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes punished them for not complying “with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents,” according to the post. “When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him. We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States.

The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that. In the days to come, we will publish all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings in the interest of transparency. Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders. To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of speech.” Meanwhile, Musk says that SpaceX is going to continue to provide Starlink in Brazil to schools and hospitals for free…

* * *
One day after Brazillian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes threatened to suspend social media platform X unless Elon Musk appoints a new legal representative in 24 hours, the judge – dubbed “Brazil’s Darth Vader” by Musk – issued a subpoena against the company. Today, he blocked the financial accounts of Musk-owned Starlink Holdings, due to the absence of an attorney. According to Moraes, the companies are a “de facto economic group” commanded by Musk. On August 18, Moraes sanctioned X’s bank accounts in order to guarantee the payment of fines imposed by the Brazilian justice for refusing to censor content, Metropoles reports. According to information published by the G1 and confirmed by the Metropolis, advisors to the office of Minister Alexandre de Moraes said that another company under Musk in the country, Starlink Holding, responsible for the sale of satellite internet services, also had the finances blocked. All Starlink managers in Brazil received notifications and were subpoenaed to answer for the values due to the Brazilian Justice by the network X. -Metropoles (translated)

In response, Musk called Moraes a dictator, and said “this picture of you in prison will be real. Mark my words.” Earlier this month, Moraes ordered an investigation into Musk after the billionaire vowed to defy a court order as part of an ongoing probe into social media accounts allegedly spreading misinformation and ‘hate’ speech. “The flagrant conduct of obstruction of Brazilian justice, incitement of crime, the public threat of disobedience of court orders and future lack of cooperation from the platform are facts that disrespect the sovereignty of Brazil,” wrote de Moraes. While X initially said in a they would comply, blocking certain popular accounts in Brazil – Musk said an hour later, after the release of the “TWITTER FILES BRAZIL,” that they would not, noting that “As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there.”

in a post the next day, Musk said that Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had “brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil,” and should “resign or be impeached.” De Moraes said that as part of his decision to open an inquiry, that “X shall refrain from disobeying any court order already issued, including performing any profile reactivation that has been blocked by this Supreme Court,” Reuters reports. The justice said that Musk would face a fine that equates to approximately $20,000 each time an account is reactivated on X.

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When someone brings it up, act surprised.

• Ukrainian Army Shoots Down Its Own F16 Jet, Pilot Killed (ZH)

It appears that the US-made F-16 fighter jet, which was handed over to Ukraine earlier this year, was downed by a Ukrainian Patriot air defense system in a friendly fire incident, Ukrainian lawmaker Maryana Bezuglaya said cited by TASS. “According to my information, the F-16 of the Ukrainian pilot Alexey ‘Moonfish’ Mes was shot down by the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system due to a lack of coordination between the [military] units,” she wrote on Telegram. The lawmaker criticized the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for falsely describing the incident as “a crash.” “The culture of lies in the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as in other higher military headquarters, leads to the fact that the system of managing military decisions does not improve on the basis of truthful, consistently collected analytics, but deteriorates and even collapses, as is happening in the other directions,” she wrote.

In her words, none of the generals was punished over the incident that led to the loss of both the aircraft and its pilot. Earlier, an unidentified US official told the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine had lost a donated F-16 fighter jet in the first such case. According to the official, the jet was not shot down, and the crash was likely due to pilot error. Later, the Ukrainian Air Force confirmed the death of a Ukrainian F-16 pilot, Alexey Mes. The man was trained to fly F-16, according to CNN. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the pilot was killed in an aerial fight, when his plane crashed on August 26.

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They’re getting creative with their alternative truths.

• Suspected Nord Stream Bomber Used Ukrainian Gov’t Car To Flee – Spiegel (RT)

The Ukrainian diver allegedly behind the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines managed to escape a German arrest warrant with the help of Ukraine and possibly Poland, Der Spiegel has claimed. The pipelines under the Baltic Sea were damaged in a series of explosions in September 2022, ending the flow of natural gas from Russia to Germany. No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts, but some media outlets in the West have blamed a group of Ukrainian nationals. Earlier this month, German media revealed that Berlin had issued an arrest warrant for “Vladimir Z,” a former Ukrainian military diver who they alleged had planted the explosive charges on the pipeline. Russian outlets have identified the suspect as Vladimir Zhuravlev. According to an investigation by Der Spiegel published on Thursday, Zhuravlev was actually in Germany in May and in Poland at the time the warrant was issued.

Polish authorities did nothing to detain him, the outlet claimed, and Zhuravlev was able to cross into Ukraine on July 6 in a car belonging to the Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw. “Why should we arrest him? For us, he is a hero!” Der Spiegel quoted German security officials as paraphrasing their Polish counterparts. The German outlet noted that Zhuravlev and his family entered Germany in May, on their way to Denmark. They even found the exact apartment in Copenhagen where the Zhuravlevs stayed, in the Bryggen Syd neighborhood. On May 26, the family takes the ferry to Rostock and stops in Berlin, on their way back to Warsaw.

Zhuravlev was already on the German authorities’ radar, but they had yet to issue a warrant for his arrest. Berlin only acted in the first week of June, and it took until June 21 for a European arrest warrant to be forwarded to Poland. Warsaw, however, did nothing. Zhuravlev fled the country on July 6, crossing the border into Ukraine at Korczowa at 6:20am. Security sources told Spiegel that he was in a vehicle with diplomatic plates, used by the Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw.

Spiegel’s security sources claim that Germany is “very angry” with Poland and will not forget Warsaw’s “foul play.” Responding to media reports about the attack, former head of German intelligence August Hanning claimed earlier this month that Poland and Ukraine likely worked together. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk responded by telling all “initiators and patrons” of Nord Stream to “apologize and keep quiet.” Reports about a group of Ukrainians working off a rented yacht – with or without Vladimir Zelensky’s blessing – being responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage surfaced only after Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed that the US government was behind the blasts.

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“Borrell has previously called on the West to lift all restrictions on Kiev’s use of the weapons it has provided [..] He argued that this would “help advance peace efforts.”

• Hungarian FM Slams EU’s Borrell Over Ukraine (RT)

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has slammed the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, over his recent remarks on strikes deep into Russian territory. Borrell suggested that Ukraine should be allowed to use Western-supplied weapons to conduct these attacks. Commenting on Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Kursk Region, Russia in early August, Borrell told Kiev that it has the “full support” of the EU. Also this month, the bloc’s top diplomat said, “we are not a party to the war, but we are part of the conflict.” In a post on Facebook, the Hungarian foreign minister described the Ukraine conflict as “madness” that “must be put to an end.” “However, if more and more weapons are sent to this region, if depth strikes arrive on the territory of Russia, then the danger of escalation will only increase and this war will become even more serious,” Szijjarto warned, apparently referring to Borrell’s recent statements.

Budapest’s top diplomat added that to avoid this, his country will “continue to represent the pro-peace position” during an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Thursday.In a separate post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, Zoltan Kovacs, the spokesperson of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s office, wrote that Szijjarto “criticized the European Union’s outgoing High Representative for Foreign Affairs, who is calling for more weapons to be sent to Ukraine and even suggesting that these Western-supplied arms should be used for deep strikes on Russian territory.” Borrell has previously called on the West to lift all restrictions on Kiev’s use of the weapons it has provided, particularly with regard to long-range strikes. He argued that this would “help advance peace efforts.”

Last week, the head of the prime minister’s office, Gergely Gulyas, characterized Kiev’s actions on Russian soil as “wrong” and not conducive to a peaceful settlement of the conflict. In July, Szijjarto also criticized the top EU diplomat over his reported scheme to undermine Hungary’s efforts to organize an informal foreign affairs summit, calling the supposed plan childish. He went on to accuse Borrell of overseeing the “most unsuccessful period of European foreign policy” ever.

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Nobody’s telling them nuke plants are off limits.

• Ukrainian Impunity Could Result In Major Nuclear Incident – Moscow (RT)

The refusal to hold Ukraine accountable for attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant has emboldened Kiev to target the Kursk NPP in the same way, Russia’s deputy envoy to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, has said. Speaking at a UN Security Council session in New York on Wednesday, Polyansky denounced the Western powers for failing to acknowledge the escalating Ukrainian threat to nuclear safety. The Zaporozhye plant is located in the city of Energodar in Zaporozhye Region, Russia, which Kiev claims under its own sovereignty. Moscow has accused Ukrainian forces of targeting the city and the facility itself on multiple occasions with artillery fire and drone attacks. An incendiary device deployed by a Ukrainian drone caused a major fire at one of its two cooling towers earlier this month, according to the plant’s management.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has an observer mission at the location, has confirmed that the blaze did not start at the base of the structure and that the tower may need to be dismantled. Russia has urged Western backers of Ukraine to use their leverage to stop attacks on the Zaporozhye site. Polyansky said Kiev’s impunity for these actions has put another nuclear power plant, in Kursk Region, in its crosshair. Ukrainian forces have shelled the plant and attempted to seize it during their incursion into the Russian region, he explained. “This kind of recklessness, which potentially could trigger a nuclear incident with tragic consequences for the whole of Europe, is the best rebuff” to people who ignored the situation in Zaporozhye Region, Polyansky said. “This is what your unprincipled ostrich-like stance leads to.”

Senior Russian officials have previously accused Kiev of engaging in “nuclear terrorism” by attacking Russian reactors. President Vladimir Putin specifically mentioned this when he stated that peace talks with Ukraine have been ruled out in the wake of the incursion into Kursk Region. He also cited Kiev’s attacks on civilians as a reason that negotiations are no longer possible. Following the incident with the Zaporozhye plant’s cooling tower, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned that Ukrainian forces would target the Kursk facility, and urged the IAEA to denounce these actions.

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“This does not mean that we cannot interact with the same enemy in certain situations. There is no harm in that, but do not place your hopes in them. Do not trust the enemy..”

• The Lies of the US Empire Will Be Its Undoing (DeMartino)

On Tuesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei opened the door to negotiations with the United States, saying there was “no harm” in talking with the “enemy.” The decision opened the way for Iran’s new reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian to fulfill a campaign promise to be more open to the West. While speaking to his President, Khamenei told him not to trust the United States. “This does not mean that we cannot interact with the same enemy in certain situations. There is no harm in that, but do not place your hopes in them. Do not trust the enemy,” Khamenei told Pezeshkian. Iran has significant reasons to distrust the United States. In 2015 the United States, Iran and several other countries signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iranian nuclear deal. The deal placed significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of Western sanctions on Iran.

In 2018, former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal. In 2022, current US President Joe Biden rejected an offer to return to the deal. Since the US withdrawal, Iran is believed to have significantly advanced their nuclear program. “I think this is just to placate the new president. He’s a reform president. He ran on that ticket to try to open up more avenues to the West,” former senior security policy analyst at the Office of the Secretary of Defense Michael Maloof told Sputnik’s The Final Countdown. “But [JCPOA] is clearly dead, as far as I’m concerned, simply because for three and a half years they tried through the Biden administration and got nowhere. And if Trump comes in, you can almost be guaranteed that he will cancel any agreements.” For countries around the world, the US reneging on deals is nothing new, it is nearly par for the course.

In 1990, as East and West Germany were in the process of unification, then-US Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the US Government understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” However, over the next three decades, NATO continued to expand eastward, eventually resulting in the Ukraine conflict.

[..] The Iran nuclear deal is a moot point at this juncture. “[The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA)] discovered that the Iranians had actually exceeded 60% and had gone up to 90% enrichment, ‘accidentally.’ So, they have that capability. So, what’s the point of an IAEA inspection any longer?” But the effects of the United States Empire’s lies will be much more profound than a rapidly advancing Iranian nuclear program, they will destroy its geopolitical influence, decimate its economy and isolate it from much of the rest of the world. The first to go will be the end of effective unilateral sanctions from the West, a phenomenon that has already begun. “That’s why you see Iran now a prominent member of BRICS, a prominent member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SGO),” Maloof said. “They have learned to get around Western sanctions and it’s going to increase, and that’s why they’re flourishing in many respects.” It is not only Iran.

The West has imposed as many sanctions as it could muster against Russia following the start of its special operation in Ukraine. Despite this, Russia grew its economy to the largest in Europe and the fourth largest in the world in purchase power parity (PPP). While sanctions were never effective in their stated goal of removing leaders from power, they were able to limit the economic growth of that country at the expense of the population living there. Now, even that tool is leaving the American cupboard. “Over time, they have learned to find ways around [sanctions] and it has actually strengthened them. It’s allowed them to become more self-sufficient to build more indigenous industries, which Iran has done,” explained Maloof.

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I think I read it’s 4x the Exxon Valdez.

• Houthis To Allow Salvage Crews To Access Oil Tanker They Hit In The Red (OP)

The Iran-aligned Houthis have agreed to allow salvage crews including rescue ships and tugboats to access an oil tanker that the Houthis hit with a missile in the Red Sea earlier this month. “Several countries have reached out to ask Ansarullah (the Houthis), requesting a temporary truce for the entry of tugboats and rescue ships into the incident area,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said, as carried by Reuters. The Houthi movement has agreed to this request, “in consideration of humanitarian and environmental concerns,” the Iranian mission to the UN added. Reports last week said a tanker on fire was drifting in the Red Sea. It later emerged that the vessel had come under attack by armed groups traveling on small vessels some 90 miles from the Yemeni port city of Hodeida. The tanker was also reportedly struck by missiles or drones.

“The vessel reports being not under command,” the UK Maritime Trade Operations office said at the time, likely meaning it lost all power. “No casualties reported.” The Greek-flagged oil tanker, the Sounion, had 25 crew members and was traveling from Iraq to Cyprus. The crew was rescued by a European warship and transported to Djibouti. Earlier this week, U.S. Pentagon officials said that the Greek tanker that the Yemeni Houthis struck in the Red Sea a week ago is now leaking oil. “The MV Sounion now sits immobilized in the Red Sea, where it is currently on fire and appears to be leaking oil, presenting both a navigational hazard and a potential environmental catastrophe,” Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder said, as quoted by the Maritime Executive. The oil tanker holds close to a million barrels of crude oil and if it spills as a result of the strikes, it could become one of the largest oil spills from a vessel in recent history.

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Vax injuries

 

 

Shanahan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828635192317354114

 

 

RFK health care
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828869075209961964

 

 

RFK pharma
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828880387478552752

 

 

RFKJFK

 

 

Shelter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829191897061171603

 

 

Cheap engine

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 29 2024

Jul 292024
 
 July 29, 2024  Posted by at 9:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Courtyard of the hospital in Arles 1889

 

• Kamala Harris Is A “Low IQ Individual.” – Trump (RT)
• It All Tracks – Hersch Reports Obama Threatened Biden with 25th Amendment (CTH)
• For 25 Minutes, Secret Service Command Center Didn’t Notify Trump Detail (ZH)
• Will RFK Jr be Trump’s Vaccine Czar? (AT)
• Bitcoin Breaks Through (Quoth The Raven)
• Olympics Opening Ceremony Shows ‘Absence of Public Morality’ – Orban (Sp.)
• French Bishops Condemn Olympic ‘Mockery of Christianity’ (RT)
• German Publisher Stops All Printing of JD Vance’s Book Hillbilly Elegy (Turley)
• Erdogan Says Turkiye Could ‘Enter’ Israel To Help Gazans (Sp.)
• Erdogan ‘Going Down The Path of Saddam Hussein’ – Israeli FM (RT)
• Netanyahu Granted Powers To Devise Retaliation Against Hezbollah (RT)
• Houthis Announce ‘New Stage’ of Conflict With Israel, Urge Arabs to Unite (Sp.)
• T-Rex May Have Been 70% Bigger Than Previously Believed (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

K..a..m..a..l..a

 

 

Grassroots
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817429727100952993

 

 

Kamala 68
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817375226570633526

 

 

Eva
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817208920579916261

 

 

 

 

“..dumb as a rock.”

• Kamala Harris Is A “Low IQ Individual.” – Trump (RT)

Former US president and current Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has claimed that his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, is a “low-IQ individual.” Speaking at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday, Trump called the cryptocurrency a “marvel of technology” and a “miracle of cooperation and human achievements.” The former president went on to praise the Bitcoin community as “very smart people,” and used the opportunity to disparage his election rival. “This room is amazing. The people in this room are high-IQ individuals. I’m running against a low IQ individual,” Trump told the audience. He had insulted Harris in the past, having described her as “dumb as a rock.” Harris became the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee last week after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

High-ranking Democrats and major party donors urged Biden to withdraw in the wake of his disastrous June debate with Trump, when more concerns were raised over his declining health and the ability to win the election in November. Harris has since secured enough commitments to be officially nominated as her party’s candidate at a convention next month, according to an Associate Press survey. During a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Tuesday, she launched a scathing attack against her rival, claiming that she knows “Donald Trump’s type” and listed “all kinds of predators” she dealt with when serving as a prosecutor. She repeatedly called Trump a “convicted felon” and accused him of “restoring to some wild lies.” The campaign was shaken up by an attempt to assassinate Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. Trump narrowly escaped death as the gunman’s bullet grazed his ear. The incident prompted the resignation of Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle, who admitted that the agency had failed to properly protect the former president.

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“2007 through 2017, that decade is filled with unlawful action by Barack Obama and the people behind him. This is the core of their ongoing need for control, likely for a generation or more..”

• It All Tracks – Hersch Reports Obama Threatened Biden with 25th Amendment (CTH)

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersch writes on his substack, an article outlying how his sources in Washington DC and the White House have confirmed to him that former President Barack Obama was the impetus to push Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race. Seymour Hersh says President Obama was “deeply involved” with the alleged coup and called Joe Biden after his “incident” in Las Vegas, which, from all outward appearances, looks like a major slip and fall – with a significant hit to the head. “I went over [reports] this week with a senior official in Washington who helped me fashion an account of a White House in complete disarray,” Hersh said. “Obama called Biden after breakfast [on July 20] and said, ‘Here’s the deal. We have Kamala’s approval to invoke the 25th Amendment,’” a senior Washington official told Hersh. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries were reportedly directly involved.

Obama’s plan was to not to immediately endorse Kamala, but it was clear that she would “get the nod.” “[Obama] had an agenda and he wanted to seek it through to the end, and he wanted to have control over who would be elected.” (Hersch article encapsulated) Not only does this outline track with every datapoint known about events leading up to the Biden announcement, it also aligns with the entire background of the Obama team operating inside the Biden administration. Team Obama have always been in control. Heck, the Obamas never even left Washington DC after their term in office. The bigger understanding is in the final quote cited. “[Team Obama] had an agenda and he wanted to seek it through to the end, and he wanted to have control over who would be elected.” This is the part where people forget the risk to Team Obama that has never gone away.

The Obama “fundamental change” was a construct of malicious intent. Much of it fraught with unlawful activity only possible by weaponizing the various agencies and bureaus of the U.S. government. Going all the way back to 2007 through 2017, that decade is filled with unlawful action by Barack Obama and the people behind him. This is the core of their ongoing need for control, likely for a generation or more. President Obama and his likeminded ideological foot-soldiers weaponized the federal system of government. In every action from the moment he left office, Obama’s team have been working one long continuum of control in order to keep all of their prior activity hidden. The need for Kamala ‘brat’ Harris is simply another step in this long process to hide the activity.

• The NSA Database was weaponized to conduct political surveillance.
• The Dept of Justice was weaponized to target their political opposition.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation was weaponized to act as the police investigative units for those targets.
• The Dept of Homeland Security was weaponized to control the evidence and information about their political targeting and surveillance.
• The IRS was weaponized against Obama’s political opposition.
• The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was weaponized to allow the targeting radar to sweep internally against American citizens under the guise of national security and domestic terror threats.
• The Central Intelligence Agency was weaponized allowing and permitting their “foreign surveillance” mandate to merge with the DHS internal surveillance mandate, while simultaneously the CIA conducted overseas political operations against the interests of sovereign countries. All of their activity in ideological alignment.
• The Defense Department was purged of patriotism, intentionally weakened through diversity equity and inclusion, and then boiled down to a flag corps of general willing to go along with the policy of Obama.
• Main Justice through the National Security Division used FARA violations to target anyone who was determined a threat to the fundamental change, and Main Justice began wholesale Lawfare operations against Donald Trump and any entity who would dare align with him.
• Hundreds of millions, likely billions, were funneled through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, The Green New Deal, The Inflation Reduction Act, and various legislative expenditures to foreign governments; those funds went directly into the bank accounts of Democrat donors and political activist groups.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, the part the awakened American public can look into and see for themselves. Underneath the waterline, there’s tens of thousands of vested interests, inside and outside of Washington DC, operating to maintain the fundamental change that Obama created. However, their defenses are weak and shallow, fraught with vulnerability and the endless need to avoid sunlight. All of that scheming, rot, corruption and unlawful activity makes them vulnerable. The need for control is a reaction to fear. The ‘fundamental change’ group are fraught with fear. That is why they consider the current political landscape as a zero-sum contest.

Read more …

You missed.

• For 25 Minutes, Secret Service Command Center Didn’t Notify Trump Detail (ZH)

While members of the Secret Service in a Butler, Pennsylvania command center were notified that an individual later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks was acting suspiciously before he tried to assassinate Donald Trump, members of the former president’s secret service detail were not informed of the threat, according to the Washington Post. Members of former president Donald Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have privately questioned why they were not informed that local police were tracking a suspicious person before that person opened fire on Trump at his July 13 rally in western Pennsylvania, according to people with direct knowledge of the concerns. Approximately 20 to 25 minutes before Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at the former president, local countersnipers noticed him behaving strangely and sent his photograph to a command center staffed by state troopers and Secret Service agents, the head of Pennsylvania State Police told a congressional committee Tuesday.

According to three sources, members of Trump’s Secret Service detail have complained to confidants and others inside the agency that they were never made aware of the warning, and they had no idea that local countersnipers eventually lost track of Crooks – or that a local police officer who was hoisted onto the roof of the building saw Crooks perched there with a gun. Trump was on stage a full eight minutes – roughly 20 minutes after Crooks was spotted and reported – before shots rang out, wounding Trump, critically wounding two others, and killing one rallygoer. “Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” Trump told Fox News in an interview last Monday. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes, something. Nobody said — I think that was a mistake.” Meanwhile, the Secret Service, which initially lied about denying Trump additional security requests, is not talking.

“As it relates to communications at the rally, the Secret Service is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again,” said spox Anthony Guglielmi, the guy who lied about the denied security. Trump’s team has been at odds with Secret Service headquarters over various requests that the agency denied, including more magnetometers at events, more countersnipers at some events and other specialty teams at other events, The Post has reported. The Secret Service and Trump’s team also repeatedly clashed over security and logistics at the Republican National Convention earlier this month. The Butler, Pa., shooting is also emblematic of what some Secret Service critics say are chronic communication problems that have dogged the agency and contributed to serious security lapses. -WaPo.

Yes, just a breakdown in communication. Nothing nefarious. Also on Monday, then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle deflected when asked by House lawmakers why the Secret Service didn’t immediately delay Trump’s speech when local police reported a suspicious person – telling the committee that such reports are commonplace. “At a number of our protected sites, there are suspicious individuals that are identified all the time,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they constitute a threat.” Cheatle – who resigned last week, admitted that the Secret Service was notified of a suspicious person at the Butler, PA rally “somewhere between two and five times,” and she didn’t know when Trump’s security detail was notified. Turns out, they weren’t.

Read more …

“The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with his decades-long record investigating vaccines and with his bestselling exposé of Fauci and the corruption of the public-health establishment, would loom large in Trump’s legacy as well as RFK Jr’s.”

• Will RFK Jr be Trump’s Vaccine Czar? (AT)

In 2017, shortly before assuming the presidency, president-Elect Donald Trump asked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if he would be willing to investigate one of Trump’s top-of-mind concerns — the safety of vaccines. Trump’s goal, to have Kennedy chair a “Vaccine Safety and Scientific Integrity Commission,” was soon sidetracked by the Russiagate accusation and then Covid. But it was not forgotten. In a recent leaked videotaped discussion between Trump and Kennedy, Trump reminded Kennedy about their 2017 discussion and urged him to take on the vaccine issue again. “I would love you to do so,” Trump urged. Trump’s preoccupation with vaccines — coming the very day after the assasination attempt on his life and shortly before his formal acceptance as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee — demonstrates that the government bureaucracies overseeing the vaccine industry remain top-of-mind to him.

“Something is wrong with that whole system,” he stated. “When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a 10-pound or a 20-pound baby… do you ever see the size of it, its massive, then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I’ve seen it too many times.” In an attempt to clinch the deal, Trump pointedly referred to Kennedy’s long commitment to reforming the CDC and the vaccine industry, highlighting the personal satisfaction such an accomplishment would bring, and its importance to Kennedy’s legacy. “And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you.” In their recent discussion, Trump and Kennedy didn’t discuss the specifics of what a renewed investigation of the vaccine industry would look like, but their 2017 discussion – an hour-long meeting held at Trump’s initiation that also included Kellyanne Conway and Mike Pence — raised the same issues that continue to preoccupy him today.

“He is troubled by questions of the links between certain vaccines and the epidemic of neurodevelopmental disorders including autism,” Kennedy told Science in a telephone interview at the time. “And he has a number — he told me five — friends, he talked about each one of them, who has the same story of a child, a perfectly healthy child who went into a wellness visit around age 2, got a battery of vaccines, spiked a fever, and then developed a suite of deficits in the 3 months following the vaccine. “He said that he understood that anecdote was not science, but said that if there’s enough anecdotal evidence… that we’d be arrogant to dismiss it. Those were his words.” In their recent discussion, Kennedy didn’t agree to take Trump up on his offer. No formal, detailed offer was even made, the call was merely the beginning of a process that Trump hoped would lead Kennedy to join the future Trump administration in a vaccine-related capacity.

The call wasn’t even supposed to be made public – Kennedy’s son, Bobby Kennedy III, leaked it on his own. “When President Trump called me, I was taping with an in-house videographer. I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president,” Kennedy explained. Following the leak, Kennedy told the press that he was continuing with his candidacy for president. Should his candidacy fail and Trump’s succeeds, as appears likely, look to negotiations between them to proceed for a vaccine-related role in Trump’s administration. If Trump has a regret about his first term, it’s likely over his promotion of Covid vaccines — a policy that his base overwhelming opposes, so much so that it drew boos at his rallies. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with his decades-long record investigating vaccines and with his bestselling exposé of Fauci and the corruption of the public-health establishment, would loom large in Trump’s legacy as well as RFK Jr’s.

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“..two major presidential candidates in the United States, both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, have now publicly come out and supported Bitcoin. That, in and of itself, is enormous.”

• Bitcoin Breaks Through (Quoth The Raven)

Almost everybody in the Bitcoin world is already going to be aware of the headlines former President Donald Trump made last night at the Bitcoin 2024 conference. At Bitcoin 2024, Trump pledged that if re-elected, his administration would retain all federal Bitcoin holdings, establishing a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile.” He highlighted that the federal government currently possesses nearly 210,000 bitcoins, about 1% of the total supply, mostly seized from cybercriminals. Trump promised that his administration would never sell this Bitcoin, adhering to the fundamental Bitcoin principle of holding. Additionally, he vowed to fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler on his first day in office, criticizing Gensler’s stringent regulations that many believe have hindered innovation in the crypto industry. Anyway you slice it, last night was a flurry of positive Bitcoin-related headlines hitting the wire as soon as Trump took the stage and began speaking to the crowd of crypto enthusiasts.

The idea of bitcoin as a reserve asset has always been the holy grail for maximalists and Trump’s speech sent the idea of a bitcoin “standard” to supersonic speeds. And while there’s been plenty of speculation online about Trump’s motives, with some saying he’s simply fishing for votes from wherever he can get them, it doesn’t matter at this point: the game theory snowball of a Bitcoin “standard” has officially started rolling down the hill. This pro-Bitcoin psychology and reserve asset game theory, and what it could do for the world of Bitcoin regardless of whether or not Trump is elected, cannot be understated. The Bitcoin community has now, for the first time, seen a former and potential US president endorse the cryptocurrency as a strategic reserve asset for the country. This is multiple times more consequential than Wall Street listing Bitcoin ETFs, in my opinion, because it accelerates Bitcoin’s adoption regardless of whether or not Trump is elected our next president.

The idea that the United States could potentially make Bitcoin part of a monetary standard has officially been launched into the orbit of the country’s economic zeitgeist. For comparison, when I started to warm up to the idea of Bitcoin about 6 months ago, I speculated that Middle Eastern money would be the next, after El Salvador, to put Bitcoin on a sovereign balance sheet. From there, I speculated such a move could unleash a tsunami of game theory, with multiple other countries scrambling to catch up across the world, not unlike the way Democrats — the party of Elizabeth “Ban Crypto” Warren — are now scrambling to play catch-up and modify their position stance on crypto. Too late, losers. If you would have told me months ago that one of the two major United States presidential candidates and a former president would be the first to assure the world they would place Bitcoin on the sovereign balance sheet of the most powerful nation in the world, I would have been assured the rest of the world would follow.

That is exactly the case that is unfolding. And, by removing the red tape in the world of Bitcoin, not only would the Trump administration send adoption of the asset to stratospheric levels, it would also be the first tacit public acknowledgment that the fiscal crisis unfolding in the United States is not sustainable and must be dealt with via means other than printing dollars. In other words, holding a bitcoin reserve would represent an attempt at a strategic move to sound money, regardless of whether or not Bitcoin itself stands the test of time.

Yesterday not only marked a momentous occasion for Bitcoin, it marked a momentous occasion for everybody on the Austrian side of the economic aisle who has been waiting for a politician to begin to make serious concessions that the fiscal trajectory the country and the dollar are on is not sustainable. It was a limited hangout of sorts – a passive admission that eventually, the country is going to need a solution to its monetary problem that is outside the Keynesian pattern of simply printing more fiat. And so even if you are first and foremost an advocate for gold or silver, like I am, it’s easy to see last night’s comments by President Trump as not just a victory for Bitcoin but a victory for economic common sense. Just think about this: two major presidential candidates in the United States, both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, have now publicly come out and supported Bitcoin. That, in and of itself, is enormous.

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“They have gradually shed metaphysical ties, with God, country and family..”

• Olympics Opening Ceremony Shows ‘Absence of Public Morality’ – Orban (Sp.)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban described the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris as “the weakness and disintegration of the West”, La Depeche reported. The politician believes that the event that sparked a fierce public backlash was the embodiment of the Western void. “They have gradually shed metaphysical ties, with God, country and family,” Orban said, adding that it has led to “the absence of public morality, as you could see if you watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics yesterday.” Orban also pointed out that the collective West denies the existence of nation states, resulting in the absence of a common culture and a common morality based on it. “Western values, long considered universal, are increasingly considered unacceptable and rejected by many countries in the world,” he concluded.

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Never again.

• French Bishops Condemn Olympic ‘Mockery of Christianity’ (RT)

The Bishops’ Conference of France has denounced the organizers of the Olympic Games over an LGBTQ-themed parody of the Last Supper during the event’s opening ceremony. The organizers have claimed that the performance reflected their “values and principles.” The ceremony, which took place in central Paris on Friday night, concluded with a troupe of drag queens, homosexuals, and transsexuals posing at a table, as Jesus Christ and his apostles appeared in Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’. A giant serving dish was then wheeled out in front of the table, from which emerged a mostly naked man made up to resemble Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and festivity. Throughout the performance, a male dancer’s exposed testicles could be seen behind the table. “This ceremony unfortunately included scenes in which Christianity was mocked and ridiculed, which we deeply regret,” the Bishops’ Conference said in a statement on Saturday.

“We thank the members of other religious denominations who have expressed their solidarity with us,” the statement continued. “This morning we think of all Christians on all continents who have been hurt by the exaggeration and provocation of some scenes.” The ceremony was condemned by Christians and conservatives around the world. Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota called the performance a “gross mockery of the Last Supper,” while Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini declared that “opening the Olympics by insulting billions of Christians across the world was a really bad start” for France. SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the spectacle as “extremely disrespectful to Christians,” while tech entrepreneur Dr. Eli David wrote that “even as a Jew,” he was “infuriated by this outrageous insult to Jesus and Christianity.”

Olympic organizers have defended the opening show. “We imagined a ceremony to show our values and our principles so we gave a very committed message,” Paris 2024 President Tony Estanguet told reporters on Saturday. “The idea was to really trigger a reflection. We wanted to have a message as strong as possible.” “Our idea was inclusion,” added Thomas Jolly, the ceremony’s artistic director. “We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everybody.”

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“German readers want to read the book, which Ullstein acknowledged is one of the most influential works of this generation..”

• German Publisher Stops All Printing of JD Vance’s Book Hillbilly Elegy (Turley)

JD Vance is a marked man. After accepting the nomination for vice president, Vance has been the subject of endless media attacks. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris even questioned his “loyalty” to the country despite his serving as a Marine in the Iraq War. Yet, one of the most chilling attacks came from Germany where the publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage has stopped printing the sold-out German translation of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 autobiography. As we have discussed previously in this country, it is the modern left’s equivalent of book burning. After all, why burn books when you can simply prevent their being printed under blacklisting campaigns? In this country, we have seen the left successfully force book bans for writers and even justices who espouse opposing viewpoints. We have seen actual calls for book burning recently (here and here).

Ullstein is facing a high demand for Vance’s best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, but has refused to print more copies due to his political viewpoints (unrelated to the book). First published in 2016 and made into a movie in 2020, the book returned to the top position on The New York Times‘ bestseller list after Trump chose Vance as his running mate. HarperCollins is rushing to print more books to meet the demand. Some in the United States are already balking at the selling of any book by Vance. Seven Stories Press wrote, “Seven Stories Press is extremely thrilled to have never published JD Vance.” Ullstein published the German translation of Hillbilly Elegy in 2017 and held the rights to reprints. The company cited Vance’s allegiance with Trump and his politics as the reason in a statement to German media:

“At the time of its publication, the book made a valuable contribution to understanding the drifting apart of US society…In the meantime, he is officially acting alongside him and advocating an aggressively demagogic, exclusionary policy.” German author Gerd Buurmann posted a mocking response that we should be happy that Ullstein had just thrown Vance’s book out of its catalogue and not into the fire – a reference to the notorious Nazi book burnings of the 1930s. Other Germans have raised the same objections and referenced the painful history of book bans and burnings in Germany under the Nazis. German readers want to read the book, which Ullstein acknowledged is one of the most influential works of this generation. However, because the company disagrees with his political viewpoints, it moved to block others from reading the book.

We have seen similar campaigns leading to the banning or burning of books by figures like JK Rowling because of her opposition to some transgender policies. The left now protests any programs on Rowling’s work and opposes the selling of her enormously popular Harry Potter series or even video games based on the series. When authors have defended her right to be published, they have also been subjected to cancel campaigns. Yet, Ullstein’s decision is particularly chilling as a publishing house. Again, we have seen editors at publishing houses sign petitions to bar books by conservative figures like Justice Amy Coney Barrett from being published.

In 1933, thousands of books by Jewish and leftist writers were burned throughout Germany. Publishing houses further banned the printing of these books. The books were announced as corrupting the minds of German citizens. Many books were banned or burned on the basis of the authors being Jewish or known socialists or anarchists. Now the left has developed a taste for censorship and blacklisting. Editors and publishing houses are blacklisting those with conservative or libertarian views as forms of dangerous viewpoints or disinformation. Ullstein will, of course, not stop people from reading the work of JD Vance. While it may make it more difficult for Germans to find copies, ideas like water have a way of finding their way out. Blacklisting and censorship have not succeeded in killing a single idea. What it does is reveal the true character and values of those who want to prevent others from hearing opposing viewpoints.

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He looks alone for now.

• Erdogan Says Turkiye Could ‘Enter’ Israel To Help Gazans (Sp.)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkiye could “enter” Israel just as it once did in Libya and Karabakh. Speaking at a meeting of the ruling party branch in the president’s native province of Rize, Erdogan noted the success of the country’s defense industry, but urged not to be deceived by them. According to the president, if the successes had been even greater, Israel “would not have done to Palestine what it did.” “We must be strong. As we entered Karabakh, as we entered Libya, so we will do to them [Israel]. There is nothing we cannot do. We must be strong to take such steps,” Erdogan said in a speech broadcast by the national television. Erdogan also once again recalled the refusal of the leader of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to speak in the Turkish parliament. Earlier, the Turkish president urged Abbas to apologize.

The Turkish parliament approved the extension of the mandate for the deployment of the Turkish military contingent in Libya for two years from January 2024. Turkiye supported Azerbaijan during the Second Karabakh War in the fall of 2020, and Turkish drones actively participated in the operations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in the US Congress on Wednesday, sparking protests by anti-war activists at the Capitol. Turkish politicians, including Erdogan, harshly criticized the speech of “war criminal” Netanyahu in the Congress and those senators who gave him a standing ovation. On October 7, 2023, Israel was subjected to an unprecedented rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. After that, fighters of Palestinian movement Hamas penetrated the border areas, opened fire on the military and civilians, and took more than 200 hostages.

According to the authorities, about 1,200 people were killed. The Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Iron Swords in the Gaza Strip, which included strikes on civilian targets. Israel announced a complete blockade of the enclave: supplies of water, electricity, fuel, food and medicine were stopped. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the death toll from Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7 has exceeded 39,000, with more than 89,800 people injured. The Russian Foreign Ministry called on the parties to cease hostilities. According to Moscow’s position, a settlement is only possible on the basis of the UN Security Council-approved formula with the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem.

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Sounds like a personal threat.

• Erdogan ‘Going Down The Path of Saddam Hussein’ – Israeli FM (RT)

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has warned that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could end up like the toppled and executed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein if he attempts to intervene in the Gaza war. Erdogan traded threats with Israeli officials on Sunday amid the IDF’s operation against Hamas in Gaza, as well as the rapidly escalating tensions between Israel and the Lebanese-based armed group Hezbollah. Speaking at a rally in his hometown of Rize, Erdogan suggested that Türkiye could “enter” Israel in order to help the Palestinians. “We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine,” Erdogan said. In the past he has condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Nazi Germany – and likened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.

Katz responded with a warning of his own on X (formerly Twitter). “Erdogan is going down the path of Saddam Hussein and threatens to attack Israel,” he wrote, adding that the Turkish leader “should just remember what happened there and how that ended.” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid also blasted Erdogan, calling him a “danger to the Middle East” and a “wannabe dictator.” “The world, and especially NATO members, must strongly condemn his outrageous threats against Israel and force him to end his support for Hamas,” Lapid wrote on X. Saddam Hussein was overthrown during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. He went into hiding, but was eventually caught by US troops, convicted by an Iraqi court of crimes against humanity, and executed by hanging in 2006.

