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Debt Rattle January 9 2025

Jan 092025
 
 January 9, 2025  Posted by at 10:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Face female study 1925

 

• Elon Musk Brands British PM ‘Evil’ (RT)
• France Calls For EU Action Against Elon Musk (RT)
• EU Ministers Plan Joint Trip To US (RT)
• Trump Envoy Will Join Gaza Ceasefire Talks in Qatar (Antiwar)
• Genocidal President, Genocidal Politics (Solomon)
• Biden Confirms He’s Considering Preemptive Pardons (ZH)
• Trump’s Ukraine Aide Sets 100-Day Timeline To End Conflict (RT)
• Victor Davis Hanson: FBI “Afraid” Trump Will “Re-Examine” Conduct (ZH)
• Klobuchar Repeats Common False Claim About January 6th (Turley)
• Trump Asks Supreme Court To Halt Sentencing In Hush Money Case (ZH)
• Guess Who Is Already Talking About Impeaching Trump Again (Margolis)
• NATO Members Should Increase Defense Spending – Trump (RT)
• Senate Democrats Attempt To Delay Tulsi Gabbard Confirmation Hearings (ZH)
• DOJ Confirms It Will Release Jack Smith’s Report On Trump, But… (ZH)
• FBI Is Still Hiding Details Of Russiagate (Maté)

 

 


And So Castles Made of Sand – by Mr. Fish

 

 

Rogan 2024
https://twitter.com/i/status/1877190941909438598

Water

Sachs

Reagan

Watters Zuck

 

 

 

 

 

 

No. 1 priority in Britain today: block any attempt at an inquiry. What a sad place.

• Elon Musk Brands British PM ‘Evil’ (RT)

SpaceX CEO and X owner Elon Musk has hammered Prime Minister of Britain Keir Starmer for his refusal to prosecute Pakistani gangs involved in the mass rape of underage British girls, calling the PM “evil” incarnate. ”Starmer is evil,” Musk wrote on his social platform on Wednesday morning, above a meme condemning Starmer for demanding an investigation into former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lockdown-breaching parties during the Covid-19 pandemic, but declining to prosecute “politically protected UK rape gangs.” Musk has spent much of the last two weeks drawing attention to the UK’s so-called “grooming gangs,” and to the police departments, politicians, and prosecutors who allegedly failed to protect children from them.

The gangs in question systematically raped and tortured tens of thousands of underage girls in towns across northern England over the last two decades, according to multiple government and media reports. Almost all of the perpetrators were Pakistani men, and the victims white British girls. Successive governments declined to investigate the scandal – which received mainstream media attention after a series of reports by The Times in 2011 – and several police departments covered up the existence of the gangs, inquiries later found. “What was done to thousands of defenseless little girls in Britain was vile beyond belief,” Musk wrote in another post on Wednesday. “When the fathers of the little girls tried to save them, the authorities arrested their fathers,” he continued, referring to at least one infamous case in the town of Rotherham.

Starmer led the Crown Prosecutorial Service (CPS) from 2008 to 2013, at the height of the scandal. Under his leadership, the CPS was heavily criticized for declining to prosecute a gang in Rochdale, and police in Rotherham told a 2015 inquiry that they considered the CPS unwilling to bring charges against alleged perpetrators. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Starmer accused Musk of spreading “lies and misinformation” about his handling of the scandal. The PM claimed that he changed the CPS’ “whole prosecution approach” to cases of child sexual abuse and left the agency with the highest number in history of such prosecutions.

However, a BBC investigation noted that “the prime minister referred only to the broad category of child sex abuse prosecution data” and that CPS records do not distinguish between sexual abuse perpetrated by gangs and abuse perpetrated by individuals. The broadcaster also found that prosecutions under Starmer peaked at 4,794 between April 2010 and March 2011 but rose to 7,200 per year in 2016-2017, after Starmer left the CPS. Starmer’s already dismal approval rating has sunk even further since last week when Musk began attacking his handling of the rape gangs. According to a YouGov poll published on Monday, 63% of voters disapprove of his government’s performance, while just 16% approve, a fall of two points since December.

In a debate in parliament on Wednesday, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch demanded that an upcoming child protection bill include an amendment setting up a national inquiry into the gangs. Starmer rejected the proposition, arguing that a lengthy inquiry would stall the implementation of the rest of the bill. With Starmer’s Labour Party holding a 163-seat majority, the amendment is unlikely to pass “Now why would Keir Starmtrooper order his own party to block such an inquiry?” Musk wrote on X. “Because he is hiding terrible things. That is why.”

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Sure, ban X. Musk has his interview with AfD leader Alice Weidel later today. Can Germany ban it?

• France Calls For EU Action Against Elon Musk (RT)

France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot has urged the EU executive branch to use existing legislation to crack down on outside interference. His comment to French media on Wednesday is related to US-based billionaire Elon Musk weighing in on European politics on his platform X (formerly Twitter). His words come a day after French President Emmanuel Macron slammed the owner of X for interfering in EU matters. He accused the world’s richest man of intervening directly in elections across the continent, including next month’s snap federal polls in Germany. “Either the European Commission applies with the greatest firmness the laws that we have to protect our unique space, or it does not, and then it should think about giving the capacity to do so back to EU member states,” Barrot said in an interview with France Inter radio, urging the lawmakers to “wake up.”

Asked whether the X platform could be banned in the bloc, the minister replied that a mechanism allowing the move “is laid out in our laws.” The foreign minister’s comments came ahead of a livestream conversation on X with the co-leader of the right-wing AfD (Alternative for Germany) party, Alice Weidel, scheduled for Thursday, where the South African-born tech mogul is set to participate as a host. On Monday, an EC spokesperson said the institution will investigate whether the conversation is in breach of the bloc’s social media rules. In December, Musk provoked major controversy by claiming in a post on X that “only the AfD can save Germany.” The statement was followed by an op-ed piece posted by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag later that month, in which the entrepreneur defended the party against accusations of extremism and praised its economic policies.

Additionally, Musk sparked indignation across the block with a wave of verbal attacks on various political leaders. Last month, following a tragic attack at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, the billionaire demanded the immediate resignation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, calling him an “incompetent fool.” Last week, the tech mogul lambasted British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, accusing him of failing to tackle the Pakistani grooming gang issue and refusing to properly investigate the mass rape of underage girls while head of the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013. He also urged Washington to step in and “liberate” the Brits from their “tyrannical government.”

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They want to show unity where there is none.

Hopefully, Trump will invite Elon Musk into the room.

• EU Ministers Plan Joint Trip To US (RT)

The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland are planning a joint trip to the US as a show of unity, Politico EU has reported. While the visit is still at the planning stage and no date has been set, the trio wants to arrive shortly after the January 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump, three EU diplomats told the outlet on condition of anonymity on Wednesday. Jean-Noel Barrot of France, Annalena Baerbock of Germany and Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland might even be accompanied by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, according to two of the diplomats. The idea behind the trip would be to make a “show of European unity,” one of the diplomats said. The EU has struggled to respond to Trump’s talk of the US taking over Greenland, an Arctic island that is currently an autonomous territory of Denmark.

The Danish government has ruled out selling the island and suggested it would be unacceptable of the US to take it from a fellow NATO member by force. “There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders,” Barrot has told France Inter radio. The European Commission, however, declined to take a position on the issue. French President Emmanuel Macron has argued that Trump won’t be able to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict quickly and that the role of Washington should be to bring Moscow to the table. Barrot, who has been France’s foreign minister since September, is a holdover from Michel Barnier’s cabinet that lost parliamentary confidence in early December. Germany’s ‘traffic light’ coalition that Baerbock is part of crumbled in November and faces a general election in February.

The current government of Poland took power in December 2023 through post-electoral coalition-building. While still in the opposition, Sikorski caused a minor scandal by posting “Thank you, USA” after the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines which had delivered Russian gas to Germany. Trump has also rattled the European NATO members by declaring this week that their levels of military spending were too low. As many as 15 members of the bloc have failed to reach the minimum target of 2% of their GDP by mid-2024. According to the US president-elect, even that is nowhere near enough and they ought to be spending at least 5%, which none of the members of the bloc are currently capable of.

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Trump must put a leash on Bibi. And he knows it.

• Trump Envoy Will Join Gaza Ceasefire Talks in Qatar (Antiwar)

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said Tuesday that he was traveling to Qatar to take part in Gaza hostage and ceasefire negotiations with Biden administration officials. Chances of a deal seem slim as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he has no intention of ending the genocidal war, and Hamas is saying any deal must lead to a permanent ceasefire, but Witkoff insisted progress was being made. “We’re making a lot of progress, and I don’t want to say too much because I think they’re doing a really good job back in Doha,” Witkoff, a real estate investor, said at a press conference with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Witkoff said he was “really hopeful that by the inaugural, we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president.” When asked what has been impeding a deal, Witkoff declined to answer.

“I believe we’ve been on the verge of [a deal]. I don’t want to discuss what’s delayed it — no point to be negative in any way,” he said. Standing alongside Witkoff, Trump repeated his threat that there would be “all hell to pay” if Hamas doesn’t start releasing hostages by his inauguration on January 20. “If those hostages aren’t back — if they’re not back by the time I get into office — all hell will break out in the Middle East and it will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is and they should have been back a long time ago,” Trump said. The president-elect has vowed to be a staunch supporter of Israel, as he was in his first term, and said on Monday that he was the “best friend that Israel ever had.”

According to media reports, Hamas has released a list of 34 hostages it is willing to release as part of the first phase of a ceasefire deal in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. The Times of Israel reported that a potential deal that’s on the table would only involve a six to seven-week temporary ceasefire. Relatives of Israelis still held in Gaza are calling for the government to pursue a comprehensive deal that releases all the hostages and brings an end to the conflict. During previous rounds of negotiations, Netanyahu sabotaged the chances of a deal by constantly declaring that he wouldn’t agree to a permanent truce and adding new demands.

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“President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.”

• Genocidal President, Genocidal Politics (Solomon)

When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency. It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous. But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Forty days after the Gaza war began, Anne Boyer announced her resignation as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. More than a year later, her statement illuminates why the moral credibility of so many liberal institutions has collapsed in the wake of Gaza’s destruction. While Boyer denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza,” she emphatically chose to disassociate herself from the nation’s leading liberal news organization: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.” The acclimatizing process soon became routine. It was most crucially abetted by President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.

For mainline journalists, the process required the willing suspension of belief in a consistent standard of language and humanity. When Boyer acutely grasped the dire significance of its Gaza coverage, she withdrew from “the newspaper of record.” Content analysis of the war’s first six weeks found that coverage by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times had a steeply dehumanizing slant toward Palestinians. The three papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians,” a study by The Intercept showed. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

After a year of the Gaza war, Arab-American historian Rashid Khalidi said: “My objection to organs of opinion like the New York Times is that they see absolutely everything from an Israeli perspective. ‘How does it affect Israel, how do the Israelis see it?’ Israel is at the center of their worldview, and that’s true of our elites generally, all over the West. The Israelis have very shrewdly, by preventing direct reportage from Gaza, further enabled that Israelocentric perspective.” Khalidi summed up: “The mainstream media is as blind as it ever was, as willing to shill for any monstrous Israeli lie, to act as stenographers for power, repeating what is said in Washington.”

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Some people will refuse pardons. That makes the rest look extra very bad.

• Biden Confirms He’s Considering Preemptive Pardons (ZH)

President Joe Biden in a Jan. 5 interview confirmed that he is considering whether to issue preemptive pardons. White House officials have said that Biden plans to issue additional pardons and commutations before his term ends. Preemptive pardons would differ from those Biden has already issued and those issued by other presidents in their final days in office. They would protect people from prosecution for charges that have not yet been brought, reports Zachary Stieber at The Epoch Times. “Some of your supporters have encouraged you to issue preemptive pardons to people like Liz Cheney and Anthony Fauci … will you do that?” USA TODAY’s Susan Page asked Biden during the interview. The individuals suggested have drawn criticism from President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office again on Jan. 20.

Biden referenced a meeting with Trump at the White House in November 2024. “I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores,” Biden said, recounting the conversation they had. Trump did not respond directly to that advice, according to the president. “He didn’t. But he didn’t say, ‘No, I’m going to…’ You know. He didn’t reinforce it. He just basically listened,” Biden said. “So you haven’t decided yet. You’re still assessing this issue?” Page asked. “No, I haven’t,” Biden responded. “A little bit of it depends on who he puts in what positions,” Biden said. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment. Inquiries sent to the employers of Cheney and Fauci were not returned.

Biden in late 2024 pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, whom a jury convicted of federal gun charges and who pleaded guilty to intentionally failing to pay taxes. Biden later pardoned another 39 people and commuted the sentences of some 1,500 others, including 37 death row prisoners. One individual floated as a possible preemptive pardon candidate is Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state. Clinton, who mishandled confidential emails and whose campaign funded opposition research against Trump, was included in a list compiled by Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director. The list, Patel has said, are participants in the so-called deep state.

Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, has said that he does not think Biden should preemptively pardon his wife. “I hope he won’t do that,” he said during a recent television appearance on Dec. 11. A Clinton Foundation spokesperson did not return a request for comment. Biden this month awarded Cheney, who was mentioned during the interview, a Presidential Citizens Medal for her work as vice chair of a House panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol. Biden said Cheney and other former officials who received the medal in the ceremony had “dedicated their careers to serving our democracy” and “served in difficult times with honor, decency and ensure our democracy delivers.”

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100 days is more than 24 hours.

• Trump’s Ukraine Aide Sets 100-Day Timeline To End Conflict (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming special envoy has said he hopes to mediate a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict within 100 days, starting on Inauguration Day on January 20. “I know I’m on the clock,” retired US Army lieutenant general Keith Kellogg told Fox News on Wednesday. “I would like to set a goal on a personal level, on a professional level. I would say let’s set it at 100 days and move your way back.” Kellogg stressed that Trump remains committed to restarting negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to find a settlement to the fighting, which has claimed “enormous” casualties on both sides. “He’s not trying to give something to Putin or to the Russians. He’s actually trying to save Ukraine and save their sovereignty. And he’s going to make sure that it’s equitable and that it’s fair,” Kellogg said.