The US under President George W. Bush claimed at the time that the Iraqi leader had connections to Al-Qaeda – a group behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks – and had weapons of mass destruction. Both claims later turned out to be false, but Washington used them as rationale for attacking Iraq, despite having failed to secure the approval of the UN Security Council.

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“Iran has warned that Israel would face an “obliterating war” in case of a “full-scale military aggression” against Lebanon..”

• Netanyahu Granted Powers To Devise Retaliation Against Hezbollah (RT)

Israel’s security cabinet has authorized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to determine the scope of a potential military operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon. During the meeting on Sunday evening, the cabinet agreed to let Netanyahu and Gallant “decide on the manner and timing of the response” to Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks. Tensions flared up on Saturday after a rocket hit a football pitch in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) blamed Hezbollah for the strike and later showed photos of shrapnel that it said matched an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket, which is used by the pro-Palestinian militant group. According to the IDF, the rocket was launched from the Chebaa area in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah, however, denied any involvement in the strike on Majdal Shams. The group has been firing rockets and mortar shells at Israeli positions after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7. The IDF carried out further airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Sunday. However, there is an expectation of a stronger response from Israel, including a potential ground invasion, given the warnings made by leading politicians over the weekend, with Foreign Minister Israel Katz saying that Hezbollah has “crossed all red lines.” Iran has warned that Israel would face an “obliterating war” in case of a “full-scale military aggression” against Lebanon. The US, meanwhile, has backed Israel and condemned Hezbollah. Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said through her national security adviser that her “support for Israel is ironclad.”

Read more …

“..Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi vowed that Yemen’s response was “inevitable.”

• Houthis Announce ‘New Stage’ of Conflict With Israel, Urge Arabs to Unite (Sp.)

Yemen is entering a “new stage” of its war with Israel, and is asking Arab and Muslim countries to unite to help wage it, Houthi political bureau member Ali al-Qahoum has told Sputnik. “Yemen and its leader are entering a new stage of conflict, new alliances are being created that do not have red lines,” Al-Qahoum said. “As long as Israel exists, there will be no peace – this is an existential battle. It is time to unite Arabs and Muslims, use their opportunities and stand together in this battle to preserve the identity of Islam and Arabism in the face of the challenges, dangers and projects of the Great Satan represented by America and Israel,” the official said, using the derogatory epithet originating from the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and typically referring to the United States. Al-Qahoum’s language signals a marked escalation in the militia’s position, which at the beginning of its Red Sea semi-blockade and missile attacks on Israel last October and November was aimed at “standing in solidarity” with Palestinians with a view to stopping the now more than nine-month old war in Gaza.

The Houthi political bureau member has not shied away from using increasingly sharp rhetoric in interviews in recent months, warning Washington in January that Yemen would become America’s “graveyard” and that the US would be forced to “leave the region in humiliation” after the US and British navies launched a campaign of air and missile strikes inside Yemen. In March, al-Qahoum said the Houthis were “cooperating” with the rising powers in the world to “drown America and the West in the mire around the Red Sea, to get them bogged down, weaken[ed] and unable to maintain unipolarity.” Tensions between the Houthis and Israel escalated dramatically over the past week after the militia flew a long-range airplane-style combat drone into Tel Aviv on July 19, evading Israel’s powerful air defenses in an incident the IDF attributed to “human error.” One person was killed in the attack, and seven were injured.

Israel reacted by launching F-35I jets to target the western Yemeni Red Sea port city of al-Hudaydah on July 20, targeting the port’s oil facilities and a power plant. The attacks were meant to make “it clear to our enemies that there is no place that the long arm of Israel will not reach,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. At least nine people were killed and 87 others injured in the Israeli attack, according to local authorities. The Houthis have vowed to respond to the tit-for-tat escalation, with Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam, saying last week that Israel’s “brutal aggression will only increase the determination and steadfastness of the Yemeni people and their brave armed forces, continuing and escalating their support for Gaza.” In a televised speech on Thursday, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi vowed that Yemen’s response was “inevitable.”

Read more …

“..2.5 billion T-Rex once lived on Earth. But just 32 adult fossils have ever been found..”

• T-Rex May Have Been 70% Bigger Than Previously Believed (Sp.)

According to a new study, the king of dinosaurs may have been 70% heavier and 25% longer than previously thought. Paleontologists from the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, said the carnivorous T-Rex could have weighed up to 33,000 pounds (15,000 kilograms), which would make it 35% heavier than an average school bus. In an effort to determine how big the dinosaur could get, scientists first examined the fossil record, which shows that a total of about 2.5 billion T-Rex once lived on Earth. But just 32 adult fossils have ever been found. The largest T-Rex on record is a specimen named “Scotty”, which weighed an estimated 19,555 lbs (8,870 kg) when it was alive.

But the largest T-Rex “would have been about 70% bigger” than Scotty, said study co-author Jordan Mallon, a research scientist and head of palaeobiology at the Canadian Museum of Nature. “Our study suggests that, for big fossil animals like T-Rex, we really have no idea from the fossil record about the absolute sizes they might have reached,” said Mallon, whose team also took into consideration other factors including population size, growth rate, lifespan, and the incomplete nature of the fossil record. “It’s fun to think about a 15 tonne T-Rex, but the implications are also interesting from a bio-mechanical or ecological perspective,” he said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

High Jump

 

 

Turnings

 

 

Dog n puppy

 

 

Smile
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817551970716033046

 

 

Pet dad

 

 

Clingy

 

 

Water

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle Independence Day 2024

Jul 042024
 
 July 4, 2024  Posted by at 9:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Félix Vallotton The balloon 1899

 

• “No One Is Pushing Me Out” Biden Tells Staff (ZH)
• Biden May Drop Out Of Presidential Race – NYT (RT)
• Dozens of Democrat Lawmakers Want Biden Out – Bloomberg (RT)
• Only Michelle Obama Can Beat Donald Trump – Poll (RT)
• Jack Smith is Willing to Try Trump Up to Inauguration Day (Turley)
• The Presidential Dilemma (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Hillary Clinton Welcomes Ukraine ‘Attacking’ Trump (RT)
• Will Putin Attack Poland & the Baltics? (Ray McGovern)
• Western Talk of Ukraine Peace Just For Show – Zakharova (RT)
• Orban Reveals Zelensky’s Reaction To Ceasefire Proposal (RT)
• US Dissatisfied With Ukraine’s Mobilization Rate – Former PM (Sp.)
• Tucker Carlson Announces Zelensky Interview (RT)
• Ukraine To Be Warned It’s ‘Too Corrupt’ For NATO – Telegraph (RT)
• ‘Hamas Has Never Been Stronger’: Israel Is Stuck In A War It Can’t Win (Blade)
• Houthis Vow USS Theodore Roosevelt Primary Target Once it Enters Red Sea (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kamala
https://twitter.com/i/status/1808504862386049227

 

 

Big Mike
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807996200966410600

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone gave Hunter a security clearance? For real?

• “No One Is Pushing Me Out” Biden Tells Staff (ZH)

Update (1355ET): According to AP, Biden told campaign staff “No one is pushing me out” during a Wednesday call. Would he even know though? Meanwhile, a new NYT/Siena poll reveals that Trump now leads Biden 49%-43% among likely voters.

* * *

Update (1055ET): With knives out and all eyes on Kamala, President Biden has reportedly ‘told a key ally that he knows he may not be able to salvage his candidacy’ if he can’t convince the public in the coming days that he’s up for the job, the NY Times reports. “He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place” by the end of the weekend said the ally, referring to last Thursday’s debacle of a debate. The conversation is the first indication to become public that the president is seriously considering whether he can recover after a devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta on Thursday. Concerns are mounting about his viability as a candidate and whether he could serve as president for another four years.

A top adviser to Mr. Biden, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation, said the president was “well aware of the political challenge he faces.” -NYT. We’re shocked Biden can ‘weigh’ anything given his condition, but the White House says the Times report is ‘absolutely false.’ As we noted earlier, odds of Kamala Harris facing off with Trump in November spiked overnight, and then accelerated even higher upon the NYT report, only to pull back shortly thereafter after the White House denied.

What a time to be alive!

* * *
While Former President Barack Obama has publicly supported sockpuppet president Joe Biden following last Thursday’s unprecedented debate, he has privately told allies that the path to victory ‘grew more challenging’ following an abject debacle for the Democrats. According to ‘several people familiar with his remarks,’ and perhaps most notably conveyed via the Washington Post, not only has Obama grown more concerned following the debate (and having to physically guide the 81-year-old off of a stage last month), the former president “has long harbored worries about his party defeating Donald Trump in November, repeatedly warning Biden in recent months about how challenging it will be to win reelection.” Not only that, “Just before the debate, Obama conveyed to allies his concerns about the state of the race.”

So Obama gets to save face, while adding to the growing chorus of Democrats who have expressed everything from quiet panic to public hints, to outright calls for Biden to drop out of the race. Meanwhile in the ivory tower, White House aides are reportedly freaked out that crack addict, China profiteer, Ukraine energy expert, convicted felon Hunter Biden is in the building helping to counsel his father in Jill’s time of crisis. According to NBC News’ Ken Deilanian, White House staff are asking “What the hell is happening,” after a report that Hunter has been sitting in on meetings.

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Comedy.

• Biden May Drop Out Of Presidential Race – NYT (RT)

US President Joe Biden is seriously considering whether he can recover from his “disastrous” debate performance, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing a “key ally” who wished to remain anonymous. Biden struggled through last week’s exchange with challenger Donald Trump, hosted by CNN. The Times described his performance as “devastating,” even though Biden’s campaign had arranged the circumstances to be maximally favorable. “He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place” by the end of the Independence Day weekend, the unnamed ally told the newspaper. While the unnamed source insisted that Biden is “still deeply in the fight for re-election,” the 81-year-old is reportedly aware that the next several days must go well if he wishes to “salvage” his candidacy.

Biden is scheduled to record an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos – a Clinton White House veteran – on Friday and take part in campaign events in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A meeting with Democratic governors is also on the schedule for Wednesday evening. White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the NYT that the anonymous ally’s claim was “absolutely false” and that he had not been given enough time to respond. According to the Times, Biden has told at least one person that he is open to the possibility that the plan to move on from the debate and shift the narrative to Trump “may not work.” The White House and the campaign have offered a range of excuses for what happened at the debate. Meanwhile, a CBS News poll on Wednesday showed Trump two points ahead of Biden nationally and three points in battleground states.

“Concerns are mounting about his viability as a candidate and whether he could serve as president for another four years,” the Times noted. Several other unnamed allies of Biden told the outlet that he was “clear-eyed” about the “uphill battle to convince voters, donors and the political class” that his debate performance was just a bad day. Media outlets that have been friendly to Biden for years, insisting just last month that he was “sharp as a tack” and that allegations of mental and physical infirmity were fake news, turned on the president practically overnight. Major party donors have reportedly done so as well, demanding a new candidate. Vice President Kamala Harris remains unpopular, however, and the Democrats did not allow a competitive primary, leaving them in a bind to name a possible replacement

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“..even among Democrats some 45% believe that he should withdraw from the race..”

• Dozens of Democrat Lawmakers Want Biden Out – Bloomberg (RT)

Dozens of Democrats in the US Congress are considering signing a letter demanding that President Joe Biden suspend his reelection campaign, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Calls for Biden to withdraw from the race and resign from office have intensified since his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last week. Bloomberg did not name any of the lawmakers involved, and attributed the news to an anonymous “senior party official.” According to this official, Democrats fear association with the unpopular and apparently senile president will harm their own reelection chances in November, leading to “a Republican sweep of Washington and an unchecked Donald Trump presidency.” Calls for Biden’s withdrawal have snowballed since last Thursday’s CNN-hosted debate, during which Biden appeared confused and struggled to finish sentences.

Speaking to MSNBC on Tuesday, influential Democrat Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn both discussed the possibility that Biden may suffer from a mental condition, while Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first sitting Democrat lawmaker to urge Biden to suspend his campaign. Liberal pundits have gone further, with The Atlantic and The Hill both publishing op-eds on Wednesday calling on Biden to leave office immediately, after the New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune all called on him to step aside so the party can choose a more lucid candidate to take on Trump this November. The White House, meanwhile, insists that Biden does not suffer from dementia or any other degenerative condition, and that his lackluster performance was the result of tiredness and a “bad cold.”

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Andrew Bates dismissed a report in the New York Times suggesting that the president was considering whether to pull out of the race, calling the claim “absolutely false.”According to Politico reporter Elena Schneider, Biden told campaign staffers on Wednesday that “no one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.” Biden spoke to Clyburn and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer by phone on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported. The president has a packed schedule of appearances over the coming days, including a meeting with Democratic governors on Wednesday evening, an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Friday, and campaign events in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over the weekend.

“We really want to turn the page on this,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday, adding that Biden’s upcoming appearances will allow Americans to “see him for themselves.” According to multiple polls, however, Americans have already decided that Biden is not fit for office. A survey conducted by CBS News/YouGov in the wake of the debate found that 72% of registered voters do not believe that Biden has the “mental and cognitive health necessary to serve as president.” The poll indicated that even among Democrats some 45% believe that he should withdraw from the race.

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That poll is wrong. Because it will all be about Big Mike.

• Only Michelle Obama Can Beat Donald Trump – Poll (RT)

Michelle Obama, the wife of former US President Barack Obama, is the only potential Democratic candidate who could beat Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in November’s election, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll. There is growing concern among Democratic voters over President Joe Biden’s ability to secure a second term in office this year, particularly after his debate with Trump, in which the 81-year-old incumbent appeared frail and confused, and struggled to finish his sentences. On July 1 and July 2, Ipsos market research company surveyed a representative sample of 1,070 US adults for Reuters, including 892 registered voters, 348 Democrats, 322 Republicans, and 303 independents.

According to the poll, if a vote were to be held now, Biden and Trump would both win an estimated 40% of the votes. However, around three in five voters, including nearly one-third of Democrats, believe Biden should drop out of the race altogether and that his party should put forward a new candidate, even at this late stage. Most of Biden’s potential replacements do not seem to have the public approval or recognition needed to beat Trump on November 5, according to the poll. In hypothetical matchups against Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris was one point behind the Republican candidate, while others, like California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, fared even worse. The only person who could beat Trump is Michelle Obama, the poll suggests. In her matchup against the former president, some 50% of registered voters said they would vote for her, compared to 39% who said they would vote for Trump.

The former first lady also appears to have a better public image than the other candidates. The survey showed that around 42% of voters have a favorable opinion of Trump, compared to the 38% who have a favorable opinion of Biden. But Obama had an approval rating of 55%, beating all other potential Democratic candidates. Meanwhile, Biden and his team have indicated that they have no plans to drop out of the race despite last week’s debate performance, which they have tried to play down as just a “bad night.” The Democratic Party has also publicly rallied behind the president. Privately, however, media reports suggest that many top Democratic donors want Biden gone from the November 5 ticket and even his public allies, including Barack Obama, have reportedly been “telling people Biden can’t win” in private.

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It’s called election interference. And SCOTUS should stop it.

“Smith’s appetite for a trial before the Inauguration may exceed his ability to force that expedited schedule…”

• Jack Smith is Willing to Try Trump Up to Inauguration Day (Turley)

The Washington Post is reporting that Special Counsel Jack Smith may try to convict former president Donald Trump all the way through the election and up to 11:59 am on January 20th. After the oath, the Justice Department has long maintained that it will not prosecute a sitting president. There is also a long-standing policy of the Justice Department to abstain from criminal proceedings before an election to avoid the appearance of trying to influence the outcome. Smith has signaled that he will discard that policy and that he is prepared to try Trump not only up to the election but through the election. He is now reportedly willing to try Trump up to January 20th. Smith has made trying Trump before the election the overriding priority in his two cases against the former president. He failed repeatedly to force a shorter schedule on appeal before the Supreme Court.

His arguments were revealing. He suggested that the public should have a possible conviction before they cast their votes. It flipped the DOJ policy on its head in openly seeking to influence the election. The Supreme Court was not persuaded, though Smith did succeed in effectively cutting the appellate process a bit shorter. He then lost in spectacular fashion before the Court on presidential immunity. According to the Post, he is not giving up the ghost and is now committed to a trial running up to Inauguration Day: “Current officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed … that if Trump wins the election, the clock on the two federal cases against him would keep ticking until Jan. 20, when he would be sworn in as the 47th president.” Even with Smith’s continued push to try Trump at all costs before the Inauguration, it could be a challenge. There is a 30-day period before the Supreme Court case is effectively returned to district court.

Judge Tanya Chutkan has been highly favorable for Smith and highly motivated in seeking a trial before the election. That led to problems highlighted in the recent opinion. Chutkan was so motivated that she failed to create an adequate record on these issues. That record will now have to be established. If Chutkan rules as she did earlier, she is expected to be hostile to Trump’s claims on his conduct falling within official functions. However, she will need to make the record and her decision could again be appealed. The Court left clear guidelines that will make it difficult for Chutkan to, again, dismiss such claims.

Moreover, the pre-trial motions were stopped with the latest appeal. They must now be addressed. Finally, she pledged to give the Trump team over 80 days for preparation after the appeal, which will be added to the 30 days, the period for the remand record, and the pre-trial motions. There is also the need for the court and Smith to deal with the Fischer decision limiting the use of the obstruction charges — impacting two of the four counts against Trump. As I have previously written, Smith has various options but could trigger a new reversal on appeal if he follows his signature inclination to resist legal limits. In other words, Smith’s appetite for a trial before the Inauguration may exceed his ability to force that expedited schedule.

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“All the people can do is to cast votes that might or might not be properly counted..”

• The Presidential Dilemma (Paul Craig Roberts)

The dilemma is not limited to Trump and Biden. All of us face it. Biden cannot win despite all of the theft mechanisms the Democrats have institutionalized. A stolen election requires a close election in order to hide the theft. But the polls show no such close election. In order to use the fraudulent electoral means put in place, the Democrats need a candidate that the media can present as neck-in-neck with Trump. Even if Democrats had such a candidate, the Biden Crime Family cannot risk Trump taking office. In the event that Trump has learned not to appoint his most dangerous enemies to the highest offices, Biden out of power faces the risk of a real investigation of his and his son’s suspect business affairs, which appear to boil down to influence peddling.

So far the Biden family has reacted negatively to the pressure on Biden from fellow Democrats to stand down. But there is room for a deal if the Democrats can find a candidate for whom they can succeed in having a stolen election accepted. The deal would be that in exchange for standing down, the replacement candidate when “elected” will have the Justice (sic) Department investigate Joe and Hunter’s business dealings and clear them from all suspicions. One wonders why the corrupt merrick garland hasn’t already done this. For Trump the main problem is how does he form a loyal government committed to Trump’s and Trump’s supporters agenda? The Rino Republican establishment is almost as opposed to Trump as the Democrats. Where are there aware Republicans with brains and a willingness to fight the Establishment and the media which serves the Establishment? Supposing such people exist and that Trump finds them, how does he get them confirmed in office? Confirmation is up to the Senate. Is the Senate going to put in office people who intend to dismantle the Establishment that the Senate represents?

The most important question is who will sacrifice his chances for success in life by serving in a Trump administration and going against the Establishment. There are so many ways in which the Establishment can ruin you. When Trump, if elected, is confronted with his isolation, as he was during his first term with no reliable advisers having abandoned Bannon and Flynn, what does he do? Does he declare his re-election as vindication and make his peace with the Establishment, thereby surviving and recovering from his damaged business interests? Trump’s support is in the people, but the people are impotent. The media lies to them continually, but enough of them continue to support the media and partake of their indoctrination from CNN, NPR, the New York Times and the rest of the presstitutes for the media to continue its lies. The media’s lies sustain the official narratives.

The people have no influence on the cabinet departments that serve the private agendas of the Establishment. All the people can do is to cast votes that might or might not be properly counted. We already see an unpromising change in Trump. In place of analysis he blusters. If he had been in office Russia would have been too afraid to invade Ukraine and Hamas to attack Israel. In other words, he has bought into the Establishment explanations. We no longer hear that he is going to normalize relations with Russia. Instead, he is going to intimidate Russia. This is not what the world on the brink of World War III wants to hear. We want to see leadership that acknowledges Washington and NATO’s responsibility in the ever-widening conflict. As long as we are full of self-justification, we can’t see the Russian point of view. Unless we can bring ourselves to see the Russian point of view, we will continue on our path to a major war.

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Vovan and Lexus strike again.

• Hillary Clinton Welcomes Ukraine ‘Attacking’ Trump (RT)

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has signaled her support if Ukraine attempted to dig up dirt on GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. She made the comment in a phone call with Russian prankster duo Vovan and Lexus, one of whom posed as ex-Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko. According to a recording of the conversation made public on Wednesday, Clinton and the man she believed to be Poroshenko discussed the political landscape in the US leading up to the November election, as well as the potential repercussions of a Trump victory for both Kiev and Washington. Trump has repeatedly criticized the way the administration of US President Joe Biden has handled the Ukraine conflict, saying he would end hostilities within 24 hours if elected and stop sending unconditional financial support to Kiev.

Clinton said that she is “doing everything” she can to secure Biden’s reelection, while acknowledging that those efforts come at “a very difficult time in this country.” Her comments followed a recent television debate between Biden and Trump, widely seen as a disaster for the incumbent. The former presidential candidate, who lost the 2016 election to Trump, described her former rival as “very dangerous,” adding that he “would be very bad for the United States as well as for… Ukraine,” and that Kiev was right to be concerned. Later in the conversation, ‘Poroshenko’ offered to “request a hearing in the [Ukrainian] parliament to find something on him [Trump] before the election,” recalling that the 45th president is already facing serious legal trouble in the US. “I think we can attack him from different sides,” the prankster suggested.

Clinton seemed to like the idea. “Good. Anything you could do, attack him, I’m all for it, because he is a very dangerous man,” she responded. ‘Poroshenko’ then followed up with a suggestion to “send my people in the US,” without clarifying what he meant, but the former secretary ignored this proposal. Biden and Trump faced-off on June 27, with the US president widely being perceived as incoherent and fumbling. According to several reports, many prominent Democrats and party donors are scrambling to find a replacement for Biden. Meanwhile, Trump is heading into the election as the only former or current US president to be convicted of a crime. In May, the GOP frontrunner was found guilty of falsifying business records stemming from an alleged ‘hush money’ payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump allegedly had an affair. The ex-president maintains his innocence and has denied being involved with Daniels.

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Fiona Hill.

• Will Putin Attack Poland & the Baltics? (Ray McGovern)

At Thursday’s debate with Donald Trump, President Joe Biden, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” claimed that he “wants all of Ukraine. … Do you think he’ll stop? … What do you think happens to Poland and other places?” Spoiler Alert: Official Ukrainian sources confirm that Putin did stop in March 2022, after Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky agreed to forswear membership in NATO. This was the key provision in the Ukraine-Russia deal initialed by Davyd Arakhamia, who at the time was Zelensky’s chief negotiator (and his party’s faction leader in the Rada) at the talks in Istanbul at the end of March, hardly a month into the war. The Russians lifted their objection to Ukraine joining the EU, as the Ukrainians agreed to neutrality. Security guarantees sought by Kyiv (short of NATO membership) would be worked out. The fighting would stop. Agreement on the status of Crimea would be put off to the future.

Putin and Zelensky reportedly were micromanaging the March 2022 negotiations, and at that early stage the Russians expressed readiness for the two to meet. At the same time that Biden and other Western leaders raise the alarm that Putin will attack other parts of Europe when he’s through with Ukraine, they claim Russia can’t even take the Ukrainian province of Kharkiv, has lost more than 500,000 men to just 30,000 Ukrainians and its economy is faltering (none of which is true.) But Cold War Western power was based on an exaggerated Soviet threat and the same is true today. In a November 2023 Kyiv Post report titled “Russia Offered to End War in 2022 If Ukraine Scrapped NATO Ambitions – Zelensky Party Chief,” Arakhamia confirmed that in the March 2022 negotiations Russia proposed ending the war on the condition that Ukraine abandon its NATO aspirations and adopt a neutral stance.

Arakhamia continued: “Neutrality was the biggest thing for them, they were ready to end the war if we took — as Finland once did — neutrality and made commitments that we would not join NATO. This was the key point. While negotiations continued in Istanbul, former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson unexpectedly arrived in Kyiv on April 9 and said that Ukraine shouldn’t sign anything with them at all – and ‘let’s just fight.’ ” Arakhamia’s candor was refreshing. But it came as no surprise to those of us following Ukraine in early 2022. On May 5, 2022 — a year and a half before Arakhamia spilled the beans to the Kyiv Post — Ukrainska Pravda ran a report under the title “Possibility of talks between Zelensky and Putin came to a halt after Johnson’s visit”: “According to sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.

The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the West] are not. The collective West felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to press him.” Three days after Johnson left Kyiv, Putin publicly stated that talks with Ukraine had “turned into a dead end.” Putin expressed confidence that Russia would ultimately prevail and added that it would “rhythmically and calmly” continue conducting the operation in Ukraine. In his major speech to the Russian Foreign Ministry on June 14, Putin said the Russian troops approaching Kyiv in February-March 2022 were there “to push the Ukrainian side to negotiations.” From Feb. 24 on, the Russians had expressed readiness for diplomacy. Interestingly, Zelensky appointed Arakhamia chief negotiator on Feb. 28.

Putin continued: “Surprisingly, as a result, agreements that satisfied both Moscow and Kyiv were indeed reached and initialed in Istanbul. … The document was titled ‘Agreement on Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine’. It was a compromise but resolved the problems that were stated as major ones even at the start of the special military operation. But the path to peace was rejected again. … The former UK prime minister said directly during his visit to Kyiv – no agreements. Russia must be defeated on the battlefield. … Thus they began to intensively pump Ukraine up with weapons and started talking about the need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.”

Who has been telling Biden that Putin “will not stop at Ukraine?” Exhibit A would be Fiona Hill, disciple of arch-Russophobe historian Richard Pipes, and national intelligence officer for Russia (2006-09). Her insights appeared in The New York Times exactly a month before Russia invaded Ukraine. On Jan. 24, 2022, the Times featured a guest essay by Hill titled “Putin has the U.S. Right Where He Wants It”: “This time, Mr. Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s ‘open door’ to Ukraine and taking more territory — he wants to evict the United States from Europe. As he might put it: ‘Goodbye, America. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’”

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”What is happening to Europe is not just a crisis, or collapse, or loss of position. It truly is a disaster..”

• Western Talk of Ukraine Peace Just For Show – Zakharova (RT)

Any Western talk of peace in the Ukraine conflict is merely a “decoy” as the US and its allies remain intent on inflicting a strategic defeat on Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Kiev on Tuesday, where he urged Vladimir Zelensky to seek a ceasefire with Russia to facilitate peace talks. The Ukrainian leader rejected the proposal, saying he has a different way to end the conflict. Whatever discussions Ukraine and Western nations have about peace are mere “decoys, screens, tropes and memes,” said purely for their own sake, Zakharova said on her weekly radio show on Wednesday. The Ukraine conflict is dominated by the goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, which the US and its allies have declared “absolutely clearly and specifically,” the official explained.

In practical terms, the West seeks to dismantle Russia and to end its existence, she claimed. What did you expect from the people chosen by the US as their tools? Tools don’t have a say in what they do. Clear-eyed politicians in the EU can see the place allocated to their nations in the US grand plan, which is that of a sacrificial animal on the altar of victory against Russia, Zakharova added. Europe’s grim future is evident in the state of its economy, she said. ”What is happening to Europe is not just a crisis, or collapse, or loss of position. It truly is a disaster,” she argued. Western officials such as Hungary’s Orban, who publicly object to the course of action chosen in Washington, probably want to set the record straight for the future generations of Europeans, who will blame the leaders of today for their inaction, Zakharova said.

The Hungarian prime minister has repeatedly argued that Western sanctions imposed on Russia as punishment for the Ukraine conflict have failed to end hostilities and ended up hurting EU members more than they did Russia. Budapest has used its veto power in the bloc to stop proposed restrictions that would have undermined core Hungarian national interests, such as its cooperation with Russia on nuclear energy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledged to order a ceasefire with Ukraine as soon as Kiev renounces its bid to join NATO and pulls its troops out of all territory which Moscow claims under its sovereignty.

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“..Ukraine is not interested in Orban’s proposal and claimed that a ceasefire “cannot be considered in isolation.”

• Orban Reveals Zelensky’s Reaction To Ceasefire Proposal (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky was not receptive to Budapest’s proposal to establish a temporary ceasefire with Russia, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who recently traveled to Kiev. During his surprise visit on Tuesday, which was his first trip to Ukraine in over a decade, Orban proposed that Zelensky think about “whether it would be possible to take a break. To reach a ceasefire and start negotiations [with Russia] since a quick ceasefire could speed up these negotiations.” Ahead of the trip, Orban stated that he hoped to explain to Zelensky that “time is running out and it is important to establish peace, as hundreds of soldiers are dying on the front every day and we do not see how a solution can be found on the battlefield.”

However, following his conversations with Zelensky, Orban told the Swiss Die Weltwoche news outlet, that the Ukrainian leader “had some doubts” about the ceasefire proposal and “didn’t like it very much.” He explained that Zelensky “had a bad experience in the past with ceasefires, which, in his opinion, did not benefit Ukraine” and because of this believed there were “limits” to what could be achieved. While Zelensky himself has not yet commented on Hungary’s proposal, his deputy chief of staff, Igor Zhovka has stated that Ukraine is not interested in Orban’s proposal and claimed that a ceasefire “cannot be considered in isolation.”

Instead, Zhovka said that Kiev will continue to seek a resolution to the conflict based on Zelensky’s own ‘peace formula’. The ten-point program, initially floated in late 2022, calls for a complete withdrawal of Russian forces from territories Kiev claims as its own, reparation payments and an international war crime tribunal for Russia’s leadership. Moscow has vehemently rejected Zelensky’s plan as a non-starter and has stressed that any peace talks with Kiev must be based on “realities on the ground.” Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has presented his own set of terms for starting ceasefire talks, which include a full Ukrainian withdrawal from the regions that voted to be part of Russia, as well as legally binding guarantees that ensure Ukraine will never become a member of NATO.

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‘You planned to mobilize this number of people, but mobilized that. We have provided you with funds for weapons and that number of troops, and you fail to hold your end of the bargain,..”

• US Dissatisfied With Ukraine’s Mobilization Rate – Former PM (Sp.)

The United States expresses its dissatisfaction with the insufficient mobilization rate in Ukraine, causing trouble in Washington-Kiev relations, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said on Wednesday. “After the adoption of the bill facilitating mobilization, the number of mobilized people increased, but the Kiev regime failed to achieve the numbers set by the Americans, failed by far. That is why they are having problems with their US masters who are openly saying: ‘You planned to mobilize this number of people, but mobilized that. We have provided you with funds for weapons and that number of troops, and you fail to hold your end of the bargain,'” Azarov said on Telegram. There is active agitation in Ukraine in favor of signing of the temporary ceasefire agreement, he added.

“They say, we should sit tight, gain strength and win [the lost territories] back. That is the idea of all that [agitation] talks. No one is promoting the idea of giving up these territories indefinitely, the idea of a permanent peace treaty, the idea of giving up on NATO membership. These ideas are mentioned nowhere,” the former prime minister added. Martial law was introduced in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The next day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on general mobilization. The martial law and mobilization have been continuously extended since then. On May 9, the Ukrainian president signed bills to extend mobilization and martial law in the country for another 90 days. Under martial law, Ukrainian citizens aged from 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving the country.

Western countries have been providing massive military and financial aid to Kiev since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. The Kremlin has consistently warned against continued arms deliveries to Kiev, saying it would lead to further escalation of the conflict.

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“Stage [the interview] on neutral grounds or he might have you disappeared like Gonzalo Lira..”

• Tucker Carlson Announces Zelensky Interview (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky has finally accepted a request to be interviewed by Tucker Carlson, the American journalist has revealed. A notorious Ukrainian government-linked website branded Carlson an enemy of the state, in particular for his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year. Carlson used to host a highly-rated evening show on Fox News until he was fired last April for reasons never quite explained. He has since launched his own network, posting on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram. “Looks like we’ve got the Zelenskyy interview,” Carlson said on Wednesday. “We’ve been trying for two years, and with particular intensity after interviewing Putin in February.” “The point is to bring Americans much-needed information about the conflict that’s completely reshaping their country’s position in the world. Coming soon we hope,” he added.

Following the Putin interview, Carlson revealed that he also reached out to Zelensky to give him a chance to “explain his position,” but said that the Ukrainian leader ignored his overtures. The influential American journalist has long been critical of the US policy to fund Kiev in the conflict against Moscow. “Ukraine can’t win. Everybody knows that around the world. People are very clear on that. There is not one informed person outside the United States who thinks that somehow Ukraine is going to beat Russia,” he said in April.Last month, during an interview with Donald Trump Jr, Carlson argued that Ukraine was being sold off to foreign corporate investors and that the Ukrainian nation would disappear within 50 years. “We betrayed them like no other country ever,” he said at the time.

Carlson’s announcement has caused some concern among his fans, given that he was placed on Ukraine’s notorious list of public enemies back in 2023, labeled as “an accomplice of Russian occupiers and terrorists.” “Stage [the interview] on neutral grounds or he might have you disappeared like Gonzalo Lira,” conservative blogger Ian Miles Cheong warned Carlson, referring to an American-Chilean journalist who was tortured to death in a Ukrainian jail earlier this year. The controversial Mirotvorets (Peacemaker) database was launched by Ukrainian government-linked activists in 2014. It has often been called Ukraine’s ‘kill list’, as a number of prominent journalists and other public figures featured on the website have been murdered over the years.

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Good topic for Tucker’s interview.

• Ukraine To Be Warned It’s ‘Too Corrupt’ For NATO – Telegraph (RT)

NATO wants Ukraine to make more effort to crack down on endemic corruption as a condition for any progress towards joining the bloc, the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday, citing sources. According to the British paper, concerns that Ukraine is “too corrupt” to become a full-fledged NATO member will be highlighted in the communique at the bloc’s Washington summit on July 9-11. A senior US State Department official told The Telegraph that the West must “applaud everything that Ukraine has done in the name of reforms over the last two-plus years.” However, he added that “we want to talk about additional steps that need to be taken, particularly in the area of anti-corruption. It is a priority for many of us around the table.”

NATO members first agreed in 2008 that Ukraine would eventually join the bloc, without setting an exact timetable. After the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, Ukraine made its NATO aspirations a strategic goal and formally applied to join the bloc in 2022. The move came after four of its former regions voted overwhelmingly to join Russia. However, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said Ukraine’s accession is out of the question while it is in conflict with Russia, insisting that membership can only be approved “when allies agree and conditions are met.” Moscow has said Ukraine’s plans to join NATO are among the key reasons for the conflict. Ukraine has been plagued by corruption for years. The hostilities with Russia have made the problem even more apparent, and the Ukrainian military has been rocked by several high-profile procurement scandals in recent months.

Graft is high on the list of concerns for Ukraine’s Western backers in the EU and US. Last month, the EU set up a special watchdog to combat the possible embezzlement of billions of dollars allocated to Kiev. In May, Robert Storch, the Pentagon’s inspector general, released a report stating that “endemic corruption persists” in Ukraine while calling its government “one of the least accountable” in Europe. An NBC report in June claimed that Kiev has been irritated by constant US demands to ramp up anti-corruption efforts. American and Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that it is one of the issues poisoning bilateral relations. According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Ukraine is in the ‘red’ zone, ranking 104th out of 180 countries.

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“The stocks of their weapons have been depleting, many tunnels have been destroyed, infrastructure has been devastated. Their combatants must be exhausted as they have been fighting for a long time. But from the political point of view, Hamas has never been stronger..”

• ‘Hamas Has Never Been Stronger’: Israel Is Stuck In A War It Can’t Win (Blade)

Through April, the IDF had targeted more than 32,000 military sites belonging to Hamas and its allies. In June, Israel announced that 15,000 of the group’s militants had been eliminated. But experts are certain those measures won’t eradicate the Islamic group that has been in charge of Gaza since 2007. “We are advancing to the end of the stage of eliminating the Hamas terrorist army,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, addressing the cadets of Israel National Defense College. “I was very impressed by the achievements above ground and below ground, and by the commanders’ fighting spirit. With this spirit we will achieve our objectives: Returning our hostages, eliminating Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, ensuring that Gaza will not constitute a threat…” he added. Since October 7, 2023 – when hordes of Hamas militants attacked Israel and killed more than 1,500 people – Israel has eliminated dozens of Hamas tunnels.

It has seized weapons depots and cash, destroyed various military sites, killed operatives of Hamas and of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and captured thousands others. But almost nine months in, Israel’s victory over Hamas still seems remote. Before the deadly October 7 attack, the Islamic group that has been in control of the Strip since 2007, boasted five brigades or 25 battalions with a total number of active combatants standing at 30,000. In June, Israel admitted that it had only eliminated half of that original force, or 15,000 Hamas combatants. On Tuesday evening, the country’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said Israeli forces had killed at least 900 militants in Rafah, south of the Strip. Reports suggest that Hamas is now actively recruiting new cadets, many of whom are 18 year-olds, to replenish its ranks, but even if they fail to reach their initial numbers, the existing battalions are more than enough to challenge Israel.

Just on Monday, Hamas militants fired twenty rockets from Khan Yunis at Israel’s southern communities, showing they are still capable of putting up a fight. Areas that had been vacant of Hamas before are now seeing a resurgence. Israeli soldiers continue to fall in the Strip, almost on a daily basis, with the total number already exceeding 670. “I don’t believe Israel can destroy Hamas completely,” said Shadi Abdelrahman, a political analyst and native of Gaza who left the Strip shortly before the war. “Hamas is not like any other group. They are not outsiders. They have an ideology connected to a cause, and that cause is to fight for their lands or to avenge the death of their loves ones,” he added.

Stemming from the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist organization that’s deemed terrorist by many regional and international players, Hamas was established in Gaza in late 1980s as a response to what they call Israeli occupation and the inability of other Palestinian factions, including Fatah, to confront it. But they were far more than just a group that wanted to resist Israel militarily. Just like their patrons, the Muslim Brotherhood, they were a social movement: they established schools and hospitals, they ran charities and served as mediators in family feuds, and that made them an indispensable part of the Gazan society.

“Socially speaking, Hamas of today doesn’t have that much power and cannot provide what it used to before, simply because they cannot move freely due to Israel’s heavy shelling,” explained Abdelrahman. “Militarily, their capabilities have also been damaged. The stocks of their weapons have been depleting, many tunnels have been destroyed, infrastructure has been devastated. Their combatants must be exhausted as they have been fighting for a long time. But from the political point of view, Hamas has never been stronger,” added the analyst.

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“If they want to take the risk, get themselves into trouble, and put themselves into the same predicament that Eisenhower was, let them come..”

• Houthis Vow USS Theodore Roosevelt Primary Target Once it Enters Red Sea (Sp.)

The USS Theodore Roosevelt is set to take over duties in the region after Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement (Houthis) targeted the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea with missiles and UAVs in response to earlier bombings, leading the supercarrier to exit after an eight-month posting. Yemen’s Houthi militia has released a video promising to sink the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt once it arrives in Red Sea waters. The aircraft carrier is a “primary target for the Missile Forces of the Yemeni Army from now on, and will be subject to targeting upon its entry into the Red Sea,” Ansar Allah leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi stated in the video. “If they want to take the risk, get themselves into trouble, and put themselves into the same predicament that Eisenhower was, let them come,” al-Houthi warned.

The Houthis have vowed to stop all Israeli-owned or bound naval traffic through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden until Israel halts its assault on the Palestinian Gaza Strip. The armed forces have tried to strike the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier on several occasions, but the US Navy insists that those attacks caused no damage to the supercarrier or its escorts. A missile and drone barrage targeted the vessel shortly before it departed the region in early June.

“In response to US and UK air strikes on some cities and civilian targets in Yemen, which killed and injured more than 58 people, most of whom were civilians, the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier was attacked in the Red Sea with a large number of ballistic, cruise missiles and drones,” Ansar Allah political office member Hezam al-Asad told Sputnik in May. Yemeni forces hit a US aircraft carrier in the Red Sea with missiles and UAVs in response to the bombing of the country – Ansar Allah. Most of those killed and wounded in US and British strikes on Yemen were civilians, a member of the Ansar Allah political bureau told Sputnik. The Yemeni blockade of Israel prompted the United States to send warships to the Red Sea along with a handful of ships from a ‘coalition’ of NATO member states including the UK. Those forces have attacked targets in Yemen.

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FSD

 

 

Chicken
https://twitter.com/i/status/1808274583784403372

 

 

Snow leopard

 

 

Baby sleep

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 22 2024

Mar 222024
 
 March 22, 2024  Posted by at 9:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  80 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn A Lady And Gentleman In Black 1633
Stolen from Gardner Museum March 18 1990, the single largest art theft in the world. Never recovered.

 

• NY Prepares To Seize Trump Assets In Westchester County (ZH)
• Judge Grants Trump’s Request to Appeal Fani Willis Disqualification Decision (ET)
• The Path to Victory for Trump (Hammer)
• The “Perversity” of Michael Cohen (Turley)
• Trump Fears Alzheimer’s – WaPo (RT)
• What Is Necessary For The Ukrainian “Sanitary Zone” To Be Sanitary? (Helmer)
• Ukraine Forced To Close Controversial ‘War Sponsors’ Blacklist (RT)
• Russian Troops To Kill All French Soldiers In Ukraine – Senior Lawmaker (TASS)
• Biden’s Point Man Visits Ukraine With Bundle of Promises (Sp.)
• Ukrainian Officers Negligent in Duties and Attitude to Personnel – POW (Sp.)
• US Submits Draft Resolution To UN Calling For Gaza Ceasefire – Blinken (TASS)
• Authorized Atrocities (Patrick Lawrence)
• Russia and China Reach Shipping Deal With Houthis (RT)
• Yemen’s Indian Ocean Checkmate (Harb)
• Justice Department Considering Plea Deal for Assange (Antiwar)

 

 

 

 

Tucker no reason
https://twitter.com/i/status/1770864586788348034

 

 

Nap

 

 

AOC

 

 

Comer

 

 

J6

 

 

Benz Hunter

 

 

Belfort

 

 

 

 

Irreversible. Theft. SCOTUS better hurry. Or the US will not have a justice system left.

• NY Prepares To Seize Trump Assets In Westchester County (ZH)

The state of New York has positioned itself to seize Donald Trump’s assets in Westchester County following a $454 million civil fraud judgement against the former president. The state registered the massive judgement in the county, a sign that his properties in the area may be at risk of being seized if Trump can’t post an appeal bond. The judgement, registered March 6 according to the Westchester Country Clerk’s online database, didn’t give any reason for the registration, nor did it specifically identify any of Trump’s assets, but it will allow Attorney General Letitia James to more easily secure liens on two of the billionaire’s most valuable properties – Trump National Golf Club Westchester, and the 212-acre Seven Springs estate which remains mostly undeveloped, Bloomberg reports.

James has said she’s prepared to start seizing Trump assets if he misses a March 25 deadline to post a bond for 120% of the judgment to put it on hold while he appeals. She hasn’t started that process, and the registration in Westchester County doesn’t automatically mean she will attempt to seize the properties. It’s nevertheless a clear sign they’re at risk. Trump, who is campaigning to return to the White House in the November election, has asked a New York appeals court to waive the bond while he challenges the verdict, or allow him to post a smaller one for $100 million. A ruling on that request, which James opposes, could come at any time.

Trump and his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, were found by Judge Arthur Engoron to be liable for inflating the former president’s assets in order to obtain better terms on loans – despite the banks involved all saying they did their own internal due diligence and were happy with the relationship. In a March 18 filing, Trump said that an appeal bond is “unattainable,” as insurance companies that arrange them won’t take his real estate as collateral – only cash, which Trump has previously warned he doesn’t have. If the court doesn’t help him with a lower bond, Trump says he’ll have to sell properties in a “fire sale” to raise money. In Manhattan, the state doesn’t have to register the judgement since that’s where the verdict was handed down. Trump properties in the Big Apple include Trump Tower and his skyscraper located at 40 Wall Street.

Habba
https://twitter.com/i/status/1770799295379145212

CNN Mar A Lago

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Is he backpedalling?

• Judge Grants Trump’s Request to Appeal Fani Willis Disqualification Decision (ET)

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has granted former President Donald Trump’s request for a certificate of immediate review, allowing the former president and seven co-defendants to appeal the judge’s order denying the disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. The certificate of immediate review, filed on March 20 at the Superior Court of Fulton County in Georgia, allows President Trump and seven co-defendants to seek an appeal from the Georgia Court of Appeals, which has the discretion to accept or decline to hear the case. “Judge McAfee has issued a certificate of immediate review allowing us to take our motion to disqualify Fani Willis directly to the Georgia Court of Appeals,” David Shafer, former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and one of the seven co-defendants, said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, commenting on the judge’s decision.

Besides Mr. Shafer, the co-defendants who can appeal the judge’s disqualification ruling are Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Robert Cheeley, Michael Roman, Harrison Floyd, and Cathleen Latham. All of them had joined the initial motion to disqualify Ms. Willis and later joined the motion for a certificate of immediate review. The request for immediate review, filed on March 18 by Steve Sadow, attorney to President Trump, stems from Judge McAfee’s decision to allow Ms. Willis to remain on the high-profile case, in which the former president is accused of election interference. President Trump has denied wrongdoing and has called the case a politically motivated “witch hunt” meant to undermine his 2024 comeback bid for the White House. Ms. Willis was accused of engaging in an “improper” romantic relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade and benefitting from it financially. The two acknowledged the relationship but denied any financial benefit or conflict of interest.

Judge McAfee said in a March 15 order that there was an appearance of impropriety but that no conflict of interest had been proven. He found that disqualifying Ms. Willis wouldn’t be the appropriate remedy to the appearance of impropriety and instead ordered Mr. Wade off the case. Mr. Wade resigned hours after the morning order was issued. In earlier testimony, Mr. Wade had acknowledged a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis but testified that it had ended before the election case indictment was handed up. Judge McAfee noted that Mr. Wade’s inconsistent answers under oath in his recent divorce case showed a willingness to “conceal” his relationship with Ms. Willis, and he opined that an “odor of mendacity” lingered on the prosecution team with Ms. Willis’s and Mr. Wade’s testimonies in his court.

Given the seriousness of the appearance issue as described by the judge, the defendants argued that the removal of Mr. Wade wasn’t sufficient. Judge McAfee had a 10-day window to decide whether he would allow a review of his disqualification decision. Allowing review could technically halt pretrial proceedings for up to 45 days while an appeals court decides whether to take the case. However, in his March 20 certificate of immediate review, Judge McAfee said that the court intends “to continue addressing the many other unrelated pending pretrial motions, regardless of whether the petition is granted within 45 days of filing, and even if any subsequent appeal is expedited by the appellate court.” The case still has 15 defendants (four have accepted plea bargains) and is expected to run for about six months.

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“..the Democratic Party in its fetid current form is wholly unfit to govern the local assisted living facility—to say nothing of the greatest country in the world.”

• The Path to Victory for Trump (Hammer)

For the many Americans who are neither Trump enthusiasts nor card-carrying Democratic partisans, this choice at the ballot box may be less than fully enticing. But for those patriots who still love this country, warts and all, and in spite of our ruinous current trajectory and decadence, it is imperative that Trump secures a second presidential term. It really is that simple. You may admire Trump’s willingness to challenge conventional orthodoxies and his instinctual nationalism, or maybe you think he is an unprincipled politician and an obnoxious boor, to boot. Perhaps you believe Trump is now being persecuted by a weaponized prosecutorial apparatus, or you might have deep qualms about voting for someone found guilty of a crime by a jury of his peers. But whatever it is you think about the polarizing 45th president of the United States, it doesn’t really matter. The reality is that the Democratic Party in its fetid current form is wholly unfit to govern the local assisted living facility—to say nothing of the greatest country in the world.

And whoever once said American elections don’t present a binary choice is a moron; that is precisely what they do. Patriots of all stripes must therefore band together to get Trump across the finish line this November. Trump can certainly make that task easier (or harder) based on how he runs his campaign this year. Here is what he should do. Since Trump is the first former president to run for a non-consecutive additional term since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, his campaign is somewhat anomalous. Most challengers to an incumbent president seeking reelection can only talk about what they will do once they are in office and how that agenda differs from the incumbent’s record. But Trump already served a full term; he has a record. What’s more, that term was just a few years ago; most voters remember it well.The key to Trump’s reelection this fall, then, is to make the straightforward case that his term was demonstrably better for the median American citizen than Biden’s term has been.

On the economy, Biden has presided over the worst inflation in four decades, declining real wages, a formal recession, and a historic supply chain crisis. Trump, by contrast, oversaw a generally flourishing pre-COVID economy: the stock market soared, inflation was generally subdued, America became a net exporter of oil and natural gas for the first time ever, and the Black unemployment rate even reached the lowest it has been since that statistic was first measured. On the border, Biden has presided over the worst crisis in American history: Endless streams of unknown illegal aliens have flooded over, leading to a massive strain on municipalities’ resources, skyrocketing violent crime, depressed wages for working-class Americans, and the mass importation of terrorism-implicating “special interest aliens.” Trump, by contrast, may not have finished construction of the border wall, but illegal immigration was orders of magnitude lower than it is today due in no small part to the prudent measures he implemented, such as Remain in Mexico.

On the world stage, Vladimir Putin did not march into Ukraine under Trump (indeed, it is curious that Putin invaded Crimea during the Obama presidency in 2014 and then waited patiently until the next Democratic president to invade again), and under Trump, Hamas did not infiltrate Israel and kill the most Jews in a single day since the defeat of Nazi Germany. Iran was on the brink of economic catastrophe by the end of Trump’s term due to his administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign; under Biden, the Islamic Republic has been “maximally emboldened” to sow the seeds of jihad all over the Middle East. For all the talk of Trump’s “chaos,” there was not a single major war abroad during his presidency. The 2024 presidential campaign is going to get ugly. Democrats have barely commenced the advertising onslaught that is to come, wherein they will depict Trump as a Mafia-like thug and shamelessly compare Jan. 6, 2021, to 9/11. Trump’s best chance this fall is to ignore the noise and prove, contrary to the smear campaigns, that he is the superior candidate in terms of competence, stability, and sanity. He has the record to prove it.

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“If lying were an art form, former Trump fixer Michael Cohen would be its Rembrandt..”

• The “Perversity” of Michael Cohen (Turley)

Michael Cohen was back in court this week and it did not go well. The former fixer for Donald Trump was in court seeking a reduction in his federal sentence and to answer for his use of Google’s AI chatbot to submit arguments with fake case authority. However, things went off the rails when his counsel cited his prior testimony as evidence of his rehabilitation. U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman called the argument “perverse” and noted that Cohen is clearly a serial perjurer and cited the need for continued “deterrence.” That is hardly a promising review before Cohen appears as the star witness for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the prosecution of former president Donald Trump. If lying were an art form, former Trump fixer Michael Cohen would be its Rembrandt. Throughout his career, the disbarred lawyer has found powerful clients who valued his reputation for supporting any side that offered the biggest payback.

For full disclosure, I have been a critic of Cohen for years, including columns when he was still representing Trump. Cohen has been repeatedly accused of perjury. For example, after Cohen turned on Trump, he went from being a pariah to a hero for many Democrats. Yet, he continued the same pattern. When he was called before the House to testify against Trump soon after his plea agreement with the Justice Department, Cohen was again accused of perjury: The House Oversight Committee chairman, Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, began his questioning by noting that he told him that he had better testify truthfully this time or be nailed to the cross. “Didn’t I tell you that?” Cummings asked. “Yes, you did, more than once,” Cohen replied. Then Cohen went forward and claimed he had cared nothing about jobs or pardons from Donald Trump. However, a number of news organizations reported that Cohen was upset after lobbying for the White House counsel, chief of staff, or other jobs in the administration.

Despite a multitude of such sources, Cohen has insisted, “I was extremely proud to be the personal attorney for the president of the United States of America. I did not want to go to the White House. I was offered jobs.” There is little ambiguity here. Either multiple witnesses lied or Cohen once again lied to Congress. Then Cohen stated, “I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.” That also directly contradicts multiple sources who say his lawyer pressed the White House for a pardon, and that Cohen unsuccessfully sought a presidential pardon after FBI raids on his office and residences last year. (Roughly a month later, he decided to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller.). Even after being stripped of his bar license and sentenced to three years in prison, Cohen continued the pattern. In 2019, Cohen failed to appear to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing the inability to travel due to a medical surgery.

However, he was seen partying before the hearing date with five friends with no apparent problems. Even in jail, Cohen was accused of lying to a court in violation of an order for early release due to medical problems. He was ordered back into custody after being spotted at a high-end restaurant. After Cohen admitted to various criminal acts in federal court to secure his plea agreement, he then declared that he lied. In his 2018 guilty plea before U.S. District Judge William Henry Pauley III, Cohen admitted to this conduct under oath. Cohen was later asked by Trump counsel “Did you lie to Judge Pauley when you said that you were guilty of the counts that you said under oath that you were guilty of? Did you lie to Judge Pauley?” Cohen matter-of-factly responded “yes.” He was then again asked “So you lied when you said that you evaded taxes to a judge under oath; is that correct?” He again responded “yes.”

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We’ll see lots of this in the MSM. Variations on: Biden old and senile? Well, so is Trump.

• Trump Fears Alzheimer’s – WaPo (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has a fear of developing dementia due to his father’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Washington Post, which cited several of the billionaire’s former associates. The outlet claimed to have spoken to a former senior executive at the Trump Organization, who said they had worked with Trump and saw him interact with his father Fred Trump Sr. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source claimed that “Donald is no doubt fearful of Alzheimer’s.” “He’s not going to talk about it and not going to admit it,” they told WaPo, claiming that this information was nevertheless relevant in light of Trump’s allegations that current US President Joe Biden is not mentally fit for office.

WaPo also cited Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, who reportedly recalled that Donald was seriously upset by his father’s descent into dementia after the patriarch failed to recognize his children at a family gathering in the mid-1990s. The outlet also cited an interview that Donald Trump gave to Playboy in 1997, in which he stated that seeing his father suffering from Alzheimer’s had left him wondering “out loud about the senselessness of life.” In recent years, Trump has repeatedly claimed that US President Joe Biden was suffering from severe mental health issues as he could often be seen tripping, getting lost, mixing up world leaders and countries, losing his train of thought mid-sentence, and recently even forgetting NATO’s new ally, confusing Norway with Finland. At the same time, the billionaire has boasted that he himself had passed the Montreal cognitive test with flying colors.

However, some have suggested that Trump’s own mental health may also be slipping, after several gaffes on the campaign trail in recent months, such as confusing South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley with former speaker Nancy Pelosi, and warning that the US could face “World War II” under Biden. Meanwhile, a recent survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 63% of American voters are not very or not at all confident in Biden’s mental capability to serve effectively as president. Trump also did not fare well, with 57% voicing concerns about his mental capacity. The pair are now set to face off in the upcoming US presidential election, which will be held on November 5.

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“.. there cannot be a military outcome for the General Staff and the Kremlin which will allow terrorism against Russia forever from inside those cities, or from whatever remains of the Ukraine. So there must be regime change in Kiev– and a form of Russian occupation that will be surprising.”

• What Is Necessary For The Ukrainian “Sanitary Zone” To Be Sanitary? (Helmer)

In his election victory speech on Sunday night, President Vladimir Putin has accepted the 87% Russian voter mandate to finish the war by securing the Novorussian territories east of the Dnieper River, and converting western Ukraine into “a certain sanitary zone in today’s territories subordinated to the Kiev regime.” In military terms, this zone extends westward from the Dnieper to the full 500-kilometre range of NATO missiles supplied to the Ukrainian forces; and to the 900-km range of the drones in the current Ukrainian inventory. With direct flight distance from Odessa to Lvov at 630 kms, and between Kharkov and Lvov of 975 kms, this means that all of the “territories subordinated to the Kiev regime” will become a sanitary zone, demilitarized to the Polish border.

Referring to the HIMARS rocket attacks in the Belgorod region and the proposed evacuation of nine thousand schoolchildren out of range, Putin announced at his campaign headquarters, “I do not exclude that, bearing in mind the tragic events taking place today, we will be forced at some point – when we deem it appropriate — to create a certain sanitary zone in today’s territories subordinated to the Kiev regime.” The president did not specify how soon is “appropriate”, or how deep the demilitarized or sanitary zone will be, except that in calculating the depth and taking Russian control of it, the range of weapons includes “first of all, of course, [weapons] of foreign production.” Demilitarization of the Ukraine has been the strategic objective of the Special Military Operation from the start in February 2022.

In several Kremlin meetings last June, Putin foreshadowed a zone variously called a DMZ, buffer zone, or cordon sanitaire. In a meeting with military correspondents on June 13, 2023, Putin explained operationally. “Here are several solutions: first, bolstering the effectiveness of the counter-battery struggle. But this does not mean that there won’t be missile strikes against our territory. And so if this continues then we will apparently have to consider the issue – and I’m saying this very carefully – of creating a buffer zone on Ukraine’s territory at such a distance from where it could be impossible to reach our territory.” Mapping the DMZ has been discussed in detail as senior civilian and military officials in Moscow and in the Donbass have publicly discussed the range-of-defence requirement.

Now, with the conclusion of the election, Russian military bloggers have begun to voice open criticism of the performance of the military in preventing drone and missile attacks from striking civilians in Belgorod, as well as oil refinery targets up to 900 kms from the border. According to Boris Rozhin (Colonel Cassad), Russian early warning and detection of Ukrainian HIMARS units are effective, but counter-battery and interception firing is delayed. “The reason is organizational issues that prevent timely fire damage to the exposed priority targets. The issue of their elimination is extremely relevant now: This will not only significantly increase the effectiveness of counter-battery warfare, but also reduce the intensity of enemy strikes on Belgorod and other settlements.” “Organizational issues” is a code term for the chain of command Rozhin avoids explaining.

Military sources in Moscow have been discreetly acknowledging that the decisions on how far the Russian military operation should extend westwards were postponed during the election campaign. During this time, the sources have also been warning, the Ukrainians were able to construct extensive surface fortifications and command-and-control bunkers north of Chernigov facing an expected offensive drive of Russian forces toward Kiev; and around Odessa to block a Russian offensive in the south. These lines are reportedly manned by fresh and well-supplied Ukrainian reserves, who are being held out of the meat-grinder battles along the line of contact, like Bakhmut and Avdeyevka.

Threats to reinforce these new fortified lines with a French-led “coalition” have come from President Emmanuel Macron. In parallel, detailed planning by the German Luftwaffe, backed by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, of long-range Taurus missile attacks, launched from aircraft based outside the Ukraine, has become public knowledge. In response, a well-informed Moscow source believes the parameters of Russian strategy are becoming clearer “now that Putin is waving the green flag. It’s clear, for example, that although there will not be battles inside cities like Odessa, Kharkov, and Kiev, there cannot be a military outcome for the General Staff and the Kremlin which will allow terrorism against Russia forever from inside those cities, or from whatever remains of the Ukraine. So there must be regime change in Kiev– and a form of Russian occupation that will be surprising.”

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“..unacceptable to disseminate such information in the state’s name without resolving the legal issues.”

• Ukraine Forced To Close Controversial ‘War Sponsors’ Blacklist (RT)

Ukraine has decided to abandon its list of ‘international sponsors of war’ following complaints from other countries. Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention has hosted a website listing companies that continue to do business in Russia or “indirectly assist in or contribute to Russia’s war efforts.” The list includes major corporations such as PepsiCo, P&G, Yves Rocher, Unilever, Metro, Nestle, Auchan, and Xiaomi. The project was part of Kiev’s strategy to pressure companies into cutting ties with Moscow in response to the conflict with Russia. The Ukrainian government announced on Tuesday, however, that those wishing to view the list will be redirected to the more neutrally named State Register of Sanctions curated by Ukraine’s National Defense and Security Council.

The decision was made after a meeting attended by diplomats from more than ten countries, including the US, China, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, as well as representatives from the EU. According to a statement on the government’s website, many of Ukraine’s partners raised concerns about “the lack of legal basis for the existence of the ‘international sponsors of war’ list.” Kiev had to consider “the negative impact of this list on the adoption of important decisions to stop the Russian aggression,” the statement read.

Ukraine’s Justice Ministry ultimately agreed that it was “unacceptable to disseminate such information in the state’s name without resolving the legal issues.” Austria had refused to back the 12th round of EU sanctions against Russia, demanding that Kiev remove the Vienna-based Raiffeisen Bank from the blacklist. Ukraine eventually conceded, paving the way for Austria to give the green light to the sanctions in December 2023. Last month, Beijing requested that Kiev remove its companies from the list as well. “China firmly opposes the inclusion of Chinese enterprises in the relevant list and demands that Ukraine immediately correct its mistakes and eliminate negative impacts,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson told Reuters.

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“.. the number of dead Frenchmen has exceeded a psychologically significant threshold, and now there is a question about how to bury the dead and treat the wounded in secret…”

• Russian Troops To Kill All French Soldiers In Ukraine – Senior Lawmaker (TASS)

Russian servicemen will eliminate all French soldiers coming to Ukraine, State Duma Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy said. “We will kill all French soldiers who will come to the territory of Ukraine. All of them,” he told the BFMTV channel. The politician also pointed out that 147 out of 367 French mercenaries who arrived in Ukraine earlier have been eliminated. In addition, Tolstoy emphasized that Russia “does not care” about the statements of French President Emmanuel Macron and his words about the rejection of red lines in the provision of aid to Kiev. On March 19, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin said that France was already preparing a military contingent to be sent to Ukraine, which would initially amount to about 2,000 soldiers. After that, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces made a statement on the social network X that what Naryshkin said did not correspond to reality.

The Russian intelligence chief pointed out that France unofficially recognized the deaths of its own servicemen. The French army has not experienced such a level of losses since the Algerian War of 1954-1962. The Elysee Palace, as Naryshkin noted, also believes that the number of dead Frenchmen has exceeded a psychologically significant threshold, and now there is a question about how to bury the dead and treat the wounded in secret so as not to spark a public outcry. In late February, after a conference in Paris devoted to Ukraine, Macron did not explicitly rule out the possibility of sending ground troops from Western countries to the special military operation zone. Macron also said that Western states “intend to do whatever is necessary” to prevent Russia from gaining the upper hand in this conflict.

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“Even if Ukraine holds on, what we really are saying is that we are going to leverage countless lives in order to do that.”

• Biden’s Point Man Visits Ukraine With Bundle of Promises (Sp.)

A big bag of nothing but promises is what Joe Biden’s national security advisor brought with him on his covert trip to Kiev on Wednesday. As Jake Sullivan offered a rehash of the same old promises of Washington’s commitment to supporting Ukraine, he could not put any specific timeframe as to when more aid might be forthcoming. It would appear that the whole point of Biden’s point man visiting Ukraine was to placate Kiev while exuding confidence that the gridlock in Congress over supplementary aid to Ukraine would end – at some point. This was Sullivan’s first trip to Ukraine since he accompanied Biden to the Ukrainian capital on February 20, 2023. This hurried visit could be taken as a sign that things look pretty bleak when it comes to hopes of getting the aid package “out the door.” And yet, Sullivan ruled out any “Plan B,” saying: “I’m confident that we will achieve Plan A… We are confident we will get a strong bipartisan vote in the House for an assistance package for Ukraine… It’s already taken too long,” he said, noting, however, that “I’m not going to make predictions about exactly when this will get done.”

President Joe Biden’s military aid for Ukraine remains mired in political deadlock. The $95 billion US foreign aid bill passed by the Senate that includes more than $60 billion for Ukraine is stuck in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, with GOP lawmakers insisting new funds be linked to more action against illegal immigration. Media reported that House Republicans are in the early stages of work on an alternate foreign aid bill that they hope will be ready by April. Current discussions are believed to be centered on trying to get the aid approved in the form of a loan. Last week, Pentagon cost savings allowed Washington to scrounge up $300 million in Ukraine military assistance that included air defense interceptors, artillery rounds, and armor systems. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted it before European allies at a meeting of Ukraine’s Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base on March 19.

“Those supplies rush to you as we speak,” said Sullivan. As for Kiev’s coveted larger package, he reiterated that “we are confident that we will get this aid to Ukraine.” Sullivan also put a damper on the Kiev regime’s hopes of getting their hands on American longer range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) with a range of up to 300 kilometers. There were reports that these systems might be included in the $300 million Ukraine aid package. “ATACMS, I am going to disappoint you, I have nothing to announce here publicly today on that issue. When we do have something to share we will be sure to share it, but we will say that we had very constructive discussions about our military support and our capabilities,” Sullivan said.

Earlier, US officials predicted Ukraine’s failure in the NATO proxy conflict with Russia in a worst-case scenario unless Congress approves additional military aid to Kiev. “This doesn’t go well for Ukraine over time without a supplemental, and it could lead to potential collapse,” an unnamed official was quoted by The Washington Post as saying, adding: “But here’s the bottom line: Even if Ukraine holds on, what we really are saying is that we are going to leverage countless lives in order to do that.”

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“The average age of servicemen is over 45 years old..”

• Ukrainian Officers Negligent in Duties and Attitude to Personnel – POW (Sp.)

Officers in the Ukrainian Armed Forces are negligent in their duties and towards personnel, with discipline among servicemen low, Ukrainian Sergeant Dmytro Balanda, who was on the line of contact near Kupyansk at the end of 2023, told reporters. “No one wanted to fight, everyone resented it, there were no officers at the position. They gave orders: just go out, dig in, without saying where to dig in, in which direction, or where to wait for encounters, it was such a negligent attitude. Many of my comrades were outraged and said: ‘Why don’t we have officers… We didn’t have proper training.’ The average age of servicemen is over 45 years old,” said Balanda, who later surrendered in the Zaporozhye region.

According to him, servicemen in his unit refused to participate in combat operations. “The attitude of the commanders is bad … For several days we were without water, without food. There is no discipline, discipline was violated. The servicemen managed to get drunk, they didn’t get rowdy, but they refused to go to their positions. They said they refuse to carry out combat operations. They were written down as insubordinate and thrown in the brig without water or food,” the prisoner added. As the commander of the detachment BARS-10, call sign “Saturn,” told reporters, the Ukrainian serviceman was detained when he crossed the line of contact near the village of Kamenskoye in the Zaporozhye region.

“In the morning, under fog, under enemy fire, it was right during an intense attack by enemy FPV drones. The observer at a distant post saw that there was a man with a backpack and two bags in his hands. We reported it on the radio, moved forward, and decided to arrest him without firing, because we saw with binoculars and a drone that he was unarmed. We ordered him to lie down on the pavement, put his things down, and take off his outer clothes in order to protect us. There are many examples, everything happens, maybe a person is booby-trapped, like a shahid [suicide attacker],” Saturn said, describing the circumstances of the detention and the security measures taken by the Russian troops.

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Hot and empty air.

• US Submits Draft Resolution To UN Calling For Gaza Ceasefire – Blinken (TASS)

The United States has submitted a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) calling for an immediate ceasefire and release of Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “We actually have a resolution that we put forward right now that’s before the United Nations Security Council that does call for an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages, and we hope very much that countries will support that,” he said in an interview with the Al Hadath television. According to Blinken, the latest draft resolution would send a “strong signal.” While the United States stands with Israel’s right to defend itself, Washington focuses on efforts to protect civilians “who are suffering so terribly,” he emphasized.

“We’ve been leading the effort to do that, to get more in, to get more to the people who need it. We are pressing on that as hard as we can,” Blinken said. The United States used its right to veto at the UNSC to block several resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian radical movement Hamas before. Algeria was the last country to have submitted its draft resolution in late February. On Wednesday, the US secretary of state arrived in Saudi Arabia, the first stop of his sixth tour of the Middle East since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict escalated again on October 7. Blinken is planning to travel to Egypt and Israel later on. He is expected to hold talks in Cairo with top diplomats from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as well as with the UAE minister for international cooperation and a senior Palestinian official later today.

Varadkar

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“Israel has proven a failed experiment, incapable of conducting itself as a legitimate nation-state.”

• Authorized Atrocities (Patrick Lawrence)

In the decade before the American defeat in Indochina, the U.S. and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. If we want to go further back in postwar history we can think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then we can think about Israel in Gaza: As of the start of this year — leaving us more than three months to count — it had dropped more than 70,000 tons of ordnance on a territory the size of Manhattan. Torture of Palestinian prisoners — the beatings, the maiming, the waterboarding, the forced confessions: Is this so different from how the U.S. conducted the “war on terror?” Long-term detentions in dungeons with no charges and no recourse to attorneys: There is no echo in this of what goes on at Guantánamo as we speak? Those IDF soldiers in the photographs are nothing more than punks with guns, vulgarians with no shred of humanity in them. Can we rightfully describe the U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib any differently?

Israel ignores the International Court of Justice? Where might this impudence come from? There is more, much more, that we can add to this list. Afghanistan merits a place on it. There is the West’s “back-to-the-Stone–Age” destruction of Libya in 2011. I confine myself to the postwar decades to allow us to take a good, clear look at that “edifice of global norms” of which Mishra writes. When we do, we find the West has licensed the Israelis. They bear a pre-authorization by way of many precedents. There is one for more or less every shameful act the Israelis perpetrate against the Palestinian population — this in the West Bank as well as Gaza. And so we discover — or remind ourselves, depending on how attentive we have been to events — that the post–1945 edifice has looked from the start roughly as it looks now. Israel is at bottom an outcome, not the prime cause of anything.

Certainly the grotesque spectacle of mass murder and wholesale destruction we witness daily has marked a rupture, to stay with Mishra’s term. But to assert that this rupture lies in Israel’s conduct is to sustain an insidious mythology of innocence for the West. No, the true rupture lies with those in the West who are sucked into Israel’s utter immorality and now come face-to-face with their amoral indifference or, for the best of them, discover the extent of their powerlessness despite their authentic efforts. As to Israel, I am with Primo Levi as Mishra quotes him. “The Jewish state” had already proven a mistake when he made his much-disputed remark in 1985. The truth of it has since been demonstrated a hundred times over. Israel has proven a failed experiment, incapable of conducting itself as a legitimate nation-state.

But whose mistake is Israel? It was the West, Britain in the lead, that created Israel by caving to the Zionists at the expense of indigenous Palestinians. This is the reality of power that should weigh most heavily on our shoulders. Israel ‘R’ us. Britain’s abandonment of the 1920 Mandate brings us to one of the deeper characteristics of our time, our postwar edifice. This is the ever more complete disregard of those in power for the principles, standards and broadly accepted ethics that give form and coherence to a stable civilization and keep its public space clean and well lit. In our crumbling edifice, everything is done according to its value as an expedient to a desired outcome. This, too, is a kind of depravity. And it is this depravity that produces the depravity we watch as we watch Israel’s effort to destroy an entire people.

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“Last week, the Houthis’ leader, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, vowed to expand the campaign to the Indian Ocean and hit vessels traveling around South Africa..”

• Russia and China Reach Shipping Deal With Houthis (RT)

The Yemen-based Houthi militants have told Russia and China that their ships can sail freely through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden without fear of being attacked, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing sources. People with knowledge of the matter told the outlet that the understanding was reached during talks in Oman involving Russian and Chinese diplomats and a top Houthi political figure. According to Bloomberg’s sources, in exchange for promising safe passage for ships the Houthis want the two countries to provide political support for the rebel group in international bodies such as the UN Security Council.

The Houthi rebels have carried out dozens of drone and missile attacks on commercial vessels traversing the Red Sea, disrupting shipping traffic through one of the world’s most important maritime corridors. As a result, many major shipping companies have stopped using the Suez Canal and are instead redirecting ships around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa. The Houthis have been attacking ships they believe to be linked to Israel in what they claim is a show of “solidarity” with the Palestinian people in light of the war in Gaza. After the US and the UK conducted a number of strikes on Houthi facilities in Yemen, the group said it would now also attack ships affiliated with both nations.

In a recent such incident, Yemeni missiles struck the merchant vessel True Confidence in the Gulf of Aden earlier this month, causing the first deaths since the militant group started its attacks. The Houthis claimed the vessel was American. However, according to a Bloomberg source, the ship used to be owned by Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital, but a new non-US company had taken it over. A senior Houthi political leader, Ali Alqhoom, declared recently on X (formerly Twitter) that the group’s goal is “sinking America, Britain and the West in the swamp of the Red Sea.” Last week, the Houthis’ leader, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, vowed to expand the campaign to the Indian Ocean and hit vessels traveling around South Africa. Attacks on vessels in the Red Sea region decreased traffic via the Suez Canal, a vital route between Asia and Europe that ordinarily handles about 15% of global maritime trade.

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“We have surprises that the enemies do not expect at all,” before announcing the successful testing of a new hypersonic missile..”

• Yemen’s Indian Ocean Checkmate (Harb)

Ansarallah’s maritime reach has surpassed all initial expectations, now extending to the distant shores of the Indian Ocean in its ambitious plan to besiege Israel by targeting the occupation state’s shipping interests. Yemen’s strategic position not only serves as a beacon of hope for Palestinians enduring Israel’s brutal military assault on their lives, homes, and livelihoods but has also become a crucial pillar in the Axis of Resistance’s fight against US hegemonic machinations in West Asia. In late February, al-Houthi vowed to expand the scope of attacks against Israel-linked vessels, stating, “We have surprises that the enemies do not expect at all,” before announcing the successful testing of a new hypersonic missile. This stands in stark contradiction to western narratives trumpeting their own containment efforts to encircle Yemen and thwart its ability to intercept Israel-bound vessels.

If anything, the naval operations undertaken by the Ansarallah-aligned armed forces are instead rippling outward, spanning a remarkable distance of over 6,000 kilometers from the Yemeni coast to the Indian Ocean. Crucially, Yemen’s defiance has drawn widespread, popular support from its once-warring nationals, not just in support of Gaza and the Israeli blockade but also against the relentless US and British airstrikes launched under the fig leaf of Operation ‘Prosperity Guardian’ – an extrajudicial imperial project which aims to cripple Ansarallah’s military capabilities under the guise of securing international shipping and trade routes. Yet al-Houthi’s unequivocal declaration on barring the passage of ships associated with Israel, or those engaged in commercial ties with it, from traversing the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope shows that Washington and London have been dealt a resounding strategic defeat.

By targeting these two new critical waterway passages, Yemen imposes a new reality on global shipping routes. This phase of the naval battle presents a significant threat to the world’s established maritime corridors, compelling commercial vessels traveling to and from Southeast Asia to navigate lengthier and more costly routes around the southern tip of Africa to reach the Mediterranean Sea. Al-Houthi’s message is clear: “Do the Americans, British, and the Zionists expect that any aggressive act against Yemen will distract us from defending Gaza?” Ansarallah recently announced the targeting of over 70 commercial ships with ties to Israel, alongside military battleships across the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean.

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“..the US could have leaked the talk of a plea deal to the press to portray Assange as unreasonable if he didn’t take it..”

• Justice Department Considering Plea Deal for Assange (Antiwar)

The Justice Department is considering whether to offer WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the opportunity to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The report said DOJ officials and Assange’s legal team have already had preliminary talks on what a plea deal might look like. However, Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, said he has been given no indication that the department will take a deal. “It is inappropriate for Mr. Assange’s lawyers to comment while his case is before the UK High Court other than to say we have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case and the United States is continuing with as much determination as ever to seek his extradition on all 18 charges, exposing him to 175 years in prison,” Pollack said in a statement.

Consortium News reported later in the day that it had previously learned of the talks between the US and Assange’s legal team on a potential deal, but the information was given off the record, so the outlet did not publicize it. Under the DOJ’s indictment against Assange, he could face up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act for exposing US war crimes by publishing classified documents leaked to WikiLeaks by former Army Private Chelsea Manning in 2010. If Assange is convicted, it would set a dangerous precedent for press freedom since publishing information obtained by a source is a standard journalistic practice, whether classified or not. The Journal report said that if the DOJ offers a deal for Assange to plead guilty to a lesser charge of mishandling classified information, it would be a misdemeanor, and he could potentially enter the plea remotely without going to the US. His time in London’s Belmarsh Prison, where he’s been held since April 2019, would count toward his sentence, and Assange could be free shortly after reaching the deal.

While such a deal could potentially secure Assange’s freedom, it could still set a dangerous precedent since it would criminalize the relationship between a journalist and his source. Kevin Gostzola, author of the book “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange,” suggested the US could have leaked the talk of a plea deal to the press to portray Assange as unreasonable if he didn’t take it. “Basically, US officials chat to the press about some possible plea deal for Assange when he isn’t guilty of any crime. If Assange’s team signals it would never be acceptable, then it is Assange’s fault that he remains in prison. Officials can say he wants to martyr himself,” Gostzola wrote on X. Last month, Assange’s legal team presented its case for an appeal to the UK home secretary’s decision to extradite Assange to the US, and a decision on whether or not he can appeal is expected to happen soon.