He argued that “the biggest mistake President [Joe] Biden made is the fact that he’s never engaged in any conversations with Putin.” “He hasn’t talked to him in over two years,” Kellogg said, adding that Trump “does talk to adversaries and allies alike.” Trump has repeatedly vowed to quickly mediate a successful peace deal, but offered little specifics. According to media reports, his team is considering freezing the conflict along the current front line. Negotiations between Moscow and Kiev broke down in spring 2022, with both sides accusing each other of making unrealistic demands. Putin stated that for any settlement to work, Ukraine must abandon its plans to join NATO and renounce its claims on Crimea and four other former Ukrainian territories that have joined Russia.

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“They’re afraid that if they were Donald Trump and they had suffered what they did to him, they would be very frightened..”

• Victor Davis Hanson: FBI “Afraid” Trump Will “Re-Examine” Conduct (ZH)

Victor Davis Hanson said on Monday that he thinks the FBI is “afraid” of the incoming Trump administration over the possibility that their shady dealings will be ‘re-examined.’ Speaking with Fox News on Monday about new evidence released of a suspect in the DC pipe bomb case, the Hoover Institution Senior Fellow told host Laura Ingraham; “I think they’re afraid the narrative changed over the four years, and they were afraid to release any information during the election. Now they feel that there’s a new administration and there might be some exposure or culpability. They’re afraid that if they were Donald Trump and they had suffered what they did to him, they would be very frightened the way they think,” adding “So they think Donald Trump is going to re-examine a lot of this.”

A new video published by the FBI’s DC Field Office shows a suspect appearing to plant a bomb near the Democratic National Committee. Hanson went on to call out what he said were the FBI’s “lies,” highlighting the neglect to immediately release Lt. Michael Byrd’s identity after fatally shooting Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 riot. The senior fellow additionally cited the number of charges brought against attendees of the Jan. 6 attack compared to those not charged during the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots. -Daily Caller. “A lot of the things they said, Laura, were abject lies,” Hanson continued. “There were not four officers killed. There were not 10 people killed. There was only one violent death, we think, and that was a Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt. Then there was no need to hide Officer Byrd’s identity. Anytime an officer lethally shoots an unarmed person in this country, they’re identified. For some reason, they wanted to suppress that.”

“They wanted to suppress the FBI video. They wanted to suppress the information about Lynn [sic] Cheney, maybe witness tampering, that’s alleged,” Hanson continued. “They wanted to suppress some of the erosion of the evidence. They didn’t tell us how many people were charged. It ended up [with] 1,500 felony charges. It was [an] almost 75% conviction rate. That never happens. Compare that with the 14,000 people that were arrested in 2020. Almost 90% of them were never charged or indicted. They were released. So there was a lot of things that they want to suppress.”

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How lies survive.

• Klobuchar Repeats Common False Claim About January 6th (Turley)

Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar this week was hit by a “community note” flagging a common false statement made about January 6th and how multiple officers were killed that day. Democratic leaders routinely refer to multiple deaths of officers when the only person to die on January 6th was Ashli Babbitt, a killing of an unarmed protester that remains controversial after a whitewashing by the Capitol Police. Klobuchar, who has been a vocal supporter of censorship to quell “disinformation” on social media, repeated the false narrative and declared that “Police officers were injured and killed.” Klobuchar joined other Democrats in repeating the claim in her post on X: “Four years ago, the electoral vote certification was interrupted by a violent mob. Police officers were injured and killed. Our democracy hung in the balance. I knew we had to do our duty and complete the count – and in the early hours of January 7th, we did.”

That posting quickly led to a “Community Note” by X that said, “No officers were killed.” Immediately after the riot, Democrats started to repeat this claim, particularly concerning the later death of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. The New York Times helped spread the false claim that he died as a result of being hit with a fire extinguisher. In reality, Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes the day after the riot. As the note states, “The medical examiner found Sicknick died of natural causes which means ‘a disease alone causes death. If death is hastened by an injury, the manner of death is not considered natural.’ Four other officers committed suicide days to months later.” While repeating this claim, Democrats also downplay the riot around the White House in the previous summer, including some like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md), who has bizarrely insisted that the protests were “peaceful.”

While many today still claim that the protests were “entirely peaceful” and there was no “attack on the White House,” that claim is demonstrably false. It is only plausible if one looks at the level of violence at the start of the clearing operation as opposed to the prior 48 hours. There was, in fact, an exceptionally high number of officers injured during the protests. In addition to a reported 150 officers injured (including at least 49 Park Police officers around the White House), protesters caused extensive property damage including the torching of a historic structure and the attempted arson of St. John’s. The threat was so great that Trump had to be moved into the bunker because the Secret Service feared a breach of security around the White House.

Of course, January 6th was bad enough—it does not need embellishment. Many of us immediately condemned it at the time as a desecration of our traditions and values. It was a disgraceful riot that interrupted the constitutionally mandated transition of power. However, the repeated use of this false claim is a disservice to the public and a misuse of this national tragedy. This repetition is referred to by psychologists as creating the “illusion of truth.” If repeated enough times, the lie becomes the truth, and those who object are then attacked as “deniers” or “insurrectionist sympathizers.” On “misinformation,” Klobuchar has pushed social media companies to “take this crap off.” She has sponsored legislation to support censorship, particularly when it comes to the pandemic and COVID-19. She has stressed “how lethal misinformation can be and it is our responsibility to take action.” In this case, the lethality was the misinformation.

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“The Supreme Court requested a response from New York prosecutors by Thursday.”

• Trump Asks Supreme Court To Halt Sentencing In Hush Money Case (ZH)

Donald Trump petitioned the US Supreme Court to postpone his sentencing in the Stormy Daniels/hush money case, scheduled for Friday, Jan. 10. This move comes after a New York appeals courts rejected his requests for a delay, including a recent denial from the state’s appeals court, the Epoch Times reported. This move comes after New York courts rejected his requests for a delay, including a recent denial from the state’s appeals court. Trump’s legal team filed an emergency request with the nation’s highest court on Wednesday, arguing that proceeding with the sentencing could cause “grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government,” according to The Associated Press.

The Supreme Court requested a response from New York prosecutors by Thursday. The case, presided over by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, resulted in Trump’s conviction in May 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Merchan has indicated that he does not intend to impose jail time, fines, or probation at the sentencing, and in fact the only reason for the sentencing is so CNN/MSNBC can officially claim that Trump is a convicted felon.

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Can’t miss.

• Guess Who Is Already Talking About Impeaching Trump Again (Margolis)

Donald Trump is set to make history on January 20, becoming the 47th president of the United States. After winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote, he enters this term with a stronger mandate than his first. Yet as sure as the sun rises, Democrats are gearing up for their favorite pastime: impeaching Trump. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has already signaled as much. During an interview on CNN, Dana Bash pressed him on balancing governance with his previous focus on investigations into Trump’s conduct, and Schiff vowed to “push back” against Trump for any perceived “abuse of power.” Schiff responded hesitantly, initially stumbling over his words. “Well, I — look, I think we hope for the best. We keep a focus on trying to get positive, affirmative things done for the country,” he said.

However, he quickly pivoted, adding, “But a lot will depend on how he chooses to govern. If he violates the law, if he violates the Constitution, if he abuses his office, we will vigorously push back, fight back, stand up to him, as we had to do during his first term in office.” Schiff added, “My priority is to try to get things done for my California constituents.” Still, he noted that his constituents also “expect me to stand up to him when he attacks the Constitution or their freedom.” Despite claiming to focus on policy, Schiff’s rhetoric suggests that he is really gearing up for another round of battles with Trump, just as he did during Trump’s first term. This is the same man who lied about having seen evidence of Trump colluding with Russia. So obviously, the issue isn’t whether Trump violates the law; it’s whether Democrats can frame him for some violation of the law.

Remember, before Trump even stepped into the Oval Office, left-wing activists and their media allies were already speculating about his removal. Politico broached the topic of impeachment in April 2016, months before he won the presidency. Articles like “The Case for Donald Trump’s Impeachability” popped up before he was even sworn in. Vanity Fair explicitly reported on Dec. 15, 2016, that Democrats were “paving the way” to impeach him. The Washington Post didn’t even wait a full hour after Trump’s first inauguration, declaring less than 20 minutes into his presidency that the impeachment campaign had begun. For Democrats, impeachment has never been about legitimate concerns. Their motives have always been political: to stop Trump and appease their donor base. Despite their best efforts — including two failed impeachment attempts and numerous legal maneuvers to prevent him from being able to return to office — Trump’s support has endured, and his momentum has grown.

Their relentless attacks on him have only fatigued the public, including many on the left. You would think they’d try a new tactic for a change. For Democrats, simply holding the office of president seems to qualify as an “abuse of power” in Trump’s case. Unlike his first term, however, this time Trump has a Republican-controlled Senate to act as a firewall against such antics, ensuring that his agenda can proceed with fewer roadblocks. Trump’s victory isn’t just a win for his supporters; it’s a repudiation of the Left’s years-long campaign of lawfare and political gamesmanship. With the country increasingly weary of futile anti-Trump hysteria, Democrats might find that their impeachment rhetoric falls flat this time around. But don’t expect that to stop them — they’ve been plotting this for years, and they’re not about to stop now.

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No, they should all decrease it.

• NATO Members Should Increase Defense Spending – Trump (RT)

NATO countries should start spending 5% of their GDP on defense, US President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday. European members of the US-led military bloc, he told a press conference, continue to spend “only a tiny fraction” of what Washington spends on defense, even though they are more affected by the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. “It should be 5%, not 2%,” Trump told journalists at his Florida estate, referring to the spending threshold set by the bloc for its members. Some countries in the organization “have taken advantage of us,” the US president-elect said, repeating the statements he made during his first presidential term, when he pushed fellow NATO states to spend more on defense, arguing that the US would not protect them in case of a foreign aggression otherwise.

On Tuesday, Trump also spoke about a disparity in defense spending between various member countries. According to him, Washington was spending “billions and billions of dollars more … than Europe.” The president-elect then argued that the economy of the European NATO members combined is of a “similar size” to that of the US, adding that “they can all afford” an increase in defense spending. The US-led bloc simply “can’t do it at [a 2% threshold],” the president-elect said, without going into details about his reasoning behind that statement. He even warned that European NATO member states are currently “in a dangerous territory” and also claimed his previous insistence on fellow members’ defense-spend increases “saved” the bloc. According to a NATO report into defense spending published last June, none of the bloc’s members, including the US itself, currently spends 5% of their GDP on defense.

Poland was the NATO member with the largest relative level of defense spending, having allocated over 4% of its GDP to this concern. The US occupied third place in relative terms, behind Poland and Estonia, with just under 3.5% of its GDP spent on defense. As many as 15 members of the bloc, including Canada, Italy and France, continued to fall behind the organization’s 2% spending threshold as of June 2024, according to its own data. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has also spoken about bloc members’ need to increase this allocation in their budgets. “It is true that we spend more on defense now than we did a decade ago,” he said last month in Brussels, adding that the bloc nonetheless spends less on defense then during the Cold War, when “Europeans spent far more than 3% of their GDP” on it.

Asked about what new threshold he would consider sufficient, Rutte said “you have to go to at least 4%,” adding that “even with 4% you can’t defend yourselves, because then you would not have the latest technologies implemented… in your armies.” Trump’s latest reiterations come as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sharply criticized a proposal by his Economy Minister Robert Habeck to drastically increase the nation’s defense budget. According to Scholz, the proposed increase would only end up as additional burden for the German taxpayers.

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Trump can’t afford to lose her.

• Senate Democrats Attempt To Delay Tulsi Gabbard Confirmation Hearings (ZH)

Just days after the new members of the United States Senate were sworn into office, Democrats in the upper chamber have already taken steps to delay the confirmation hearings of one major nominee for President-elect Donald Trump’s second Cabinet. As reported by Axios, Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), who serves as the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is delaying Republican efforts to hold confirmation hearings as early as next week for former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (R-Hawaii), President-elect Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Warner’s excuse for the delay is that the committee has allegedly not yet received certain materials from Gabbard, including her FBI background check, ethics disclosure, and her pre-hearing questionnaire. The background check, as per committee rules, must be submitted at least one week before the hearing is to take place.

However, Gabbard had in fact completed her background check last week. Furthermore, her confirmation could be much smoother than most due to her already possessing a security clearance. She also already submitted her pre-hearing questionnaire, but will submit a second one by Thursday due to Warner’s demands. As for the ethics report, logistical issues have prevented the timely delivery of such information due to the Washington D.C. area being struck by a heavy snowstorm on Monday, which has caused similar delays for other nominees. Despite Warner’s efforts to block the hearing, Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) reaffirmed that the Senate “intends to hold these hearings before Inauguration Day,” according to a spokesman. “The Intelligence Committee, the nominees, and the transition are diligently working toward that goal.”

“After the terrorist attacks on New Year’s Eve and New Years Day, it’s sad to see Sen. Warner and Democrats playing politics with Americans’ safety and our national security,” said Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition. Gabbard has generally been considered one of President-elect Trump’s most controversial nominees. Originally a Democrat who rose to the rank of vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Gabbard came to be at odds with her own party over its deliberate suppression of the presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and 2020. She left the House to run for President herself in 2020, then left the Democratic Party and switched to Independent. She became a vocal supporter of President Trump’s comeback bid in 2024, and switched her party affiliation to Republican shortly after his victory in November.

Fetterman

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Some logic:

“DOJ lawyers said in the new filing that whether Smith was unconstitutionally appointed is irrelevant because the issue at hand is how Garland handles Smith’s report..”

You mean the report that the Constitution says shouldn’t have existed?

• DOJ Confirms It Will Release Jack Smith’s Report On Trump, But… (ZH)

Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to release only the volume of special counsel Jack Smith’s report dealing with Donald Trump’s plans to subvert the transfer of power after his loss in the 2020 election, holding back on sharing the Mar-a-Lago report while the president-elect’s two co-defendants still face trial. Garland’s decision all but assures the public will never see Smith’s report reviewing Trump’s mishandling of classified records at his Palm Beach, Fla., resort. However, the filing says the top members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees will be able to review the Mar-a-Lago report at the Department of Justice (DOJ)… so don’t be surprised when the leaks start.

As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, DOJ officials said in a court filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that AG Garland intends to release part one of the report, which deals with Trump, “in furtherance of the public interest in informing a co-equal branch and the public regarding this significant matter.” Smith has already transmitted the report to Garland, officials said. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday had ordered the department not to release the report until the 11th Circuit reviewed a motion by Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, Trump’s co-defendants in a federal case. While prosecutors dropped charges against Trump following his November 2024 election win, they are still pursuing Nauta, a former Trump aide, and De Oliveira, a manager at Trump’s resort in Florida.