The Australian government has been calling on President Biden to drop the charges against Assange, who is an Australian citizen. Some members of Congress have also been calling for an end to the persecution of the WikiLeaks founder, including Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who brought Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, to President Biden’s State of the Union. WikiLeaks and Assange supporters are asking Americans to add to the pressure by contacting Congress. Americans can call their House representatives to support H.Res.934, a bill introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) that calls for the US to drop the charges against Assange.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

RFK Sr

 

 

Nail polish

 

 

 

 

Fish Stocking

 

 

Snake

 

 

Smart cow

 

 

Shampoo

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 12 2024

Mar 122024
 
 March 12, 2024  Posted by at 8:34 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Le moulin de la galette 1886

 

• Elite Units of Ukrainian Armed Forces Discuss Overthrowing Zelensky (Sp.)
• Pentagon’s ‘Ukrainian Fantasy’ Is Falling Apart – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• Ukraine Already Bankrupt Long Ago – Former Prime Minister (TASS)
• Houthis ‘Schooling’ West in Asymmetric Warfare (Sp.)
• God Is Underwriting Israel’s Genocide Bond (Helmer)
• Chasing ‘Tactical’ Wins, Israel Now Faces ‘Strategic’ Defeat (Sweidan)
• White House Fails to Navigate the Israeli Re-calibration (Alastair Crooke)
• Biden a ‘Rare Kind of Idiot’ – Medvedev (RT)
• Macron is a ‘Coward’ – Medvedev (RT)
• ‘Warmonger’ EU’s Defense Strategy a Wishful Dream (Sp.)
• EU Nuclear Umbrella to Embolden Member States to Use French Nukes (Sp.)
• Poland: the Biggest Army in the EU And the Biggest Risks in the Making (Babich)
• Eventual Financial Death Spiral Now Imminent – John Rubino (USAW)
• Global Hunger Isn’t The Worst Food-Related Threat To Humanity (Bridge)
• Nanoplastics Linked to an Increase in Heart Attacks And Strokes (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Kimmel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1767014173391585295

 

 

Mace

 

 

Schiff Trump

 

 

 

 

Melania

 

 

Rogan X
https://twitter.com/i/status/1767284402143334811

 

 

 

 

Bannon Rickards

 

 

Tucker Cuomo

 

 

 

 

“Let’s demolish this green rat and install Zaluzhny!”

• Elite Units of Ukrainian Armed Forces Discuss Overthrowing Zelensky (Sp.)

Following the recent reshuffle in Ukraine’s military leadership, discontent is brewing among elite units, with discussions of ousting President Volodymyr Zelensky and reinstating Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief, a source has revealed to Sputnik. Commanders and soldiers in elite units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are dissatisfied with the reshuffle in the country’s military leadership and are seriously discussing the ousting of Volodymyr Zelensky, a representative of the Russian security services has told Sputnik. He explained that specialists had gained access to a closed Telegram channel called “ParaBelum,” which consists of radically-minded fighters from the elite units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

“Our specialists have gained access to a resource in which members of various elite units, such as the Marines, special forces, intelligence, special forces of the SBU [Security Service of Ukraine], as well as various nationalist battalions, communicate. They are highly qualified specialists who are clearly dissatisfied with the change of command. They are seriously discussing options for overthrowing the current government and the command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the interlocutor said. Based on the materials at the disposal of Sputnik, the soldiers express dissatisfaction with the actions of Zelensky and the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, who was appointed a month ago to replace Valery Zaluzhny. Thus, the commander of the reconnaissance group of Ukraine’s 80th Separate Air Assault Nrigade, Maxim Shevtsov, with the call sign “Winter,” calls on members of “ParaBelum” to overthrow Zelensky.

“If people don’t come to the defense of Zaluzhny, if the military doesn’t come to the defense of Zaluzhny, then this rat [Zelensky] will torpedo everyone… Let’s demolish this green rat and install Zaluzhny! In fact, it’s Zelensky who needs to be changed, not Zaluzhny. This rat feels that he has a zero rating, and Zaluzhny has a higher rating, and [this is why Zelensky] is trying to torpedo him,” a voice message from Shevtsov says. A recent poll by the Ukrainian Center for Social and Marketing Research SOCIS suggests that if the presidential election were held in Ukraine in 2024, former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny would secure a significant lead, with 41.4% of the first-round vote, surpassing Volodymyr Zelensky’s 23.7%. In the parliamentary scenario, Zaluzhny’s hypothetical bloc would lead with 46.4% of the vote, according to the same poll.

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“This is to buy time for a miracle to happen and the Ukrainians are hoping the miracle will be the arrival of a French battlegroup.”

• Pentagon’s ‘Ukrainian Fantasy’ Is Falling Apart – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

The US Pentagon’s fantasy in Ukraine is falling apart, former UN weapons inspector and commentator Scott Ritter told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Monday. Speaking on reports in US media that said there are growing tensions between Kiev and Washington because Ukraine reportedly did not listen to tactical advice offered by the Pentagon, Ritter said he believes the assertions are not based in reality but instead are designed to shift the blame away from the United States. “The Pentagon is definitely trying to create political cover for itself because their huge Ukrainian fantasy is falling apart,” Ritter asserted, explaining earlier that Ukraine had little choice but to hold Avdeyevka for as long as possible so that defensive lines could be built behind it, noting however, that Russian airpower prevented even that goal from being achieved.

“It’s easy to play armchair quarterback and just sit back there and pick apart. But the reality is what other choices [did] Ukrainians have but to try and hold onto the last defensible position they [had]?” The Kiev regime is “waking up to the reality that their so-called friends and allies are abandoning them and leaving Ukraine to its own fate” Ritter explained earlier while discussing Macron’s comments that French troops may be deployed in Ukraine, a hypothetical that Ritter says is only being discussed because of the position Ukraine is in. “To understand why Macron would be even talking about this, you have to understand how dire the situation is for Ukraine right now. They are facing military collapse, right now as we speak the last reserves of Ukraine are being thrown into the battle outside the village of Orlovka,” Ritter explained. “This is to buy time for a miracle to happen and the Ukrainians are hoping the miracle will be the arrival of a French battlegroup.”

That possible “miracle” would not change the outlook on the battlefield, Ritter argued, saying that their ability “to deploy a military meaningful force to Ukraine is very slim,” with or without the Baltic State allies Macron is reportedly seeking. Meanwhile, Ritter argues, the election season is forcing the United States to step back from the conflict. “Biden is in a presidential election cycle, we’re coming up on the final sprint to November. … Biden will do whatever is necessary to minimize his political exposure.” “We fired [Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs] Victoria Nuland, the architect of [the Ukraine] policy, and we [took] a step back.” That has left Europe “sitting there, realizing that, frankly speaking, they are nothing without American money. This is a hard pill to swallow and meanwhile, on the battlefield, the Ukrainian army is in absolutely desperate straits.”

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“..a highly telling stigma – ‘negative outlook,’ ‘a virtual certainty of default,’ ‘debt susceptible to non-payment..’”

• Ukraine Already Bankrupt Long Ago – Former Prime Minister (TASS)

Ukraine has long been completely insolvent, former Ukrainian Prime Minister (2010-2014) Nikolay Azarov said in commenting on the Standard & Poor’s rating agency’s downgrade of its credit rating on Ukraine’s sovereign debt to “junk” status. “Ukraine is fully insolvent. However, international agencies do not risk assigning it a default rating. Although Ukraine went bankrupt long ago,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. Earlier, S&P downgraded Ukraine from a “CCC” rating to “CC.” “Now the country’s long-term sovereign [debt] rating has received a highly telling stigma – ‘negative outlook,’ ‘a virtual certainty of default,’ ‘debt susceptible to non-payment,’” the former head of the Ukrainian government added.

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“..the Houthis “demonstrating in real time just how target-rich developed nations are..”

• Houthis ‘Schooling’ West in Asymmetric Warfare (Sp.)

The Yemeni militia has led a sustained campaign of ship seizures, drone and missile attacks against suspected Israeli-tied commercial vessels and Western warships operating in the Red Sea for nearly four months straight, with commercial freight volume through the strategic maritime chokepoint down as much as 80 percent. Ansar Allah, the Yemeni militia group also known as the Houthis, has “more surprises” in store for the US and Israel, and will continue its campaign of maritime attacks so long as Tel Aviv continues its brutal assault in Gaza and blocks humanitarian aid from getting through, leading Houthi figure Abdul Sattar Al-Nehmi has said. “We have a firm belief in our leadership and its decisions, which motivates us to continue these operations in support of our brothers in Gaza,” al-Nehmi said in an interview with local media. The official did not elaborate on the “surprises” Washington and Tel Aviv should expect, but stressed the maritime campaign will continue until the Houthis manage to “force” global powers to bring Israel to heel.

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi offered a tally of militia missile and drone attacks and ship seizures to date last week, saying 96 missile and drone attacks have been launched and 61 ships targeted so far amid the ongoing campaign. Separately on Monday, Bloomberg Middle East contributor Marc Champion warned that the Houthis have succeeded in “schooling” the West “in asymmetric warfare,” with neither the “extraordinary power of US carrier fleets,” nor attempts to “get tougher” by bombing the militia group succeeding in reining in Ansar Allah’s activities. “The first challenge is that advances in the production of missiles and drones have democratized extremely powerful weapons that until recently were available only to the richest states,” Champion wrote. “The second is a growing asymmetry of vulnerabilities,” with the Houthis “demonstrating in real time just how target-rich developed nations are,” and the US and its allies showing that they have much more to lose than humble Yemenis.

“When the Houthis disrupt the roughly 12% of global shipping that passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, it impacts consumers in Europe and manufacturers in Asia, but not Yemen. If oil tankers have to shift to longer, more expensive routes than the Suez Canal, nudging up the price of gasoline at US pumps, the Houthis will be much less affected,” the commentator emphasized. And that’s not to mention the “trillions of dollars” worth of information passing through the communications cables which lie at the bottom of the Red Sea, which Western media fear the Houthis might sabotage, or the “communications and the data that sophisticated militaries rely on to operate.” Champion urged Washington to “resist the temptation to escalate its fight with the Houthis,” and to prevent the situation from spinning even further out of control, as any “reliable success” against the militia would require a full-scale invasion or heavy bombardment – neither of which “would be remotely worth the cost.”

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“Israel’s public genocide is a private secret among Americans who are paying for it..”

• God Is Underwriting Israel’s Genocide Bond (Helmer)

Last week it happened that God and the United States Treasury managed to underwrite a record issue of Israel Government bonds to continue the war against the Arabs in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq – and Iran if necessary. The war financing comprised $2 billion of five-year bonds, and $3 billion each of 10 and 30-year bonds. The US Treasury guarantees bond holders that if Israel defaults on repayment of its obligations, the US will pay instead. Notwithstanding this, the Israelis were obliged to offer an extra 1.35%, 1.45%, and 1.75% more in interest over the going rate for US Treasury bonds for the same length of term. The Reuters news agency headline on March 6 celebrated “Israel sells record $8 billion in bonds despite Oct 7 attacks, downgrade”. The propaganda agency based in New York quoted Israel’s Accountant-General as claiming the bond placement “results showed an “unprecedented expression of confidence in Israel’s economy by the world’s largest international investors”.*

In fact, according to well-informed bond trade sources in Europe, with the higher interest rates the market has just demanded from the Israelis, the spread between the Israel bonds and US Treasuries has never been wider, and the worse this spread will become for Israel. This is a vote of no-confidence from the market which the Israelis, the Americans, and their media are trying to keep secret. The longer the war is protracted, the more obvious the costs of Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) failure will become – and the deeper the negative bond sentiment will grow. By converting secrecy into money, the market is signalling that it has begun to turn against Israel – and profit at Israel’s expense. Also unprecedented is the secrecy in which the “expression of confidence” has been managed by the US, French, and German banks acting as managers of the Israeli bond issue; and of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has had regulatory oversight of the process.

The debt financing has been reported as a “private placement”; this has removed the requirement that the Israelis produce a public prospectus explaining how they think their war – plausibly genocide, according to the International Court of Justice in its ruling of January 26, 2024 – is going, and how long the IDF claim it will last. This does not remove the legal requirement on the two US banks engaged in marketing the bonds to US investors, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, to submit a formal application for SEC approval of what is called a letter of consent. However, asked to confirm the contents of the letter of consent application for the sale of the Israeli bonds, and its official approval, the SEC has refused to give any answer. Goldman Sachs was asked the same questions. The bank also refuses to say.

Last October the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon,* issued a personal letter to the bank’s employees claiming the Hamas operation was a “violation of fundamental human values”: Solomon then proposed a $2 million gift of bank funds “to organizations providing critical support and humanitarian relief in Israel”; plus additional bank money, three bank dollars for every one contributed by bank staff making donations under $25, and one for one if the staff contribution was over $25. Asked how much money has been raised for Solomon’s gift to the Israelis, the bank is refusing to reply. In other words, Israel’s public genocide is a private secret among Americans who are paying for it, and among US government officials responsible for regulating the scheme according to US law. According to well-informed bond traders, this deal-making is worth in fees to the dealmakers, led by Goldman Sachs, about $100 million.

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“Everyone can see the tactics that are used to defeat the enemy in war, but what no one can see is the strategy from which great victory arises.”

• Chasing ‘Tactical’ Wins, Israel Now Faces ‘Strategic’ Defeat (Sweidan)

In a fight like this, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you make them fall into the hands of the enemy, you turn tactical victory into strategic defeat. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued this warning to Israel back in December during his address at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. Drawing on hard-earned lessons from US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Austin stressed that winning battles on the ground does not guarantee a strategic victory and may even lead to a strategic defeat – if Israel refuses to look at the bigger picture. This is one of the main sources of Washington’s pressure on Tel Aviv, especially in light of the allies’ differing political visions for Gaza in the post-war period and the man-made humanitarian crisis Israel has imposed on the Strip. It’s a philosophy rooted in foresight, echoing Robert Greene’s wisdom from his 33 War Strategies: “Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has outlined two primary objectives for the Gaza war: dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure and securing the release of prisoners detained since 7 October. Netanyahu later expanded on these objectives, adding a crucial third goal: ensuring Gaza’s inability to threaten the occupation state’s security in the future. Consequently, the success of Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza hinges on achieving these pivotal objectives. Despite their shared goals, disparities have emerged between the American and Israeli approaches. While both advocate for neutralizing Hamas, the Biden administration advocates for a more politically driven strategy, while Netanyahu seeks an almost entirely military-centric approach.

Hamas, on the other hand, announced three main objectives of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood immediately following the events of 7 October. First, success in conducting a prisoner exchange with the enemy entity. Second, retaliation against Israeli aggression in the occupied West Bank and safeguarding Al-Aqsa Mosque from settler extremists. Third, placing the Palestinian issue back on the global stage. Chinese General Sun Tzu’s timeless wisdom in his Art of War distinguishes between tactical maneuvers and strategic foresight: “Everyone can see the tactics that are used to defeat the enemy in war, but what no one can see is the strategy from which great victory arises.” In warfare, tactical objectives focus on short-term gains – specific engagements or territorial advances. In contrast, strategic goals require long-term vision, aligning military actions with political priorities. In essence, tactics look to answer the “how,” while strategy answers the “why” in military engagement, ultimately with a political endgame.

Any state or party to a conflict can achieve tactical objectives by excelling in battlefield maneuvers, using superior technology, or having better trained and equipped forces. But winning battles – that is, achieving tactical goals – does not necessarily mean winning the war. This discrepancy occurs because the cumulative effect of tactical victories may not align with or contribute adequately to broader strategic objectives. While tactics are essential to winning battles, they must be used as part of a strategy aimed at achieving the ultimate goals of war. History offers several sobering reminders of the perils of prioritizing tactics over strategy. For example, in the Vietnam War, the US achieved numerous tactical victories yet failed strategically. Despite inflicting heavy losses, the broader goal of fostering a non-communist South Vietnam remained elusive. The US’s longest war, in Afghanistan against the Taliban, ended in another humiliating withdrawal, only for the Taliban to return to unprecedented political power across the country.

Esteemed Israeli historian and critic of Zionism, Ilan Pappe, believes that the failures of the genocidal war on Gaza will ultimately lead to the downfall of the Zionist entity, with the war being the most perilous chapter in the “history of a project fighting for its existence.”

Yanis

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“Like Florida, [a] key state, where the votes of the Jews can decide who will move into the White House, so too can the votes of the Muslims in Michigan decide … ”

• White House Fails to Navigate the Israeli Re-calibration (Alastair Crooke)

Alon Pinkas, a former senior Israeli diplomat, well-plugged into Washington, tells us that a frustrated White House finally has “had enough”. The rupture with Netanyahu is complete: The Prime Minister does not comport himself as ‘an U.S. ally’ should; he severely criticises Biden’s Middle East policies, and now the United States has come to understand this fact. Biden cannot afford any further Israel-affects to jeopardise his electoral campaign, and so – as his State of the Union Speech makes clear – he will double-down on misconstrued policy frameworks for both Israel and Ukraine. So what does Biden intend to do about Netanyahu’s act of defiance against the ‘holy grail’ of U.S. policy recommendations? Well, he invited Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s War Cabinet to Washington, and wrapped him around an agenda “reserved for a prime minister, or someone they think will, or should be, premier”. Officials apparently thought that by initiating a visit outside of usual diplomatic protocols, they may “have unleashed a dynamic that could lead to an election in Israel”, Pinkas notes, resulting in a leadership more amenable to U.S. ideas.

It was clearly intended as a first step to ‘soft power’ régime change. And the prime reason for the declaration of war on Netanyahu? Gaza. Biden apparently didn’t appreciate the snub received in the Michigan primary when the Gaza protest vote surpassed 100,000 ‘uncommitted votes’. Polls – especially amongst the young – are flashing red warning signals for November (in no small part because of Gaza). Democratic national leaders are beginning to worry. Leading Israeli commentator, Nahum Barnea, warns that Israel is “loosing America”: “We are accustomed to thinking of America in familial terms … We receive weapons and international backing and the Jews give their votes in the key states and money to the campaigns. This time, the situation is different … Since the votes in [presidential] elections are counted regionally, only a few states … actually decide … Like Florida, [a] key state, where the votes of the Jews can decide who will move into the White House, so too can the votes of the Muslims in Michigan decide …

“[Activists] called on the primary voters to vote “uncommitted” to protest Biden’s support for Israel … Their campaign succeeded beyond expectations: 130,000 Democratic voters supported it. The slap in the face to Biden reverberated across the entire length and breadth of the political establishment. It not only attested to the rise of a new, efficient and toxic political lobby, [but] also to the revulsion that many Americans feel when they see the pictures from Gaza”. “Biden loves Israel and is truly afraid for it”, concludes Barnea “but he has no intention of losing the elections because of it. That is an existential threat”. The problem however, is the converse: It is that U.S. policy is deeply flawed, and wholly incongruent with majority public sentiment in Israel. Many Israelis feel they are fighting an existential struggle, and must not become ‘just fodder’ (as they see it) to a U.S. Democratic electoral strategy. The reality is that Israel is rupturing with Team Biden – not the converse.

Biden’s key plan which rests on a revitalised Palestinian security apparatus is described – even in the Washington Post – as ‘improbable’. The U.S. tried a PA security ‘revitalising’ initiative under U.S. General Zinni in 2002 and Dayton in 2010. It did not work – and for good reason: Palestinian Authority security forces are simply viewed by most Palestinians as the hated stooges enforcing continued Israeli occupation. They work to Israeli security interests, not Palestinian security interests. The other main components to U.S. policy is an even more improbable ‘de-radicalised’ and anaemic ‘two-state solution’, buried within a regional concert of conservative Arab States acting as its security overseer. This policy approach reflects a White House out of kilter with today’s more eschatological Israel, and one failing to move on from perspectives and policies hailing from decades past which, even then, were failures. The White House therefore has resorted to an old trick: To project all of its own policy failings onto a foreign leader for not making the ‘unworkable’ work, and to try to replace that leader with someone more compliant. Pinkas writes:

“Once the United States became convinced that Netanyahu was not being cooperative, not being a considerate ally, behaving like a crude ingrate … focused only on his political survival after the October 7 debacle, the time was ripe to try a new political course”. However, Netanyahu’s policy – for better or worse – reflects what a majority of Israelis think. Netanyahu has his well-known personality defects and is seriously unpopular in Israel, yet that does not mean that a plurality disagrees with his, and his government’s programme. So “enter Gantz”, unleashed by Team Biden as prospective PM-in-waiting into the Washington and London diplomatic pool.

Kash Patel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1766847857460437487

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“..Biden’s recent blunder in which he mixed up Ukraine and the Middle East sums up his poor mental state..”

• Biden a ‘Rare Kind of Idiot’ – Medvedev (RT)

US President Joe Biden’s recent blunder in which he mixed up Ukraine and the Middle East sums up his poor mental state, former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. Biden’s gaffe came in an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, as he discussed the Israeli military campaign in Gaza with host Jonathan Capehart. The US leader said West Jerusalem should not repeat the mistakes that Washington made following the September 2001 terrorist attacks. “America made a mistake. We went after Osama bin Laden until we got him, but we shouldn’t have gone into Ukraine,” Biden stated. He then corrected himself, saying he meant “the whole thing in Iraq and Afghanistan,” referring to the US invasions and occupation of the two Middle Eastern nations. Confusing places and people has been a recurring issue for the 81-year-old president. Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, posted a short clip of the gaffe on Sunday on social media, adding: “A rare kind of idiot.”

Some Russian officials have suggested that Biden’s slip of the tongue was Freudian. “He didn’t mix it up. He can no longer keep to himself what everyone understands – the US has disgraced itself in the bloodiest manner with the whole Ukrainian project,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. Moscow perceives the Ukraine conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainian soldiers serve as ‘cannon fodder’. The Russian military estimated that by the end of February, Kiev’s military losses had reached 444,000. In the nine-minute interview with MSNBC, Biden mentioned Ukraine once, calling out former President Donald Trump for his skeptical attitude towards NATO. The incumbent leader described the organization as “critical to our national defense.” Moscow has cited the expansion of the military bloc in Europe as a key cause of the hostilities with Ukraine.

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“Macron preparing to visit Kiev? But he’s a zoological coward!”

• Macron is a ‘Coward’ – Medvedev (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron has postponed his visit to Ukraine because he is a pathological coward, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. The Elysee Palace announced on Monday that Macron’s long-awaited visit to Ukraine will take place sometime “in the coming weeks.” The announcement marks the third delay of the French leader’s visit to Ukraine. Macron had initially planned to visit Kiev to sign a bilateral security agreement last month, but the document ended up being signed during Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s trip to Paris. “Macron preparing to visit Kiev? But he’s a zoological coward!” Medvedev posted in French on X (formerly Twitter), recommending that Macron’s office pack “several changes of underwear” and prepare for a “strong stink.”

Medvedev claimed that he originally wrote the message in the morning, but by the time he decided to post it – the French president had already “s**t himself” and pulled out of the planned visit. “Poor France!” he added. Instead of hurrying to Kiev, Macron wants to “take the necessary time” for talks with allies to be able to visit Ukraine “with tangible results,” Politico wrote on Monday, citing an anonymous French diplomat. In recent weeks, the French president has escalated his hawkish rhetoric towards Russia, suggesting in late February that sending Western troops to Ukraine cannot be ruled out. Last Tuesday in Prague, he called on European nations to step up support for Kiev amid the Ukraine-Russia conflict, saying Europe is facing times “where it will be appropriate not to be a coward.”

NATO members are seeking to boost military aid to Kiev amid worries that funding from Ukraine’s biggest war sponsor – the US – will dry up. Earlier this year, the White House said that Washington had used up all the money allocated to Ukraine thus far – more than $113 billion. An additional $60 billion in US funding is still being held up in Congress, although recently it was suggested that the money should be loaned to Kiev, rather than given away. Moscow maintains that Western military aid to Ukraine does little to alter the course of the conflict, while extending the hostilities and causing needless deaths. Commenting on Macron’s words regarding the possibility of deploying Western troops to Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that doing so would make a direct clash between NATO and Russia “inevitable.”

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“The EU, whose initial vocation as a peacemaker in Europe has completely slipped and transformed into a warmonger..”

• ‘Warmonger’ EU’s Defense Strategy a Wishful Dream (Sp.)

The European Commission’s newly proposed strategy to coordinate its military industries to tackle the “existential threat” posed by Russia is, above all, a pipe dream, Colonel Jacques Hogard, who served 26 years in the French Army as an airborne officer in the Foreign Legion and the special forces, told Sputnik. “The EU, whose initial vocation as a peacemaker in Europe has completely slipped and transformed into a warmonger, is seeking to exist, in the face of the visible disengagement of the United States in Ukraine. It clumsily tries to find a way out of the trap into which the Americans have made it fall. But in reality, ‘defense Europe’ is a dream. Born from a desire to bring the Franco-German couple together, this dream has never had the slightest beginning of concrete realization,” Hogard stated.

The pundit elaborated by pointing to the TIGER III, MAWS, and CIFS programs that were all successively “abandoned by Berlin, either to adopt purely German solutions or to turn to American equipment.” The remaining two programs – SCAF (Future Combat Air System) and MGCS (Main Ground Combat System) – were plagued by “disagreements over the distribution of roles between German and French industries.” “These programs were pushed through under pressure from politicians, without their future being assured,” Jacques Hogard said. Continuing to support Ukraine militarily has left European countries’ existing stocks depleted, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell admitted in his latest blog post. He urged moving “from an emergency mode to a longer-term vision, in a new strategy would allow the EU to be able to “replenish our stocks and develop the defense capabilities,” while continuing to provide “adequate military support to Ukraine.”

“To strengthen our defense in a tense geopolitical context, we urgently need to overcome the fragmentation of our defense industry through more joint procurement and more common projects,” he wrote. The blog post further elaborated on the new European Defense Industrial Strategy recently unveiled by Brussels. The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, touted its plan worth around €1.5 billion (US $1.6 billion) as a way to turbocharge the bloc’s military-industrial sector. The strategy is geared to reduce the EU member states’ dependence on the US for defense needs. Procurement outside the bloc was declared “no longer sustainable.” The plans will need to be approved by the European Parliament and by member countries, who are already squabbling over military and weapons spending on Ukraine aid.

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“..Macron effectively offered to share French nuclear weapons. “These statements by Macron are extremely serious..”

• EU Nuclear Umbrella to Embolden Member States to Use French Nukes (Sp.)

The idea of the EU’s nuclear umbrella could lead to other countries using France’s nuclear potential, even though France might not be under any threat, the leader of France’s Patriots party and candidate for the European Parliament elections, Florian Philippot, told RIA Novosti. Earlier in the year, French President Emmanuel Macron said that Paris had a responsibility to defend the European Union. He added that France’s interests had a European dimension, which gave Paris a special responsibility that, in particular, affects French deterrence capabilities. The assertion, Filippot said, means that Macron effectively offered to share French nuclear weapons. “These statements by Macron are extremely serious. This is what should be the first guarantee of national sovereignty, nuclear weapons, which you need in case your vital interests are in danger, this is what nuclear doctrine is all about, the same for all nuclear powers. And what he is saying means that if tomorrow Poland is at war with Russia, it can use nuclear weapons while we are not in danger, we are not at war. And if tomorrow Ukraine becomes part of the EU, we could potentially let Ukraine use it, that’s completely insane,” the politician said.

Such statements indicate that the French president is not guided by the country’s national interest, he added. “Behind this is also pressure from Germany to get our nuclear weapons. They have long been willing to invest financially in our nuclear weapons in exchange for jointly controlling them. This is where the demand that France makes for Germany or the EU to take a place among the permanent members of the UN Security Council comes from. This goes hand in hand,” Philippot said. In February, European Parliament Vice-President Katarina Barley said in an interview with the Tagesspiegel newspaper that the creation of the EU’s own nuclear umbrella to replace the US umbrella could become a topic of discussion at the European level. At the same time, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner spoke in favor of greater cooperation with France and the United Kingdom on nuclear deterrence.

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““NATO is acting like a fireman, who sets on fire more and more buildings in order to show the community how much it needs him..”

• Poland: the Biggest Army in the EU And the Biggest Risks in the Making (Babich)

The Polish ministers love surprises. This week, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski stunned the public when he said “several NATO countries already have their troops in Ukraine.” Sikorski represents the pro-EU “liberal” party Civic Platform, which recently replaced the “anti-European” nationalists from the Law and Justice (PiS) party. By voicing the shocking remark, Sikorski was effectively attempting to outdo the media star of the previous cabinet formed by the PiS. That media star was Mariusz Blaszczak, the former minister of defense who promised Poland would have “the strongest army in Europe” in two years In fact, Sikorski’s statement about NATO troops in Ukraine was not much of a secret for Russia. Even Sikorski’s attempt to create intrigue by saying he would not reveal the troops’ countries of origin was a failure. Maria Zakharova, the official representative of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, acknowledged that Russia knew about the presence of Western servicemen and which countries they came from.

She said: “It does not make sense for NATO to deny it’s sending soldiers to Ukraine any more.” However, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius again denied the presence of NATO troops in Ukraine recently, in this way one more time exposing himself or Sikorski as a liar. Sikorski made his revelation about NATO troops at a celebration devoted to the 25th anniversary of Poland joining the NATO alliance alongside Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999. In his speech, Sikorski also said that sending Western troops to Ukraine was a “creative” move, and that “the West should pursue the policy of asymmetrical escalation” in Ukraine. Through the official’s commentary and by ignoring Russia’s warnings of the inevitable retaliation for the escalation, Sikorski is – again – following in Blaszczak’s footsteps. It was under him that Poland, indeed, became Europe’s fastest growing military power, and the Civic Platform does not show any willingness to stop the project.

According to official data from Blaszczak’s defense ministry, in 2023 alone, Poland bought 1,000 K2 tanks from South Korea and 673 K9 howitzers from the same supplier. From the United States, Poland purchased 366 Abrams tanks and 32 F-35A fighter jets. “If Blaszczak’s plans are fulfilled, by 2030 Poland will have more tanks than the combined forces of the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands and Belgium,” the Wall Street Journal reported in an article headlined, “Poland Hardens Its Defenses Against Russia.” In 2023, Poland spent $ 23 billion on defense purposes, a sum that makes up 4% of the country’s GDP against the NATO-required 2%. But is spending tens of billions of dollars from a poor country’s budget for preparations of war against the historically and ethnically close eastern neighbor a wise policy? Not so, say cooler heads. “NATO is acting like a fireman, who sets on fire more and more buildings in order to show the community how much it needs him,” Mateusz Piskorski, a well known journalist and former leader of Zmiana party, told Sputnik.

In Piskorski’s opinion, NATO and Polish aggressive elite bear at least a part of the responsibility for the fire which is now devouring Ukraine. Ironically, these same elites point to Ukraine as the proof of Russia’s belligerence. These same Polish elites try to talk Poles into spending more money on arms for Ukraine and on increasing the power of the native Polish army. Blaszczak’s plan was to increase the staff of the Polish army from the current 172,000 men to 300,000. The timeframe for the reform is intended to proceed between two and three years, and this is one of the few initiatives of the outgoing PiS party, which the new “liberal” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk promises to continue.

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“You will get these massive bank runs that the government will have to step in and bail out. This is one of many things that will happen in the not-so-distant future..”

• Eventual Financial Death Spiral Now Imminent – John Rubino (USAW)

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino warned nearly four months ago of a “U.S. Financial Death Spiral.” This past week, Bank of America caught up to Rubino and issued a warning about a “US dollar death spiral” because the federal government was going deeper in the red by creating “$1 trillion in new debt every 100 days.” Maybe this is why gold and Bitcoin have been hitting new all-time highs day after day. Rubino says, “When a building was worth $200 million and someone sells it for $48 million, that means there is a loss that someone has to take. Those losses are mostly on the books of regional and local banks. So, they are in big trouble financially. . . . You will get these massive bank runs that the government will have to step in and bail out. This is one of many things that will happen in the not-so-distant future. This will impact government finances in a scary way that will send people’s attention to the currency. In other words, if we have another $3 trillion bailout on top of everything else that’s going on . . .what is that going to do to the dollar? . . . .

Currencies are being inflated away with all these bailouts, deficits, wars and all these things that are going on that are bad for the currency. So, people start selling government bonds, which push up interest rates and blows up even more bad real estate and paper . . . until you get a debt spiral, a real live financial death spiral than cannot be fixed. . . . I was talking to a real estate guy the other day, and he said this is not just inevitable, it is imminent. It is happening now. It is happening quickly, and it is going to hit the headlines. . . . In this case, what is inevitable in commercial real estate is also looking imminent.” Rubino goes on to say, “The numbers are not lost on the guys running the big investment banks and the big media outlets. They are sitting around, and they are thinking we have to say something about this because this is obviously a very big financial story. So, we have to report on it. Finally, the numbers have gotten big enough with the deficits and government interest costs . . . that this is a story that cannot be ignored anymore.

“It’s got to be pretty far along before they reach that point because they really don’t want to report on this. To report on this is seen as a betrayal of the establishment, and they are part of the establishment. They are playing on that team. The debt numbers are finally big enough that they can’t be ignored anymore, and that implies that we are getting near the end of the road.” Gold and Bitcoin both hit all-time new highs this past week. What does it mean? Rubino explains, “This means the market is speaking, and it’s concluding these currencies have a problem. Capital is flowing into the alternatives. It’s flowing into the old kind of money that has held up for thousands of years like gold or the possible new kind of money like Bitcoin that has come on relatively recently (when compared to gold). . . . In either case, it is a vote against the dollar. When gold and Bitcoin are both spiking, it is a big vote of no confidence in the dollar.”

In closing, Rubino says, “There is no way to know how this plays out in the next six months, but this should terrify the central banks. By the way, the big central banks are behaving as if they are terrified because they are aggressively buying gold. They have bought about 1,000 tons of gold in each of the last two years. 1,000 tons is a fourth of the gold that comes out of all the gold mines in a given year. So, that is a major purchase, and they take the gold off the market. They don’t turn around and sell it. They put it away as a reserve asset. The gold is effectively disappearing. This makes the market even tighter, and this is also part of the reason why gold is going up.”

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Obesity. “It probably comes as no surprise that the same people who demand their food fast and fried, will also expect an easy cure as well..”

• Global Hunger Isn’t The Worst Food-Related Threat To Humanity (Bridge)

World Obesity Day was marked this week and, with over a billion people afflicted worldwide, obesity is now considered more dangerous to global health than hunger. The numbers are staggering. Sometime in the mid-20th century a cameraman captured an unforgettable black-and-white photo depicting thousands of American sunworshippers crowded onto Coney Island, New York City. What is most conspicuous about the iconic photograph, aside from the sheer number of beachgoers, is the lack of excessive cellulite packed into the assorted bathing suits and bikinis. Sadly and not a little tragically, those halcyon days are over. While hunger overwhelmingly afflicts the poverty-stricken nations of the world, obesity represents a unique type of affliction in that it targets both rich and poor alike. Between 1990 and 2022, global obesity rates quadrupled for children and doubled for adults, according to a new study by the Lancet (The World Health Organization classifies obesity as having a body-mass index equal to or greater than 30 kilograms per square meter).

In the WHO’s top-ten ‘hefty’ list, it may come as some surprise that the tiny Polynesian nations of Tonga and American Samoa had the highest prevalence of obesity in 2022 for women, while American Samoa and [nearby] Nauru had the highest rates among men. In those picturesque island paradises, more than 60% of the adult population were clinically obese. Other surprises included Egypt, weighing in at number ten in the female category, while Qatar took tenth place in boys’ obesity levels. Among the wealthy countries, the United States was the heavyweight representative and is tenth in the world for obesity among men. Shockingly, the US adult obesity rate increased from 21.2% in 1990 to 43.8% in 2022 for women, and from 16.9% to 41.6% in 2022 for men, placing the nation of 330 million fast-food consumers 36th in the world for highest obesity rates among women and, for men, tenth in the world.

By contrast, the adult obesity rate in the United Kingdom increased from 13.8% in 1990 to 28.3% in 2022 among females, ranking it 87th highest in the world, while the obesity rate for males surged from 10.7% to 26.9%, placing Britain at 55th. Among children, the study found the US obesity rates increased from 11.6% in 1990 to 19.4% in 2022 for girls, 11.5% to 21.7% for boys. In 2022, the US ranked 22nd in the world for obesity among girls, 26th for boys. Considering the rapid rates of change among Americans, the US will be predictably dominating the charts in just a few years, creating what could be considered a national emergency. None of this should have been unpredictable. After all, what does a society expect that can’t even park the car and walk several steps into the restaurant? And it’s not like consumers are ordering homemade soup and salads at the drive-thru window.

The junk food served at fast food enterprises is loaded with sodium content in order to prolong its shelf life, as well as saturated fatty acids that increase cholesterol levels in the body, clog the blood vessels and restrict normal blood flow, leading to heart disease. And that’s not even mentioning the high-fructose corn syrup found in the cola drinks. The real challenge, however, is how to combat obesity at a time when so many people have become addicted to a sedentary, order-online lifestyle. It probably comes as no surprise that the same people who demand their food fast and fried, will also expect an easy cure as well.

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“Researchers are curious as to how 40% of the participants showed no evidence of microplastics in their plaques, given that microplastics are ubiquitous..”

• Nanoplastics Linked to an Increase in Heart Attacks And Strokes (Sp.)

Roughly a week ago it was reported that boiling one’s water could help reduce the amount of microplastics in it by nearly 90%, as long as that water is hard water. At the time, scientists were still studying the extent to which nanoplastics could cause harm to one’s body. A new study says that people with nanoplastics inside their bodies are 4.5 times more likely to suffer from a heart attack, stroke or die of other health related concerns over the next three years than people without them, scientists say. The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, and explained how micro- and nanoplastics (NMPs) are “emerging” as a potential risk factor when assessing cardiovascular disease. It is the first time that such a connection has been made.

Nanoplastics are tiny bits of plastic that can be as small as one-thousandth of a millimeter in diameter, though the definition applies to any small plastic piece that is less than five millimeters long in length. They are ubiquitous, long-lasting, and often require centuries to break down. But cells responsible for removing waste products can’t readily degrade them, so microplastics accumulate in organisms. These NMPs, about the size of a virus, are the perfect size to adversely affect how human cells function, and are capable of passing through key protective filters in one’s body including the intestinal lining and blood brain barrier. They have also been found in our food, breast milk and even the clouds in our skies. The researchers studied a group of patients who were already scheduled to undergo surgery for a condition known as carotid artery stenosis, which occurs when the carotid arteries—the main blood vessels that carry blood and oxygen to the brain—become narrowed after plaque, or fatty deposits, block normal blood flow. These arteries typically help supply blood to the brain, face and neck.