Nauta and De Oliveira say Smith should be fired and that his report should not be released to the public, given he was found by Cannon to be unconstitutionally appointed. DOJ lawyers said in the new filing that whether Smith was unconstitutionally appointed is irrelevant because the issue at hand is how Garland handles Smith’s report. They also argued that Nauta and De Oliveira have no interest in part one, and do not have standing to block the publication of that part. “There is also no valid basis for this Court to pretermit the Attorney General’s discretion with respect to Volume One,” they wrote. Officials said that while part two of the report will not be made available to the public, a redacted version will be available for certain lawmakers to view in camera as long as the lawmakers agree not to publicly release any of the report’s contents.

Read more …

Enter Kash Patel.

• FBI Is Still Hiding Details Of Russiagate (Maté)

Just two days before McCabe opened the May 2017 probe, the FBI, via Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, renewed contact with dossier author Christopher Steele despite having terminated him as a source back in November 2016. As RCI’s Paul Sperry has previously reported, this sudden outreach to Steele right before the opening of a new Trump-Russia conspiracy investigation indicated that the FBI was seeking to re-engage the Clinton-funded British operative to help it build a case against the president for espionage and obstruction of justice. At the time, the FBI was still relying on Steele’s fabrications for its surveillance warrants against Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. The following month, the FBI filed the last of its four FISA court warrants based on Steele’s material. The Justice Department has since invalidated two of those warrants on the grounds that they were based on “material misstatements.”

The FBI re-enlisted Steele despite possessing information that thoroughly discredited him. Five months before it newly sought Steele’s help to investigate the sitting president, the FBI interviewed Igor Danchenko, whom Steele had used as his dossier’s key “sub-source.” In that January 2017 meeting, Danchenko told FBI agents that corroboration for the dossier’s claims was “zero”; that he had “no idea” where claims sourced to him came from; and that the Russia-Trump rumors he passed along to Steele came from alcohol-fueled “word of mouth and hearsay.” The FBI had also been unable to corroborate any of Steele’s incendiary claims.

A previously disclosed document also shows that former CIA Director John Brennan – who insistently advanced the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory – informed then-president Barack Obama in July 2016 that the Clinton campaign was planning to tie Trump to Russia in order to distract attention from the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. By that point, the Clinton campaign was already paying for the fabricated reports produced by Steele, who made contact with the FBI as early as July 5.

Although the newly declassified document attempts to suggest that the FBI had actionable intelligence to suspect Trump of being a Russian agent, McCabe’s subsequent comments indicate that there was no such evidence on offer. Instead, McCabe has said his counterintelligence probe of Trump was primarily motivated by the president’s firing of Comey. In a February 2019 interview with CBS News, McCabe explained his thinking as follows: “[T]he idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia’s malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counter intelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, ‘Why would a president of the United States do that?’ So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia.”

McCabe therefore had no evidence that Trump had a “connection” to Russia, and in fact could only “wonder” if there was one. Yet because Trump had fired Comey, whose FBI was already investigating Trump’s campaign for Russia ties and relying on the Clinton-funded Steele dossier in the process, McCabe decided that he had grounds to order an espionage investigation of the commander in chief. With the official predicate for that May 2017 investigation still redacted by the FBI, McCabe’s public statements offer the only insider window into why it was opened. In all of the investigations related to alleged Russian interference to date, the Justice Department has pointedly avoided the question.

Despite inheriting McCabe’s probe – and debunking claims of a Trump-Russia conspiracy related to the 2016 election – Special Counsel Mueller made no mention of the Trump as Russian agent theory in his final report of March 2019. Without informing the public, the FBI closed down the Trump counterintelligence investigation the following month. The case’s closing Electronic Communication, which has previously been declassified in redacted form, states that the McCabe probe “was transferred to FBI personnel assisting” the Mueller team, and entailed the use of “a variety of investigative techniques.” An inquiry led by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the FBI’s conduct during Crossfire Hurricane also ignored McCabe’s decision to investigate Trump as an agent of Russia.

And in a footnote in his final report of May 2023, John Durham – the Special Counsel appointed to launch a sweeping review of the Russia investigation – claimed that McCabe’s May 2017 probe was outside of his purview. By contrast, when it comes to Crossfire Hurricane, Durham’s report concluded that the FBI did not have a legitimate basis to launch that investigation, repeatedly ignored exculpatory evidence, and buried warnings that Clinton’s campaign was trying to frame Trump as a Russian conspirator. While the original Trump-Russia investigation has been discredited, the public remains in the dark about why the FBI launched a follow-up counterintelligence probe that targeted Trump while he was newly in the White House – and what ends it took to pursue it.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Panama
https://twitter.com/i/status/1876988453205746021

 

 

Stay at home dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1876904648981831764

 

 

Eagle

 

 

Parrots

 

 

Street art

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 7 2024

Sep 072024
 
 September 7, 2024  Posted by at 8:34 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Christ in the garden of olives 1889

 

• Judge Delays Trump’s Hush Money Sentencing Until After Election (ZH)
• Ghosts in the Machine (Kunstler)
• Hunter Biden Loses Game of Chicken With Himself (Turley)
• Hunter Biden: Plot to Clear Harris of Blot of Biden Family Corruption? (Sp.)
• Russia, Russia, Russia Rerun (Sp.)
• Biden Steals Trump’s Idea To Launch Sovereign Wealth Fund (ZH)
• The Media Lies Add Up (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Kremlin Refuses To Be Drawn On Putin’s ‘Endorsement’ Of Harris (RT)
• YouTube Bans Alleged Russia-linked Right-wing Channels (RT)
• Archaic Crypto Law Charges Reveal French Access to Private Communications (Sp.)
• The Edifying Misadventure of The Chevalier du Rove (Despot)
• Chip Roy Report On Impact Of Biden-Harris Border Policies (ZH)
• FBI Raids Homes of New York Mayor’s Allies, Police Chief (Sp.)
• War In Ukraine Must End ‘This Fall’ – Zelensky (RT)

 

 

 

 

Will Scharf is good
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832093648613454095

 

 

Alina is a treasure
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832091397328875733

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1831881225679859954

 

 

JFK peace
https://twitter.com/i/status/1831883090710659336

 

 

Vivek
https://twitter.com/i/status/1831881487412547907

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many had their hopes up that Merchan would put him away. But he caved.

“..it would be inappropriate to sentence the former president this month since early voting in the presidential election has already begun..”

• Judge Delays Trump’s Hush Money Sentencing Until After Election (ZH)

The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal case has postponed his sentencing for the second time. According to Reuters, the new sentencing date has been pushed to November 26, after the presidential election on November 5. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Juan M. Merchan, who oversaw Trump’s seven-week trial earlier this year, to postpone the September 18 sentencing. They argued there wouldn’t be enough time for the defense to appeal Merchan’s upcoming ruling on Trump’s request to overturn the conviction, citing the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision on presidential immunity. Judge Juan Merchan wrote in the court filing: “This matter is one that stands alone, in a unique place in this Nation’s history, and this Court has presided over it since its inception – from arraignment to jury verdict and a plenitude of motions and other matters in-between.

Were this Court to decide, after careful consideration of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump, that this case should proceed, it will be faced with one of the most critical and difficult decisions a trial court judge faces – the sentencing of a defendant found guilty of crimes by a unanimous jury of his peers. “The adjournment request has now been decided in the same way this Court has decided every other issue that has arisen since the origination of this case, applying the facts and the law after carefully considering the issues and respective arguments of the parties to ensure that the integrity of the proceeding, is protected, justice is served, and the independence of this judiciary kept firmly intact.” In May, Trump was convicted by a unanimous jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors said Trump signed off on the scheme to conceal reimbursements to a lawyer who wired $130,000 “hush money” payment to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump pleaded not guilty and denied the encounter.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of four years in jail. Most legal observers expect Trump to avoid jail time, given the alternatives to incarceration, including probation. Trump’s original sentencing was set for July 11, but it was delayed after he filed a motion to overturn his conviction, citing a landmark Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove’s request for a postponement argued it would be inappropriate to sentence the former president this month since early voting in the presidential election has already begun. “By adjourning the sentencing until after that election … the Court would reduce, even if not eliminate, issues regarding the integrity of any future proceedings,” they wrote.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told The Hill that there should be no sentencing at all in the case and that, “as mandated by the United States Supreme Court,” Trump’s hush money case and other legal matters should be dismissed. Prosecutors did not oppose the delay, leaving the decision to the judge. They noted, “The People respectfully defer to the Court on the appropriate post-trial schedule.” A Trump win in November indicates he could order the Department of Justice to drop federal election interference charges against him. However, he would not have the authority to end the case in Manhattan or an election interference case in Georgia.

Read more …

“Are you comforted to know that the US government is on auto-pilot, a colossal, menacing machine run by ghosts?”

• Ghosts in the Machine (Kunstler)

Russia is about to roll up on what’s left of Ukraine. Our State Department neocon division thought it was wicked-smart to start a little action there in 2014, to provoke Russia into a ruinous war against NATO (the game: “Let’s You and Him Fight”) in order, theoretically, to wreck Russia and depose Mr. Putin. Didn’t work. Do you know why? I will tell you (it’s really simple): Russia’s leadership is more intelligent than ours, and far less psychopathic. They perceived correctly that we were only wrecking ourselves. Ten years later, the Ukraine caper draws to a humiliating end for our neocons, and a ruinous end for NATO and the EU. So far this year, it appears that “Joe Biden’s” party has ceased paying attention to Ukraine. The pretty yellow and blue flags have all but disappeared — except in Massachusetts, we noticed, the most highly “educated” and most deeply insane state in the union. I’ll be interested in how Kamala Harris explains our Ukraine war policy in Tuesday’s presidential debate. Defending democracy, I suppose.

The governments of the major EU nations stupidly followed the bidding of America’s psychopathic neocons and now they ‘ll have to answer for it as their people awake to the destruction of the EU nations’ economies. Early elections will be called and globalist stooges will be swept away. The turmoil will rhyme with the chaos of 1848, a year of revolution. NATO, finding itself not just purposeless but toxic to Europe’s well-being, must dissolve as members on the periphery withdraw, some seeking to join the BRICs economic bloc. Germany, France, and the UK get sucked helplessly into a new great depression and social turmoil as they contend with many millions of hostile migrants.

Here in America, you can already hear the fake anguished cry of “Russia, Russia, Russia” echoing out of Merrick Garland’s fake Justice Department. We’re to understand that the Russians are coming for our election — more gaslight — when it’s actually the Democratic party, led surreptitiously by its lawfare cadres, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, et al. Their many courtroom pranks have failed against Mr. Trump. Judge Chutkan was bloviating in the DC federal court this week to generate a little heat on MSNBC, but her case has a wooden stake through its heart and Xs where its eyes used to be.

Up in New York, Judge Juan Merchan pretends to wrassle with whether or not to start Civil War Two by remanding Mr. Trump to Rikers Island on September 18 (I doubt that happens). In the event, though, I believe Mr. Trump might simply say, “No thank you,” and go about his business running for president. That would be a counter-prank I’d be eager to see. Who gets in the act then? Federal marshals? The FBI (ha!)? The Supreme Court term begins the first Monday in October. They could have something to say about the steaming pile of horseshit that was Alvin Bragg’s and Mathew Colangelo’s case. (Also, Weissmann’s, Eisen’s, Monaco’s, and McCord’s.)

Gawd knows where things might stand after next Tuesday’s great debate. The rules are pretty stringent. No candidates questioning each other. No audience. No confab with staff during commercial breaks. The mute buttons will be on. Without her “I’m speaking” routine, Ms. Harris has. . . zotz. All Mr. Trump really has to do is be polite for 90-minutes. More than a few people, meanwhile, are beginning to ask who is running the country, since “Joe Biden” is mostly off-duty, beaching it, not attending cabinet meetings, and probably not being consulted on any number of matters being carried out in his name. Are you comforted to know that the US government is on auto-pilot, a colossal, menacing machine run by ghosts?

Read more …

“If Hunter still hopes for a presidential commutation or pardon, the chances of such executive action is dramatically improved after a sentencing.”

• Hunter Biden Loses Game of Chicken With Himself (Turley)

Hunter Biden just showed the perils of playing the game of chicken with yourself. For months, many of us have marveled at the sight of Hunter careening toward a cliff while declaring publicly that he was prepared to go all the way. The Justice Department was never going over the cliff because they had nothing to gain or lose in open-and-shut cases in Delaware and California. There was never a serious question of convicting Hunter of these crimes, just a will of the Justice Department to secure them. Special Counsel David Weiss inexplicably allowed serious felonies to expire, refused to bring obvious crimes as an unregistered foreign agent, and sought to cut an embarrassing sweetheart deal with Hunter to avoid any jail time on a couple of minor crimes. The deal then collapsed in open court when a judge balked at a provision that would give Hunter sweeping immunity for any crime.

When she asked the federal prosecutor if he had ever seen such a plea bargain offered a defendant other than the President’s son, he admitted that he had not. That is when the chest pounding began. Unwilling to accept anything but the sweetheart deal, Hunter’s defense counsel told the prosecutors in court to “just rip it up.” They did and Weiss was forced to actually prosecute Hunter.According to the Justice Department, Weiss continued to try to cut a plea bargain with Hunter but was rebuffed by the defense. They then went to Delaware, the home of the Bidens, and tried to convince a sympathetic jury that Hunter was a drug addict who was not responsible for his action as well as other unsupported claims. It failed in spectacular fashion with a conviction on all counts. Hunter then floored it for the California cliff on the tax charges as the Justice Department and most of us watched confused about how he was trying to intimidate. He hit the brakes as the trial was beginning.

Hunter has succeeded in putting himself in the worst possible position for a plea. He waited until he had little to trade and reportedly did not even inform the prosecutors of his decision. But it gets worse. If he had agreed to a less generous plea deal last year, he could have secured a recommended sentence on both the gun and tax charges. Instead, he will go into this sentencing with a past criminal record, an aggravating factor that could reduce the benefit of the belated plea. In the end, Hunter had nothing to offer, nothing to bargain. He plead guilty to all nine counts. This decision may still be based more on political than legal calculations. Hunter was almost certain to be convicted. But it would have taken time as his father’s administration (and pardon authority) wanes. If Hunter still hopes for a presidential commutation or pardon, the chances of such executive action is dramatically improved after a sentencing.