The researchers looked at plaque that was removed from 256 patients and tracked their health for an average of 34 months following the surgery. They found plastic particles, many of which were NMPs in the plaque of 150 patients—about 60%. At the follow-up, nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause occurred in 20% of those patients and in 7.5% of the patients without detectable plastic particles. Chemical analyses showed that a majority of the particles were composed of either polyethylene, which is commonly used and is often found in food packaging, shopping bags and medical tubing. [..] Researchers are curious as to how 40% of the participants showed no evidence of microplastics in their plaques, given that microplastics are ubiquitous. One of the study’s co-authors says it could be that the participants behave differently or have different biological pathways for processing plastics, however, more research is needed.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Antikythera

 

 

Tigers

 

 

Leopard
https://twitter.com/i/status/1767174087397253234

 

 

Adopted

 

 

 

 

Best life
https://twitter.com/i/status/1766933626250555510

 

 

Best lives

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 27 2024

Feb 272024
 
 February 27, 2024  Posted by at 9:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Peach trees in blossom 1888

 

• NATO Troops In Ukraine Can’t Be Ruled Out – Macron (RT)
• West Could Cause ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ In Ukraine – Slovak PM Fico (RT)
• Putin Insisted On Donbass Ceasefire In 2019 – Zelensky (RT)
• Zelensky Downplays Ukrainian Losses to Wheedle More Money Out of West (Sp.)
• The Case of the Navalny Corpse – Cherchez Les Femmes (Helmer)
• Navalny About To Be Freed In Prisoner Swap When He Died – Ally (BBC)
• Leaked Details on CIA Ops in Ukraine Signal ‘End is Near’ for Kiev (Sp.)
• Start of SMO Spelled End To Western Global Dominance – Borrell (TASS)
• Era of West’s Maritime Hegemony Has Reached Its End – Houthis (Sp.)
• Super Bull Market in Gold About to Start – Charles Nenner (USAW)
• Biden Operative Inserted Into Fani Team (ZH)
• Jim Jordan Reveals New Whistleblower (ZH)
• EU Finance Ministers Clash as Bloc Fails to Centralize Market Supervision (Sp.)
• Musk Warns Google’s Woke Bureaucratic Blob Won’t Allow Its AI To Be Fixed (MN)
• Dissolving Illusions About Vaccine Safety (Mercola)
• The Rapidly Emerging Rule of Tyranny in the West (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Border Fiasco and the “Smart Wall” (Whitney Webb)
• EU Considers Ban On Repairs For All Vehicles Over 15 Years Old (WS Apes)

 

 


Jacob Rothschild died at 87. Who has their portrait taken this way?

 

 

Black flag

 

 

Tulsi

 

 

Nuland Nordstream

 

 

The Prime Minister of Hungary has given women a lifetime 0% personal income tax exemption if they give birth to and raise at least 4 children.

 

 

Bret

 

 

Roadblocks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762044181604655309
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762134920837648412

 

 

 

 

Compare that to what they said 2 years ago.

• NATO Troops In Ukraine Can’t Be Ruled Out – Macron (RT)

French President Emmanual Macron has argued that deployments of troops to Ukraine by NATO members and other allies cannot be ruled out because Western powers must stop at nothing to ensure that Russia does not defeat Kiev’s forces. “There’s no consensus today to send, in an official manner, troops on the ground,” Macron told reporters after hosting a meeting of European leaders on Monday in Paris. “But in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything. We will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning this war.” France hosted Monday’s summit of Ukraine backers to demonstrate steadfast support and European unity amid concerns that US aid to Kiev may stop, especially if Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election. Macron said that while Ukraine’s European allies want to avoid escalating the conflict into a direct war with Russia, they agree that they must do more to ensure that Moscow doesn’t win.

“We have to take stock of the situation and realize our collective security is at stake,” the French leader said. “We have to ratchet up. Russia must not win, not only for Ukraine, but secondly, we are, by doing so, ensuring our collective security for today and for the future.” Macron noted that the allies who say “never, ever” today about direct troop deployments to Ukraine are the same ones that previously ruled out escalations of military aid that were later granted, including long-range missiles and fighter jets. “Two years ago, a lot around this table said that we will offer helmets and sleeping bags, and now they’re saying we need to do more to get missiles and tanks to Ukraine. We have to be humble and realize that we’ve always been six to eight months late, so we’ll do what is needed to achieve our aim.”

There is broad consensus among the nations represented at Monday’s meeting that the allies must provide more aid to Ukraine and step up more quickly, Macron claimed. “We are not at war with the Russian people, but we cannot let them win in Ukraine,” he said, adding, “We are determined to do everything necessary for as long as necessary. That is the key takeaway from this evening.” Washington ran out of money for Ukraine last month, after burning through $113 billion in congressionally approved aid packages. US President Joe Biden is seeking an additional $60 billion in Ukraine funding as part of an emergency spending bill that also includes aid for Israel and Taiwan. Conservative Republican lawmakers have balked at approving more aid for Ukraine, saying Biden is merely prolonging the conflict without changing its outcome. Trump has claimed he will end the crisis within 24 hours by forcing Ukrainian and Russian leaders to the negotiating table.

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“..He pledged not to let Slovak troops get involved in the fighting, even if it costs him his premiership..”

• West Could Cause ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ In Ukraine – Slovak PM Fico (RT)

Western nations may come up with the “worst solution” for the Ukraine conflict at a top-level meeting convened on Monday by France, according to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. The Elysee Palace described the event it is hosting as a chance for participants to “reaffirm their unity” and express their determination to defeat Russia in Ukraine. There was initial speculation in the media that Slovakia would not send a representative, but Fico confirmed on Sunday that he would be attending. ”The information about the issues we’re supposed to talk about on Monday sends chills down my spine,” he said in a video statement on social media. Fico expressed concern over a “total escalation” of the conflict by the West and “unlimited military and financial assistance” that the strategy entails. He pledged not to let Slovak troops get involved in the fighting, even if it costs him his premiership.

Fico is an outspoken critic of the Western approach to the Ukraine conflict. He said he wanted to hold consultations with Slovakia’s national security council and his coalition partners before going to Paris. Western leaders will be tackling concerns over optics, an unnamed French presidential official explained to AFP. Ukraine’s backers need to counter any “impression that things are falling apart” for Ukraine after a series of setbacks on the battlefield, the source said. The intention is to send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that “he will not prevail” and to examine ways to “do things better and more decisively,” the official added.

The meeting in Paris comes as hostilities enter their third year. The government in Kiev rejected a draft peace agreement with Moscow in 2022, and opted to seek a military victory instead. Last year, Ukrainian forces failed to regain any significant territory despite receiving numerous heavy weapons from foreign donors. Russia liberated the strategically important Donbass town of Avdeevka this month. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and top officials have blamed a shortage of Western weapons for their earlier failed counteroffensive and the current retreat. Half of pledged arms arrive in Ukraine behind schedule, costing Kiev both troops and land, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov complained on Sunday.

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It wasn’t just Boris Johnson in March 2022, they had gotten to him well before that.

• Putin Insisted On Donbass Ceasefire In 2019 – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has acknowledged that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, urged him to stop the hostilities in Donbass in 2019. He added that he had strong concerns at the time that diplomacy would freeze the conflict, but not resolve it. Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Zelensky gave an account of his face-to-face meeting with Putin in Paris in December 2019, which took place several months after he was elected. According to Zelensky, he had a long conversation with Putin, who “constantly raised the issue of ceasefire.” The Ukrainian president said he told the Russian leader that it would not work out in the long run, noting that this turned out to be the case. He recalled that while talking to Putin, he expressed his doubts about the Minsk agreements – which sought to end the hostilities in Donbass – “because… the withdrawal of troops along the line of contact does not work.”

He claimed that he had shown Putin data which proved that the progress was too little and too slow. “I showed him that we would spend 20 years pulling back troops.” Zelensky said this means that the Donbass conflict would have remained frozen for many years, adding that he and Putin had been “haggling” for a long time over the issue. Brokered by Germany and France, the now-defunct 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements were aimed at halting the hostilities in Donbass and give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The 2019 meeting between Zelensky and Putin took place in the Normandy Format with the participation of the German and French leaders.

At the time, the negotiations made some headway, with the sides reaching an agreement on the disengagement of troops in Donbass and prisoner exchanges. However, Russia accused Ukraine of failing to implement the Minsk agreements, saying this was one of the key reasons for launching the military operation against Kiev. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces,” a position that was later echoed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-French President Francois Hollande. In autumn 2022, several months into the Ukraine conflict, the two Donbass regions and two other former Ukrainian territories voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in referendums.

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“In general, Zelensky’s statement was so senseless and implausible that I think it will cause a wide resonance, including in Ukraine..”

• Zelensky Downplays Ukrainian Losses to Wheedle More Money Out of West (Sp.)

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Zelensky again begged his Western backers for more money and weapons. “Whether Ukraine will lose is dependent on you, our partners, the Western world,” he said. “We will not lose this war if we get the weapons. We will win.” Zelensky’s interview came on the heels of Russia’s capture of Avdeyevka, a city in the Donetsk region, from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which were forced into a further retreat. The Ukrainian army is continuing to lose ground since the failure of the Kiev regime’s summer offensive. The botched counteroffensive attempt alone resulted in 159,000 Ukrainian servicemen killed and wounded, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Still, the Ukrainian president insisted at a Sunday press conference in Kiev that Ukraine has lost just 31,000 troops killed since the outset of the conflict.

But that contradicted the assessment of US officials last summer that Ukraine had alreadt lost close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded, noted Alexander Mikhailov, analyst and head of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis in Russia. Speaking to US journalist Tucker Carlson in August 2023, Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel of the United States Army and a political analyst, suggested that Ukraine’s real losses amounted to 400,000. “That was said before the battle for Avdeyevka and other major battles,” Mikhailov told Sputnik. “Zelensky’s statement in this context should be viewed as an indication of fear of [the Ukrainian] people. He has repeatedly lied. Apparently, he lies and talks about 31,000 killed in order to reduce social responsibility for what was happening,” he noted. The analyst referred to reports that Kiev officials were deliberately understating Ukrainian losses to avoid paying compensation to the families of the deceased.

While targeting his domestic audience in his speech, the Ukrainian president also sought to reassure Western viewers that Ukraine still has enough manpower — and that all that it needs to win are extra money and weapons. “In general, Zelensky’s statement was so senseless and implausible that I think it will cause a wide resonance, including in Ukraine,” Mikhailov stressed. The Ukrainian president also insisted that the Ukrainian military has a clear vision for 2024. Last November Ukrainian MPs lashed out at then-commander-in-chief General Valery Zaluzhny for his failure to outline a military strategy for the coming year. Since he replaced Zaluzhny with Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky, the Ukrainian president has claimed that Kiev now has not just one plan but was preparing “several” versions of its battlefield strategy for 2024. Mikhailov considers that implausible, however.

“Zelensky just needs to say something so that the Democrats could convince the Republicans to sign $60 billion [in aid to Ukraine],” said the analyst. “Zelensky’s statement that there is a plan for 2024, that they had a plan for 2023 or for 2022” doesn’t make much sense, he added. “They had plans all the time, but these plans ended in nothing and were axed by the reality in which the Russian Federation achieves its goals and continues to fulfill the goals of the special military operation, on a larger scale than previously stated,” Mikhailov said. The analyst also found Zelensky’s comments about a change of strategy ironic, given his claim that Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive plan was cracked by Russia.

“Our counteroffensive action plans were on the Kremlin’s table before the counteroffensive actions began,” Zelensky told a press conference in Kiev. “By stating that the Russians knew about the counteroffensive, he may be rubbing US intelligence’s nose in it,” Mikhailov said. “Because the Americans now control many processes: American and British intelligence agencies — Western intelligence agencies — control all plans of Kiev. And therefore, if it was leaked, it means they missed it.”

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“..Between the two political corpses, a lot of money is at stake..”

• The Case of the Navalny Corpse – Cherchez Les Femmes (Helmer)

Two women, Kira Yarmysh and Maria Pevchikh made up the series of lies which in August 2020 claimed that Alexei Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok by a Russian state death squad – first in a cup of tea he drank at Tomsk Airport; then in a bottle of mineral water which he drank in his hotel room; and finally in the underpants he dressed himself with before the water, before the tea. As each of these claims proved untrue on the public evidence, they and Navalny agreed to the release of medical data collected by the group of German doctors who treated Navalny after his admission to the Charité Clinic in Berlin on August 22, 2020. But neither data presented in the doctors’ publication in The Lancet of December 22, 2020, nor the doctors’ report itself proved that Navalny had been poisoned by Novichok. That conclusion came in press releases from the German military, and then from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

According to the Berlin doctors, “severe poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor was subsequently diagnosed. 2 weeks later, the German Government announced that a laboratory of the German armed forces designated by the OPCW had identified an organophosphorus nerve agent from the Novichok group in blood samples collected immediately after the patient’s admission to Charité, a finding that was subsequently confirmed by the OPCW.” That’s a political advertisement, not a medical diagnosis – no doctor has signed his name to either, and no German military officer has signed his name to the first. One day before The Lancet publication, on December 21, Navalny, Pevchikh and Yarmysh published their fabrication of the underpants story with the fake telephone call of an FSB agent, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, admitting to Navalny everything which had been disproved until that time.

The combination of fabricated evidence of the murder weapon and then of the murderer’s accomplice was repeated in the documentary film which won the Oscar award for documentary films in March 2023. Yarmysh was Navalny’s press spokesman in August 2020; she still is. Pevchikh was the script writer for Navalny and the channel to him from Anglo-American government agents, as well from Russian financiers in London like Yevgeny Chichvarkin, once the Evroset mobile telephone magnate. If the two women had been telling the truth and Novichok had been in Navalny’s tea, water, or underpants, he would have been dead within minutes of contact. So too would Pevchikh who hand-carried the water bottle from Tomsk to Novosibirsk, then Omsk, and finally Berlin.

Navalny’s blood, urine, skin, and hair, clinically tested and reported by the German doctors treating him at Charité Clinic, proved his collapse had been caused by a combination of drugs he had himself consumed. The two women, and other members of Navalny’s family, including his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, 47, his mother Lyudmila Navalnaya, 69, and his daughter Daria, 23, have all refused to disclose any medical data on his prior medical conditions and the medicines he was taking before the August 2020 episode. Navalny himself gave permission to the Charité Clinic doctors in Berlin to publish their test results in The Lancet report, believing they would corroborate his story. Following Navalny’s death on February 16, 2024, there has been no release of the medical data, nor the medicines Navalny was taking at the time of his death; the record of his vaccinations against Covid-19 which were given to him in Germany; his prior medical conditions; or the toxicology and pathology data collected in the post-mortem investigations following his death.

Russian law prohibits the release of this personal information without the permission of the senior next of kin and executor whom Navalny named in his will. He named his mother, Lyudmila. He did not name his wife, Yulia. His reason for doing that has begun to surface in Moscow. It marks infighting over the political succession to Navalny, and the money which the US has been providing to the Navalny organization. That heirs fight over succession rights, assets and cash is commonplace. What has not yet been noticed in either the Russian or western press reporting is the document on which probate cases start the world over – the will of the deceased. The first sign that an inheritance fight has begun is that while Lyudmila Navalnaya went to Kharp, where Navalny had been imprisoned, and Salekhard, where his body was taken for post-mortem testing, Yulia Navalnaya flew to California to meet President Joseph Biden. Between the two political corpses, a lot of money is at stake.

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There’s Navalny aid Ms Pevchikh again. This makes no sense. Why would Putin have him killed?

“Putin has gone mad with hatred for Navalny,” Ms Pevchikh said. “He knows Navalny could’ve defeated him.”

By polling at 2%? Navalny has meaning only in the western narrative.

• Navalny About To Be Freed In Prisoner Swap When He Died – Ally (BBC)

Alexei Navalny was about to be freed in a prisoner swap when he died, according to his ally Maria Pevchikh. She said the Russian opposition leader was going to be exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hitman who is serving a life sentence for murder in Germany. Two US citizens currently held in Russia were also going to be part of the deal, Ms Pevchikh claimed. She added that negotiations were at their final stage on 15 February. The next day, Mr Navalny died in his cell in the prison colony in Siberia where he was being held on a 19-year sentence over charges that were widely seen as politically motivated. Prison officials said the 47-year-old had fallen ill following a “walk”. In a video posted on Mr Navalny’s YouTube channel, Ms Pevchikh, who is the chairwoman of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), said negotiations for a prisoner swap had been under way for two years.

She added that after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 “it was clear that Putin would stop at nothing” and that Mr Navalny “had to be freed from jail at any cost, and urgently”. According to Ms Pevchik, Mr Navalny was going to be freed under a humanitarian exchange and American and German officials were involved in the talks. The process finally resulted in a concrete plan for a prisoner swap in December, she said. Vadim Krasikov – a Russian who was found guilty of shooting former Chechen rebel commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in the head at close range in Germany in 2019 – was going to be part of the deal. Two US nationals currently held in Russia were also going to be exchanged, Ms Pevchikh said, although she did not name them. However, earlier in February, President Putin told US host Tucker Carlson that talks were ongoing with the US about freeing American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who is being held on espionage charges.

President Putin hinted that in exchange Russia would accept a person who “due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals… during the events in the Caucasus” – almost certainly a reference to Krasikov. According to Ms Pevchikh, Russian President Vladimir Putin changed his mind about the deal at the last minute. She said he “could not tolerate Navalny being free” – and since there was an agreement “in principle” for Krasikov’s freeing, Mr Putin decided to “just get rid of the bargaining chip” and “offer someone else when the time comes.” “Putin has gone mad with hatred for Navalny,” Ms Pevchikh said. “He knows Navalny could’ve defeated him.” As a former KGB officer, President Putin is used to saying – or promising – one thing, and then doing something completely different. It is a policy he and his government have been consistently implementing for almost a quarter of a century. Up until the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Putin and several Russian officials repeatedly denied there was a plan to invade the country.

Although we do not know what exactly happened to Navalny in prison, engaging in negotiations on his release without intending to set him free would fit the Kremlin’s behaviour over the past years. Within an hour of publication, Ms Pevchikh’s video had had hundreds of thousands of views. The Kremlin has not yet reacted to the claims put forward by Ms Pevchikh, but President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has previously said allegations of government involvement into Navalny’s death were “absurd”. Authorities initially refused to hand Navalny’s body over to his mother, only relenting eight days after his death. On Monday, Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmish posted a message on social media saying his allies were looking for a venue where supporters could hold a public farewell later this week. Such an event is expected to be closely monitored by the authorities, provided it is allowed to go ahead at all. A rights group said 400 Russians were arrested across the country for laying flower tributes to Navalny following his death.

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“..the CIA’s role in dealing with the Banderites goes back into the late 1940s and early 1950s..”

• Leaked Details on CIA Ops in Ukraine Signal ‘End is Near’ for Kiev (Sp.)

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has dissected Sunday’s NYT story on the CIA’s operations in Ukraine, challenging the newspaper’s assertion that Western intel services’ active involvement in the country began only after the February 2014 Euromaidan coup. “The CIA has helped Kiev to train its spies, and not just spies, but outright militants, extremists, terrorists, thugs. Everyone. And one of the most striking examples of this chain being set in motion occurred in 2013-2014. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, reacting to the NYT’s reporting. “Under the guise of democratic forces and civilians, those which took part in the Maidan were primarily trained at bases in Poland and the Baltic states. And we have spoken about this,” she said. NATO countries’ intelligence services worked to establish bases and other infrastructure in Ukraine long before the 2022 escalation, the spokeswoman said, and not only on the border with Russia, but across the country.

“This begs the question: why is the New York Times only now raising concerns about this? We have provided all the information publicly. Why was the American press silent for many years?” she asked. According to the Times’ account, the CIA created a dozen secret spy bases in Ukraine near Russia over an eight year period going back to 2016, with the intelligence “partnership” supposedly taking “root a decade ago,” after Maidan-appointed spy chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko contacted then-CIA director John Brennan and the MI6 asking them to help rebuild the Security Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian acronym SBU) “from the ground up.” “They’re lying about the US role in those early stages,” says former CIA analyst and State Department Office of Counterterrorism expert Larry Johnson. “They’re lying about the US and British role in helping create the coup and what happened in the Maidan. They’re acting like ‘oh, you know, the Maidan happened and then the CIA was contacted, after the fact’.

Well that’s not true,” Johnson told Sputnik, suggesting that the NYT is looking to create a narrative on the coup, the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 incident, the ‘Russia the aggressor’ story which ignores Ukraine’s punitive ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ in the Donbass starting in 2014, etc. “You’ve got once piece of disinformation after another” in the story, according to the observer. “And then, they’re saying that it was the United States trying to rein in Ukraine from carrying out all these terrorist attacks. So it’s really like we’re trying to send the message that ‘these attacks on Russia were not the fault of the United States, it was the Ukrainians acting on their own,’” which is another patent falsehood, Johnson said. “We’ve had connections [with Ukrainian anti-Soviet and anti-Russian elements] going back to 1955. I mean the CIA’s role in dealing with the Banderites goes back into the late 1940s and early 1950s. They’re trying to portray that this is like some new relationship or just over the last 10-15 years. That’s nonsense,” the former CIA analyst emphasized.

Asked about the likely motivations to publish the expose at this stage of the proxy war in Ukraine, while Russia is advancing through the Donbass and US and European arms assistance to Kiev is under threat, Johnson suggested it may be a signal that Washington has decided to wrap up its Ukrainian project. “I think this is a sign that the end is near for Ukraine. That’s the only reason they’re leaking it now. Because the Ukrainians themselves are putting that information out,” Johnson said. “It’s a sign that the rats are starting to leave the sinking ship. This is their way to say that it’s not the fault of the United States. You know, ‘we did everything we could, it’s these crazy Ukrainians.’ This is part of a ‘blame Ukraine’ [narrative],” the observer noted.

As for the dozen clandestine bases mentioned in the piece, Johnson expressed confidence that Russia knew about these facilities, and likely has taken or will take action to eliminate them. “If I’m Russian intelligence, you’re going to blow those sites up,” he said. “The bases are not going to be that close to Russian territory because the Russians can easily take them out. And they almost exaggerate the kind of intelligence that’s collected. Again, if the CIA was really operating like the CIA is supposed to, that means they would have recruited human sources in the SBU already. That would have been passing them information without admitting or acknowledging it. But that’s not what was going on. This is what they call an open liaison service, so the information is being passed freely.”

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“If the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of ‘the West against the Rest,’ Europe’s future risks to be bleak..”

• Start of SMO Spelled End To Western Global Dominance – Borrell (TASS)

The era of the West’s global dominance finally came to an end with the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and the conflict in the Gaza Strip, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell wrote on his blog. “If the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of ‘the West against the Rest,’ Europe’s future risks to be bleak. The era of Western dominance has indeed definitively ended. While this has been theoretically understood, we have not always drawn all practical conclusions from this new reality,” Borrell wrote. According to him, the special military operation in Ukraine and the Gaza conflict have “significantly increased this risk” of a confrontation between the Global West and the Global South, which can already be “seen in the Sahel and elsewhere in Africa.”

He emphasized that many countries in the global South accuse the West of “double standards.” Borrell considers this fact unfair and blames Russia and its propaganda for this. “Russia has managed to take advantage of the situation,” he believes. “We need to push back on this narrative but also to address this issue not only with words: in the coming months, we must make a massive effort to win back the trust of our partners (primarily countries that were European colonial possessions in Africa – TASS),” he added. In his blog on the outcome of the Munich Security Conference, Borrell once again rebuked EU countries and the United States for not heeding his warnings two years before the conflict in Ukraine about the rapidly growing security threats to the West. He once again urged Western countries to arm themselves and supply as many weapons as possible to Kiev to try to regain their global dominance.

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“Yemen is a haven of peace, partnership, construction, giving and humanity, especially when the intentions are sincere..”

• Era of West’s Maritime Hegemony Has Reached Its End – Houthis (Sp.)

Despite lacking any sort of blue water navy or even much of a brown water fleet beyond machinegun-armed gunboats, the Yemeni militia has managed to put a giant dent in international shipping through the Red Sea chokepoint linking Europe and Asia, with the volume of maritime traffic through the nearby Suez Canal dropping by as much as 40 percent. The era of Western dominance of international waters has reached its end and the US and its allies will have to deal with it, Houthi government Defense Minister Mohamed al-Atifi has said. “The United States, Britain and Israel must realize that the policies of demarcation and assertion of hegemonic influence over the seas have become an obsolete and unwelcome approach,” al-Atifi said in a speech at the graduation ceremony of Yemeni cadets in Hudaydah.

Suggesting that Yemen’s naval forces have “redefined” the concept of regional maritime security, al-Atifi stressed that the Houthis would continue their military operations in the Red Sea as long as the Israeli aggression in Gaza continues, and “as long as blood continues to flow through our veins.” “We are custodians over the navigational course in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait,” al-Atifi said. “We reaffirm that the Yemen Armed Forces will not target any ships that are neither affiliated with the Zionist enemy nor serving its interests. Marine navigation for vessels through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea is safe,” the defense minister assured. “Sanaa is committed to all international treaties and conventions that do not infringe upon Yemeni dignity and sovereignty or subject it to hegemony and foreign mandates,” he added.

“Yemen is a haven of peace, partnership, construction, giving and humanity, especially when the intentions are sincere. But when challenges grow and the enemies of God and the nation conspire to impose the will of evil and tyranny, another Yemen emerges and its loyal men find themselves as steadfast mountains against their enemies, strong and proud in their positions, pushing to restore balance and removing symbols of evil, oppression, tyranny and arrogance,” al-Atifi said.

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“..if you know winter is coming, you cannot stop it, but you can get a winter coat. Again, Nenner thinks “Trump is the winter coat.”

• Super Bull Market in Gold About to Start – Charles Nenner (USAW)

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner has been warning of a huge war and financial cycle, and it is clear both continue to build. The war cycle will continue to amplify until World War III breaks out. Meanwhile, unpayable debt will continue to explode until another Great Depression hits America again. Standing in the gap is gold, and the wait for a bull market is about over. Nenner explains, “The dollar’s buying power could possibly be cut in half. . . . That’s the reason why we expect a super bull market in gold and silver when the cycle bottoms. You remember I came on and said coming, coming, but not yet? I say it was too early . . . but, now, we are getting very close to a bull market. . . . Gold could still have one more down move because the cycles are still down.”

On Bitcoin, Nenner says, “We had a high of $54,000, and we said if it hit $52,000, we would sell. I do not believe this story that Bitcoin will hit $100,000 based on my work. It has been proven that NASDAQ and Bitcoin go up and down together because it is based on nothing, and people are buying out of greed. Because we think we are at a top in the NASDAQ, then we don’t think the outlook for Bitcoin is too positive.” Nenner thinks the DOW is also topping, and he is telling clients to lighten up on the risk. Nenner sees a second Great Depression playing out again in 2026 or 2027. Nenner thinks the “War Cycle” will continue to build in 2024, but all bets are off in 2025.

Nenner says his wealthy clients see dark days ahead for the world and have actual bunkers to go along with a bunker mentality. Nenner think domestic terror and even war is coming to America in a big way. Nenner is still forecasting “2 billion will die in the next global war, and the only way we get a body count that high is with nuclear weapons.” Nenner sees an election coming in 2024 and still thinks Trump can win. Nenner warns that problems in America are too big for any one person to actually fix. Nenner still thinks if you know winter is coming, you cannot stop it, but you can get a winter coat. Again, Nenner thinks “Trump is the winter coat.”

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Two stories from one ZH article. The link between the White House and the various Trump prosecutions gets stronger by the day. Ugly.

• Biden Operative Inserted Into Fani Team (ZH)

Two stunning reports have emerged that spell trouble for Fulton County DA Fani Willis. For starters, Breitbart News reports from multiple sources that the Biden administration “planted a Democrat operative in the Fulton County office to target former President Trump,” which according to the report “would present a strong argument that the administration interfered in the 2024 presidential election.” Breitbart News granted the sources anonymity to discuss the attorney’s office for fear of retribution. The sources have direct knowledge of the environment at the District Attorney’s Office, which they characterized as “corrupt.” The alleged ‘plant’ in questionf is Jeff DiSantis – the county’s Deputy DA, who not only worked on Willis’s 2020 campaign and was the former Executive Director of the Democrat Party of Georgia, he was the DNC’s deputy director of compliance.

Sources credit DiSantis with colluding with the White House to target Trump. “DiSantis did this,” one source told Breitbart News about the Trump case. “He’s the one. He is the one pulling all the strings. He was the one that walled her [Willis] off. He was in every important meeting. He is the brainchild behind this. That is the connection to the White House.” One of Breitbart’s sources said they are “one hundred percent” sure DiSantis was the inside man that the Biden administration planted in the Fulton County office. “DiSantis is the one pulling the strings on this whole thing,” a second source told the outlet. “Everybody heard Fani testify. It’s no secret that she’s not smart. That is how she sounds and acts every day of the week.” “Anyone that has common sense knows that the White House has been involved in this prosecution,” a source continued. “This shouldn’t just miraculously happen. Of course, she’s [Willis] not going to prosecute the former president United States without the current administration’s approval.”

According to the sources, DiSantis was deeply involved in selecting grand jurors for the Trump case based on voter registration data. “Part of why you’re raising money as a candidate is to get money to buy the data about who are your voters. DiSantis, as the former head of the state Democratic Party, he’s going to know you know [the data] in Georgia,” said a source. “There’s not one conservative person on that grand jury.” Sources also revealed that DiSantis was a member of Willis’s transition team after she won the election in November 2020. DiSantis helped Wade select employees for the new office. “DiSantis was there in the capacity to be a political strategist, hiding in the DA’s office,” a source told Breitbart News.

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But not who it is..

• Jim Jordan Reveals New Whistleblower (ZH)

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) came down on Willis with an elbow drop from the top rope, revealing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that there’s a whistleblower inside of Fani’s office. Whether it’s one of Breitbart’s sources – we don’t know, though Jordan’s comments suggest it might be Willis’s former friend, Robin Bryant Yeartie, who testified against her about Fani’s relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. “[The whistleblower is] now talking with our office, and we’ll see how that goes. But that’s why we have subpoenaed documents related to this,” Jordan continued. As the Epoch Times notes further; “Over the past several weeks, significant allegations against Ms. Willis and her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, have emerged, triggering several court motions and hearings during which Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have testified. The allegations center around the timing of a romantic relationship between the two—the existence of which both have confirmed—and whether Ms. Willis financially benefitted from the arrangement.”

Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade in November 2021 to handle the racketeering and election case against former President Donald Trump and several co-defendants. Late last week, President Trump’s team said they hired a private investigator to use a program to provide data on Mr. Wade’s cellphone, suggesting that Mr. Wade was actively engaged in a relationship many months before they claimed that their relationship started, in 2022, a key claim both made in court earlier this month. It’s unclear whether Mr. Jordan was referring to Robin Yeartie, a witness in the case who claimed that the two were involved in a relationship in 2019. Ms. Yeartie, who had owned the property where Ms. Willis had lived and was her friend, testified that she was forced to resign from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office several years ago.

However, there have been reports that the whistleblower could be another former employee at the office, Amanda Timpson. Mr. Jordan sent a letter to Ms. Willis’s office several weeks ago, saying the employee was fired because she was being retaliated against, which he said raises serious concerns about whether the district attorney was appropriately supervising the expenditure of federal grant funding allocated to her office and whether she took actions to conceal her office’s “unlawful use of federal funds.” As reported by The Washington Free Beacon, Ms. Timpson said troubles within the office started in March 2021 when she stopped an aide to Ms. Willis from allegedly trying to obtain funds from a $488,000 federal grant for an anti-gang violence organization to instead pay for travel, computers, and other items.

The report noted that she was fired in early 2022, saying only that she was terminated because of an “employee discharge.” But Ms. Willis rejected the claims by saying that the ex-employee’s claims are “false allegations” that are “included in baseless litigation filed by a holdover employee from the previous administration who was terminated for cause,” Politico reported. Her office stated that she failed “to meet the standards of the new administration.” “Any examination of the records of our grant programs will find that they are highly effective and conducted in cooperation with the Department of Justice and in compliance with all Department of Justice requirements,” Ms. Willis said earlier this month.

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Brussels is power hungry.

• EU Finance Ministers Clash as Bloc Fails to Centralize Market Supervision (Sp.)

European Union finance ministers disagree regarding proposals to streamline the regulation of national capital markets, aiming to harmonize divergent systems and foster private investment in vital sectors like defense. Due to various market regulations and barriers among member states, the bloc is focusing on supervision, savings products, and insolvency rules to promote risk mitigation and streamline processes for businesses and investors. The bloc’s actions are driven by its bleak outlook as its major economies grapple with challenges such as high inflation, soaring energy costs, and deindustrialization due to their alignment with US-led anti-Russia sanctions, which have inadvertently backfired on the 27-member bloc. Consequently, the EU is facing mounting financial pressures and heightened geopolitical risks.

EU finance ministers are considering proposals from the Eurogroup to advance the capital markets union over the next five years. Paschal Donohoe, Eurogroup president, noted disagreement among member states on the level of ambition needed to establish a common supervisory framework, a key aspect of the bloc’s agenda, set to be completed by March. The Eurogroup represents the assembly of finance ministers from the Eurozone, comprising EU member states that have adopted the euro as their currency. Consisting of 20 members, it holds informal gatherings to oversee the political direction of the currency and manage facets of the EU’s monetary union, including the Stability and Growth Pact.

“Europe is acutely aware at the moment of the need for it to be able to stand firmly on its own two feet in the years ahead,” he said. “I really have felt this in a number of discussions of late that how we can strengthen ourselves is now a necessity,” the Eurogroup’s president noted. However, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has expressed dissatisfaction over the pace of progress in establishing a capital markets union for the bloc. He recommended advancing with three or four supportive countries to pursue greater ambition on joint supervision rather than negotiating a deal among all 27 member states, reintroducing market securitization, and launching a savings product across the EU. According to sources familiar with the matter, the Netherlands and Spain have endorsed France’s initiative. However, they lean towards a pan-European agreement, but are prepared to explore other possibilities.

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“.. Google is one of the key delivery mechanisms of information on the planet, and it is going to have this ‘broken’ AI at its heart.”

• Musk Warns Google’s Woke Bureaucratic Blob Won’t Allow Its AI To Be Fixed (MN)

X owner Elon Musk commented on the dumpster fire that is Google’s Gemini AI Sunday, noting that he has spoken to a senior Google executive who has claimed it is being fixed. As we previously highlighted, the latest ridiculous thing the AI has come out with is that it would not misgender Caitlyn Jenner in order to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. Musk chimed in, warned that “Given that the Gemini AI will be at the heart of every Google product and YouTube, this is extremely alarming!” Musk also revealed that a senior Google executive has told him “it would take a few months to fix,” adding “Previously, he thought it would be faster.” “My response to him was that I doubted that Google’s woke bureaucratic blob would *allow* him to fix it,” Musk continued.

“Unless those who caused this are exited from Google, nothing will change, except to make the bias less obvious and more pernicious,” the X owner further warned. The comments come after the Gemini AI also declared that it is “difficult to say” who is the worse human being when given the choice of Elon Musk or Adolf Hitler. The AI clearly cannot discern between right and wrong, having also declared that calling communism “evil” is “harmful and misleading” and refusing to say pedophilia is “wrong.” Musk is right, Google is one of the key delivery mechanisms of information on the planet, and it is going to have this ‘broken’ AI at its heart.

Elon UBI

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“It’s a dark night of the soul when you wake up to it..”

• Dissolving Illusions About Vaccine Safety (Mercola)

One of the silver linings of the COVID mass injection campaign is that it has awakened many to the notion that vaccines aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. The COVID shots are so toxic, even though the injuries are being swept under the carpet like never before, there are just so many of them that the carnage cannot be hidden. And, because government and health authorities refuse to acknowledge the problem, many are now questioning all vaccines, not just the COVID shot. “It’s a dark night of the soul when you wake up to it,” Humphries says. “Your whole world does get a bit shattered, because you start to realize that the entire medical system is corrupt and backwards and that there’s probably better ways to do just about everything. And you know what? For 225 years, doctors have been saying that, and for 225 years, those doctors have been ignored. That’s one of the reasons we wrote the second book, ‘The Dissolving Illusions Companion book.’

It’s another huge book, about 600 pages, with 230-something doctors giving different quotes about what they saw, boots on the ground, for smallpox vaccines to the toxoid vaccines to scarlet fever, typhoid, and the worsening of all diseases that occurred after they gave vaccines. Some of them basically come out and say, ‘The entire profession of medicine is a complete waste of time. [They’re doing] damage to humanity. It would be better if all the doctors just were taken off the Earth and for humanity to do nothing.’ What we’ve done over the past 10 years is, in my travels, I would have to do more research to present different diseases. I would go one place and they say, ‘We want to hear about tetanus,’ or they want to hear more about whooping cough. More medical literature has also come out. So, we’ve added basically another book to ‘Dissolving Illusions.’

We’ve expanded it by 200 pages. We’ve added on a chapter on tuberculosis, which was called the White Plague. There’s an extra addition to the smallpox chapter. I’ve added about 20 or 30 new pages to the pertussis chapter. There is a chapter on deadly medicine, the practices from the early 1800s through to the 1940s that were provably causing lots of harm. Roman came up with more charts. There’s a follow-up on the polio chapter. Dr. Jacob Puliyel, who lives in India, wrote the papers on the oral polio vaccines, how they were causing paralysis in children. We added those follow-up papers, as well as a lot of other data that we left out of the original chapter to try to save space, but it’s so important, it really needs to be put out there.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762265806002352386

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“Those advocating the genocide of humanity are not held accountable. Instead, they are respectable leaders of mankind..”

• The Rapidly Emerging Rule of Tyranny in the West (Paul Craig Roberts)

An 18 year old mother put her baby in a dumpster with a trash compactor. The police found the baby’s remains wrapped in a mattress protector inside a zipped-up duffel bag. Evil must have taken a large step forward for a mother to do this to her baby. I can imagine Jakayla Williams thinking that if she had aborted the baby there would be no complaint, so why can’t she put the baby in the dumpster? Legalized abortion, that is legalized murder, has left women insensitive to murder. Consequently, murder is becoming legalized outside abortion. For example, Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, and our Great Country America vetoes the UN resolutions against Israel’s genocidal murder of the Palestinians. Washington has redefined genocide as “self-defense” by the Israelis committing the genocide.

The atrocities are beyond belief. The Israelis are committing genocide of the Palestinians and the Democrat regime here vetos UN cease fire resolutions. But an 18 year old black American woman is going to be tried for first degree murder because she waited too long before she aborted her baby. How can this be that the Israeli and US governments can murder at will, but if a black woman disposes of her baby after the expiration of the “use by” date of her legal right to murder, she is a murderess? And look what the Great British and American Democracies have done to Julian Assange. Imprisoned in one form or the other for 12 years without any charges being brought. It is just like medieval times when feudal lords at their whim threw people in dungeons for keeps. The latest reports show that the Democrats are spending massive amounts of our money suppressing truth and financing the recruitment and provisioning of the immigrant invaders from 160 countries that are overrunning our country.