The White House rarely considers pardons before a trial and sentencing. Indeed, they often wait for appeals to run their course. Moreover, a demand for jail time seems likely from the Justice Department given this history and it is equally likely to be granted. If that sentence is lengthy, it will add pressure on President Biden to take action with a commutation or pardon. If President Biden does violate his promise to not pardon Hunter, it would not be a surprise for many. In 2022, I wrote that the President could resign or withdraw as a candidate and pardon Hunter. I referred to this as “break-the-glass option”: “He would end his political career with an act as a father, which some would condemn but most would understand.”

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He counts on his dad if Kamala loses.

• Hunter Biden: Plot to Clear Harris of Blot of Biden Family Corruption? (Sp.)

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter has pleaded guilty to all nine counts against him in a sprawling, $1.4 million tax evasion case highlighting his history of indulgence in drugs and hookers. The surprise resolution of the case came just days before opening statements in his trial were set to begin. If it had proceeded, the trial would have likely run through the remainder of Joe Biden’s presidency, and proven politically damaging for the Biden’s successor – Vice President Kamala Harris, just two months out from the November 5 election. Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in jail and fines of up to $1.2 million in the tax case, although observers expect leniency for the 54-year-old businessman – whose business allegedly included an elaborate influence-peddling scheme involving the selling of access to his powerful father for cash. Sentencing in the tax case is set for December 16.

The guilty plea adds to Biden’s conviction in a Delaware court in June on three felony counts related to a 2018 handgun purchase, for which he could get up to 25 years in jail. The judge in the case did not set a sentencing date. Hunter Biden has followed his father like a corruption ball and chain since 2020 when, just weeks from the November election, the New York Post began the publication of a series of stories based on information from his recovered lost laptop about his alleged pay-to-play dealings. The stories threatened to derail the Biden campaign, were it not for social media companies’ move to censor them as ‘Russian disinformation’ – claims which tech execs including Mark Zuckerberg later confirmed were bogus. The Harris campaign has already made a push to carefully distance itself from Biden on some issues, from capital gains taxes to the Border wall, and may now hope that Biden’s tax charges guilty plea will conclude the Hunter Biden saga, or at least leave him out of the spotlight until safely after the election.

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Hmmm. Still think they accepted a lot of money. Without too many questions.

• Russia, Russia, Russia Rerun (Sp.)

Western media outlets are fervently perpetuating the narrative of “Russian meddling in the US election.” As this fabricated story intensifies, marked by sanctions, indictments, and the seizure of web domains labeled as “influenced by the Kremlin” according to US officials, an increasing number of media sources are jumping on the bandwagon. The New York Times noted that American spy agencies have assessed that the Kremlin “favors” Donald Trump, and warned how the US was “caught flat-footed in 2016” over Russia’s alleged (and unproven) endeavors to ‘influence’ American elections. ABC News said that the US was rushing to “take aim at Russian disinformation” just weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Washington Post dove in for a closer look at what it described as a pro-Trump “supergroup” allegedly bankrolled by Russia. The six right-wing influencers involved are currently engaged in damage control, asserting on social media that if the allegations prove to be true, they should be regarded as “victims” of this supposed “plot.” Forbes also threw its focus on Tenet’s talent roster of six influencers: Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, Lauren Southern, Taylor Hansen and Matt Christiansen. Together, the content-creators boasted a cumulative YouTube subscriber count of 7.16 million, noted the outlet. Also, Germany’s Die Welt ran with a headline that warned of “deep fakes being spread by Moscow.”

On Wednesday, the United States imposed sanctions against the Rossiya Segodnya media group, RIA Novosti, RT, Sputnik and Ruptly. The new measures also affected Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Sputnik’s parent media group Rossiya Segodnya. “Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated ten individuals and two entities as part of a coordinated US government response to Moscow’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 US presidential election,” a statement released on Wednesday said.

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“..Bloomberg had to make it seem that Biden had been working on their version of Trump’s idea “for months” and that’s precisely what it said..”

• Biden Steals Trump’s Idea To Launch Sovereign Wealth Fund (ZH)

Two days ago when president Trump first floated the idea of a sovereign wealth fund… hard-core Democrats and/or socialist billionaires balked at the idea, mocking it as wannabe Saudi Arabia. Trump, speaking to economic leaders on Thursday, said he envisioned the fund as a way to address persistent debt issues and said it would be funded through his plan to impose tariffs on all imports. “We’ll be able to invest in state-of-the-art manufacturing hubs, advanced defense capabilities, cutting-edge medical research and help save billions of dollars in preventing disease in the first place,” Trump said. “And it is many of the people in this room who will be helping to advise and recommend investments for this fund.”

But expect all the leftist critics to positively love the idea now, just a few hours later, because late on Friday Bloomberg reported that the Kamala/Biden admin has stolen yet another idea from Trump (after eliminating tax on tips, and stimulating new business creation): aides to Joe Biden “have been crafting a proposal to create a sovereign wealth fund” that would allow the US to invest in national security interests including technology, energy, and critical links in the supply chain, a person familiar with the effort, told Bloomberg. As Bloomberg admits, the “behind-the-scenes work” by NSA Jake Sullivan and his deputy, Daleep Singh, mirrors – at least in spirit – a proposal floated Thursday by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who called for a government-owned investment fund to finance “great national endeavors” during a speech to the Economic Club of New York.

Of course, it would look just a little suspicious if the admin of the president in absentia were to float a wealth fund idea just one day after Trump did the same, so Bloomberg had to make it seem that Biden had been working on their version of Trump’s idea “for months” and that’s precisely what it said: “Sullivan and Singh have been working on the project for months across a series of weekly brainstorming efforts, and have met with economic experts on the National Security Council to debate the size, structure, funding, leadership, and potential guardrails for a proposed fund.” It “wasn’t clear if it was the “sources” that clarified on the ongoing duration of the project, or just Bloomberg’s attempt to make the latest policy theft appear a bit more organic. It gets funnier: “The work has progressed to the point where planning documents have been circulated among White House staffers and key agencies, according to the person familiar, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.”

Sure it has: and Biden waited until 2 months before the end of his presidency to make the push… or rather waht push: “But even as the work has progressed, key details — including, critically, the fund’s structure, funding model, and investment strategy — remain unclear.” And so, just like every aspect in Kamala’s policy agenda, we’ll have to wait for Trump to reveal the details of his own plan before “sources” leak what Biden was working on before he decided to hit Rehoboth beach permanently after Nancy Pelosi’s July putsch. One thing is certain though: whether it its Trump or the puppetmasters who control Kamala, a SWF – especially one of material size in the $1+ trillion range – will lead to another sharp spike in US debt, pushing US debt sharply higher from its latest record daily print just over $35.3 trillion, and making holders of non fiat assets richer as the US careens toward a monetary and fiscal solvency crisis.

Read more …

“..they have all but destroyed democracy, ruined the reputation of the media, alienated the public—and embarrassed their country before the world.”

• The Media Lies Add Up (Victor Davis Hanson)

On the eve of the first 2020 debate, Biden aide and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken helped to round up “51 former intelligence authorities” to claim falsely that Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop—full of incriminating evidence of felonious Biden family behavior—was fabricated by the Russians. Yet the FBI already had the laptop and had authenticated it as genuine. The FBI was also actively enlisting Silicon Valley social media companies to suppress accurate news accounts of the laptop’s embarrassing contents—ostensibly to aid the Biden campaign. The signees of the false letter included former intelligence kingpins such as Leon Panetta, James Clapper, and John Brennan. None has ever apologized for deliberating lying to the country in a (successful) attempt to help alter an election. During the summer of 2021, top military officials, at least publicly, parroted the Biden administration’s lie that it was safe to abruptly withdraw all troops from Afghanistan.

The Biden plan was to take political credit for ending the two-decade-long war on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the American invasion of Afghanistan.Yet many intelligence officials in and outside the Pentagon had warned both Biden and the Pentagon top brass that any such reckless and total withdrawal would collapse Afghanistan.They rightly also advised that sudden flight would give terrorists a windfall of equipment and infrastructure. But they were ignored and during the subsequent Biden misadventure, thirteen American Marines were needlessly killed. After the greatest military humiliation in a half-century, Biden and many in the media lied that the mission was nevertheless a successful withdrawal. But that was not all. For the first time in history, a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, was subjected to numerous criminal and civil suits in an election year.

Yet the federal prosecutor, Jack Smith, met with Biden officials. A high-ranking Biden Justice federal attorney joined the New York municipal prosecution. The Georgia prosecutor met stealthily with Biden’s legal counsel. And a major Biden donor funded the civil suit. The once collusion-hungry media ignored all such lawfare and rank collusion. During the 2020 Democratic primaries, the general election, and throughout the first three years of the Biden administration, it was evident that Joe Biden was physically and mentally incapable of serving as president. Yet his aides and the media all misled the American people. They insisted that Biden was vigorous and sharp. Then suddenly in June 2024, within a 24-hour period, Biden was declared by these same insiders as unfit to continue as the Democratic nominee. Their new problem with Biden was not just his long-standing embarrassing dementia.

Rather bad polls increasingly warned that voters no longer believed their lies and thus would likely not reelect Biden but would instead punish most Democrats in the upcoming 2024 election. So, a new media narrative arose: the once-hale Biden was forced to resign as the Democrat nominee. His once widely caricatured vice president, Kamala Harris, just as abruptly was coronated as his replacement candidate by an equally suddenly gushing and colluding media. In sum, for some nine years, the media and the left have successfully fed the country a succession of rank deceptions and conspiracies. They did so because they proclaimed Donald Trump too dangerous to be president and therefore any means they employed to stop him were to be justified. And they are doing so yet a third time in 2024. As they continue, they have all but destroyed democracy, ruined the reputation of the media, alienated the public—and embarrassed their country before the world.

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”As for his tone, people abroad who are interested in it should reflect on it. Let’s not steal the opportunity to do so..”

• Kremlin Refuses To Be Drawn On Putin’s ‘Endorsement’ Of Harris (RT)

People are free to interpret the tone of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks about his preferred candidate in the upcoming US presidential election any way they like, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. He was commenting on the reaction to statements made by the Russian leader the previous day during a panel discussion. Putin said he favored Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, since she has the backing of President Joe Biden. She also “laughs infectiously,” Putin added, suggesting that Harris would not be as likely to impose new sanctions on Russia. Peskov said American domestic politics is not at the top of the Russian president’s agenda, but that he does comment on international affairs when asked.

”As for his tone, people abroad who are interested in it should reflect on it. Let’s not steal the opportunity to do so,” the official added. Moscow would rather not be dragged into American affairs, but does not expect Russia to stop being used as a foil for US domestic politics anytime soon, Peskov said. Washington routinely accuses the Russian government of “meddling” and “interfering” in American elections, which Moscow denies. The White House on Thursday rebuked Putin’s remark, with John Kirby, its national security spokesman, stating that he “ought to stop talking about our elections, period.” Meanwhile former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, reacted by saying that he was not sure whether to be insulted by Putin’s words or take them as a favor to him.

Officials in Moscow have repeatedly denied having a preference for either candidate, since they believe neither would improve US relations with Russia. Some US media interpreted Putin’s “endorsement” of Harris as a form of trolling, similarly to his previously expressed support for Biden. In February, he described the US leader a predictable old-school politician, unlike Trump. Biden has since dropped out of the race amid unfavorable opinion polls and pressure from donors and party heavyweights.

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“..testifies to the irreversible degradation of the democratic state in the United States and its transformation into a totalitarian neoliberal dictatorship.”

• YouTube Bans Alleged Russia-linked Right-wing Channels (RT)

YouTube has removed five right-wing political channels linked to what the US Department of Justice (DOJ) claims is a Russian effort to sow division in America and influence its domestic landscape. In a statement cited by the Washington Post on Thursday, the Google-owned video hosting service said it had “terminated” the accounts of the Tenet Media company and four other entities linked to conservative commentator Lauren Chen in a bid “to combat coordinated influence operations.” The move comes after the DOJ on Wednesday charged two Russians, identified as RT employees, with violating the Foreign Agents Act, money laundering, and illegally funneling millions of dollars to US-based entities to promote Moscow’s narrative on various politically charged issues.

While the DOJ did not directly name the company which was allegedly involved in those activities, saying only that it was based in Tennessee and had posted around 2,000 videos since its launch in November 2023, some observers and social media users suggested that the indictment referred to Tenet Media.The company was founded by Chen and her husband Liam Donovan in early 2022 and often features right-wing influencers that provide commentary on such topics as immigration, inflation, and foreign policy.

Following the indictment, conservative outlet Blaze Media said, as quoted by Semafor, that it had terminated a contact with Chen, whom it described as “an independent contractor,” without providing an explanation for the move. In a separate development, the US Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned several Russian nationals, including RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and three other senior RT employees, over alleged efforts to influence the US election. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has denounced the new restrictions, arguing that the move “testifies to the irreversible degradation of the democratic state in the United States and its transformation into a totalitarian neoliberal dictatorship.”

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“..an obscure, never-used twenty-year-old law obliging companies providing cryptography tools to inform the French Cybersecurity Agency..”

• Archaic Crypto Law Charges Reveal French Access to Private Communications (Sp.)

The Durov saga in France and the continued efforts by countries around the world to crack down on his popular cloud-based, end-to-end encrypted private messenger and social media software has divulged a string of embarrassing details about the sorry state of internet privacy and freedom of information. Two of the six charges facing Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France are grounded in an obscure, never-used twenty-year-old law obliging companies providing cryptography tools to inform the French Cybersecurity Agency (French acronym ANSSI) and grant it access to the software’s source code and “a description of [its] technical characteristics.” The 2004 law – uniquely blunt in its demand that companies divulge info about the tech tools used for private communications, is being used against Durov by accusing him of providing encrypted communications services “without certified declaration.”

The legal requirement also means, if it is applied evenly across the board, that the array of instant messengers available to French users, from WhatsApp and Signal to iMessage and the French-made Olvid ‘secure’ messenger used by the French government, do comply with ANSSI regulations, meaning French intelligence can potentially spy on any or all French users at any time. Adding credence to this idea is the fact that Pavel Durov is reportedly the first-ever tech mogul to be charged under the 2004 law, and the fact that many big-name tech companies have been silent on the Durov case, with the exception of Proton CEO Andy Yen, who characterized the charges against the Russian-born tech mogul as “economic suicide” that’s “rapidly and permanently changing the perception of founders and investors” toward France.

“If sustained, I don’t see how tech founders could possibly travel to France, much less hire in France,” Yen wrote last week. The law is also reminiscent of the case against WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange, who was threatened with decades of jail time by the US under the obscure Espionage Act of 1917, even though that he was not an American citizen, and a publisher, not a spy. Former president Donald Trump was charged under the same act in his classified documents case, which got thrown out by a judge in July.

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“America is a stage where standing ovations are paid at the price of blood..”

• The Edifying Misadventure of The Chevalier du Rove (Despot)

The owner of Telegram, as far as we know, is still in France. The bird without a nest now lives with a police ankle tag on its foot. It is still unclear why he himself landed in the trap set. But we are beginning to understand how he thinks. The intelligence services too, no doubt. More than thirty years ago, when he was living in Paris, Edward Limonov gave me a very valuable piece of advice: ‘Do whatever you want, but avoid making out with the French police. They are the toughest bastards.’ Limonov had been expelled from the USSR before landing in the New York underground, so he knew a bit about police in many places. Limonov was not only a political punk, but also a very good writer. In his collection of short stories about Russia in decay which we had published in French (La sentinelle assassinée, ed. L’Age d’Homme), he dissected the anatomy of certain Russian illusions about the West.

In a piece named ‘A Tragedy of Ignorance’ he delivered the burlesque and heartbreaking story of the exodus of a family of Soviet musicians who had enjoyed great success playing jazz. Drunk with glory, they had convinced themselves that it was nothing to succeed in Russia if one did not succeed in America. In the homeland of jazz! The unfortunate people did not know where they were setting foot. America is a stage where standing ovations are paid at the price of blood. Fooled by promises without cover, rushed into tours as exhausting as they were low-paying, they had ended up crashing in a poorly maintained plane. Limonov would have done better to address his warning to the founder of Telegram, but would the Chevalier du Rove have listened to it? Anyway, the bird without a nest now lives with a police ankle tag on its foot. Unless otherwise indicated, he has not tried to flee his new homeland where he faces twenty years in prison. Around the world, there is speculation about the reasons and the behind-the-scenes story of his arrest.

His personality interests us in two ways. Both as a product and illustration of a certain mentality specific to the westernized Russian intelligentsia, and as a geopolitical factor because Pavel Durov is the sole owner-at least that’s what he claims-of the most coveted internet messaging service in the world. Last May, Tucker Carlson travelled to Dubai to record a very captivating interview with Durov. That was mainly about the fight against censorship, the independence of ideas and freedom of movement, and the best way to resist the global Leviathan. Perhaps Carlson had oriented the interview according to his own domestic political imperatives, where the fight against Democratic media censorship plays a central role. In any case, this interview undoubtedly contributed to imposing a certain ‘reading’ of the Parisian incident.

After the captive, let’s take a look at the jailer. Since the Gilets Jaunes revolt, the French state has established for itself a solid reputation as an enemy of freedoms. It is from France, in particular, that the largest number of blocking requests to Twitter came before it was taken over by Elon Musk. The Macronian apparatchik Thierry Breton, France’s nominee as European Commissioner, exported this Orwellian craze to the European Union with extravagant high-handedness until he was disavowed by the Eurocrats themselves. Macron and his henchmen had set a trap for the new Julian Assange to gag him and his network. The accusation of complicity in paedophilia or terrorism was just their alibi. It was that simple. Maybe. But there are also less romantic ways of looking at events.

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“..the “ultimate goal” of the Democratic party is to grant citizenship to “all 11 million or however many” illegals in the country..”

• Chip Roy Report On Impact Of Biden-Harris Border Policies (ZH)

Democrats have made no secret that they plan to grant blanket amnesty to tens of millions of illegal immigrants who flooded into the country after President Joe Biden shredded President Trump’s sweeping efforts to secure the border – and whose worst elements are committing heinous crimes and taking over apartment complexes in several major Democrat-run cities. The plan appears to be to provide Democrats with a reliable stream of votes, no matter the cost to the country (which, according to the NY Post, was $150 billion last year). That’s not hyperbole – last week Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) openly stated that the Democrat party’s plan is to turn all “undocumented” migrants into “documented” ones, and supported the idea of providing subsidized housing to illegal aliens.

And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) made it clear in a resurfaced 2022 speech that the “ultimate goal” of the Democratic party is to grant citizenship to “all 11 million or however many” illegals in the country. According to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the plan is “ALL about getting Democrat votes.” Meanwhile, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has released a lengthy report detailing how the Biden-Harris immigration allowed a flood of noncitizens to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Roy notably sticks to government statistics (second only to lies and damn lies) for his report, citing just 8.5 million illegal migrants – though the number is far higher according to some estimates. Key points:

• Over 8.5 million illegal aliens have crossed the U.S. southern border since the Biden-Harris administration took office, exceeding the population of 37 states.
• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released 5.6 million illegal aliens into the U.S., and 1.9 million “got-aways” have evaded capture.
• Border Patrol is overwhelmed, suffering from low morale and recruitment levels, leading to a significant increase in agent suicides.
• Fentanyl, primarily produced by Mexican drug cartels using Chinese chemicals, has led to nearly 75,000 American deaths in 2023.
• Criminal activities committed by illegal aliens, including murders and assaults, have spiked under the Biden-Harris administration.
• At least 169 known or suspected terrorists were arrested at the southern border in FY 2023.
• Mexican cartels have increased their profits to over $13 billion a year through human smuggling and drug trafficking operations.
• States like Texas have spent billions on border security, citing a lack of federal support.
• Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are facilitating illegal immigration, funded by U.S. taxpayers.
• The Biden-Harris administration’s catch-and-release policies have contributed to a surge in crime and human trafficking.
• There has been a significant rise in illegal aliens from non-Western countries, especially China, with record numbers crossing the border in FY 2024.
• The number of illegal aliens involved in crimes has increased, with many committing serious offenses after being released into the U.S.
• Thousands of migrant children have been lost by U.S. authorities, with over 320,000 minors unaccounted for as of 2024.
• Venezuelan gangs, like Tren de Aragua, are committing crimes in major U.S. cities.

Pelosi+

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Squeaky clean, I’m sure.

• FBI Raids Homes of New York Mayor’s Allies, Police Chief (Sp.)

Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) officers have raided the homes of New York Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Edward Caban and other senior city officials in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, according to media reports. The reason for the action against the top New York City officials was not immediately known and the FBI did not comment. Shockwaves rippled across the political and economic elite of the US metropolis as news broke of the raids that occurred early Wednesday at the residences of Caban and New York deputy mayors Phil Banks and Sheena Wright. Cellphones of the implicated officials were seized as well to aid in investigations, reports claim. “I’ve been around a long time and that’s never happened before,” said CNN analyst and former NYPD deputy commissioner for counterterrorism John Miller.

“I would say that this is the first time in history that a sitting New York City Police Commissioner has been visited by his colleagues from federal law enforcement who have said, ‘hand over your electronic devices pursuant to a grand jury subpoena.’”Mayor Adams’ office has distanced itself from the investigations, The New York Times reported.”Investigators have not indicated to us the mayor or his staff are targets of any investigation,” Adams’ Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg said in a statement made available to the Times. “As a former member of law enforcement, the mayor has repeatedly made clear that all members of the team need to follow the law.” At least two more figures in Adams’ inner circle were also subjected to FBI scrutiny according to reports, with senior Adams aide Timothy Pearson and former Metropolitan Transport Authority official Terence Banks, the brother of the deputy mayor, also being searched.

Reports claimed deputy mayor Banks abruptly resigned as department chief of the NYPD in 2014 amid a federal bribery investigation in which agents allegedly uncovered evidence that he had accepted thousands of dollars in free meals and sports tickets.Additionally, prior to this week the home of Brianna Suggs, the top fundraiser for Adams’s mayoral campaign, was raided in November 2023. The FBI was reportedly investigating whether the campaign “conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers”. The reports added that since Adams took office in January 2022 his campaign had ignored multiple requests from city regulators to disclose the identities of more than 500 supporters who provided $300,000 in contributions to his campaign.

The controversial mayor has raised eyebrows for appointing many of his close friends to top positions in the city. In addition to Banks and Wright, Adams — himself a former New York police captain — hired longtime friend Lisa White as deputy commissioner for employee relations at the NYPD, with an annual salary of more than $241,000.

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Easy. Step 1: you step down.

• War In Ukraine Must End ‘This Fall’ – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has urged NATO countries to pressure Russia to agree to Kiev’s peace terms this fall. He made his statement during a meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Regular gatherings at Ramstein are designed to coordinate military aid to Kiev. Zelensky urged Western countries to help arrange joint production of weapons on Ukrainian soil, including drones and missiles. “To achieve this, we need funding – we are ready to quickly produce everything that will help us bring this war to an end, namely, by putting decisive pressure on Russia for real peace,” Zelensky said, according to his website. “Let’s make this fall a time for Russian aggression to fall – in a way that will end the war and restore a reliable international security order.”

Austin also stressed the importance of weapons manufacturing, saying that the US was “working with Ukraine to design and build a substitute for the S-300 surface-to-air missile system and the R-27 air-to-air missile.” Washington has set aside more than $200 million to purchase “critical components” to allow Ukraine to make drones and electronic-warfare systems, he said. Kiev has faced several setbacks on the battlefield in recent months, with the Russian troops steadily making gains in the Donbass and advancing towards the city of Pokrovsk. In the hope of forcing Moscow to recall most of its soldiers from the Donbass, Ukraine launched an invasion in Russia’s Kursk Region on August 6, capturing several villages and the border city of Sudzha. The Russian advances have not stopped, however.

By sending its most well-equipped and experienced units in Kursk, the Ukrainian army has “weakened” its positions on other fronts, Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week. He added that the Russian forces have only increased their push in the Donbass. Peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev broke down in the spring of 2022. Moscow has since stated that Zelensky’s demand to restore Ukraine to its 1991 borders was completely unacceptable. Speaking on Monday, Putin said that Russia was ready to reopen peace negotiations, but only on its own terms. But Moscow needs to neutralize Ukrainian attempts to “destabilize the situation” in Kursk and other border regions first, he stressed.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Questions

 

 

Toll road

 

 

Lion

 

 

The future of energy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832068739203821610

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 4 2024

May 042024
 
 May 4, 2024  Posted by at 9:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


John Collier Lady Godiva c1897

 

• Trump Pays Fine For Gag Order Violations (RT)
• Trump Urges Dismissal of Mar-a-Lago Case (ET)
• Stormy Daniels Lawyer Says Payment Wasn’t ‘Hush Money’ (ZH)
• Trump Develops Plan On Peaceful Resolution In Ukraine — Telegraph (TASS)
• Kiev Has Lost Over 111,000 Troops This Year – Moscow (RT)
• Ukraine Can’t Beat Russia On The Battlefield – Senior General (RT)
• Freedom Of The Press Dying In West, Any Dissent Snuffed Out – MFA (TASS)
• Aggression Against Crimea To Be Met With Crushing Retaliation – Russia (TASS)
• This Is Not The EU That Hungary Joined – Orban (RT)
• EU Leaders Talking ‘War in Europe’ Shows Their Real Intentions – Orban (Sp.)
• Saudi Arabia and Indonesia Lobby EU to Halt Russian Asset Confiscation (Sp.)
• The Russia–Iran–China Search For A New Global Security Order (Pepe Escobar)

 

 

MMT?

 

 

Tesla China

 

 

Elon

 

 

“There is no crime. I have a crooked judge..”

• Trump Pays Fine For Gag Order Violations (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has paid a $9,000 fine for violating a gag order imposed during his hush money trial in New York, news outlets reported on Thursday, citing a court official. Judge Juan Merchant fined Trump on Tuesday for violating the gag order nine times and instructed him to take down seven “offending posts” from Truth Social and two more posts from his campaign website. Trump is being accused of falsifying business records in an effort to conceal his sexual relationship with former adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and insisted he never had an affair with Daniels. He further slammed the gag order as “unconstitutional,” and argued that the trial is a plot to derail his re-election campaign. During the 11th day of hearings on Friday, the jurors heard the testimony of Hope Hicks, Trump’s former campaign press secretary and White House communications director.

Describing her former boss’s reaction to a Wall Street Journal story about Trump’s alleged affairs with Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, she told the court that Trump was “concerned how it would be viewed by his wife and he wanted me to make sure that the newspapers weren’t delivered to their residence that morning.” Trump and President Joe Biden are neck-and-neck in most polls, with just six months left until election day. Trump continued to insist on his innocence during a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin on Wednesday. “There is no crime. I have a crooked judge,” the former president told supporters. According to an NPR/PBS NewHours/Marist poll released on Wednesday, 55% of Americans say that they are not closely watching the hush money trial or not watching it at all. At the same time, 54% of Americans said they believe the investigations into Trump are fair, while 45% view them as unfair.

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“..selective and vindictive prosecution”

• Trump Urges Dismissal of Mar-a-Lago Case (ET)

Former President Donald Trump docketed a brief to support his motion to dismiss the classified documents indictment against him in Florida, citing “selective and vindictive prosecution” on Thursday. The 43-page filing contends that special counsel Jack Smith’s case against the former president “has been motivated by improper political animus.” It cites “targeted leaks and public statements” by President Joe Biden, “urging others to prosecute President Trump.” This refers to a New York Times report from April 2, 2022, reporting that President Biden told his “inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted.” President Trump’s lawyers contend that the article amounted to presidential pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to “act … more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action.”

The motion details a series of events to support the former president’s arguments of a concerted effort by the Biden administration and federal agencies to target him. It points to statements from officials at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which is responsible for the preservation of presidential records, that the Biden administration’s “current business” was investigating the 45th president. Among other events, it cites a text message from a NARA official dated Feb. 9, 2022, stating that the classified documents have “consumed all of our discussions” with the Biden White House. “There is evidence of vindictive political animosity focused on election interference in these proceedings, which is part of the reason why the Special Counsel’s Office is wrong in the claim that President Trump ‘does not contend that the Special Counsel himself was motivated by improper considerations,’” President Trump’s lawyers argue.

In a March 7 filing, Mr. Smith argues against President Trump’s claims that the prosecution team, influenced by political bias, is selectively targeting him for prosecution. Prosecutors from the special counsel’s office argue that the former president hadn’t identified anyone in his motion who was engaging in similar conduct without being prosecuted and failed to provide evidence that his indictment was solely retaliatory. “Trump contends … that he has been subject to selective and vindictive prosecution,” the prosecution wrote. “But he has not identified anyone who has engaged in a remotely similar battery of criminal conduct and not been prosecuted as a result.