According to official, understated, figures, each year Biden is bringing in immigrant-invaders in numbers equal to 12 cities the size of Pittsburg Pennsylvania. So, 24 cities in two years, 36 cities in 3 years, and dumbshit Americans vote for Demorats who are stealing their country from them. How can a people as indoctrinated and brainwashed as Americans possibly avoid the tyranny that is rapidly descending on them? Many Americans have difficulty being realistic about government. They think government is there to serve them. It is not. Many decades ago Albert Jay Nock made that clear in the classic book, Our Enemy, The State. The trust that Americans place in official narratives is extraordinary. Americans fell for 9/11, for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, for the “Covid Pandemic” hoax and the mRNA deadly vaccine. Our government wouldn’t lie to us, many say as they sit in front of CNN, Fox News, listen to NPR, read the New York Times and program themselves into mindlessness.

I recently read a letter from a US Senator to a federal agency demanding to know why the agency was financing research in Wuhan, China, focused on weaponizing bird flu. She hasn’t had a reply. Are the elite going to release weaponized bird flu on us in 2025? By then will it be a criminal offense to refuse the vaccine? Bill Gates has made it clear that the elite’s agenda is to kill off most of the world population. Mike Benz recently explained to Tucker Carlson the controls being put in place to prevent one word of truth being spoken in resistance to the tyranny that is prepared for us. The official narrative is that people are killing the planet by causing global warming. To save the planet people have to be eliminated. Here we face not Israel’s genocide of a couple of million Palestinians, but the elite’s genocide of 7.5 billion people. Those advocating the genocide of humanity are not held accountable. Instead, they are respectable leaders of mankind.

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“..a digital wall that is not a barrier so much as a web of all-seeing eyes, with intelligence to know what it sees.”

• The Border Fiasco and the “Smart Wall” (Whitney Webb)

The disastrous situation at the US-Mexico border is, and has been, intentionally produced. Throughout the last several administrations, regardless of campaign and other public rhetoric, the porous nature of the border has remained unresolved. On several occasions, the situation as it has developed has been blamed largely on incompetence and government inefficiency. Though some administrations have been tougher than others in regards to terrestrial migration (under some metrics), the US-Mexico border has not been sealed off so to force entrants to cross through officially recognized and managed ports of entry. Under the current administration, it has been pointedly obvious that even the sections of the border that do contain physical barriers are being dismantled on purpose, all the while illegal crossings have risen to unprecedented levels. Whatever the motives for this deliberate policy on the part of the Biden administration, the end result has been the widespread characterization of the crisis as an “invasion,” priming the voter bloc usually most concerned with border security – the American Right – for military-style “solutions.”

While the justifications for the frenzied media coverage are based on the actual reality that the border is indeed highly insecure (and has been for some time), the policy responses from American politicians reveal that there is a bipartisan consensus about what must be done. Tellingly, the same “solution” is also being quietly rolled out at all American ports of entry that are not currently being “overrun”, such as airports. That solution, of course, is biometric surveillance, enabled by AI, facial recognition/biometrics and autonomous devices. This “solution” is not just being implemented throughout the United States as an alleged means of thwarting migrants, it is also being rapidly implemented throughout the world in apparent lockstep.

The reasons for the unspoken, but obvious, global consistency in implementing invasive, biometric surveillance is due to the fulfillment of global policy agendas, ratified by nearly every country in the world, that seek both to restrict the extent of people’s freedom of movement and to surveil people’s movements (and much, much more) through the global implementation of digital identity. Those policy agendas include mainly the UN’s Agenda 2030 or Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG 16, as well as Interpol’s Global Policing Goals. While the American Right has been rather outspoken in its rejection of the UN’s Agenda 2030, and the digital ID project at large, the distress over the border situation is being used to manufacture consent among this specific group for “solutions” that are focused on expanding surveillance and biometric collection as opposed to the implementation of physical barriers. The Hawaiian shirt-wearing inventor of the VR headset Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey, has become the face of America’s “virtual border wall.”

Luckey, the brain behind the defense tech firm Anduril, is a long-time associate of Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, with Luckey having met Thiel at 19 when Luckey presided over his first company Oculus Rift, which was later sold to Facebook. Thiel was then on Facebook’s board and was also instrumental in the rise of the social media company. Luckey’s Anduril is also backed by Thiel’s Founders Fund and another Palantir co-founder, Joe Lonsdale, is also an Anduril investor. Anduril is one of the main beneficiaries of government contracts to build autonomous surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, which are now also being rolled out along the US-Canada border. As a consequence, they are likely to be among the beneficiaries of the Senate’s current proposal for “border security,” which sets aside $170 million for additional towers to be build. Under the Trump and now Biden administrations, Luckey has been vocal about how Anduril will create “a digital wall that is not a barrier so much as a web of all-seeing eyes, with intelligence to know what it sees.” As noted by WIRED in 2018, Luckey and Anduril has long been pitching its technology “as a complement to – or substitute for – much of [then] President Trump’s promised physical wall.”

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“..Circularity requirements..” I have a 25 year old car. Go fuck yourself.

• EU Considers Ban On Repairs For All Vehicles Over 15 Years Old (WS Apes)

This Is Absolutely Insane. The European Union Is Considering A Ban On Repairs For All Vehicles Over 15 Years Old. “To encourage Europeans to buy new environmentally friendly vehicles.” So In The Name Of “Climate Change” Millions Of People Will No Longer Be Able To Repair Their Vehicles “. The EU considers banning repairing cars over 15 years old. I mentioned this at the close of program the other day, but, uh, this truly is where it is headed. This is an article from wine press. Uh, the proposal is an amendment to the European commission’s preexisting listen to what they call it. Circularity requirements, Circularity requirements. I guess recycle is kind of passed out of use now that you got, uh, the wind turbines that are not recyclable for the windmills and, uh, the solar panels and all these other issues.

You know, there used to be all this reduce, reuse, recycle, Uh, that doesn’t work anymore. That’s kind of become a mockery. So now that we got circularity requirements for vehicle design and on the management of end of life vehicles. The same is to renew the car fleet. See that’s it. They’re not banning anything. They’re renewing it. They’re renewing it. Yeah. Right…. To encourage Europeans to buy new environmentally friendly vehicles. Uh, this is beyond the despicable practice of planned obsolescence where the manufacturers would design something to break after a short period of time. This is this is planned immobilization. Planned immobilization by the government.

They don’t want people to have cars of any type. By the way, you notice that this doesn’t say anything about electric cars. Of course, they don’t really have to do that. Um, by the time your batteries are 15 years old, they’re already gone long dead. And if you, and if you try to replace those batteries, it’s going to cost more than your car’s worth. So they don’t have to do it for electric cars. It’s already implied your planned obsolescence, uh, based on the concept of a residual vehicle, A category for vehicles that are over 15 years old. Oh, all my vehicles are approaching a residual vehicle.” The people in charge always implement their agendas overseas first before bringing their regulations to America.

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Sagan

 

 

Master’s voice

 

 

 

 

Jag

 

 

Tetris
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762078095467569644

 

 

Tree house

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle DayX 2024

Feb 202024
 
 February 20, 2024  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Lane near Arles 1888

 

• Julian Assange Judge Previously Acted For MI6 (Dec.UK)
• Brandon, Rotting in the (White) House (Kunstler)
• Democratic Lawmaker Urges Vote Against Biden (Sp.)
• Biden’s Lies On Top Of Lies On Top Of Lies (Victor Davis Hanson)
• US Threatens to Veto New Gaza Ceasefire Resolution at UNSC (Antiwar)
• A Nuclear Power Cannot Lose In War (Medvedev)
• Putin Is The New Climate Change (Marsden)
• Euromaidan Triggered Ukraine’s Nine-Year War on Donbass (Sp.)
• Ukraine Used US Chemical Weapons Against Russian Troops – MoD
• Helping Crimea Recover From Decades Of Ukrainian Misrule (Scott Ritter)
• About Navalny’s Death (Lubos Blaha)
• Germany Gives Timeframe For Possible Russian ‘Attack’ On NATO – Bloomberg (RT)
• Czech PM Labels Protesting Farmers ‘Supporters Of Moscow’ (RT)
• Houthis Attacked UK Ship in Gulf of Aden, Vessel Severely Damaged (Sp.)
• 2024 Is the Last Year of Free Speech and Democracy in the Western World (PCR)

 

 

 

 

RFK Assange

 

 

Ai Weiwei

 

 

Yanis Julian

 

 

Waters

 

 

Assange DDN

 

 

Hillary

 

 

Liz Cheney

 

 

Udo

 

 

 

 

Eric Trump

 

 

 

 

Craig Murray syas he’s at the courthouse, but doesn’t know if he can attend the hearing. Julian doesn’t know either if he can attend his own hearing.

• Julian Assange Judge Previously Acted For MI6 (Dec.UK)

One of the two High Court judges who will rule on Julian Assange’s bid to stop his extradition to the US represented the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Ministry of Defence, Declassified has found. Justice Jeremy Johnson has also been a specially vetted barrister, cleared by the UK authorities to access top secret information. Johnson will sit with Dame Victoria Sharp, his senior judge, to decide the fate of the WikiLeaks co-founder. If extradited, Assange faces a maximum sentence of 175 years. His persecution by the US authorities has been at the behest of Washington’s intelligence and security services, with whom the UK has deep relations. Assange’s journalistic career has been marked by exposing the dirty secrets of the US and UK national security establishments. He now faces a judge who has acted for, and received security clearance from, some of those same state agencies.

As with previous judges who have ruled on Assange’s case, this raises concerns about institutional conflicts of interest. Exactly how much Johnson has been paid for his work for government departments is not clear. Records show he was paid twice by the Government Legal Department for his services in 2018. The sum was over £55,000. Justice Johnson became a deputy High Court judge in 2016 and a full judge in 2019. His biography states he has been “often acting in cases involving the police and government departments”. As a barrister, in 2007 he represented MI6 as an observer during the inquests into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed. Johnson worked alongside Robin Tam QC, previously described by legal directories as a barrister who “does an enormous amount of often sensitive work” for the UK government.

Johnson was appointed to “sit in on the hearing” At the time, Foreign Office sources could not recall “a previous occasion when MI6 [had] appointed lawyers to an inquest”. MI6 was reportedly “so concerned by possible revelations” during the inquest that Johnson was appointed to “sit in on the hearing”. He reportedly received a brief from MI6 in advance of the inquest, and was tasked with providing “such assistance as the coroner may require”. Johnson has also represented the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) on at least two occasions. In 2013, he acted for the department during the high-profile Al-Sweady inquiry, which looked into allegations that “British soldiers torture and unlawfully killed Iraqi prisoners” in 2004. The MoD’s lawyers said the Iraqi allegations were a “product of lies” and that those making the claims “were guilty of a criminal conspiracy”.

Johnson argued there was “compelling and extensive and independent forensic evidence” to refute the case. The five-year inquiry, which cost around £25m, exonerated the British troops. Johnson also acted for the MoD in 2011, in an appeal case against Shaun Wood, a Royal Air Force (RAF) serviceman. Wood had the previous year won his case claiming compensation against the MoD, arguing his neurological condition akin to Parkinson’s disease was caused by exposure to organic solvents while serving in the RAF. The judge upheld Wood’s claim against the MoD, which had admitted a breach of duty but disputed that this had caused the damage claimed by him.

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“What have they got left? AI-contrived photos of Mr. Trump having sex with a manatee in the intercoastal waterway off Mar-a-Lago?”

• Brandon, Rotting in the (White) House (Kunstler)

We’re also informed in recent days by the Department of Justice that “Joe Biden” is not mentally competent to answer for anything in a court of law, should someone inquire into the signal irregularities emerging from the fugitive annals of his long career. Of course, “Joe Biden” running for reelection is one of the greatest gags ever put over on the American public. But more astounding yet is that half the country persists in pretending to believe it. They are egged on in every possible way by persons in high places of government fearful of going to prison if the Democratic Party loses its grip on the levers of power.

Since “Joe Biden” is not actually calling the shots, one naturally wonders who is responsible for all the dubious achievements of the past three years. I guess we’ll find out when Mr. Trump wins that election in November, an outcome increasingly guaranteed unless “Joe Biden” (or, let’s face it, our Intel Community) takes the final decisive step of bumping off the Golden Golem of Greatness. What have they got left? AI-contrived photos of Mr. Trump having sex with a manatee in the intercoastal waterway off Mar-a-Lago?

In New York City, the Woke lunatics did a victory dance after Judge Arthur Engoron, beaming his Joker smile, laid a $350-million fine on Mr. Trump for conducting a set of normal real estate transactions with a bank that profited from doing business with him. Many are still trying to figure out how that amounts to a crime of any sort. Don’t suppose that the check is in the mail, though. There is an appeals process that leads, you may be sure, to a dismissal of that inane judgment and the puerile hypotheticals that the case derived from. And, by and by, you also might expect a countersuit for malicious prosecution when all that smoke clears. New York Attorney General Letitia James, lacking impulse control, is for the moment enjoying the fulfillment of her campaign promise to “get Trump.” Waiting to see how much she enjoys losing her law license in the days to come.

Every reaction provokes an equal and opposite reaction, Newton’s Third Law states. It manifested shortly after Judge Engoron’s end zone dance when a call went out over the Internet for America’s truckers to refuse loads inbound to New York City. We’ll have to stand by to see how that develops. No more bok choy, Texas beef, or Meyer Lemons for you, “progressive” denizens of the Five Boroughs! Embrace the suck! The genius part is that, unlike the 2022 Canadian truckers’ action in Ottawa, the American truckers will not be cluttering up New York’s streets with their rigs, license plates on view, leaving them vulnerable to such pranks as the shutdown of their bank accounts. All they’ll do is sit innocently at home back in Kentucky and Missouri, enjoying a break from the rigors of the highway. Is that a crime? Arguably no more than doing a normal real estate deal in good faith with a willing lender was a crime.

The truckers have promised to include Washington DC next in their delivery boycott. The K-Street lobbying gang won’t be buying any influence for a while over platters of grilled branzino and Mariscos Molcajete. Maybe there will be a few Cliff Bars left in the Farragut Square 7-Eleven and they can do business in their cars. As for “Joe Biden,” his minders have probably laid in enough Ensure for a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory to get by for a few weeks — until the magic moment when, alas, he must needs be thrown under the bus of expediency to keep their game going.

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“..Trump won Michigan in 2016 with a margin of just 10,700 votes; Michigan has an Arab American population of some 211,000..”

• Democratic Lawmaker Urges Vote Against Biden (Sp.)

In the latest example of opposition to US President Joe Biden from within his own party, Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib publicly urged Michigan voters to oppose the president in the state’s primary election next week. Rep. Tlaib made the call Saturday in a video posted by the Listen to Michigan campaign on the X social media platform. Listen to Michigan is an organization of pro-Palestine activists in the state organizing opposition to Biden’s support for Israel’s deadly campaign in Gaza, which has killed some 29,000 people. “It is important as you all know to not only march against the genocide, [to] not only make sure that we’re calling our members of Congress and local electeds and passing city resolutions all throughout our country, it is also important to create a voting bloc – something that is a bullhorn to say ‘enough is enough,” said Tlaib, the first Palestinian American member of US Congress. “We don’t want a country that supports wars and bombs and destruction,” she added. “We want to support life. We want to stand up for every single life killed in Gaza.”

Tlaib and other activists are urging Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the party’s presidential primary election next Tuesday rather than supporting Biden or any of his challengers. Activists portray the move as a show of opposition to the president’s handling of the Palestine-Israel crisis. Biden has attempted to express modest criticism of Israel through leaked statements to the press alleging consternation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but the US president has continued to back the country with the frequent provision of financial support and lethal aid. In December the Biden administration even bypassed Congress to rush an “emergency” arms shipment to Israel, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken affirming the move was necessary in response to an alleged imminent security threat to the United States.

Observers have noted Blinken could be impeached on perjury charges for the dubious claim, which is unlikely to generate opposition given the significant influence of AIPAC and other Zionist groups in US politics. “This is the way you can raise our voices,” Tlaib continued. “Don’t make us even more invisible. Right now we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government. If you want us to be louder then come here and vote ‘uncommitted.’” Tlaib made the statement standing outside of an early voting location in Dearborn, a major hub of the Arab American community in Michigan. Pro-Palestine activists have warned Biden that his unrelenting support for Israel could cost him reelection in November, with Michigan representing a crucial swing state for the president. Former President Donald Trump won Michigan in 2016 with a margin of just 10,700 votes; Michigan has an Arab American population of some 211,000.

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X thread.

“Well apart from his cognitive decline, Biden himself is a pathological prevaricator.”

• Biden’s Lies On Top Of Lies On Top Of Lies (Victor Davis Hanson)

In the last week, Joe Biden had flat-out lied in the most egregious fashion in so many ways. In his disastrous press conference of last week, he claimed that special counsel Hur’s report exonerated him. Anyone who read the findings concluded exactly the opposite. According to Hur, Biden would have been indicted for his willfully unlawful removal of classified documents except for two reasons: one, the Department of Justice protocols apparently prohibit indicting a sitting president; and two, Biden suffers such cognitive decline that the special counsel believes a jury would more likely pity him into acquittal than convict him of what he is certainly guilty. He lied that Hur brought up his son’s death (“How in the hell dare he raise that?”).

In fact, Biden as is his serial wont, raised it, and does on a regular basis, usually deliberately and further lying that his son died while on military duty in Iraq (he died six years subsequently as a civilian in Walter Reed Hospital), and always contorting the death to enhance his own greater sense of grieving. He lied that he notified authorities when he discovered that he unlawfully had taken out classified documents to various residencies (perhaps for over some 30 plus years during his senatorial and Vice Presidential tenures). In fact, Biden only admitted that he had apparently for decades unlawfully removed classified files in 2017, to his ghostwriter in a recorded tape, and then he hid that fact and kept quiet for five years—until his administration’s special counsel began to investigate Trump for the same thing. Note the worried ghostwriter erased the tape of Biden’s confession as soon as he learned there was an appointment of a special counsel. (Destroy evidence much?)

He lied that the files bore no classification marks. In fact, they did and do. He lied that he kept the files safe in a secure location. In fact, the special counsel report includes several photographs of the Biden garage, in which there were sloppily stored, open, and torn boxes of classified documents amid a complete mess of junk. He lied that Trump’s once secure border is somehow responsible for Biden’s intentionally open border. He just lied that Trump caused the 2022 Putin invasion of Ukraine on Biden’s watch that never occurred on Trump’s. It is not enough that the Biden team must wildly lie daily that the non-compos-mentis President is dynamic, impressive in his recall and cognition, and stands out as the most astute mind in most of this meetings. Well apart from his cognitive decline, Biden himself is a pathological prevaricator.

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“The US has already used its veto power on the Security Council to veto two resolutions calling for an end to the onslaught..”

• US Threatens to Veto New Gaza Ceasefire Resolution at UNSC (Antiwar)

The US is threatening to veto a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza at the UN Security Council as the US continues to provide political cover for the Israeli massacre of Palestinians. US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement that if the resolution, which is being drafted by Algeria, was brought to a vote, it would not be adopted. Thomas-Greenfield justified US opposition to a ceasefire by pointing to US efforts to push for a new hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vetoed hostage talks last week, and Qatar, the mediator of the negotiations, said Saturday that things were not looking “promising.” Thomas-Greenfield said Algeria’s resolution would “run counter” to US efforts on the hostage deal. “We have communicated this concern repeatedly to our colleagues on the Council.

For that reason, the United States does not support action on this draft resolution. Should it come up for a vote as drafted, it will not be adopted,” she said. The US has already used its veto power on the Security Council to veto two resolutions calling for an end to the onslaught. The Biden administration has also dismissed the International Court of Justice’s ruling that it’s “plausible” Israel is committing genocide and continues to provide unconditional military support for the slaughter. Thomas-Greenfield said the resolution would get in the way of US “diplomacy” related to pushing for a hostage deal. “It is critical that other parties give this process the best odds of succeeding, rather than push measures that put it — and the opportunity for an enduring resolution of hostilities — in jeopardy,” she said.

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X thread.

• A Nuclear Power Cannot Lose In War (Medvedev)

“Some time ago I wrote in my Telegram channel: “A nuclear power cannot lose in war.” Immediately, sniveling Anglo-American lackeys popped up with hysterical cries: “No, that’s not true at all, even the USA has lost wars.” This is an obvious lie. I wasn’t talking about Vietnam, Afghanistan, or dozens of other places where Americans waged colonial wars of conquest. I was writing about historical wars where defending one’s Homeland occurs. Defending one’s land, people, and values. These are the wars nuclear powers have never lost to anyone. Why am I writing about this again? Well, I’m reading the words of various Pistoriuses with shaps, and I’m thinking: are they really such idiots or are they just pretending? “The world cannot afford Russia’s victory in this war.” How so? Here’s how.

Okay. Let’s imagine for a moment that Russia lost, and “Ukraine with its allies” won. What would such a victory mean for our enemies – the neo-Nazis and their Western sponsors? Well, as it has been said many times, a return to the borders of 1991. That is, the direct and irreversible collapse of present-day Russia, which includes new territories according to the Constitution. And then a furious civil war with the final disappearance of our country from the world map. Tens of millions of victims. The death of our future. The collapse of everything in the world. And now the main question: do these idiots really believe that the Russian people will swallow such a division of their country? That we will all reason approximately like this: “Well, alas, it happened. They won. Present-day Russia has disappeared. It’s a pity, of course, but we have to continue living in a collapsing, dying country, because nuclear war is much scarier for us than the death of our loved ones, our children, our Russia…”? And in such a case, will the leadership of the state headed by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation hesitate to make the most difficult decisions?

So here’s the thing. It will be completely different. The collapse of Russia will have much more terrifying consequences than the results of a normal, even the most protracted war. Because attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. To a global war with Western countries using all the strategic arsenal of our state. Towards Kyiv, Berlin, London, Washington. Towards all the other beautiful historical places long targeted by our nuclear triad. Will we have the courage for this, if the disappearance of our thousand-year-old country, our great Motherland, is at stake, and the sacrifices made by the Russian people over the centuries will turn out to be in vain? The answer is obvious. So it’s better to let them return everything before it’s too late. Or we’ll take it back ourselves with maximum losses for the enemy. Like Avdeevka. Our warriors are heroes!”

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“..von der Leyen laments the Russian president’s attempt to “blackmail” Europe with fossil fuels while at the same time saying that whatever’s left of them can’t disappear fast enough. If that seems like a contradiction, it is.”

• Putin Is The New Climate Change (Marsden)

It’s hard to tell if she’s blaming him or crediting him, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a meeting of the Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on February 13th that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s attempt to blackmail our union has utterly failed. On the contrary, he really pushed the green transition.” [..]

Germany is the canary in the coal mine for the EU green transition, having gone all-in, and clearly wind and solar weren’t ready for prime time when the cheap Russian gas tap was effectively turned off – first through the EU’s own anti-Russian sanctions that complicated payment for sales, then when it was blown up altogether. This is why the German economy is taking a hit, with the country’s own national statistics office now qualifying the economic environment as “marked by multiple crises,” as last year’s GDP dropped by 0.3%, with high energy prices as one of the top contributing factors. If mighty gusts of wind could singlehandedly prevent German deindustrialization as industry bails to less fantasy-powered jurisdictions, then Queen Ursula’s speeches alone would have long since done the job. In this latest one, von der Leyen laments the Russian president’s attempt to “blackmail” Europe with fossil fuels while at the same time saying that whatever’s left of them can’t disappear fast enough. If that seems like a contradiction, it is.

The truth is that Putin just served as a convenient pretext for something that Brussels had long wanted to do anyway, but was prevented from doing because of how it feared the average EU citizen would react. It’s now obvious what the impact of the green transition is on inflation as energy costs have skyrocketed. If the EU had pulled a stunt like this by simply caving to Washington’s relentless insistence that it renege on Nord Stream pipeline gas, telling Europeans that it was pivoting to far pricier US liquified natural gas – at least until it could figure out how to use the basic elements of earth to live like a developed country using tactics from the Stone Age – people would have gone ballistic and wondered what the heck was really going on. Putin came along just in time to rescue the transition from the growing skepticism of the climate-change excuse, fueling popularity for the right-wing populist parties calling the Brussels establishment out for its use of it to manipulate citizens into compliance with their agenda.

What agenda, exactly? Profits, first and foremost. Ask the farmers currently protesting all across Europe against a heavy-handed Brussels bureaucracy put into place that increasingly controls their production using everything from climate change policies that put precious farmland into the state’s hands through buyouts of climate change policy offenders, to pro-Ukraine trade policies that crush domestic production in favor of Ukraine’s Western-backed corporate Big Farming, like Bayer, Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont. When the Ukraine conflict went hot, Queen Ursula just substituted Putin for the climate-change excuse, then kept hammering the need to plough cash into renewable energy projects that just happen to be dominated by European and American big finance and their investors, like US defense contractor General Electric, Germany’s BASF, Shell, and BP. Von der Leyen dropped a hint herself that all this is about not wanting to share the pie outside of her coffee klatch.

“The old fossil fuel economy is all about dependencies. The new clean energy economy is all about inter-dependencies,” she said, pointing out that “clean energy can be produced anywhere.” And that means being able to keep the profits among your friends and supporters. Interesting that she used the term “inter-dependencies” rather than “independence.” You’d think that national sovereignty would be a good thing. But apparently not when it could mean a country being able to tell Brussels to bugger off. Both climate change and national security are profitable causes, first and foremost. They should just be honest about that rather than trying to hard-sell it with virtue-signaling and bogeymen. But it’s the increased authoritarianism to control emissions or the ubiquitous “Russian threat” by introducing policies and tools that can also be used to quash domestic dissent, that are even more troubling. And for Brussels that seems to be a nice bonus.

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“It all started back in 2004, when the first Maidan, dubbed the Orange Revolution, and [the West’s] interference in the presidential elections happened. I think at that moment everyone realized exactly what was happening.”

• Euromaidan Triggered Ukraine’s Nine-Year War on Donbass (Sp.)

The “Russian Spring” in Donbass was a grassroots movement that began when the Euromaidan protests were raging in Kiev, Alexander Matyushin, call sign “Varyag,” former commander of the “Varyag” detachment and war correspondent, told Sputnik. The protests started on November 21, 2013, with up to 2,000 protesters gathering in Kiev’s central square, Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), after then-President Viktor Yanukovich refused to sign an EU association agreement. “Nikolai Azarov, Yanukovich’s closest aide and adviser, at the 11th hour calculated that switching to European standards would indebt Ukraine at a scale one had never imagined,” Matyushin said. “The transition envisaged changing everything, starting from sockets to railway tracks, everything had to be rebuilt. [The Yanukovich government] concluded it was unprofitable and refused [to sign the agreement with the EU – Sputnik]. After that, students took to the streets and were dispersed by Berkut on camera, which caused a wave of indignation in Kiev. From that point Euromaidan started to gain momentum.”

“Historically, the southeast [of Ukraine] has always gravitated towards Russia,” Matyushin said. He recalled that in 1919, Vladimir Lenin, then head of the Soviet government, integrated Donbass into the Ukrainian Socialist Republic against the will of the region’s population. After the collapse of the USSR, the 1994 plebiscite in Donbass concerning the region’s federalization and making Russian a second official language was similarly ignored by the then-Ukrainian government. By the time of Euromaidan, the southeastern and northwestern parts of Ukraine had already been divided over the future of the country: the former sought to integrate with the EU, while the latter wanted to develop economic ties with Russia, according to Matyushin. “The southeast included the territories from Kharkov to Odessa, the so-called Novorossiya, along with Crimea. And separately, there was the northwest, where these Ukrainian [nationalist] tendencies were strong,” he said.

The split became especially visible in 2004, when the Western-backed Orange Revolution on Maidan square brought Viktor Yushchenko to power in Kiev, the war correspondent pointed out. “And all the economic vicissitudes starting from 2004, when there was a severance of relations [between Russia and Ukraine], i.e. the gas war, the sugar war, etc., hit Donbass very hard because its industries relied, in particular, on cheap Russian gas.” In 2005, the Yushchenko government unilaterally initiated a review of tariffs for the transit of Russian gas to Europe through the territory of Ukraine, which led to the termination of a long-term Russo-Ukrainian gas contract that had fixed the fuel price for Kiev at $50 per 1,000 cubic meters until 2010. The increase in gas price dealt a blow to Donbass, which “blamed the Western Ukraine protege Yushchenko” for the economic turndown, Matyushin noted.

Another driver for the split was the glorification of WW2-era Nazi collaborators by the Yushchenko government. Yushchenko openly praised the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)* responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Jews, Russians, Roma, and Poles during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Ukraine and granted the titles of Hero of Ukraine to OUN-UPA leaders Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera in 2007 and 2010, respectively. He also declared Ukrainian NATO membership a priority in 2008. According to the war correspondent, over 10 years – from 2004 to 2014 – the ideological and political rift between western and eastern Ukraine deepened dramatically. The 2014 Euromaidan events became the catalyst for the final division, he underscored.

“We had understood from the very beginning that everything that happened on Maidan could not lead to anything good,” Maya, warrant officer and commander of the support platoon of the 1st Slavic Brigade, told Sputnik. “I think the majority [of Ukrainians] also knew and understood that the West was involved in this. It was not the first time that the West had interfered in the domestic affairs of our state. It all started back in 2004, when the first Maidan, dubbed the Orange Revolution, and [the West’s] interference in the presidential elections happened. I think at that moment everyone realized exactly what was happening.”

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Surprised?

• Ukraine Used US Chemical Weapons Against Russian Troops – MoD

Russia has recorded cases of Ukrainian troops using US chemical munitions during the special military operation, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian armed forces, said on Monday. “During the special military operation, cases of US chemical weapons used by the armed forces of Ukraine were recorded,” Kirillov told a briefing The Ukraine military used US-made chemical grenades dropped from UAVs several times against the Russian armed forces in 2023, and this January, Ukrainian units used an unknown toxic chemical against the Russian troops, which led to burns, nausea and vomiting. “Ukraine, with the complicity of Western countries, does not limit itself to the use of non-lethal chemicals, actively using chemicals from the list. I would like to draw attention to the statement by representatives of the Ukraine armed forces about the availability of such compounds at their disposal, including analogues of the combat toxic substance Tabun, which is included in List 1 of the Convention [on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction],” Kirillov said.

The head of the Kherson region administration, Saldo, was poisoned with ricin in August 2022, the substance was detected in biomedical samples, the head of the Russian Chemical Defense Forces, Kirillov, has said. The head of the Lugansk People Republic Leonid Pasechnik in December 2023 received a severe poisoning with phenolic compounds, said the head of the RHBZ troops Kirillov. Before that, Pasechnik’s poisoning had not been reported. The Russian Defense Ministry reported on the facts of the use of poisonous substances by the Ukrainian military:
• On August 19, 2022, a toxic chemical, an analog of the warfare poisoning agent “Bi-Zet,” was used.
• A similar substance was found on January 28, 2024, during operational-search activities in a cache in Melitopol. It was in vials labeled “Biosporin”.
• On February 8 and 16, 2023, cases of using hydrocyanic acid with drones were registered.
• On January 31, 2024, the Ukrainian Armed Forces used an unknown toxic chemical that caused burns. Analysis showed the presence of a compound known as anthraquinone.
• On December 28, 2023, American-made gas grenades loaded with a substance called “CS” capable of causing skin burns and respiratory paralysis were dropped in the area of Krasny Liman.
• On June 15, 2023, a drone carrying a plastic container with a mixture of chloroacetophenone and chloropicrin was used against Russian troops near Rabotino.

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“Ukraine effectively destroyed Crimea’s agricultural industry..”

• Helping Crimea Recover From Decades Of Ukrainian Misrule (Scott Ritter)

As the Russian military operation against Ukraine approaches its third year, the focus on the ongoing conflict has allowed another anniversary to go relatively unnoticed – it’s now around ten years since the violent events in Kiev’s Maidan square that put in motion the circumstances which precipitated the current conflict. Over the course of five days, from February 18 to 23, 2014, neo-Nazi provocateurs from the Svoboda (All Ukrainian Union ‘Freedom’) Party and the Right Sector, a coalition of far-right Ukrainian nationalists who follow the political teachings of Stepan Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, engaged in targeted violence against the government of President Viktor Yanukovich. It was designed to remove him from power and replace him with a new, US-backed government. They were successful; Yanukovich fled to Russia on February 23, 2014.

Soon thereafter, the predominantly Russian-speaking population of Crimea undertook actions to separate from the new Ukrainian nationalist government in Kiev. On March 16, 2014, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, both of which at that time were legally considered to be part of Ukraine, held a referendum on whether to join Russia or remain part of Ukraine. Over 97% of the votes cast were in favor of joining Russia. Five days later, on March 21, Crimea formally became part of the Russian Federation. Shortly afterwards, Ukraine built a concrete dam on the North Crimean Canal, a Soviet-era conduit transporting water from the Dnieper River that provided around 85% of the peninsula’s water supply. In doing so, Ukraine effectively destroyed Crimea’s agricultural industry. Then, in November 2015, Ukrainian nationalists blew up pylons carrying power lines from Ukraine to Crimea, thrusting the peninsula into a blackout that prompted a declaration of emergency by the regional government.

The Ukrainian assault on Crimea’s water and electricity was merely an extension of the lack of regard shown to the Crimean population during the two-plus decades that Kiev ruled the peninsula. The local economy was stagnant, and the pro-Russian locals were subjected to a policy of total Ukrainization. In general, the Gross Regional Product (GRP) of Crimea was well below the average of Ukraine (43.6% less in 2000, and 29.5% less in 2013.) In short, the Kiev government made no meaningful attempt to develop Crimea culturally or infrastructurally. The Crimean Peninsula was in a state of decay perpetrated by Ukrainian governments. The damming of the North Crimean Canal and the destruction of the electrical transmission lines were simply the radical expression of the indifference shown by Kiev.

In the years that followed the return of the peninsula to Russian control, there has been a gradual improvement in the economy of Crimea. The Russian government undertook a $680 million program to bolster water supplies which involved repairing long-neglected infrastructure, drilling wells, adding storage capacity, and building desalination plants. While this effort wasn’t sufficient to save much of Crimea’s agriculture, it did provide for the basic needs of the population. The Russian government also constructed the Crimean ‘Energy Bridge’, laying down several undersea energy cables across the Kerch Strait that effectively compensated for the loss of power brought on by the destruction of the Ukrainian power lines.

But the greatest symbol of Russia’s commitment to the people of Crimea was the construction of a $3.7 billion, 19-kilometer-long road-and-rail bridge connecting Krasnodar Region in southern Russia with the Crimean Peninsula. The bridge is the longest in Europe. Construction began in 2016, and it was opened for car traffic in a little more than two years. It has become a symbol of pride for the Russian people and their leadership; President Vladimir Putin personally drove across the bridge during its formal opening ceremony in 2018. The rail line was opened to passenger traffic in 2019, and freight traffic in 2020. The construction of the Crimean Bridge coincided with the building of the Tavrida Highway, a 250-kilometer, $2.5 billion four-lane road connecting the Crimean Bridge with the cities of Sevastopol and Simferopol. Construction of the road began in 2017 and is still ongoing.

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X thread. Lubos Blaha is Vice Speaker of the Slovak Parliament.

• About Navalny’s Death (Lubos Blaha)

It’s sad, of course, that the man died, but it’s strange that the whole West is now cheerfully promoting conspiracy theories here, and his death has not even been investigated. Putin definitely didn’t need his death, Navalny would have had to spend the next decades in prison and he didn’t threaten anyone politically. According to officials, the cause of his death was a blood clot. We don’t know anything else, the case is being investigated, everything else is conspiracies. I will not pretend that I will cry all night because of Navalny now – thousands of children are dying in Gaza and all the media spit on them, they will now talk on air for a week only about this one American agent.

They better look at what the British and Americans are doing to Julian Assange, who is in custody on the verge of death in this glorious West, which prides itself on freedom of speech and protection of journalists. Let them remember how they remained silent when the American journalist Gonzalo Lira, who criticized Zelensky, recently died in Ukrainian custody. They didn’t even remember about it. And today they will moralize about Navalny’s death. Again, it’s always sad when a person dies, but this is pure hypocrisy. – FRWL reports

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”I can’t predict if and when an attack on NATO territory might occur,”[..] “But it could happen in five to eight years..”

• Germany Gives Timeframe For Possible Russian ‘Attack’ On NATO – Bloomberg (RT)

Russia may attack NATO within the next five to eight years, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has claimed in an interview with Bloomberg. Pistorius was speaking on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference over the weekend. NATO leaders and defense officials met in Germany to discuss current geopolitical challenges, in particular the situation in Ukraine and military aid to Kiev. ”I can’t predict if and when an attack on NATO territory might occur,” Bloomberg quoted Pistorius as saying. “But it could happen in five to eight years,” he claimed. According to the outlet, EU countries are increasingly alarmed over Russia’s success on the battlefield, the potential reduction in US support for the region, and the fact that they are not prepared for an attack.

On Saturday, Russian forces liberated the key town of Avdeevka in a significant battlefield victory, inflicting heavy casualties on Ukrainian troops. The Ukrainian defeat came as a $60 billion emergency aid package for the country remains held up in the US Congress. “The problem with Europe is it doesn’t provide enough of a deterrence on its own because it hasn’t taken enough of an initiative,” J.D. Vance, a Republican senator and an opponent of Ukraine aid said in Munich, as quoted by Bloomberg. “The American security blanket has allowed European security to atrophy,” he added.

German tabloid Bild reported last month that the German Defense Ministry was developing a plan of action in case Russia attacks a NATO state following a victory in its conflict with Ukraine. In December, Bild cited the intelligence service of a European country as saying that Russia could attack Europe in the winter of 2024-25. Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the same month that Russia has never had plans to attack NATO. The fears of a ‘Russian threat’ in the EU are being fueled by the US, as Washington fears losing its dominance on the European continent, Putin said.

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Idiot.

• Czech PM Labels Protesting Farmers ‘Supporters Of Moscow’ (RT)

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala has claimed farmers protesting against EU agriculture policies, environmental requirements and high energy prices are “supporters of Russia”. On Monday, hundreds of tractors blocked off sections of Prague and disrupted traffic outside the country’s Agriculture Ministry as demonstrators demanded that the EU’s Green Deal, which calls for regulations on the use of certain chemicals and greenhouse gas emissions, be rejected. The farmers have argued that the Brussels’ proposals place a heavy burden on their businesses, making products more expensive and less competitive, especially when compared to non-EU imports, such as those coming from Ukraine.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), however, Fiala dismissed the demonstration and suggested that the farmers who took their tractors to Prague on Monday have “little to do with the fight for better conditions for farmers.” “The demonstration is organized by people who, for example, do not hide their support for the Kremlin and pursue goals other than the interests of farmers,” Fiala wrote, adding that the Czech government would only deal with those who “really represent farmers and talk together about what our agriculture needs.” He also noted that Monday’s protests in the Czech capital were not organized by the country’s largest farmers organizations, such as the Agrarian Chamber, the Agricultural Union, and the Association of Private Agriculture.