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“..he said it was a “Consideration”,..

• Stormy Daniels Lawyer Says Payment Wasn’t ‘Hush Money’ (ZH)

A lawyer who was involved in negotiations between former President Donald Trump and two women denied that payments made to them constituted “hush-money,” and instead used the word “consideration.” Keith Davidson, who negotiated deals with both Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) and model Karen McDougal, disputed Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass’s language during a May 2 court appearance. “It wasn’t a ‘payout’ and it wasn’t ‘hush money.’ It was consideration in a civil settlement,” said Davidson. “Would you use the phrase hush money to describe the money that was paid to your client by Donald Trump?” Steinglass shot back. “I would never use that word,” Davidson replied. When asked what he would call it, he said it was a “Consideration,” comparing it to a contract in which one pays to have one’s lawn mowed.

Trump attorney Emil Bove pressed Mr. Davidson on his understanding of extortion law, grilling him about previous instances in which he solicited money to suppress embarrassing stories, including one involving wrestler Hulk Hogan. Mr. Bove suggested to the witness that by the time he negotiated the payments for Ms. McDougal and Ms. Clifford, he would have been “pretty well versed in coming right up to the line without committing extortion.” “I had familiarized myself with the law,” Mr. Davison replied. -Epoch Times. Davidson also told Steinglass that he worked out the “consideration” deal with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen just days before the 2016 election, but that Trump never signed it.

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“Trump will focus on a simple message that he would end the war in an attempt to win over US voters..”

• Trump Develops Plan On Peaceful Resolution In Ukraine — Telegraph (TASS)

Former US President Donald Trump has developed a detailed plan on resolving the Ukrainian conflict peacefully, but will not reveal it until the election, the Daily Telegraph reported, citing an anonymous source close to the politician. “There is a plan, but he’s not going to debate it with cable news networks because then you lose all leverage,” the source said. Instead, according to the source, Trump will focus on a simple message that he would end the war in an attempt to win over US voters. At the end of April, Trump said in an interview with Time that he would not provide aid to Ukraine if elected unless Europe chips in. Russia has repeatedly voiced its position regarding the situation around Ukraine at various levels. Previously, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that Moscow has always been and remains open to a diplomatic settlement of the crisis, and it is ready to respond to truly serious proposals, while the Kiev regime interrupted and prohibited further negotiations with Russia.

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Not much fighting going on?!

• Kiev Has Lost Over 111,000 Troops This Year – Moscow (RT)

Ukrainian military losses since the beginning of the year have surpassed 111,000 troops, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Friday, as he shared Moscow’s latest estimates from the conflict. Russian forces “continue to break up” Ukrainian defensive positions along the entire front line, preventing their attempts to stall advances by Moscow’s troops, the senior official reported during a ministerial meeting. Russia’s territorial gains this year have amounted to 547 sq km, he added. Shoigu accused the US and its allies of pressuring Kiev into disregarding the cost of continued fighting. As a result, Ukraine suffered 1,000 casualties daily throughout April, the minister claimed.

Kiev has ramped up its mobilization efforts due to high attrition, Shoigu added, claiming that Ukrainians unwilling to fight “are being forced to the front line” and certain death. The Russian defense chief accused the leadership in Kiev of sacrificing citizens for the sake of continued Western financial and military assistance. In addition to inflicting significant casualties, Russian forces have also destroyed some 21,000 heavy weapons operated by Ukrainian forces, Shoigu stated. In April, Shoigu estimated Ukrainian casualties as approaching 500,000 since the hostilities with Russia started in February 2022.

Earlier this year, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed into law a radical reform of military service, which includes harsher punishments for draft dodgers and facilitates the work of conscription officers. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has since suspended consular services for military-age men residing in foreign countries, stating that anyone avoiding mobilization does not deserve them. Kiev is also seeking assistance from Western nations in its attempts to force potential conscripts to return. The country’s border service said last month that since February 2022, some 30 Ukrainian citizens have died while trying to illegally flee to other nations.

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“Our problem is very simple: we have no weapons..”

• Ukraine Can’t Beat Russia On The Battlefield – Senior General (RT)

A Ukrainian military victory over Russia is unfeasible, a senior military intelligence official in Kiev has predicted. Peace talks with Moscow are nonetheless unlikely before 2025, he claimed. Vadim Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, shared his grim perception of the frontline situation in an interview with The Economist published on Thursday. He expects Russia to launch a major offensive by the end of May or the beginning of June, with Kiev’s forces badly positioned to prevent it. “Our problem is very simple: we have no weapons,” Skibitsky explained. Kiev’s armament woes will not be addressed anytime soon, even after the US approved an additional $60 billion in Ukraine-related spending, the British magazine reported, saying it will be weeks before new aid filters through to the front line.

A lack of willing draftees is also undermining Kiev’s war effort, including those recruited under draconian new rules, the report stated. Skibitsky reiterated Kiev’s claims that Moscow intends to capture the Donbass city of Chasov Yar by May 9, when Russia celebrates victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The Ukrainian military leadership announced the purported deadline in mid-April, and has recently boasted about depriving Moscow of its supposed wish. Russia will eventually take Chasov Yar anyway, Skibitsky told The Economist. The general added that he does not see a way for Ukraine to win on the battlefield alone, describing the continuing hostilities as an attempt by both sides to gain a stronger position in future peace talks. Skibitsky believes that no meaningful negotiations will happen before 2025.

Moscow has repeatedly said that, unlike Kiev, it is willing to negotiate peace as long as “realities on the ground” are acknowledged. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky intends to promote his “peace formula” – a list of demands to Russia – to neutral nations during an international event in Switzerland in mid-June. Russia has said it will not participate in the process, which it sees as irrelevant, even if invited. The event organizers “do not intend to seek a road to peace let alone analyze the roots of the Ukraine conflict,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday. The West is seeking to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, rather than an end to the bloodshed, she claimed.

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“In Ukraine, the criminal regime of [President Vladimir] Zelensky has annihilated freedom of speech once and for all..”

• Freedom Of The Press Dying In West, Any Dissent Snuffed Out – MFA (TASS)

Freedom of the press is under attack in the West, where the authorities stamp out any dissent and repress journalists, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement dedicated to World Press Freedom Day on May 3. “Unfortunately, World [Press Freedom] Day, which was conceived as a global celebration, is gradually degenerating into a meaningless date. This situation can change only if there is an honest assessment of the situation surrounding freedom of the press and journalist safety that is not distorted by Western propaganda,” the ministry pointed out. “We once again draw attention to the deplorable situation regarding freedom of expression and equal access to information in the countries of the collective West,” the ministry noted, adding that “the so-called democratic countries continue destroying every pocket of dissent in violation of all international obligations.”

“Investigative journalist Julian Assange and other prisoners of conscience continue to languish in London’s dungeons,” the report said. “So far there has been no reaction from international human rights organizations on the death of journalist Gonzalo Lira in a Ukrainian prison this January. He was rejected by both of his countries of citizenship, the United States and Chile,” it added. The Russian Foreign Ministry also pointed to the “incessant arbitrariness committed by the Western authorities against the Russian media and journalists, who have fully felt the repressive machine of the neoliberal West.” “Special attention should be paid to the appalling situation regarding freedom of the media in the Baltic republics and Moldova. Their authorities, under the pretext of combating ‘Russian propaganda,’ with the silent consent of their Western curators, have organized persecutions against representatives of Russian-language media,” the ministry explained.

“In Ukraine, the criminal regime of [President Vladimir] Zelensky has annihilated freedom of speech once and for all by banning all opposition media outlets and closing access to thousands of Internet resources,” the Russian Foreign Ministry continued. “The indulgence of Kiev by its overseas masters has also led to the continuation of brutal massacres against Russian journalists. The list of national media representatives who were killed by Ukrainian militants was recently expanded to include Semyon Yeremin, a military correspondent for Izvestia, who was murdered by neo-Nazis using a UAV while performing his professional duties,” the ministry noted. “UNESCO Director General Audrey Azule has not yet condemned the cold-blooded murder of Semyon Yeremin, as well as other Russian journalists (Daria Dugina (Platonova), Vladlen Tatarsky (Maxim Fomin), Oleg Klokov, Rostislav Zhuravlev, Boris Maksudov),” the ministry added.

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“In recent days, Maria Zakharova continued, Ukrainian forces “have been seen using several US-made ATACMS long-range missiles, which were secretly received a month ago, against Crimea”

• Aggression Against Crimea To Be Met With Crushing Retaliation – Russia (TASS)

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned Washington, London and Brussels that any aggressive actions against Crimea and the Crimean Bridge are doomed to fail and will be met with crushing retaliation. “I would like again to warn Washington, London, Brussels that any aggressive actions against Crimea are not only doomed to fail, but will also be met with a blow of retaliation that will be crushing,” the diplomat said at a news conference. In recent days, Zakharova continued, Ukrainian forces “have been seen using several US-made ATACMS long-range missiles, which were secretly received a month ago, against Crimea.”

“According to the Russian Defense Ministry, all the missiles that were fired were destroyed,” she said. “After Easter, Kiev expects to receive the first F-16 aircraft, which, according to the UK plan, can also be used in the operation to destroy the Crimean bridge.” The diplomat warned that “Russian law enforcement agencies thoroughly record the crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis.” “Not a single atrocity of the Kiev regime remains unnoticed. Those involved are being identified and brought to justice,” she said.

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“He still believes that being part of the union is in the national interest..”

• This Is Not The EU That Hungary Joined – Orban (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban has decried the state of the European Union, claiming it is almost unrecognisable from the bloc the Budapest joined 20 years ago. Orban was a strong proponent of the move in 2003, when Hungarians overwhelmingly voted for their country to become an EU member. The country’s accession was finalized on May 1 of the following year. However, the policies of the bloc have significantly changed since then, the Hungarian leader noted during his regular Friday appearance on Kossuth Radio. He still believes that being part of the union is in the national interest, but listed several points on which he disagrees with Brussels. When Budapest joined the bloc, it did not expect to be forced to take in immigrants from other parts of the world or pressured over its constitutional protection of the family, defined as being based on a marriage between a man and a woman, Orban said.

Accession “wasn’t about the European leaders maneuvering the continent into a war instead of peace,” he added, referring to the arming of Ukraine against Russia. The prime minister urged EU citizens to vote in the upcoming European Parliament elections for parties that support a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict, including the Orban-led Fidesz Party in Hungary. If a significant number of pro-peace candidates become MEPs, “we can have a European Parliament that does not push European leaders towards war, but pulls Europe back from the edge of the abyss,” he argued. Earlier this week, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Budapest would oppose a plan proposed by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to establish a €100-billion ($107 billion) five-year aid scheme for Kiev. Hungary has been a member of the US-led military bloc since 1999. In March, American Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman accused Orban’s government of undermining NATO’s commitment to Kiev and of “standing with Russia.”

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“..Europe is playing with fire at this moment, we are balancing on the edge of war and peace..”

• EU Leaders Talking ‘War in Europe’ Shows Their Real Intentions – Orban (Sp.)

EU leaders talking about “a war in Europe” shows their real intentions, but they are playing with fire, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday. In an interview with the Kossuth radio broadcaster, the official recalled the recent statement by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell that the spread of war to Europe is no longer a fantasy and the words of Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski that the conflict has no diplomatic solution, and it can only be resolved by military force. “These are not communication bubbles, but the implementation of real political intentions and reflections. Europe is playing with fire at this moment, we are balancing on the edge of war and peace,” Orban said.

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Odd couple..

• Saudi Arabia and Indonesia Lobby EU to Halt Russian Asset Confiscation (Sp.)

Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are trying to persuade EU countries to abandon the confiscation of Russian assets. The countries have been lobbying EU capitals not to seize the assets, fearing for the future of their own reserves held in the West, the Financial Times reports, citing officials. While the US and Canada continue to push for the confiscation of Russian assets, the EU “remains highly cautious, resulting in a stalemate,” the outlet said. Confiscating Russian assets could trigger a wave of reparations claims stemming from long-standing disputes, such as those against Germany after the two world wars, as well as former colonies making claims against former imperialist powers, the FT noted, citing EU officials.

“Moving from freezing the assets, to confiscating them, to disposing of them [could carry the risk of] breaking the international order that you want to protect,” European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said. While Ukraine insists on the complete seizure of Russia’s assets, G7 officials privately declare that such a step is “no longer on the table.” The Russian Foreign Ministry has called the freezing of Russian assets theft, noting that such an attempt violates international law.

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SCO.

• The Russia–Iran–China Search For A New Global Security Order (Pepe Escobar)

The Hegemon has no idea what awaits the Exceptionalist mindset: China has started to decisively stir the civilizational cauldron without bothering about an inevitable array of sanctions coming by early 2025 and/or a possible collapse of the international financial system. Last week, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his list of delusional US demands was welcomed in Beijing by Foreign Minister Wang Yi and President Xi Jinping as little more than an annoying gnat. Wang, on the record, stressed that Tehran was justified in defending itself against Israel’s shredding of the Vienna Convention when it attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus. At the UN Security Council, China now openly questions not only the state terror attack on the Nord Streams but also the US–Israel combo’s blocking of Palestinian statehood.

Moreover, Beijing, just like Moscow recently, hosts Palestine’s political factions together in a conference aiming to unify their positions. Next Tuesday, only two days before Moscow celebrates Victory Day, the end of the Great Patriotic War, Xi will land in Belgrade to remind the whole world about the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Chinese embassy by the US, UK, and NATO. Russia, meanwhile, provided a platform for the UNRWA – the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, which Israel has sought to defund – to explain to high representatives of BRICS-10 the cataclysmic humanitarian situation in Gaza, as described by UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini. In short, serious political business is already being conducted outside of the corrupted UN system, as the United Nations disintegrates into a corporate shell with the US dictating all terms as the largest shareholder.

Yet another key example of BRICS as the new UN: Russian Security Council chairman Nikolai Patrushev met in St. Petersburg with his Chinese counterpart Chen Wenqing on the sidelines of the 12th International Security Summit, congregating over 100 nations, including the security heads of BRICS-10 members Iran, India, Brazil, and South Africa, as well as Iraq. But the key crossroads these past few days was the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) defense summit in Astana, Kazakhstan. For the first time, the new Chinese Defense Minister, Dong Jun, met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, to emphasize their comprehensive strategic partnership. Dong, significantly, stressed the “dynamic” nature of China–Russia military interaction, while Shoigu doubled down, saying it “sets a model for interstate relations” based on mutual respect and shared strategic interests.

Addressing the full SCO assembly, Shoigu emphatically refuted the massive western propaganda drive about a Russian “threat” to NATO. Everybody was at the SCO defense ministers’ meeting – including, at the same table, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Belarus as an observer. Minsk is eager to join the SCO. The interlocking Russia–Iran–China strategic partnerships were totally in sync. Apart from Dong meeting Shoigu, he also met Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, who lavishly praised Beijing’s condemnation of the Israeli terror air strike in Damascus. What is happening now between Beijing and Tehran is a replay of what started last year between Moscow and Tehran, when a member of the Iranian delegation on a visit to Russia remarked that both parties had agreed on a mutual, high-level “anything you need” relationship.

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Rogan UFO
https://twitter.com/i/status/1786653336269115699

 

 

Seed oil

 

 

Raccoon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1786418202731282523

 

 

Winston

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 27 2024

Apr 272024
 
 April 27, 2024  Posted by at 8:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  30 Responses »


Herri met de Bles c1510-after 1555 Saint Jerome medidating

 

• Trump Responds to Main ‘Hush Money’ Trial Witness’s Claims (ET)
• Immunity for Me but Not for Thee (Woodruff)
• Justices Signal a Desire to Avoid Both Cliffs on Presidential Immunity (Turley)
• Emergency-O-Rama (Kunstler)
• Trump Plans To Sanction Countries For Refusing To Use Dollar – Bloomberg (RT)
• The Impotence of Antony Blinken (Patrick Lawrence)
• Blinken Threatens China Over Russia Ties (RT)
• Here’s What Makes Blinken’s Job In China So Difficult (Blankenship)
• Facade of Diplomacy Masks US Efforts to ‘Smear, Isolate, Suppress’ China (Sp.)
• Russia Must Fear NATO – Poland (RT)
• Congress Panics Over Ukraine as Russian Drones Kill Abrams Battle Tanks (Sp.)
• Ukraine’s Deep Manpower Shortage Overshadows Arms Deliveries (Sp.)
• Pelosi Insulting Americans – Zakharova (RT)
• US Congress Probing 13 Banks For January 6 ‘Collusion’ (RT)
• Biden: White Americans Are the Threat (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

Tucker fraud poll

 

 

Trump ad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1783877767827775661

 

 

Rogan Tucker Dumb

 

 

Watters Five Eyes

 

 

 

 

“..the former president “had no idea what [he] was talking about” when he asked about reimbursing Mr. Cohen.”

• Trump Responds to Main ‘Hush Money’ Trial Witness’s Claims (ET)

Former President Donald Trump praised the first witness in his New York City “hush money” trial, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, as he is scheduled to deliver more testimony in the case on Friday. “He’s been very nice. David’s been very nice. He’s a nice guy,” President Trump said on Thursday, responding to a question about Mr. Pecker’s testimony over the past week or so. During cross-examinations Thursday, Mr. Pecker detailed how he obtained potentially damaging stories about the candidate and paid out tens of thousands of dollars to keep them from the public eye. But when it came to the seamy claims by adult performer Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, the former National Enquirer publisher said he put his foot down.

“I am not paying for this story,” he told jurors Thursday at President Trump’s trial, recounting his version of a conversation with President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen about attempts to suppress allegations that prosecutors claim amounted to election interference in the 2016 campaign. Mr. Pecker said that he remembers saying he “didn’t want to be involved in this.” President Trump has maintained he is not guilty of any of the charges, and says the stories that were bought and squelched were false. “There is no case here. This is just a political witch hunt,” he said before court in brief comments to reporters on Thursday. Ms. Daniels was eventually paid by Mr. Cohen to not speak about her claim of a 2006 sexual encounter with President Trump. The ex-president denies it happened, while his lawyers have said that she is using the claims to make money and bolster her fame.

Although he did not buy her story, Mr. Pecker told Mr. Cohen that someone should make a move to suppress the claims from going public. “I said to Michael, ‘My suggestion to you is that you should buy the story, and you should take it off the market because if you don’t and it gets out, I believe the boss will be very angry with you,’” he said. Later, Trump defense attorney Emil Bove opened his cross-examination by asking Mr. Pecker about his recollection of specific dates and meanings. He appeared to be laying further groundwork for the defense’s argument that any dealings President Trump had with the National Enquirer publisher were intended to protect himself, his reputation, and his family, not his campaign.

At one point on Thursday, Mr. Pecker said that when he spoke to President Trump about the former president reimbursing Mr. Cohen for paying Ms. Clifford, the former president told him that he had no idea what Mr. Pecker was referring to. He specifically testified that the former president “had no idea what [he] was talking about” when he asked about reimbursing Mr. Cohen. He also said that he purchased the rights to former model Karen McDougal’s story as well but he stipulated that President Trump never told him to purchase that story—only that he and Mr. Cohen were concerned about the McDougal story from emerging.

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Hot potato.

• Immunity for Me but Not for Thee (Woodruff)

“Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?” That is the question the Supreme Court will answer when it hears oral argument in Trump v. U.S. on April 25, 2024. Legacy media and the ladies of “The View” nearly lost their collective minds when the Court agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of the D.C. Circuit’s decision denying him immunity for his actions surrounding the events of Jan. 6, 2021. However, even Jack Smith, the Special Counsel prosecuting the case, argued that it was of “imperative public importance” that the Court resolve the immunity question before trial. But forget about Trump for the moment. The issue is bigger than Trump and his legal woes. As the partisan divide between the left and the right grows larger, there is a real risk that the criminalization of policy differences could raise our current state of “lawfare” to a new level.

Several retired four-star generals and admirals, as well as former cabinet officials, have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing that granting immunity to former presidents for actions within the outer perimeter of their official duties would raise questions about the ability of the United States to peacefully transfer power from one administration to another, and thereby pose a grave risk to national security. The retired officials’ brief also argues that granting immunity would undermine civilian control of the military and undermine trust and confidence in the military as an institution. The “parade of horribles” in the retired officials’ brief assumes that a future president would instruct subordinate military officers to carry out illegal orders for which they, but not the president, would be criminally liable. The brief also suggests that an unrestrained incumbent would use the military to retain power and, thus, destabilize America’s diplomatic and military standing among nations. Of course, none of the hypotheticals feared by the brief writers occurred in the case pending before the Court. Apparently, they are afraid not of Donald Trump but of some unidentified future president. To analyze the pros and cons of immunity, however, there is no need to speculate about what some future president might do. We need only look at actual events from our recent history.

Situation #1. President Obama ordered a drone strike in Yemen to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and Islamic Imam critical of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Before releasing the drones that killed al-Awlaki and two others, the White House sought and received a Memorandum from the Department of Justice providing legal justification for the attack. Several questions come to mind. Should the memo from DoJ authorizing the killing of an American citizen abroad without judicial due process immunize President Obama for violating the federal criminal statute that imposes criminal penalties for the extra territorial killing of an American citizen? Could a subsequent President, a member of the opposing political party, direct a new Attorney General to investigate whether the killing of the U.S. citizen by drone attack in Yemen violated federal criminal law? If an indictment is returned against the now former President for that killing, should President Obama be allowed to claim immunity or be forced to stand trial?

Situation #2. President Biden revoked many of President Trump’s Executive Orders addressing border security when he took office. He also halted construction of physical barriers intended to secure the southern border and stem the flow of illegal border crossings and the smuggling of dangerous drugs. The number of illegal border crossings skyrocketed. Instead of remaining in Mexico until asylum claims were adjudicated, migrants were “paroled” into the interior of the United States and given a court date for their asylum claim years into the future. The quantity of illegal drugs, and the deaths of American citizens from accidental drug overdoses smuggled across the southern border, escalated astronomically. Federal law imposes criminal penalties on those who enter the United States illegally. It also punishes conspiracies to violate federal law. So, if the White House switches parties when President Biden leaves, should the new president’s Attorney General seek an indictment against Biden for conspiring with the Secretary of Homeland Security to violate U.S. immigration laws by facilitating the illegal entry of millions of migrants into the United States? Or should those policy choices be protected by a cloak of immunity?

Situation #3. Eager to deliver on a campaign promise, President Biden announced a policy to “forgive” billions of dollars in student loan debt. The Supreme Court struck down the President’s plan and held that Congress had not authorized the Executive to unilaterally forgive student loan debt. Instead of seeking legislative authority, President Biden reworked his plan to rely upon a different statute for authority. Assume the courts dismissed lawsuits challenging Biden’s “Plan B” because the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. “Plan B” went forward and billions of dollars in federal student loans became “grants” instead of loans that had to be repaid. The federal Anti-deficiency Act imposes criminal penalties on anyone who authorizes the expenditure of federal funds without a valid congressional appropriation. When President Biden leaves office, can he be indicted and tried because his “Plan B” loan scheme violated federal law?

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“..Alvin Bragg is the very personification of the danger immunity is meant to avoid..”

• Justices Signal a Desire to Avoid Both Cliffs on Presidential Immunity (Turley)

Writer Ray Bradbury once said, “Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.” In Thursday’s case before the Supreme Court on the immunity of former President Donald Trump, nine justices appear to be feverishly working with feathers and glue on a plunge into a constitutional abyss. It has been almost 50 years since the high court ruled presidents have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits in Nixon v. Fitzgerald. The court held ex-President Richard Nixon had such immunity for acts taken “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.” Yet in 1974’s United States v. Nixon, the court ruled a president is not immune from a criminal subpoena. Nixon was forced to comply with a subpoena for his White House tapes in the Watergate scandal from special counsel Leon Jaworski. Since then, the court has avoided any significant ruling on the extension of immunity to a criminal case — until now.

There are cliffs on both sides of this case. If the court were to embrace special counsel Jack Smith’s arguments, a president would have no immunity from criminal charges, even for official acts taken in his presidency. It would leave a president without protection from endless charges from politically motivated prosecutors. If the court were to embrace Trump counsel’s arguments, a president would have complete immunity. It would leave a president largely unaccountable under the criminal code for any criminal acts. The first cliff is made obvious by the lower-court opinion. While the media have largely focused on extreme examples of president-ordered assassinations and coups, the justices are clearly as concerned with the sweeping implications of the DC Circuit opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts noted the DC Circuit failed to make any “focused” analysis of the underlying acts, instead offering little more than a judicial shrug.

Roberts read its statement that “a former president can be prosecuted for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former president has acted in defiance of the laws” and noted it sounds like “a former president can be prosecuted because he is being prosecuted.” The other cliff is more than obvious from the other proceedings occuring as these arguments were made. Trump’s best attorney proved to be Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. If the justices want insight into the implications of denying any immunity, they just need to look north to New York City. The ongoing prosecution of Trump is legally absurd but has resulted in the leading presidential candidate not only being gagged but prevented from campaigning.

Alvin Bragg is the very personification of the danger immunity is meant to avoid. With cliffs to the left and the right, the justices are looking at a free-fall dive into the scope of constitutional and criminal law as they apply to presidential conduct. They may be looking not for a foothold as much as a shorter drop. Some of the justices are likely to be seeking a third option where a president has some immunity under a more limited and less tautological standard than the one the DC Circuit offered. The problem for the court is presidential privilege and immunity decisions are meant to give presidents breathing room by laying out bright lines within which they can operate. Ambiguity defeats the purpose of such immunity. So does a test that turns on the motivation of an official act.

Turley

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“Whichever way the verdict goes in the Alvin Bragg case, epic looting and rioting will commence..”

• Emergency-O-Rama (Kunstler)

So far, the spring rioting has mostly been fun for the rioters. Unlike the J-6-21 “paraders,” locked up in the putrid DC jail for years pending trial, the Hamas frolickers are at near-zilch risk of any serious consequences. Few will even be suspended from school. They are doing exactly what the schools trained them up for: destroying Western Civ, one acanthus leaf at a time. According to the shadowy stage-managers behind “Joe Biden,” this will save our democracy.

That and stuffing Donald Trump in jail for the rest of his natural life. Alas, the lawfare cases cooked up toward that end appear defective to a spectacular degree. It really says something about the true authors of these beauties brought by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, and Jack Smith. I speak of the behind-the-scene blob lawfare ninjas Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Matt Colangelo, and Mary McCord, who wrote the scripts for all four of this year’s big elephant trap cases against the former president. You have to wonder how that bunch made it through their law boards. The current extravaganza in Manhattan that centers on alleged book-keeping errors in furtherance of an unstated federal offense is due to go on a few more weeks. The howling errors of both the prosecution and Judge Juan Merchan are so extravagant that the proceeding looks like it was cribbed from the pages of Lewis Carroll.

Yet, there is near unanimous sentiment that the Trump-deranged New Yawk jury will convict, no matter how much more idiotic the case turns out to be. By then, we will be verging on summer. The college campuses will be shuttered and the youth-in-revolt action will necessarily move to the regular streets. Whichever way the verdict goes in the Alvin Bragg case, epic looting and rioting will commence. Sometime this summer, I predict, the Mar-a-Lago documents case will get tossed on something like malicious prosecution. Jack Smith’s DC case, kneecapped by SCOTUS, won’t start before the November election (or maybe ever) and ditto the Fani Willis fiasco in Atlanta. George and Alex Soros will pour millions into box lunches for the kids burning down what’s left of the cities and the demure gals of the Ivy League Left will find plenty of love in the ruins.

The two major party conventions in July (Republican) and August (Democrat) are sure to out-do the 1968 lollapalooza in Chicago (I was there) in mayhem and property damage. “Joe Biden” — really the blob behind him — will ache to declare a national emergency, perhaps even a second emergency after the recently unveiled “climate emergency” supposedly pending any day. The USA will be in an historic horror movie you could call Emergency-O-Rama. If you think the financial system, and the US economy that has become the tail on the finance dog, can survive all this, you will be disappointed. The army may have to step in and put an end to these shenanigans. Don’t think it can’t happen.

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“I would not allow countries to go off the dollar because when we lose that standard, that will be like losing a revolutionary war..”
]
Sorry, but that train has sailed.