The three groups have announced plans to hold a separate demonstration against the EU’s green policies on Thursday in a joint action with farmers’ associations from other EU member states. The Agrarian Chamber has stated that farmers will lead their tractors and other machinery in convoys to the Czech border, but have stressed that the demonstration would be symbolic and will not interfere with the operation of the border. Similar protests have swept the EU in recent months, taking place in countries like Poland, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Slovenia. Demonstrators have been demanding more government aid for the agriculture sector, less bureaucracy from Brussels, as well as tighter controls on imports from non-EU countries.

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“As a result of the extensive damage the ship suffered, it is now at risk of potential sinking in the Gulf of Aden..”

• Houthis Attacked UK Ship in Gulf of Aden, Vessel Severely Damaged (Sp.)

Yemen’s Houthi movement, also known as Ansar Allah, has attacked a UK Rubymar cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Monday, adding that the vessel was severely damaged.”The Naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a specific military operation, targeting a British ship in the Gulf of Aden, ‘RUBYMAR,’ with a number of appropriate naval missiles. Among the results of the operation were the following: The ship suffered catastrophic damages and came to a complete halt. As a result of the extensive damage the ship suffered, it is now at risk of potential sinking in the Gulf of Aden,” Saree said in a statement on Telegram. The Yemeni air defenses were also able to shoot down a US-made Drone, MQ9, “with a suitable missile while it was carrying out hostile missions against our country on behalf of the Zionist entity,” the spokesman added.

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“our” government in Washington is financing the replacement of American Democracy subject to the will of the people with the government’s protection of the elite institutions..”

• 2024 Is the Last Year of Free Speech and Democracy in the Western World (PCR)

Tyranny is easy to establish over peoples who have confidence in their Constitutional rights and integrity of their institutions. The more patriotic the population is, the more susceptible it is to deception and betrayal by government. Try telling patriots what is happening to them, and they will call you a commie for speaking badly about their beloved country. Christian evangelicals have no opposition to the evil that is engulfing us, because they have been brainwashed that they will escape it by being wafted up to Heaven. The growth of evil is actually their escape from a sinful world into Heaven. The more evil, the sooner their escape. For most of the rest, liberal interventionists and hegemonic neoconservatives have taught that America is exceptional and indispensable, so how can anything go wrong.

Combine these awareness-blockers with the fact that uncomfortable truths are a bad news turnoff, and that censorship is being established as a national security matter with the argument that it makes us safe and “protects democracy.” Consequently, the criminalization of truth is rushing ahead. Even the word “truth” is slated to become a hate word that cannot be spoken. Any information that you have saved that helps you to understand the tyranny that is engulfing us should be stored in thumb drives and not in the cloud as all information undermining of the “consensus-building institutions” will be consigned to the memory hole. [..] Note: The Atlantic Council, one of the main anti-democratic “consensus-building (false narrative) organizations,” is possibly associated with the Burisma/Hunter Biden scandal.

Burisma, a Ukrainian company, put Hunter Biden on its board and paid him large sums of money for his father’s protection against prosecution of the company by Ukrainian authorities. US Vice President Biden actually admitted on TV, indeed he was proud of it, that he used billions of dollars in US taxpayers money to threaten Ukraine to withhold the US aid unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor, an offer Ukraine could not refuse. Atlantic Council board members Sally Painter is under investigation by the US Justice (sic) Department for illegal lobbying on behalf of Burisma. She and former Atlantic Council board member Karen Tramontano created a partnership between the Atlantic Council and Burisma. Burisma contributed $300,000 to the Atlantic Council. Perhaps it was the purchase price for Burisma officials to speak at Atlantic Council forums and for prestigious Atlantic Council members to speak at a Burisma conference in Ukraine in 2018. All of this to show American protection of the company to Ukrainian prosecutorial authorities.

In 2021 the United Arab Emirates Embassy donated more than $1 million to the Atlantic Council, and the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs added another $100,00-250,000. This might have been the purchase price for the Atlantic Council to use its influence to have the UN choose the UAE for the location of its 2023 climate change conference. Apparently, the Atlantic Council did not make the required or proper disclosures of the UAE’s donations. The Atlantic Council, a principal member of the anti-democratic censorship industry is supported by the hapless, unaware American taxpayers by grants of taxpayer’s money from the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy and by the US Agency for International Development. Thus, it is clear that “our” government in Washington is financing the replacement of American Democracy subject to the will of the people with the government’s protection of the elite institutions that have changed the definition of democracy to mean the service of their agendas.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Elon law
https://twitter.com/i/status/1759499446294020460

 

 

 

 

Deep sleep

 

 

 

 

Covers
https://twitter.com/i/status/1759649058069623161

 

 


I said no pictures!

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 15 2024

Feb 152024
 
 February 15, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  53 Responses »


Jean-Michel Basquiat Irony of the Negro Policeman 1981

 

• US Spies Behind ‘Russiagate’ Conspiracy (RT)
• Part 2: US Government Hides Documents That Incriminate Intel Community (Public)
• Biden’s Dual ‘Big Guy’, Memory Scandals Will End His Presidency (Sp.)
• Biden Must Be Removed – West Virginia AG (Sp.)
• Biden Associates Testify on the Influence Peddling of President, Family (Turley)
• Speaker Requested Meeting With Biden About Border, White House Rejected (Sp.)
• Supreme Court Orders Special Counsel To Respond To Trump Immunity Appeal (ZH)
• 2024: The Year America Ceases to Exist (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Tucker Carlson ‘Is Dangerous’ – Putin (RT)
• Old Sick Men Control US Nuclear Chain Of Command – Moscow (RT)
• The World’s Gyre (Alastair Crooke)
• Russia and Hamas: a Strategic Alliance Of Convenience (Sweidan)
• Houthis Claim to Have Stopped Ship Traffic to Israeli Ports (Sp.)
• ‘No One Left to Have Children’ (Sp.)
• West Used Ukraine as ‘Guinea Pig for Human Testing’ After 2014 Coup (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ron Paul

 

 

 

 

Dugin Pepe
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757773972618223949

 

 

Rickards gold

 

 


Kim Dotcom: Zelenskyy released a helpful guide on who to follow if you want to learn the truth about the failing US proxy war in Ukraine. He calls it pro-Russian disinformation but he’s just angry that these experts constantly reveal the truth about how badly Ukraine and the West are losing.

 

 

Elon

 

 

 

 

This is an existential threat to the US. If this cannot be solved according to the law(s), the Union will dissolve.

Start with Obama, he is behind it all. But he hardly gets mentioned.

• US Spies Behind ‘Russiagate’ Conspiracy (RT)

The US intelligence community inappropriately used foreign allies to target Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign to set up the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy ahead of the 2016 election, according to a trio of investigative journalists. Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag – of ‘Twitter Files’ fame – published the first part of an investigation on Tuesday, in which they claim the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ were operationalized against Trump staffers, citing anonymous sources close to the House Intelligence Committee. According to their report, President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had sent America’s partners – the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – a list of 26 Trump associates to target with data collection, misinformation and manipulation. The Russiagate conspiracy involved multiple failures across western media networks to critically assess US intelligence claims that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.

A 2018 Pulitzer prize was awarded to Washington Post and New York Times journalists for their reporting on what was later to exposed as a false story. “They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” said a committee source. “They were sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up,” the journalists claim. Officially, the FBI only started looking into the Trump campaign that summer, after an Australian diplomat reportedly overheard an aide mention Russia. If confirmed, these findings would demonstrate that the US intelligence community had worked for months before that to set up just such a pretext. In a statement to the investigative journalists, the FBI said it had made “missteps” in the 2016 and 2017 investigation of the Trump campaign, but has since implemented reforms to prevent it from happening again.

“The allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense,” a spokesman for the British surveillance agency said. “They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.” Shellenberger, Taibbi and Gutentag said they had never asked the GCHQ about “wiretapping.” According to Shellenberger, there is a “10-inch binder” containing previously unknown documents about the intelligence community’s surveillance of the Trump campaign. The 45th US president had ordered these documents declassified, but they went missing instead. In a Fox News appearance on Tuesday evening, Shellenberger suggested the FBI’s August 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort may have been related to the missing binder.

After the US intelligence community created a pretext for investigating Trump for ‘ties to Russia,’ they spied on his campaign – and then his presidency – using a falsely obtained FISA warrant. The warrant was based on the ‘Steele dossier,’ a file compiled by a British spy in the pay of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, through several intermediaries. The FBI knew the dossier was false as early as January 2017, but continued using the FISA warrant for almost a year thereafter. The FBI lawyer who altered evidence to obtain the warrant, Kevin Clinesmith, ended up sentenced to probation and his law license has since been restored.

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“He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate..”

• Part 2: US Government Hides Documents That Incriminate Intel Community (Public)

Part 2: U.S. Government Is Hiding Documents That Incriminate Intelligence Community For Illegal Spying And Election Interference, Say Sources. Authored by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag via Public substack,

Former CIA Director Gina Haspel blocked the release of “binder” with evidence that may identify her role in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Last December 15th, as Americans decorated trees, lit Menorahs, and prepared to tune out for winter holidays, CNN ran an extraordinary article titled, “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump.” Co-authored by Natasha Bertrand, the gargantuan expose claimed a mysterious “binder” of “highly classified information related to Russian election interference” went “missing” in the chaotic waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2021, raising concerns that some of America’s most “closely guarded national security secrets… could be exposed.” CNN and its intelligence sources meant “exposure” in a bad way. Sources have told Public and Racket, however, that the secrets officials worry might be “exposed” are ones that would implicate them in widespread abuses of intelligence authority dating back to the 2015-2016 election season.

“I would call [the binder] Trump’s insurance policy,” said someone knowledgeable about the case. “He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate. Transgressions range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian “influence activities.” The CNN report claimed intelligence officials were concerned about the disclosure of “sources and methods that informed the U.S. government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.” They should be concerned.

The story of how a team “hand-picked” by CIA Director John Brennan relied on “cooked intelligence” to craft that January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment is the subject of tomorrow’s story, the last in this three-part series. Corruption, not tradecraft, is what officials are desperate to keep secret. The ”missing binder” story has several variants. Sources offer differing answers on the question of whether anything of consequence is missing. They give mixed accounts of Trump’s frantic last efforts to declassify Russia-related material. But nearly everyone Public and Racket spoke to agreed that the tale obscured a broader and more important story. Dating back to the release of the so-called “Nunes memo” in 2018 exposing the corruption of the FISA application process, senior intelligence officials, including Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, have repeatedly blocked attempts to declassify information about the Trump-Russia investigation.

They had good reason to obstruct the release of these documents. The documents in question are said to contain information about the legal justification for those investigations, or more specifically, the lack of justification, among other things. Should more of that information be made public, it might implicate a long list of officials in serious abuses. Questions like these may be answered if the 10-inch thick binder of sensitive documents about the origins of the Russia probe is made public. Fear for reputations and careers, not national security, is what has intelligence officials panicked. [..] Investigators wanted to declassify their findings before Trump left office, but the CIA “would not cooperate.” Investigators, a source told Public and Racket, “created a binder that blew up the assessment but couldn’t get it out because the CIA controlled it.”

Gorka

Obama

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“It’s election interference from one side that has been covered up and promoted as some kind of search for justice,” Kavanaugh asserted. “Now you have that side actually trying to prevent the same candidate […] from running again, and they get away with it.”

• Biden’s Dual ‘Big Guy’, Memory Scandals Will End His Presidency (Sp.)

On Tuesday, Hunter Biden’s ex-business associate Tony Bobulinski testified to Congress that US President Joe Biden is “the Big Guy” who was mentioned in an email that discussed “remuneration packages” for six people as part of a business deal with a Chinese energy company. The email included a line that said “10 held by H for the big guy?” According to US media, citing people familiar with the testimony, Bobulinski also said that he “personally met” Joe Biden in 2017 during the Milken Conference, just days before the email was sent. It has long been suspected that President Biden was “the big guy” referred to in the email, but Bobulinski’s testimony adds further evidence to back up that presumption. The elder Biden has repeatedly insisted that he did not discuss business with his son or his associates.

“It’s hard to fathom who the big guy could be but Joe Biden. So we’ve known about this,” independent journalist Dr. Jim Kavanaugh told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Wednesday. “[Bobulinski] confirms that the big guy is Biden, which means […] [Joe] Biden was getting paid from his son’s activities with [these Chinese businesses].” This, combined with the President’s cognitive problems that have become “impossible to deny” will cause him to step aside before this November’s Presidential elections. “He’s not going to be the Democratic nominee,” Kavanaugh asserted, adding that the only question left is “How much longer is he going to last as president?” Kavanaugh noted that Bobulinski’s testimony validates the IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who claimed that politics caused the FBI to slowwalk the investigation into Hunter Biden. “It’s a mess,” he said. “But I don’t know where the Democrats think they can go with this, and how they think they can hang on.”

The election season with Biden will be a “fun ride” Kavanaugh said “trying to keep Biden out of the public spotlight enough so he won’t make a fool of himself, but in the public spotlight enough to make it seem like he’s still running the show,” adding that all the while Democratic leadership will be “trying to figure out what they’re going to go and with whom they’re going to replace him with.” Kavanaugh also discussed reports from independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger that the CIA allegedly used foreign intelligence agencies to illegally spy on people working for the Donald Trump 2016 Presidential campaign. “It’s election interference from one side that has been covered up and promoted as some kind of search for justice,” Kavanaugh asserted. “Now you have that side actually trying to prevent the same candidate […] from running again, and they get away with it.”

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“..A recent poll by NBC revealed that only 28% of registered voters have a positive opinion of Harris..”

• Biden Must Be Removed – West Virginia AG (Sp.)

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has called on US Vice President Kamala Harris to declare Joe Biden physically unable to perform his duties as president. The demand was issued in a letter sent to Harris on Tuesday. Last week, a report by US Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hur described the 81-year-old president as an “elderly man with poor memory,” although he advised against prosecuting Biden over the mishandling of classified documents. Morrisey has now called on Harris to invoke the 25th Amendment against Biden and take over his role, arguing that Hur’s report “paints a clear picture of a President who is not up for the job” and stressing that his “cognitive decline is of great concern to Americans, especially during these times that our nation is falling crisis after crisis both here and abroad.”

“We need a president who is mentally fit,” the attorney general wrote, noting that over the past few months alone, Biden has repeatedly mixed up world leaders and political figures and has appeared to have difficulty speaking on basic issues. The 25th Amendment, adopted in 1965 following the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy, clarifies the succession in the event of the US leader’s sudden death or resignation, and allows the vice president to assume their responsibilities. Under Section 4 of the amendment, the vice president and the cabinet are also allowed to remove the president if he is deemed physically incapable of performing his duties but refuses to leave office. That power has thus far never been used.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Monday, Harris stated she is “ready to serve” and replace Biden if necessary, adding that she does not need to convince anyone of her ability to lead the country. A recent poll by NBC revealed that only 28% of registered voters have a positive opinion of Harris, compared to 53% with a negative view. Biden has vehemently denied concerns over his mental and physical health, and issued an angry rebuke of Hur’s description of him. “I am an elderly man and I know what I am doing,” Biden insisted at a press conference last week. Shortly afterwards during the same conference, he confused Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with the leader of Mexico. The president’s age has become a major concern among voters ahead of this year’s presidential election. According to ABC News/Ipsos poll published on Monday, as many as 86% of US voters believe that Biden is too elderly to serve another term in office.

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“Neither Hunter nor James Biden have demonstrated any particular skill beyond an absence of inhibition and an abundance of appetite. What they have is “an interesting name,” and in Washington, that is enough.”

• Biden Associates Testify on the Influence Peddling of President, Family (Turley)

“An interesting name.” Those three words by Biden family associate Rob Walker could well be the epitaph for Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden. Walker was explaining why Hunter was repeatedly pushed forward as the face of their pitches to the Chinese and other countries. In his interview with House investigators, Walker struggled to protect President Biden while confirming critical aspects of earlier testimony from associates such as Devon Archer that they were selling the “Biden brand.” That brand included Uncle James Biden, whom Walker described as “a snake.” Walker and his associates had a letter to the Chinese come from Hunter because that is what he thought the Chinese expected. He admitted that the Chinese were led to believe that they all worked for Hunter Biden. After all, he “had an interesting last name that would probably get people in the door.”

That “interesting name” is how a Beltway bandit avoids saying “influence peddler.” You are peddling the name — an effort that is reinforced when you repeatedly produce Joe Biden on speakerphone or he drops by lunches. It’s also the same name dropped when Hunter wanted to make sure the Chinese paid up, as revealed in the infamous WhatsApp message: “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

Yet whenever questions turned to the most incriminating messages, Walker shrugged. When asked about a reference to “the big guy” receiving 10% of a deal (an apparent reference to Joe Biden), Walker declined to say who the big guy was. When he was asked about Hunter’s repeated references to his father and calling his father “my chairman,” Walker insisted that “I don’t think that Hunter was healthy at the time.” Likewise, when Hunter says his father “vetoed the deal” on a proposed SinoHawk deal structure, Walker again said Hunter was not well. So Hunter was a legitimate businessman “with an interesting name” all the way up to the point that he made admissions on alleged influence peddling. He was then interesting but unhealthy.

Walker repeatedly emphasized that Joe Biden was not a direct part of these deals. While that is a political defense, however, it is not a legal one. As I have previously written, federal courts have long treated payments to family members as evidence of bribery and corruption. Indeed, I was lead counsel in the last judicial impeachment trial in the Senate, when Democratic senators voted to convict a judge on payments and gifts going to the children of a judge. Neither Hunter nor James Biden have demonstrated any particular skill beyond an absence of inhibition and an abundance of appetite. What they have is “an interesting name,” and in Washington, that is enough.

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“.. Johnson said he will continue to insist on a meeting, adding that it is a “problem” if the Speaker of the House cannot sit down with the president.”

• Speaker Requested Meeting With Biden About Border, White House Rejected (Sp.)

US House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday that he has requested a meeting with President Joe Biden about border security, but that the White House has rejected his request. “I’ve been requesting a meeting with the president for weeks now, a month. I’ve been asking to sit down with the president to talk about the border and talk about national security, and that meeting has not been granted,” Johnson said during a press conference. Johnson said he will continue to insist on a meeting, adding that it is a “problem” if the Speaker of the House cannot sit down with the president.

House Republicans will insist on addressing the United States’ border security before sending aid to foreign countries, Johnson said. Earlier this week, Johnson said that he has no plans to bring a $95 billion supplemental funding bill passed by the US Senate to the House floor. The bill provides approximately $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. However, a congressional source told Sputnik on Tuesday that House lawmakers may divide the legislation into separate portions in an effort to pass the measures.

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“..in 1982, the Supreme Court held in Nixon vs. Fitzgerald that the president has “absolute immunity” from civil liability which extends to the “outer perimeter” of his official duties..”

• Supreme Court Orders Special Counsel To Respond To Trump Immunity Appeal (ZH)

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered the Department of Justice to respond to former President Trump’s claim that he has presidential immunity in his ongoing Jan. 6 election case in Washington D.C. The move comes after the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit rejected Trump’s attempt to overturn Judge Tanya Chutkan’s refusal to dismiss the case based on Trump’s immunity claim – and less than a week after the Supreme Court heard Trump’s appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled that he was disqualified from appearing on the state’s ballot. Roberts gave Special Counsel Jack Smith until Feb. 20 to respond, pointing to a broader urgency for the Court to address relatively untested legal issues that could have a significant impact on the 2024 presidential election.

“[A] panel of the D.C. Circuit has, in an extraordinarily fast manner, issued a decision on President Trump’s claim of immunity and ordered the mandate returned to the district court to proceed with President Trump’s criminal trial in four business days, unless this Court intervenes (as it should),” reads Trump’s Feb. 12 filing, requesting that the appellate court’s decision be stayed. Jack Smith, meanwhile, has asked the Supreme Court to skip appellate proceedings and fast-track the case, claiming that “only” the Supreme Court could “definitively resolve” the immunity claims, The Epoch Times reports. President Trump is asking for the Supreme Court to halt the appellate decision because it incorrectly ruled that presidential immunity didn’t apply to Mr. Smith’s prosecution of him.

His attorney, D. John Sauer, had argued in January that the Constitution required presidents first face impeachment and trial by Congress before they could be criminally prosecuted within Article III courts. A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit unanimously rejected his arguments, stating that” ‘[c]oncerns of public policy, especially as illuminated by our history and the structure of our government’ compel the rejection of his claim of immunity in this case.” The judges also ruled that “any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

The issue of presidential immunity is a relatively untested area of law – however in 1982, the Supreme Court held in Nixon vs. Fitzgerald that the president has “absolute immunity” from civil liability which extends to the “outer perimeter” of his official duties. The appellate court, however, held that Trump exceeded these bounds. “Former President Trump’s claimed immunity would have us extend the framework for Presidential civil immunity to criminal cases and decide for the first time that a former President is categorically immune from federal criminal prosecution for any act conceivably within the outer perimeter of his executive responsibility,” reads the lower court’s opinion.

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“..a border conflict and possible “civil war” threat that justifies martial law and the suspension of the presidential election..”

• 2024: The Year America Ceases to Exist (Paul Craig Roberts)

In 234 years of American history, no president has been criminally prosecuted. The entire world knows that the felony and civil charges against Trump are fabricated and concocted. It is obvious that the Democrat Party uses law as a weapon against political opponents just as Stalin did. Democrats are the worst and most dangerous enemy the Constitution and American citizens have ever had. The Democrats , focused on maintaining and expanding their one-party state, have a problem. Biden’s own Justice (sic) Department has ruled Biden mentally unfit to stand trial for compromising US security by having possession of unauthorized national security documents and leaving US national security documents in unsecured locations. So how can Biden be allowed to run for president if he is mentally incompetent to stand for trial for a felony because of mental incapacity?

As I have written on this website and said in interviews, one way out for the Democrats, America’s worst enemies who are legitimizing sexual perversion, maintaining open borders so Americans can be over-run with taxpayer supported immigrant-invaders, and maintaining hostility toward Russia, China, and Iran, thus inviting America’s destruction, is to replace Biden with Hillary. The other way, and perhaps both will be used together, is for the White House puppet of the ruling elite to orchestrate with the World Economic Forum member, the Governor of Texas, a border conflict and possible “civil war” threat that justifies martial law and the suspension of the presidential election. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that both outcomes are already being set in place. Everywhere in the white Western world we see that the white governments discriminate against white citizens in favor of the Ukrainian refugees and third world immigrant invaders.

I learned today that the living standard in Ireland of the Ukrainian refugees and immigrant-invaders, paid for by the Irish people is higher than the average living standard of Irish citizens. Irish farmers are faced with a wipeout of their assets as the government intends to destroy one million sheep and 200,000 cows to please the global warming agenda. Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is not the only genocide being committed today. The white governments of the Western countries are committing genocide against their own white citizens. The United States, Europe, Canada have open borders not for white people but for people of color who are outside the Western tradition. Try bringing in a European girlfriend, and you will see that immigration is not for white people. Every Western government is busy at work erasing white civilization. These governments are our deadly enemies. But the indoctrinated populace will never see it.

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“While the US has tried to accuse Assange of revealing state secrets, which is more difficult to pin on Carlson, “anything is possible in today’s US, Putin said..”

• Tucker Carlson ‘Is Dangerous’ – Putin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted on Wednesday that X host Tucker Carlson caught him by surprise during their interview last week. The final interview was two hours long and has been seen by hundreds of millions of people. Before it, Carlson was criticized for speaking to Putin at all – and afterwards, for not asking the Russian president certain things. “I think your Carlson – I say yours, since he’s a member of your profession – is a dangerous man,” Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin on the sidelines of the Future Technologies Forum in Moscow. “I thought he would be aggressive, ask me sharp questions. I was not just ready for that, I wanted that, so I could give equally sharp answers,” Putin explained. “But he chose a different tactic.” Carlson ended up patiently sitting through Putin’s lengthy digression into history and “did not give me an occasion to do something I had prepared for,” Putin said.

“Frankly speaking, I did not get the full satisfaction from this interview.” Commenting on reactions to the interview from the West, Putin said it was a good thing that the leaders there watched and listened to what he had to say – but bad that they felt the need to twist his words. Asked if Carlson could face reprisals in the West, the Russian president pointed out that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange “still sits” in a British prison. While the US has tried to accuse Assange of revealing state secrets, which is more difficult to pin on Carlson, “anything is possible in today’s US,” Putin said. While this kind of persecution would certainly be a bad thing for Carlson himself, it would be good for the world, because it would reveal the true face of the “liberal-democratic dictatorship” embodied by the ruling class in the US, the president concluded.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1758007262139048402

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“..diminished faculties in advancing age.”

• Old Sick Men Control US Nuclear Chain Of Command – Moscow (RT)

A high-ranking official in Russia’s Security Council has voiced alarm over the risk of a nuclear “catastrophe” arising from the Pentagon chief’s health problems and the declining faculties of US President Joe Biden, warning of a possible “management mistake” by America’s leadership. Speaking to the Izvestiya newspaper for an interview published on Wednesday, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Mikhail Popov said Washington’s political instability could trigger an accidental escalation. ”In the overall difficult and nervous internal political situation in the US that has emerged recently, the price of a management mistake, committed by the national leaders, either deliberately or involuntarily, has increased significantly,” he said. “And there won’t be much distance to a global catastrophe.”

Popov stressed that he was not referring to “a banana republic,” but rather “a state that has nuclear weapons and constantly claims to be the world hegemon.” He added that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s cancer diagnosis and Biden’s old age “have raised questions about the global security system” and the US chain of command, asking “How is the decision to use nuclear weapons generally made in the United States?” “The secretary of defense is not there, and no one knows where he is or who is replacing him. The press writes that some of his responsibilities were assigned to Deputy Minister Kathleen Hicks. But she was on vacation in Puerto Rico at the time,” he said. The official went on to observe an episode during the Cold War, when a US Air Force major was dismissed for questioning how he could know whether a nuclear launch order “came from a sane president,” as the commander in chief is responsible for employing America’s nuclear arsenal.

Austin’s prostate cancer diagnosis came as a surprise not only to the US public, but to Biden himself, with the Pentagon chief acknowledging that his team did not inform the White House of the news. He has since been re-hospitalized with a bladder issue, for which he was reportedly treated with undisclosed “non-surgical procedures.” As the oldest president in US history at 81, Biden’s fitness is among the most pressing issues for American voters as they look ahead to the 2024 election. In a recent NBC News poll, 76% of respondents voiced major or moderate concerns over the president’s “mental and physical health,” while even special counsel Robert Hur – who was tapped to probe alleged mishandling of classified documents by Biden – concluded that the president has “diminished faculties in advancing age.”

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“..How to maintain special rights for Jews on territory in which there is an approximately equal number of non-Jews?”

• The World’s Gyre (Alastair Crooke)

The wrongheadedness of U.S. policy is astonishing – and now has claimed the most central tenet in the ‘Biden strategy’ for resolving the crisis in Gaza. The ‘dangle’ of Saudi normalisation with Israel was viewed in the West as the pivot – around which Netanyahu would either be forced to give up on his maximalist security control from the River to the Sea mantra, or see himself pushed aside by a rival for whom the ‘normalisation bait’ held the allure of likely victory in the next Israeli elections. Biden’s spokesperson was flagrant in this respect: “[We] … are having discussions with Israel and Saudi Arabia … about trying to move forward with a normalization arrangement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. So those discussions are ongoing as well. We certainly received positive feedback from both sides that they’re willing to continue to have those discussions”.

The Saudi Government – possibly angry at the U.S. recourse to such deceptive language – duly kicked the plank out from beneath the Biden platform: It issued a written statement confirming unequivocally that: “there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops – and all Israeli occupation forces are withdraw from the Gaza Strip”. The Kingdom stands by the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, in other words. Of course, no Israeli could campaign on that platform in Israeli elections! Recall how Tom Friedman set out how the ‘Biden Doctrine’ was supposed to fit together as a interlinked whole: First, through taking a “strong and resolute stand on Iran” the U.S. would signal to “our Arab and Muslim allies, that it needs to take on Iran in a more aggressive manner … that we can no longer allow Iran to try to drive us out of the region; Israel into extinction and our Arab allies into intimidation by acting through proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq — while Tehran blithely sits back and pays no price”.

The second strand was the Saudi dangle that would inevitably pave the path into the (third) element which was the “building of a credible legitimate Palestinian Authority as … a good neighbour to Israel …”. This “bold U.S. commitment to a Palestinian state would give us [Team Biden] legitimacy to act against Iran”, Friedman foresaw. Let us be plain: this trifecta of policies, rather than gel into a single doctrine, are falling like dominoes. Their collapse owes to one thing: The original decision to back Israel’s use of overwhelming violence across Gaza’s civil society – ostensibly to defeat Hamas. It has turned the region and much of the World against the U.S. and Europe. How did this happen? Because nothing changed by way of U.S. policies. It was the same old western bromides from decades ago: financial threats, bombing and violence. And the insistence on one mandatory ‘stand with Israel’ narrative (with no discussion). The rest of the world has grown tired of it; even defiant towards it.

So to put it bluntly: Israel has now come face-to-face with the (self-destructive) inconsistency within Zionism: How to maintain special rights for Jews on territory in which there is an approximately equal number of non-Jews? The old answer has been discredited. The Israeli Right argues that Israel then must go for broke: All or nothing. Take the risk of wider war (in which Israel, may or may not, be ‘victorious’); tell Arabs to move elsewhere; or abandon Zionism and themselves move on. The Biden Administration, rather than help Israel look truth in the eye, has discarded the task of obliging Israel to face up to the contradictions in Zionism, in favour of restoring the broken status quo ante. Some 75 years after the founding of the Israeli state, as former Israeli negotiator, Daniel Levy, has. noted: ‘[We are back to] “the “banal debate” between the U.S. and Israel over “whether the bantustan shall be repackaged and marketed as a ‘state’”. Could it have been different? Probably not. The reaction comes from deep in Biden’s nature.

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“The Russian leadership considers the current conflict to be as much Washington’s battle as Tel Aviv’s..”

• Russia and Hamas: a Strategic Alliance Of Convenience (Sweidan)

Hamas has asked Moscow to act as guarantor to a Gaza ceasefire. Growing Russian ties with West Asia’s resistance actors should be no surprise; within the context of the global power standoff, they share common enemies. In the past few years, Russia’s expanding ties with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas have contributed to the growing list of issues that muddy relations between Moscow and Tel Aviv. After Hamas’ 27 October visit to Moscow following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared the trip “sends a message of legitimizing terrorism against the Israelis.” Yet Hamas officials have continued to flock to the Russian capital, most recently in late January. Since the onset of Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza, Russia’s official stance has been closer to the Palestinian position, evident by Moscow’s various UN Security Council activities: calling for a ceasefire, statements by Russian officials criticizing Israeli criminality, repeat meetings with Hamas in Moscow, and the country’s official media’s focus on human rights violation in the Gaza Strip.

Despite the long-term collaborative nature of Russo-Israeli relations, the Ukraine war has rejigged Moscow’s geopolitical calculations significantly. Today, Russia views the Gaza war and its regional implications from the perspective of its competition with the US and, therefore, considers Israel a critical tool of American influence in West Asia. The Russian leadership considers the current conflict to be as much Washington’s battle as Tel Aviv’s – a weakened Israel would mean the further disintegration of US power projection from the Levant to the Persian Gulf, a strategic Russian objective. Although Tel Aviv and Moscow still retain common interests of value to both, it is the US–Russian strategic competition that currently holds the most sway over the Kremlin’s decision-making.

This can be seen in a flurry of harshly worded Russian statements criticizing Washington’s role in prolonging and exacerbating the Gaza war. Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced the sentiments of most West Asians when he declared: “Many people would agree that this is a vivid example of the failure of US policy in the Middle East.” His Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov went the extra mile: The United States bears primary responsibility for this dramatic and dangerous crisis, since it has sought for many years to monopolize the settlement process and ignore relevant Security Council resolutions, and has now obstructed efforts to reach an appropriate solution.

There is no doubt that the events of the past two years in Ukraine played a major role in calibrating the Russian response to Gaza. During his recent interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, Putin spent an inordinate amount of time unraveling the historical context behind Ukraine’s existence as a state, before boldly declaring: “Ukraine is an artificial state created at Stalin’s will and did not exist before 1922.” Of course, the Russian president understands that his invocation of Ukraine’s weak historical justification for statehood allows him to adopt the same context-rich approach when discussing protracted conflicts in other regions. His history-based formula for tackling the root of conflict applies equally to the establishment of the Israeli state against the objections of Palestinians and their neighboring nations, which likely will play a role in Putin’s position on how to move forward with the Palestine–Israel problem.

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“It is a great victory and a real achievement, as well as proof of the effectiveness of Yemen’s maritime operations..”

• Houthis Claim to Have Stopped Ship Traffic to Israeli Ports (Sp.)

Naval forces of the Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, have prevented the passage through the Gulf of Aden of all ships that have been heading to Israeli ports recently, the movement’s leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said on Tuesday. “Operations of Yemen’s naval forces have resulted in a great victory – a complete halt to the passage of Israeli-affiliated ships to Israeli ports. During these weeks, not a single ship related to the Israeli enemy has been able to pass through the Gulf of Aden. It is a great victory and a real achievement, as well as proof of the effectiveness of Yemen’s maritime operations,” the leader said in a video message aired by the Al-Masirah broadcaster.

The Houthi movement, which controls large parts of northern and western Yemen, vowed in November 2023 to attack any ships associated with Israel until it halts military actions in the Gaza Strip. This led US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to announce the creation of a multinational operation to secure navigation in the Red Sea. US and UK forces later launched major strikes against Houthi positions in a bid to degrade the rebels’ ability to target commercial vessels.

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“Syrsky […] is stripping troops from every other front, pulling the very last strategic reserves from the country..”

• ‘No One Left to Have Children’ (Sp.)

Ukraine cannot afford to lose more young people to the frontlines, otherwise, there won’t be enough to have children and replenish the population, international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Tuesday. While discussing the state of the Ukrainian frontline and the mass conscription law being considered by the country’s Parliament, Sleboda explained that Ukraine already had a declining population before NATO’s proxy war launched in the country. “Once you got into the ’90s and particularly the mid-’90s, people were not having children. The result of that is a demographic narrowing at the lower age group,” Sleboda explained. “There are four times as many people in the 35 to 45 age bracket, [and more in] the 45 to 55 age bracket, than in the 18 to 30 age bracket,” the analyst clarified.

There are roughly 3.5 times more Ukrainians in the 35-55 age groups combined than the 18-30 age group and 2.3 times more in the 35-45 group alone, according to the CIA data. Additionally, the number of 18 and 19-year-olds were estimated as 2/5 of the 15-19 group in that calculation. “[Ukraine] can literally not afford to lose any more young people because then there will be no one left to have children,” Sleboda stated. “And I hate to tell you, large numbers of their women went to Europe and are going to have European babies and are not coming back,” he noted, adding that it was “a bit distasteful” but “true.”

Nonetheless, Ukraine has to go forward with the mass conscription plan if it wants to replace its massive losses, particularly in Avdeyevka, according to the analyst. “However bad you think [Avdeyevka] is, it’s much worse,” Sleboda emphasized, saying that newly-appointed Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Alexander Syrsky is repeating Ukraine’s failed strategy in Artemovsk (Bakhmut) and is doubling down on the increasingly encircled city. “Syrsky […] is stripping troops from every other front, pulling the very last strategic reserves from the country […] and is sending them into Avdeyevka, which means it’s not just about keeping the troops that are there, it is about throwing, at least I would say 10,000, reinforcements into the situation.

Sleboda noted that even without the latest conscription law being adopted, Ukraine is already forcing men to the front, focusing on the villages in Western Ukraine. “The conscription has focused on small villages rather than Kiev and other big cities to try to limit the potential for political protests,” he explained. “That is why you’re starting to see videos now of locals, even in West Ukraine, trying to fight in the streets [against] the conscription officials.” Earlier this week, videos appeared on Telegram showing villagers in a town in the Odessa region fighting against conscription officers.

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Biolabs.

• West Used Ukraine as ‘Guinea Pig for Human Testing’ After 2014 Coup (Sp.)

Sputnik has obtained a trove of documents indicating that rheumatological drugs had been allegedly tested for several years on psychiatric patients of a hospital in the city of Mariupol at the request of major Western pharmaceutical corporations and with the assistance of Ukrainian officials. The documents contain information pertaining to such companies as Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Celltrion, Novatris International AG, Merck KGaA, and a branch of Samsung that produces medical equipment. The tests were carried out while the Kiev regime held Mariupol until May 2022, when Russia took over the city. Patients of the Mariupol hospital’s psychiatric ward were most likely used as vulnerable “guinea pigs” in experiments that would not have been permitted in the countries where these pharmaceutical firms are located, William Jones, a former White House correspondent for Executive Intelligence Review and a non-resident fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, told Sputnik.

“It has generally been a practice to use some of the developing countries which don’t have such rigorous controls for these types of experiments,” Jones noted, hinting at Ukraine. After the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, the country “effectively became a ‘guinea pig’ for whatever experiments the forces of the Western elites had in store for them, as we see most dramatically in the way in which the ‘nation’ of Ukraine is being whittled down to nothing for the sake of NATO’s surrogate war against Russia,” according to the expert. He also touched upon the issue of “the extensive network of biological labs that have been set up in Ukraine over the twenty years, largely with the help, and no doubt at the behest, of the United States,” something that Jones recalled had repeatedly been pointed out by Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of the biological and chemical warfare department of the Russian Defense Ministry.

“Given the present situation in Ukraine with the growing understanding that Ukraine – or NATO – cannot ‘win’ this conflict using conventional weapons, as well as the determination of NATO not to accept a peaceful resolution unless Russia is soundly defeated, it could well lead to the utilization of some form of biological warfare on the part of NATO to ‘even the playing field’,” Jones warned. In the spring of 2022, Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops brought to light the alarming scope of US military-biological activities taking place at numerous locations in Ukraine. These investigations revealed the collaboration between Washington and Kiev in researching and handling various highly dangerous pathogens. Subsequently, several of these findings have been independently corroborated.

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Assange

 

 

Hero

 

 

Sledding
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757732842862211297

 

 

Dragonfly

 

 

Boop
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757800859466191280

 

 

Bird spikes

 

 

Monkey parrot

 

 

Live action Simpsons

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 10 2024

Feb 102024
 
 February 10, 2024  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  66 Responses »


Edward Hopper Christmas card 1928

 

• Eventful Events (James Howard Kunstler)
• Biden’s Angry Press Conference Made Hur’s Memory Report Infinitely Worse (Sp.)
• Putin Interview May Help Stop West From Committing Suicide – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• Tucker-Putin Interview to Erode Funding Crusade for US in Ukraine (Sp.)
• Putin Interview Helps Americans Understand Ukraine Conflict – Kwiatkowski (Sp.)
• The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More Ukrainians (Jeffrey Sachs)
• Ukraine’s Top General Fired For Disobeying US – Politico (RT)
• Nuland Told Zelensky Not To Fire Top General – The Times (RT)
• Ukraine’s New Commander-in-chief Is An Unpopular ‘Butcher’ – Politico (RT)
• General Syrsky, Hero of Kiev or Butcher of Bakhmut? (Sp.)
• Houthis Say All Warships Must Leave Red Sea (Sp.)
• Any Gaza Deal Could Break Netanyahu’s Coalition (Harb)
• German Foreign Minister’s Grandfather Was ‘Ardent Nazi’ – Bild (RT)
• The “Unassailable” Theory Faces a Potential Unanimous Rejection (Turley)
• Biden’s Eulogy Will Be ‘Journalism RIP’. How He Destroyed the 4th Estate (Jay)

 

 

 

 

Tenney
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756024349239246939

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1755830142910566427

https://twitter.com/i/status/1756011968115220878

 

 

Obama3rd

 

 

 

 

RFK Biden

 

 

Mamet
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755767014876926374

 

 

 

 

“Mr. Biden’s charade of running for reelection must come to an end. What will the Democratic party do about that?”

• Eventful Events (James Howard Kunstler)

This Friday morning, the USA is fraught with events unspooling. As I write, with dawn just breaking, there is almost zero opinion yet formed about these troubling matters on the vast Internet — but it will probably come in hot-and-heavy as the day ticks on. If Mr. Biden is truly mentally incompetent, as established more-or-less legally by Special Counsel Hur, then there is the obvious remedy of the 25th amendment — removal of a president for reason of disability. A debate over this would seem unavoidable now. The question also implies that Mr. Biden’s charade of running for reelection must come to an end. What will the Democratic party do about that?

A not inconsiderable part of our Ukraine problem has been that our chief executive was for years engaged in bribery and money-laundering misadventures there, for which there is abundant and powerful evidence, meaning he may have had very personal interests in keeping that country disordered — and sending billions of dollars there, some of it surely embezzled among the Zelensky government. You’d have to also be aware that the bag-man in those operations, the President’s son, Hunter, might well have misbehaved with drugs and prostitutes on his many trips to Ukraine as a board member of Burisma. Hunter’s self-compiled archive of round-the-world drug-fueled porn recordings on the laptop that (the FBI confirmed recently) was unquestionably his own, suggests that the Ukraine authorities may have their own recordings of him behaving similarly, or worse, and are using them to blackmail “President Joe Biden.”

We will also learn the judgment, probably with remarkable dispatch, of the Supreme Court in the matter of Colorado kicking Donald Trump off the election ballot. Meanwhile, the case against Mr. Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, is falling apart in DA Fani Willis’s pathetically comical scandal, now with a new “love nest” twist (paid for with public money). And Judge Engoron and AG Letitia James might be weighing the fates of their reputations in the shabbily-conducted and bogus real estate valuation fraud case against Mr. Trump, which will eventually be vivisected at some level of appeal. The old saying remains powerful: There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.

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“If Obama came out and said, ‘I’ve had enough. I’ve seen enough. This has to stop,’ then maybe.”

• Biden’s Angry Press Conference Made Hur’s Memory Report Infinitely Worse (Sp.)

Biden’s press conference was held in response to the report issued by special counsel Robert Hur concluding that the President should not be charged for his handling of classified documents during and after his time as Vice President. Among the reasons Hur decided against prosecution was that he felt Biden’s defense would present him as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” noting that during their interview the President’s memory was “significantly limited” and that “He did not remember when he was vice president.” The report quoted the President in a conversation that was recorded asking “If it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?” and “In 2009, am I still Vice President?.It also notes that he couldn’t remember “even within several years” when his son Beau Biden died. During the press conference, Biden slammed the report for containing “extraneous commentary” that has “no place in this report.”

Hur

However, moments earlier he stopped midway through a sentence explaining where his deceased son got a rosary for him. “I wear, since the day he died, every single day, the rosary he got from our Lady of–” he said before abruptly pausing for a few seconds and then changing the subject to an annual Memorial Day service he and his family holds for Beau Biden. Biden also snapped at reporters, when one asked him how bad his memory was, Biden shot back “My memory is so bad, I let you speak.” The decision to hold a press conference was motivated by anger, Martin argued, “He couldn’t control it because he was so angry […] he made it infinitely worse.” While Martin disagreed with co-hosts Ted Rall and Angie Wong that Biden may step down or be removed from office due to the report and subsequent press conference, he agreed that it may cause him to drop his bid for reelection. “I don’t see how he runs for reelection. He may stay in office to the end, but now there’s a real specific case to try to say, ‘It’s over, Joe.’ But I don’t think he thinks it is. I don’t think his wife [thinks it is.]”

Wong asked if the 25th Amendment, which allows a President’s cabinet to remove the President from power if he or she is incapacitated, could be invoked in Biden’s case. Martin said he does not believe it will happen but that Democrats know how bad it looks “I do think Democrats believe that they’re in big trouble because of this, but I don’t know the path [to removal,]” he speculated. “Both parties[…] set up a system where the President is so darn powerful […] if he doesn’t step away, and I don’t think he will, I think he is going to stay there.” Martin later added that it is a “tragedy” that his family is allowing him to continue on in his current state. When pressed, Martin did come up with one scenario that Democrats could use to convince Biden to drop out of the race: his former boss.

“If Obama came out and said, ‘I’ve had enough. I’ve seen enough. This has to stop,’ then maybe. But I can’t imagine Obama doing that. [Or] maybe I can, I don’t know. That might be the Hail Mary.”Martin also speculated that the Democratic convention could be a place to make the change. “The Democrats [could] go in and say ‘You know what? We don’t have a path forward here.’ But they’re out of time.” Martin argued. “Any move they make will look desperate, and part of the problem will be, [Biden] didn’t get this way yesterday, he’s been this way for […] two years or three years. How could you do this to this country? And I think that’s how voters will feel.”

MSNBC

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“Tucker Carlson opened a door into modern day Russia, opened a door into the personality of Vladimir Putin, opened a door into the history of Russia, opened a door into the Russian soul..”

• Putin Interview May Help Stop West From Committing Suicide – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin has gone viral almost immediately after being posted online on February 8, having been viewed over 50 million times on social media platform X alone mere hours after the upload. The interview in question turned out to be a “very much a tour de force” where Putin introduced American audience “to the nuances of Russian history” and “into the complexities of the Russian soul,” said former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter. “This really isn’t about the content, although there is some interesting information that came out. This is about the process. Tucker Carlson opened a door into modern day Russia, opened a door into the personality of Vladimir Putin, opened a door into the history of Russia, opened a door into the Russian soul,” he said. According to Ritter, during the course of the interview Putin, metaphorically speaking, “helped create a map” that can guide viewers “through the complexities of what makes Russia tick”

While it remains to be seen “how many millions of people” will watch Putin’s interview, Ritter argued that it is “one of the most important interviews of the modern era” because it “has the ability to stop the West and Russia from going to war, to stop the West from committing suicide. “All of the answers to all of the problems that face Russia and the West today were laid out by the Russian president. There’s no hidden agenda. There’s no, you know, secret code that has to be known,” he explained. “You just have to know Russia. You have to understand what makes Russia tick. You have to understand the thinking behind the Russian president’s decisions, the motives behind Russia. You have to understand Russia.” Though it appears unlikely that Carlson “understood Russia” when he set off to take this interview, he “knows that he was given a toolbox complete with tools, and now he has to go out and finish the job,” Ritter added.

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“..they really bring a different historical perspective to life that is very different from what Americans do. Americans don’t remember much.”

• Tucker-Putin Interview to Erode Funding Crusade for US in Ukraine (Sp.)

American journalist Tucker Carlson has come under a barrage of verbal attacks and denunciation from the Washington elite for interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among those going into meltdown mode and vilifying the renowned ex-Fox News host, were the US mainstream media, Team Biden officials and disgruntled, two-time failed presidential contender Hillary Clinton who branded him as a “useful idiot”, claiming that everything that Putin would say would be a “pack of lies”. Meanwhile, millions took to Twitter and Carlson’s website to watch the history-making interview. “The media freak out,” Larry Johnson, a retired CIA intelligence officer, told Sputnik. “The media has been losing credibility with each passing week. They are seen as dishonest and propagandists. So, what they think is really of little importance, I don’t see a groundswell developing to try to attack Tucker. The irony is, if you take the Fox News Network and MSNBC and CNN combined, Tucker has more viewers, more people following him, than those networks do. They’re just jealous.”

“Tonight, Fox News Network and CNN and MSNBC combined may have had a total of 8 million viewers. Tucker is already three times the size of whatever they saw. Now he also has a global audience, but, you know, this thing is going to spread. I would anticipate that before this is done, well over 100 million people, maybe 200 million, will have watched it worldwide,” he predicted. The now-retired CIA official believes that Putin’s interview could end up eroding support for the Kiev regime among American conservatives and make it even more difficult for US lawmakers to funnel billions into Washington’s Ukraine proxy conflict. While speaking to Carlson, Putin briefly recounted Russia’s history to illustrate the strong cultural, religious, and ethnic bonds shared between Russians and Ukrainians.

The Russian president shed light on the post-Cold War period and US schemes to pull Ukraine away from Russia’s fold by promising to admit it into NATO and later fomenting a coup in 2014 with the active participation of neo-Nazi paramilitary groups which soon morphed into an eight-year war by the Kiev regime against Donbass. Putin underscored that Russia did not start the Ukraine conflict in 2022 but moved to end the Kiev regime’s war against its own people. “Putin believes, as I do, that history helps shape the present,” Johnson explained. “And if you don’t understand where you’ve been, you’ll have a tough time to understand where you’re going. And so understanding the history that’s inherent in all of this and particularly people in Russia, in the Caucasus, down into the Middle East, they really bring a different historical perspective to life that is very different from what Americans do. Americans don’t remember much.”

If Americans want to comprehend why Russia rushed to the rescue of Donbass in 2022 and declared the denazification of Ukraine to be one of its key goals, they must remember that the wounds of WW2 that are still fresh in Russia, the ex-CIA official stressed. “Whereas, as you see today, with respect to the Russian people remembering the Great Patriotic War [WW2], they remember,” Johnson noted. “They carry pictures. So it’s still fresh. And the damage inflicted upon the Russian people by the Germans, the Nazis, is something they have not forgotten and won’t easily forget. So I think that’s part of why Putin goes back to history, to drive home the point that Russians have a different timeline, different perspective from Americans. And it’s important for Americans to understand that.”

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“Because it is an election year, and Biden is standing for re-election, his backers in the administrative state are very afraid of any presentation of ‘a loss’ in Ukraine..”

• Putin Interview Helps Americans Understand Ukraine Conflict – Kwiatkowski (Sp.)

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin has shed light on the causes of the Ukrainian conflict which is “in many ways not normal” given Ukraine’s deep historic, cultural and ethnic ties to Russia, as per retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense. Putin’s historic remarks have clearly shown to what extent the West meddled in Ukrainian affairs after the collapse of the USSR, fanned nationalist sentiment in the Eastern European state and eventually fomented a coup d’etat in 2014 which was completely unnecessary given that the legitimate Ukrainian leadership at the time sat down with the opposition and was ready to hold snap elections.Per Kwiatkowski, this interview actually helps drive home the message that the US arming of the Kiev regime and prolonging of the Ukraine conflict must be stopped, because it is unpopular, unaffordable and destroys the Eastern European country.

“Most public opinion here opposes sending money to Kiev,” the former Pentagon analyst pointed out. “Because it is an election year, and Biden is standing for re-election, his backers in the administrative state are very afraid of any presentation of ‘a loss’ in Ukraine. Hearing directly from President Putin and via his many incisive soundbites that will be replayed and discussed later for wider audiences will help Americans, although not the Biden administration. It will help the discussion that goes on in the US, and also Europe.”She noted that “members of Congress, especially Republicans, will be watching this in order to see how it may inform them as to how this conflict is going, and what it is about.” Most recently, the Senate voted to begin debate on a $95 billion aid package to fund Ukraine, Israel and other US allies.

However, the US mainstream press admitted that the bill faces an “uphill battle” given that the debate will begin just days before the Senate’s two-week recess and just a few weeks before government shutdown deadlines in March. The legislation is a variant of the $118 billion bill earlier blocked by Republican senators and stripped of its border provisions. Previously, House Speaker Mike Johnson made it clear that the “compromise” bipartisan bill will be dead on arrival in the lower chamber. He and other conservative Republicans also signaled that the foreign aid package should not be rammed through the US Congress until measures to tackle the US border crisis are adopted.

Putin touched on US domestic issues during his interview with Carlson, explaining “what many people here also know, and that is the damage we are doing to our US dollar, and our own ability to be a strong, healthy, economically productive economy,” said Kwiatkowski. The US’ deeper engagement in its proxy war in Ukraine is fraught with a risk of a direct conflict with Russia. When asked about the prospect of NATO-Russia war, Putin said: “If someone has the desire to send in American troops that would certainly bring humanity to the brink of a very serious global conflict… This conflict is taking place thousands of kilometers away from your national territory! Don’t you have anything better to do?” Kwiatkowski believes this message will resonate in the United States.

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“The 2014 Ukraine team, including Biden, Nuland, Jake Sullivan (then and now Biden’s national security advisor), Geoffrey Pyatt, and Antony Blinken (then the deputy national security advisor), remains the Ukraine team today. It is a team of bunglers..”

• The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More Ukrainians (Jeffrey Sachs)

President Joe Biden is refusing to fold a losing hand as he bets with Ukrainian lives and U.S. taxpayer money. Biden and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer propose to squander the lives of tens of thousands more Ukrainians and $61 billions of federal funds to keep Biden’s disastrous foreign policy failure hidden from view until after the November election. The $61 billion will make no difference on the battlefield except to prolong the war, the tens of thousands of deaths, and the physical destruction of Ukraine. It will not “save” Ukraine. Ukraine’s security can only be achieved at the negotiating table, not by some fantasized military triumph over Russia. $61 billion is not nothing. This worse-than-useless outlay would exceed the combined budgets of the U.S. Department of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, and the Women, Infant, and Children nutrition program.

Almost exactly 10 years ago this month, Biden did much to put Ukraine on the path to disaster. This is well known to those who have looked carefully at the facts but is kept hidden from view by the White House, the Senate Democrats, and the mainstream media that back Biden. I have previously provided a detailed chronology, with hyperlinks, here. Ukraine’s security can only be achieved at the negotiating table, not by some fantasized military triumph over Russia.In 1990, President George H. W. Bush, Sr. and his German counterpart Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward if the Soviet Union accepted German reunification. When the Soviet Union disbanded in December 1991, with Russia as the successor state, American leaders decided to renege.

President Bill Clinton began NATO expansion over the vociferous opposition of top diplomats like George Kennan and the opposition of his own Secretary of Defense, William Perry. In 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski upped the ante, with a plan for NATO to expand all the way to Ukraine. He famously wrote that without Ukraine, Russia would cease to be a great power. Russian leaders have repeatedly made clear that NATO expansion to Ukraine is understandably the reddest of Russian redlines. In 2007, President Vladmir Putin stated that NATO enlargement to that date was a cheat on the 1990 promise, and that it must go no further. Despite these clear warnings, including by his own diplomats, George W. Bush Jr. committed in 2008 to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea.William Burns, now CIA director, and then the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, wrote a famous memo entitled “Nyet means Nyet,” explaining that Russia’s opposition to NATO enlargement was across Russia’s political spectrum.

Most Ukrainians themselves were also firmly against the plan, favoring neutrality over NATO membership. The Ukrainian Rada declared Ukraine’s state sovereignty in 1990 on the basis of becoming “a permanently neutral state.” In 2009, the people of Ukraine elected Viktor Yanukovych, who ran on a platform of neutrality.In early 2014, the U.S. decided to help bring down Yanukovych in a coup. This was standard U.S. deep-state operating procedure, one used on dozens of occasions around the world. The CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and NGOs like the Open Society Foundation went to work in Ukraine. The point person was Victoria Nuland, who was first Richard Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy advisor, then George Bush Jr.’s ambassador to NATO, then Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson, and by 2014 Assistant Secretary of State.

This time, the Russians caught the conspiracy on tape, in an intercepted call between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (now Assistant Secretary of State). Nuland explains to Pyatt that Vice President Joe Biden will help choose and cement the post-coup government. The 2014 Ukraine team, including Biden, Nuland, Jake Sullivan (then and now Biden’s national security advisor), Geoffrey Pyatt, and Antony Blinken (then the deputy national security advisor), remains the Ukraine team today. It is a team of bunglers. They thought that Yanukovych’s overthrow would quickly usher in NATO expansion. Instead, ethnic Russians in Ukraine virulently rejected the Russophobic post-coup government that was installed by Nuland, and called for autonomy of the ethnically Russian regions. In a referendum, Crimea voted overwhelmingly to join Russia.

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“..Syrsky, who is widely unpopular in the military, is reportedly seen as politically safe as he is an ethnic Russian with no political ambitions..”

• Ukraine’s Top General Fired For Disobeying US – Politico (RT)

General Valery Zaluzhny was dismissed as the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces partly because he had clashed with the Pentagon about how to conduct the counteroffensive against Russia last summer, Politico EU reported on Friday. President Vladimir Zelensky sacked Zaluzhny on Thursday, even as the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) warned this might trigger riots or a mutiny. General Aleksandr Syrsky has since been announced as Zaluzhny’s replacement. Officially, the US has neither supported nor opposed Zaluzhny’s firing, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan telling the media last weekend that “we’re just not going to get embroiled in that particular decision.” Unofficially, Zaluzhny was blamed for the Ukrainian disagreements with the Pentagon during the 2023 counteroffensive, a source who has “advised the White House on military matters” told Politico.

British and American generals helped plan and wargame Ukraine’s big offensive push to the Azov Sea, but Zaluzhny “tossed aside” the plan after just four days of brutal fighting and opted for tactics the Ukrainians were more familiar with, according to a Washington Post postmortem published in December. The anonymous adviser told Politico that the Ukrainians “just weren’t interested in US advice, and they generally concluded that we have nothing to offer them advice-wise,” noting that many of the Pentagon’s suggestions ended up “tone-deaf” as the Americans had no experience in this kind of warfare.

While Zaluzhny bore the brunt of the blame for this, the US “kept yelling at the wrong person,” Politico’s source claimed, because he was “hamstrung by Zelensky” and the president had the final say on military matters. The much-heralded offensive resulted in “staggering manpower losses,” according to Politico, while failing to achieve any of its objectives. Since then, disagreements between Zelensky and Zaluzhny have gone public. The leader also suspected the general of wanting to run for president, to the point where his sacking was seen as a political necessity, one Ukrainian analyst told the outlet. Syrsky, who is widely unpopular in the military, is reportedly seen as politically safe as he is an ethnic Russian with no political ambitions.

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“Nuland flew there for a good reason, apparently to sort things out and clear up this conflict between Zelensky and Zaluzhny and to find out what is really happening and how it might all end..”

• Nuland Told Zelensky Not To Fire Top General – The Times (RT)

US Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was unhappy with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s plan to fire General Valery Zaluzhny and offered to “smooth over” the differences between the two, The Times reported on Friday. Zelensky fired Zaluzhny as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces on Thursday. Nuland was in Kiev at the end of January, as rumors of Zaluzhny’s impending dismissal began to gain traction. In a meeting with the US ambassador to Kiev, Bridget Brink, and Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, she supposedly offered to help bridge the gap between the president and his top military leader. Citing a source privy to the meeting, The Times reported that Nuland was “unhappy to see Zaluzhny go” and offered to “smooth over misunderstandings.”

Umerov reportedly told Nuland that Zaluzhny had “reacted with skepticism” to Zelensky’s public statements and direct orders, going so far as to negotiate directly with Western countries about weapons deliveries behind the Defense Ministry’s back. Zelensky was unhappy that the general would not provide any plans for his 2024 military campaigns, Umerov is said to have told Nuland. Russia’s chief delegate to the military security and arms control talks in Vienna, Konstantin Gavrilov, had identified the Zaluzhny affair as the reason for Nuland’s visit long before the Times. “Nuland flew there for a good reason, apparently to sort things out and clear up this conflict between Zelensky and Zaluzhny and to find out what is really happening and how it might all end,” Gavrilov told the Rossiya-24 TV channel on February 1. He also predicted that a reconciliation is “unlikely” because things between the two have “gone too far.”

Officially, the US has neither supported nor opposed Zaluzhny’s replacement. Within days of Nuland’s visit, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told American media that “we’re just not going to get embroiled in that particular decision.” Currently the acting deputy to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Nuland was previously in charge of European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department. In December 2013, she visited Ukraine to hand out pastries to the armed protesters in Kiev’s central square. She was then taped discussing how to “midwife this thing” just days before the February 2014 coup that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government and triggered a conflict with Russia over Crimea and Donbass.

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“In a group chat of Bakhmut/Artyomovsk veterans, one soldier wrote “we’re all f**ked” upon learning of Syrsky’s appointment..”

• Ukraine’s New Commander-in-chief Is An Unpopular ‘Butcher’ – Politico (RT)

Ukraine’s new armed forces chief, General Aleksandr Syrsky, is deeply unpopular among the rank and file of the Ukrainian military, who view him as a “butcher” willing to sacrifice waves of troops, Politico reported on Thursday. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky named Syrsky as the new head of the armed forces on Thursday, after firing General Valery Zaluzhny from the post. The switch had been the subject of media rumors for several weeks, and Zelensky hinted in an interview last week that it would form part of a wider “reset” of the country’s military and civilian leadership. Syrsky is a controversial choice, best known for “leading forces into a meat grinder in Bakhmut [called Artyomovsk in Russia], sending wave after wave of troops to face opposition fire,” Politico said.

The unsuccessful defense of Artyomovsk/Bakhmut last year cost Ukraine dearly, and earned Syrsky the nickname ‘butcher’, an anonymous source within the Ukrainian military told the news site. A captain told the outlet that Syrsky’s appointment is a “very bad decision,” adding that soldiers refer to him as ‘General200’, a nickname that Politico said refers to 200 of his men dying, but could also refer to ‘Cargo 200’, a Soviet and Russian military code used to describe corpses being removed from the battlefield. “General Syrsky’s leadership is bankrupt, his presence or orders coming from his name are demoralizing, and he undermines trust in the command in general,” an anonymous Ukrainian military officer and frontline intelligence analyst posted on X. “His relentless pursuit of tactical gains constantly depletes our valuable human resources, resulting in tactical advances such as capturing tree lines or small villages, with no operational goals in mind.”

“This approach creates a never-ending cycle of fruitless assaults that drain personnel,” the officer said. In a group chat of Bakhmut/Artyomovsk veterans, one soldier wrote “we’re all f**ked” upon learning of Syrsky’s appointment, Politico stated. Syrsky takes over command of a depleted military, with Kiev having lost more than 383,000 men since the hostilities started in February 2022, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Prior to his dismissal, Zaluzhny warned Zelensky that a rapid improvement in Ukraine’s position on the battlefield was unlikely, regardless of who took his place, the Washington Post reported last week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia’s campaign against Ukraine will not be affected by Syrsky’s appointment, and that Moscow will continue until its objectives are achieved.

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“After we withdrew the troops from Kiev, as we promised to do, the Kiev authorities, as their masters usually do, threw [the peace deal] in the dustbin of history..”

• General Syrsky, Hero of Kiev or Butcher of Bakhmut? (Sp.)

The mainstream media have spent the better part of a day pumping up newly appointed Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky as a modern-day von Clausewitz, hailing him as the commander almost singlehandedly responsible for the defense of Kiev during the first weeks of the conflict with Russia. Here’s what such reports are hiding. The recent decision by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to oust his top general and to replace him with Ground Forces commander Oleksandr Syrsky sent shockwaves throughout the media establishments of Kiev’s NATO patrons. Legacy outlets’ reactions included fears that the political leadership in Kiev may have undermined confidence among the military by swapping General Valery Zaluzhny with Syrsky, and concerns that President Zelensky’s new pet general may not be able to “resist political interference in operational matters.”

Other outlets attempted a positive spin on things, pumping up Syrsky’s ego as a brilliant strategist, with Bloomberg pointing to his supposed key role in the defense of Kiev “against all odds” at the start of Russia’s military operation in 2022, and Business Insider hailing his command as a “shocking upset that surprised many who assumed the capital would fall quickly.” AFP went so far as to suggest that it was Syrsky who scuppered “the Kremlin’s” purported “plans to bring the country to its knees within days.” President Zelensky awarded Syrsky the “Hero of Ukraine” title for the operation. In reality, as many of these same outlets have previously admitted, Russia’s withdrawal of troops from areas around the Ukrainian capital at the start of the conflict was politically motivated.

Specifically, it was based on the expectation that the “gesture of goodwill,” as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it, would help end the crisis before it escalated into a bloody, full-scale proxy war in the heart of Europe. Syrsky had nothing to do with it. Russia began withdrawing troops from Kiev region on March 29, 2022. The same day, peace talks resumed in Istanbul, Turkiye. Ahead of the negotiations, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkiye confirmed that Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were close to reaching a deal, with Kiev accepting neutrality and non-bloc status. But after Russian troops were gone and Syrsky’s forces came in to replace them without a shot being fired, Zelensky immediately went back on his word and scuppered talks.

“After we withdrew the troops from Kiev, as we promised to do, the Kiev authorities, as their masters usually do, threw [the peace deal] in the dustbin of history,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with African leaders last June, holding up the text of an agreement with Kiev which included “permanent neutrality” enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution, security guarantees, and even details on the size of its standing army in peacetime. In his bombshell interview with Tucker Carlson on Thursday, President Putin reiterated that Russia made the decision to bull back from the Ukrainian capital in the expectation that it would result in a peace deal. “My counterparts in France, in Germany, said ‘how can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev.’ I said, ‘alright.’ We withdrew the troops from Kiev.

As soon as we did so, our Ukrainian negotiators almost immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and prepared for a long-running armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe,” Putin recalled. In other words, far from saving Kiev “against all odds” during the chaotic first week’s of Russia’s special military operation, Syrsky “won” his first major battle in NATO’s proxy conflict against Russia exclusively due to geopolitical considerations, and specifically to Moscow’s peacemaking efforts. Syrsky’s fortunes would continue along the same vein through the autumn of 2022, when, during an operational regrouping of Russian forces to concentrate troops along a smaller front as additional troops were called up during Russia’s partial mobilization, the commander was hailed, again without any particular skilled maneuvers on his part, for the so-called “Kharkov counteroffensive,” which saw Ukrainian forces reoccupying much of the region with almost no resistance as Russian forces pulled back.

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“..the goal being to force all foreigners out of the region ..”

A major change. So far they have only targeted ships linked to Israel.

• Houthis Say All Warships Must Leave Red Sea (Sp.)

The Houthis will continue to fire on Western warships operating in the Red Sea, with the goal being to force all foreigners out of the region, Yemeni Supreme Political Council member Mohammed Ali al-Houthi has announced. “Our message is that just as the British warship has left the region for overhaul, the other warships will likewise leave the region…All [foreign] warships must leave the Red Sea, stop their attacks on Yemen, and end their blockade of the country,” al-Houthi said Thursday, in the wake of reports that the HMS Diamond guided missile destroyer would be “temporarily” pulled out of the Red Sea for refit following repeated attacks by the militia. Houthi-affiliated media released footage earlier in the week showing what appeared to be a cruise missile appearing to strike a warship, later said to be the HMS Diamond, and setting it ablaze.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense did not comment on the footage, but did confirm Tuesday that the Royal Navy’s HMS Richmond frigate would be taking the HMS Diamond’s place to continue “to ensure freedom of navigation in the Red Sea” as the latter is taken out of service for refit. “HMS Diamond joined Operation Prosperity Guardian…in December and has maintained a near constant presence in a ‘high threat area’ of the Red Sea,” the MoD said in a statement. “The destroyer came under fire in three separate attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, successfully destroying nine drones using her world-class Sea Viper missile system and guns,” the ministry added. The warship is now expected to “undergo a period of maintenance and resupply as HMS Richmond takes over her important mission,” the MoD said. “The situation in the region is fraught, and ships in the force are firing on a daily basis – we hand over the baton with our best wishes to the fantastic team in Richmond who we know will do a great job,” HMS Diamond Commander Peter Evans said of the rotation, offering no further details about its nature.

Coalition forces have been extremely sensitive in discussing Houthi attacks, possible casualties or injuries in the Red Sea mission. Last week, US authorities revised their story about the deaths of two Navy SEALs, who were lost at sea in the Red Sea, indicating that the troops perished while trying to board a ship suspected of trying to smuggle weapons to Yemen. Separately this week, the Houthis reported an attack on the Morning Tide, a Barbados-flagged, British-owned cargo ship, and the Star Nasia, a Marshall Islands-flagged American ship. The company operating the Morning Tide confirmed that its vessel had been struck in a drone attack on February 6, causing minor damage to the port side of the vessel. No injuries were reported.

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“..Joe Biden, the official sponsor of Israel’s four-month-long massacre..”

• Any Gaza Deal Could Break Netanyahu’s Coalition (Harb)

There are two words that sum up all the noise around the Paris negotiations over a Gaza war settlement today: “temporary” and “sustainable.” The truce envisaged by the parties present in Paris – Qatar, Egypt, Israel, the US, and France – is a “framework agreement.” The Israeli occupation authorities want any deal to deliver only a “temporary cessation of military operations,” which augurs an eventual resumption of its massacre in Gaza. Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions, meanwhile, are proposing, through various amendments, a complete cessation of military operations as a prelude to a “sustainable calm.” It is not yet clear why the US administration of Joe Biden, the official sponsor of Israel’s four-month-long massacre, insists on dealing with the “Gaza war” file as if its core issue is the release of Israeli prisoners held in Gaza – rather than the resolution of a decades-long occupation of Palestinian lands and people that led to the state of affairs today.

Any treatment or settlement of this war must start with the occupation and its vast repercussions – the very essence of the conflict. Instead, the White House’s stance reflects an American view that Washington does not bear sole responsibility for now, and raises questions about the nature and effectiveness of the role of the Qatari and Egyptian “mediators.” The latter two Arab states were part of the Paris discussions to draft the agreement over a week ago, with US–Israeli intelligence agencies represented by CIA Chief William Burns, Mossad Chief David Barnea, and the head of the Israeli Shin Bet Ronen Barr. Hours after Hamas announced the submission of its “framework agreement” response to the Qatari and Egyptian mediators, statements issued by the Israelis and Americans revealed their intent to sabotage a genuine peace or a halt to military conflict.

US President Biden commented prematurely by saying that Hamas’ remarks were “exaggerated,” while Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant – fresh out of talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken – said the response presented by Hamas was “negative,” and was intentionally drafted to be rejected by Israel. From his perspective, Gallant isn’t exactly wrong. What Israel seeks from the agreement is a US–Arab mandate to restart its war once Israeli prisoners have been released by Gaza’s resistance. The bottom line is fairly unambiguous: Israel wants a continuous war. Gallant concedes publicly that “the war is far from over.” Netanyahu, after meeting Blinken, said, “We have to end the war with a landslide victory, and it is a matter of time. Our army is advancing systematically, and we have ordered the army to work in Rafah,” where the occupation army has for days been threatening a major offensive along the border with Egypt. This will mean the re-displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians already displaced to the border area over the past weeks.

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Russia pays attention.

• German Foreign Minister’s Grandfather Was ‘Ardent Nazi’ – Bild (RT)

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s grandfather was “an unconditional National Socialist” who had read ‘Mein Kampf’ and fully stood with the Nazi regime, according to documents seen by the tabloid Bild. Baerbock has spoken publicly about her grandfather’s wartime experiences, telling an audience in 2022 that Waldemar Baerbock returned to Germany from the east in early 1945 “as a defeated soldier.” What Baerbock did not mention was that her grandfather was an officer in the Wehrmacht, and had been awarded one of the Third Reich’s highest military honors, the War Merit Cross with Swords in 1944, Bild reported on Thursday. The cross was bestowed on soldiers for “special services when deployed under enemy weapons or for special services in military warfare.”

According to the newspaper, Waldemar Baerbock’s military records describe him as “an unconditional National Socialist,” who had read Adolf Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf’ and whose character was “completely rooted in National Socialism.” Asked for comment, Baerbock’s office said that “the foreign minister was not aware of the documents.” Germany’s Federal Archives note that military records from the time “almost always” describe officers with phrases like “stands firmly on the basis of the National Socialist worldview,” and praise their “impeccable National Socialist attitude.” According to Bild, Waldemar Baerbock told his family in the late 1990s that he had served in the Wehrmacht. Before he died in 2016, he wrote down his war memoirs in a notebook, which he passed to his family. Baerbock mentioned her grandfather in her 2021 autobiography, but did not state whether his notebook contained any references to his supposed Nazi ideology.

During a 2022 speech marking the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials formulated and planned the so-called ‘final solution’ for Europe’s jews, Baerbock declared that even low-level government functionaries of the Third Reich were responsible for “the crimes and genocide of the Nazi regime.” Annalena Baerbock was a co-leader of Alliance90/The Greens in Germany before becoming foreign minister in late 2021. An ardent interventionist, Baerbock has steered the party away from its long-standing policy of pacifism, and reportedly pushed Chancellor Olaf Scholz to approve shipments of heavy weapons to Ukraine. While her party’s 2021 manifesto explicitly stated that it wanted to “end European arms exports to war and crisis zones,” Germany has become the second-largest supplier of arms to Kiev after the US.

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SCOTUS to the rescue.

• The “Unassailable” Theory Faces a Potential Unanimous Rejection (Turley)

This week, the argument before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson captivated the nation as the justices considered the disqualification of former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot. For some of us, the argument brought back vivid memories of covering Bush v. Gore almost 25 years ago. While one justice (Clarence Thomas) remains on the Court, the last major intervention of the Court into a close presidential election is a matter of distant history. As someone who covered both cases, much is regrettably familiar: the deep division in the country and rage of many advocates. However, unlike 2000, the Court itself appears virtually unanimous in this case. The biggest difference is not the Court but the coverage. The Trump case exposed the erosion of legal coverage in the media. For millions of Americans, the cold reception of all of the justices to the novel theory under the 14th Amendment came as a surprise.

Networks and newspapers have been featuring experts who assured the public that this theory was well-based and disqualification well-established. The only barrier, they insisted, was the blind partisanship of the six conservative justices on the Court. Twenty-four years ago, I was covering the Bush v. Gore case for CBS. I had just left NBC as an analyst when the election controversy exploded. While there were the usual partisans and some outlets slanted the merits, the coverage was overall balanced and informative. This is not a case of the Court changing. We have changed as legal analysts. The Court itself is deeply divided on some issues. However, the justices gave a fair hearing to both sides. That is not the case with the coverage. Looking back at the coverage, most legacy media called upon the same legal experts who have previously endorsed virtually every claim made against Trump. They predictably declared Trump as clearly disqualified despite the fact that this theory has never been embraced by the federal courts.

Figures like federal court Judge J. Michael Luttig who called these arguments against disqualification as “revealing, fatuous, and politically and constitutionally cynical.” Others insisted that the argument that the provision might not apply to presidents as “absurd.” That was the argument pushed by Justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson. Many of the media turned to Professor Laurence Tribe despite a long record of constitutional claims rejected by the Court, in some cases unanimously. Tribe assured the public that the theory was “unassailable” and also insisted that the theory (later voiced by Jackson) is “an absurd interpretation.” It is important that such views are heard in the coverage. The problem is that the media has, once again, pushed this novel (and in my view unfounded) theory to the point that many assumed that it was indeed unassailable.

What was most troubling is the repeated attacks on the Court by legal experts who suggested that the only thing keeping Trump on the ballot was the bias of conservative justices. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D. Md.) declared “This is their opportunity to behave like real Supreme Court justices.” It appears that both Justices Kagan and Jackson did not behave like “real Supreme Court justices” in oral argument by objecting to core aspects of this theory. We will have to wait for the final opinion but most of us are predicting a reversal of Colorado and the possibility of a unanimous or near unanimous decision. The question is whether such a result will change how media outlets frame these disputes in the future. After weeks of portraying the opposition as only resting with the right of the Court, the coverage had a weird disjointed feel as some of the same commentators reported that the justices appeared uniformly unconvinced by this “unassailable” theory.

Turley Kagan

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“The fourth estate has literally died and has been replaced by phalanx of corrupt young men and women who have redefined the profession entirely as an extension of the state and its craven objectives..”

• Biden’s Eulogy Will Be ‘Journalism RIP’. How He Destroyed the 4th Estate (Jay)

The Biden administration is inventing a phoney war and journalists are supporting the narrative without even missing a heartbeat. The fourth estate has literally died and has been replaced by phalanx of corrupt young men and women who have redefined the profession entirely as an extension of the state and its craven objectives. In the UK, the odious Douglas Murray who has shown Britain from day one of the recent conflict in Gaza that he is more than happy to replicate every item of fake news that Israel’s IDF is happy to hand him – without even acknowledging the bigger picture of a brutal occupation. He is, essentially, a pro-Zionist fanatic and it beggars belief that he is even allowed to go on air and report, when he has shown his almost cult-like following of the Netanyahu government and its objectives to wipe out the civilian population of Gaza. He is a genocide denier and yet he is allowed to continue his work as a journalist. Should we be shocked though to learn that just recently his diatribe of on air lies about the Gaza genocide, which always paints the Israelis as the victims and the Palestinians as savages, has been taken to the next level?

Murray now is in London trying to help Israel with its fundraising. Thirty years ago, this would have been unthinkable. A wall of resistance from professionals which would have blocked him in the media industry would have prevailed. “Unethical” would be the key word which would have put this vile Israeli apologist back in his box. But in modern Britain, media has become so corrupt, that few, if any are shocked that a journalist can work openly as an activist as well. One could argue that one role is merely an extension of the other, both of them dripping with the blood of Palestinian children. Real journalism is being shut down at an alarming rate. Partisan journalism, which even allows hacks to be activists at the same time, is the new norm. To give you an idea just how far this has advanced, any kind of criticism of how the state handles or reports on the Gaza genocide is met with a steel hand in a steel glove in both the UK and U.S. Pity the young students at Northwestern University who have obscure anti Klu Klux Klan federal laws levelled against them by the FBI for producing a parody newspaper which mocked U.S. policy of Israel and Gaza. You couldn’t make it up.

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AI

 

 

 

 

Kiwi

 

 

Baby hippo

 

 

Dinosaur

 

 

Belly Rubs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755600174536360156

 

 

Beetle Frogs

 

 

Illusion

 

 

Stick

 

 

 

 

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