• Trump Plans To Sanction Countries For Refusing To Use Dollar – Bloomberg (RT)

Economic aides to former US President Donald Trump are looking for options to stop countries from shifting away from the US dollar as it faces a growing challenge from emerging markets, including BRICS nations, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The presumptive Republican nominee for the November presidential election and his team are discussing penalties against both allies and adversaries who seek to divert their trade from the greenback to other currencies. The options could include export controls, currency manipulation charges, and tariffs, the outlet said, citing people familiar with the matter. The global trend toward using national currencies in trade instead of the dollar gained significant momentum after Russia was cut off from the Western financial system and had its foreign reserves frozen in 2022, as part of Ukraine-related sanctions.

A bill with provisions authorizing the US to confiscate frozen Russian assets, which Biden signed on Wednesday, could further spur de-dollarization, financial experts have warned. The so-called REPO Act, which was incorporated in the $61 billion military aid package for Kiev, authorized the US president to seize Russian state assets held in American banks. As quoted by Bloomberg, Trump warned on Thursday that with US President Joe Biden, “you’re going to lose the dollar as the standard. That’ll be like losing the biggest war we’ve ever lost.” According to the news agency, Trump’s economic advisers and his campaign team have specifically considered curbing de-dollarization efforts by BRICS countries.

The group – which recently expanded and now comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt – is boosting the use of national currencies in mutual trade. It has even signaled the possibility of introducing a new single currency in the coming years. Trump has repeatedly said that he wants the dollar to remain the world’s reserve currency. “I hate when countries go off the dollar,” Trump told CNBC in March. “I would not allow countries to go off the dollar because when we lose that standard, that will be like losing a revolutionary war,” he said, adding that it would be a “hit” for the US.

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“..there’s no mileage in predicting success when Blinken boards a plane for the great “out there.”

• The Impotence of Antony Blinken (Patrick Lawrence)

Antony Blinken is now in China for his second such journey as secretary of state and his third encounter with senior Chinese officials: This is our news as April marches toward May. I have to say, it is a stranger state of affairs than I can figure when the State Department and the media that clerk for it tell us in advance that America’s top diplomat is going to fail to get anything done as he sets out for the People’s Republic. “I want to make clear that we are realistic and clear-eyed about the prospects of breakthroughs on any of these issues,” an unnamed State Department official said when briefing reporters last week on Blinken’s agenda. This is how State warns in advance that the secretary will be wasting his time and our money during his encounters in Shanghai and Beijing. What is this if not an admission of our secretary of state’s diplomatic impotence? Or do I mean incompetence? Or both?

This is the man, after all, who arrived in Israel five days after the events of last Oct. 7 to announce, “I come before you as a Jew.” Does this guy understand diplomacy or what? The media followed the State Department’ lead, naturally, in advising us of the pointlessness of Blinken’s sojourn in China—this at both ends of the Pacific. CNBC: “Washington is realistic about its expectations on Blinken’s visit in resolving key issues.” Japan Times: “While crucial for keeping lines of communication open, the visit is unlikely to yield major breakthroughs.” Matt Lee, the very able diplomatic correspondent at The Associated Press, got it righter than anyone in his April 22 report: The point of Blinken’s three days of talks with top Chinese officials, he reported, is to have three days of talks with top Chinese officials. “The mere fact that Blinken is making the trip might be seen by some as encouraging,” Lee wrote, “but ties between Washington and Beijing are tense and the rifts are growing wider.”

This is our Tony. As the record makes pitifully clear, there’s no mileage in predicting success when Blinken boards a plane for the great “out there.” This is unequivocally so in his dealings with the western end of the Pacific. There is a long list of the topics Blinken was set to raise with Chinese officials, notable among these Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Taiwan and the South China Sea, military-to-military contacts, artificial intelligence applications, illicit drug traffic, human rights, trade: These are standards on the American menu when a U.S. official addresses Chinese counterparts. The last is especially contentious just now, given the Biden regime’s disgraceful determination to subvert those Chinese industries with which the U.S. cannot compete. With plans to block imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles already afoot, last week President Biden announced new tariffs on imports of Chinese steel. And it is now “investigating” China’s shipping and shipbuilding industries, which sounds to me like prelude to yet more measures to undermine China’s admirable economic advances.

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Imagine you’re mini-me and the CEO of China is persuaded to receive you. What do you do then? Well, you insult him, of course…

• Blinken Threatens China Over Russia Ties (RT)

Washington is ready to introduce more sanctions against China over its alleged transfer of dual-use goods and components, which it claims can be used by the Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday. Speaking at a press conference in Beijing following a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the US official recalled that Washington has already imposed sanctions against more than 100 Chinese entities and is “fully prepared to act” and “take additional measures.” Blinken claimed that China’s alleged support for the Russian defense industry raises concerns not only about the situation in Ukraine, but also about a “medium to long-term threat that many Europeans feel viscerally that Russia poses to them.” Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal also reported that the US was drafting sanctions that could cut off some Chinese banks from the global financial system unless Beijing severs its economic ties with Russia.

The outlet claimed that US officials believe trade with China has allowed Russia to rebuild its military industrial capacity and could help it defeat Ukraine in a war of attrition. Beijing, in turn, has accused the US of hypocrisy for providing billions of dollars in assistance to Ukraine while “unreasonably criticizing the normal trade and economic relations between Russia and China.” “This is a very hypocritical and irresponsible approach,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters on Friday in response to Blinken’s concerns about Beijing’s support of Moscow. China has also vehemently rejected accusations leveled by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg of “fueling” the Ukraine conflict. Beijing has instead blamed NATO for instigating the crisis by continuing its expansion in Europe and refusing to respect Russian national security concerns. Following his meeting with Blinken, Xi suggested that the US and China “should be partners, not rivals” and should strive towards achieving “mutual success and not harm each other.”

“I proposed three major principles: mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation. They are not only a summary of past experience, but also a guide to the future,” the Chinese leader was quoted as saying. Beijing has maintained a policy of neutrality on the Ukraine conflict, with Chinese officials repeatedly stating that the country is not selling weapons to either Russia or Ukraine. Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Ning insisted that China “regulates the export of dual-use articles in accordance with laws and regulations,” urging “relevant countries” not to “smear or attack the normal relations between China and Russia.” In December last year, US President Joe Biden issued a decree which enabled sanctions on foreign financial institutions that continue to deal with Russia. It targeted lenders outside US and EU jurisdictions that help Russia source sensitive items, which reportedly include semiconductors, machine tools, chemical precursors, ball bearings, and optical systems.

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TikTok.

• Here’s What Makes Blinken’s Job In China So Difficult (Blankenship)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in China on Wednesday to kick off a three-day trip. It is reported that he will speak with his Chinese counterpart and potentially with President Xi Jinping. As the New York Times reported, quoting officials privy to the visit, one of the main topics will be China’s alleged support of Russia, which includes the supposed sale of weapon components and dual-use products. It also comes at a time of increased tensions. Relations have shown a flicker of warmth since US President Joe Biden and Xi’s encounter at the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco last year. However, this visit comes sandwiched between significant moves by the Biden administration. On the one hand, Biden recently signed off on a hefty military aid package for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel, coupled with a divest-or-ban provision for the Chinese social media juggernaut, TikTok.

On the other, a historic trilateral summit involving the US, Japan, and the Philippines hints at potential formal military collaborations down the road, with the US deploying medium-range missiles in the Philippines, a move with unmistakable implications for China. Blinken’s trip also follows closely on the heels of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent visit to China, which coincided with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s presence in the country. Lavrov’s visit underscored the enduring bond between Russia and China, while Yellen’s seemed to foreshadow potential trade tensions over what Beijing perceives as baseless accusations of “overcapacity.” Behind the diplomatic niceties lies a deeper agenda: the concerted effort by the US and some of its allies to curb China’s economic and technological ascent. This was laid bare when EU officials on Tuesday executed unannounced raids on the offices of a Chinese company in Poland and Denmark.

The European Commission said that its “unannounced inspections” are based on “indications that the inspected company may have received foreign subsidies that could distort the internal market pursuant to the Foreign Subsidies Regulation.” Despite this explanation, it appears the EU is mirroring Washington’s growing scrutiny of and hostility against Chinese firms. The EU’s alignment with the US on trade policy, particularly regarding China, signals a loose front aimed at constraining China’s global economic reach. The issue of Russia is also another excuse to limit China. The bilateral partnership has been extraordinarily beneficial for both sides: their trade reached a record $240.1 billion in 2023, and Russia’s economy grew by 3.6% the same year despite Western sanctions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts Russia’s economy will grow faster than all advanced economies in 2024.

This is due in no small part to trade with China, the world’s second-largest economy, but it’s also due to the fact that many other large countries, such as Brazil and India, have not joined Western sanctions on Russia – they just aren’t trading in strategic sectors of the economy like China is. But even in those sectors, the US and its allies have never revealed evidence that Beijing is directly helping Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1783971853981155437

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“Imagine them [China] looking at Elon Musk and saying that you need to sell Tesla or else,” suggested Thomas. “It’s just astonishing stuff.”

• Facade of Diplomacy Masks US Efforts to ‘Smear, Isolate, Suppress’ China (Sp.)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s second visit to China in less than a year this week signifies the importance the Biden administration places on Sino-US relations in addressing various global challenges, according to Chinese commentator Anna Ge. “The United States aims to sustain dialogue with China and collaborate on addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues and also domestic issues,” said the CGTN Radio host, who frequently discusses China-related issues in mainstream media in South Africa, India, and Central Asia. But the US maintains its own motives in such discussions, according to Ge, frequently using China as a scapegoat for its own geopolitical and economic difficulties. The political commentator joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines program Friday to discuss the issue. “It is interesting to see how China-US relations develop today,” said Ge as host Jamarl Thomas noted the often chaotic nature of diplomacy between the two countries in recent years.

US President Joe Biden referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “dictator” the last time the two met in the United States, a gaffe judged to have damaged relations between the two countries. “We are left with a contradiction [between] messages and reality,” she said. “On the one hand, we hear relations are more stable with the personal diplomacy of [Janet] Yellen and Blinken in attending cultural events, etcetera. in line with the increase of flights and other types of people-to-people exchanges. These were impossible last year when the weather balloon lies and provocation in Taiwan and the South China Sea were edging towards a military confrontation.” “On the other hand we have become accustomed to anticipating negative developments shortly after high level US officials depart, often leading to any positive outreach being subsequently retracted or modified by the American side… Washington has been testing China’s limits unilaterally,” the commentator highlighted.

Biden signed a bill likely banning the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok shortly after Blinken arrived in Shanghai this week, an unprecedented measure. TikTok CEO Shou Chew, a Singaporean businessman, has vowed to oppose pressure to sell the social media platform to an American owner, which would result in the application being banned unless the company succeeds in launching a judicial challenge. US politicians have cast TikTok as a threat to US security and Americans’ privacy, but a raft of concessions won by former US President Donald Trump resulted in all data associated with the platform being hosted in the United States, with periodic auditing from US-based companies. Critics have claimed the strongarm tactic is merely a strategy to undermine competition from a successful Chinese competitor, as when the United States pressured European allies to ban 5G technology from the Shenzhen-based Huawei. “Imagine them [China] looking at Elon Musk and saying that you need to sell Tesla or else,” suggested Thomas. “It’s just astonishing stuff.”

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They do not.

• Russia Must Fear NATO – Poland (RT)

Russia should fear clashing with NATO because such a war would end in “inevitable defeat” for Moscow, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in parliament on Thursday, claiming that the US-led military bloc has several times more troops and resources. Sikorski’s comments come as a number of European leaders have raised concerns that Russia may attack an EU member state if it is allowed to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield. “It is not we, the West, who should fear a clash with Putin, but the other way around,” he insisted, adding that “it is worth reminding [people] about this” to show that an attack by Russia on any NATO member would end in Moscow’s defeat. “Putin’s only hope is our lack of determination,” he stated. The minister said the US-led military bloc remains a “defensive pact,” but nevertheless boasted that it has three times as many military personnel, three times the aerial resources, and four times as many ships as Russia.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had previously also warned that Europe is in a “pre-war era,” while President Andrzej Duda has expressed the country’s readiness to host US nuclear weapons under NATO’s nuclear-sharing program. The move would place the bloc’s nuclear arsenal on the border of Belarus – a key Russian ally. Moscow has responded by stating that its military would take “all necessary countermeasures” to ensure its security if US nuclear weapons were deployed to Poland. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also slammed Warsaw’s statements as a “provocation” and an attempt to “snuggle up” to Washington with its “deeply hostile policy towards Russia.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Moscow has no plans to attack any US “satellites” in Eastern Europe, and insists that claims of a potential Russian invasion are merely government propaganda aimed at scaring citizens “to extract additional expenses from people, to make them bear this burden [of funding Ukraine] on their shoulders.”

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So-so tanks.

• Congress Panics Over Ukraine as Russian Drones Kill Abrams Battle Tanks (Sp.)

The rush to fast-track $6 billion in military aid to Ukraine on Friday reflects the panic felt by the Biden administration and in Congress that the Zelensky regime’s forces are collapsing, veteran UK diplomat, former ambassador and political commentator Peter Ford told Sputnik. Reports that Russia’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are now proving successful at targeting and destroying US-supplied Abrams Main Battle Tanks causes a lot of concerns among the Biden administration and Congress, according to Ford. “The haste to release billions of dollars of funds for Ukraine betrays US alarm at the dire situation facing its client state on the battlefront,” he said on Friday. On Tuesday, the US Senate passed a $95 billion bill containing approximately $61 billion in Ukraine-related funding, including via a loan. US President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on Wednesday.

The US Department of Defense later unveiled a $1 billion military aid package for Kiev, including cluster munitions and air defense supplies. In addition, the Pentagon announced on Friday its largest-ever $6 billion military aid package that will include interceptors for Ukraine’s Patriot and NASAMS systems, more counter-drone systems, significant amounts of artillery ammunition, and air-to-ground munitions. However, the move came amid reports that the Ukrainian armed forces moved Abrams tanks from the frontlines due to threats from Russian drones. Ford observed that the rush to send so many more advanced weapons systems to Ukraine came hard on the heels of these reports. “The announcement coincides with reports that the Ukrainians are withdrawing US Abrams tanks from the front because they have shown themselves to be vulnerable to drone attack,” the analyst highlighted.

However, the main US defense contractors were oblivious to the multiple failures of their weapons systems on the battlefields of Ukraine and were only interested in further expanding their already enormous profit margins, the ex-diplomat emphasized. “Never mind, the main aims are being achieved. Not to help Ukraine – how naive! – but to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars down the gullet of the arms manufacturers,” Ford clarified. The other purpose of the otherwise futile and too late new arms package was to give Biden domestic credibility before his re-election campaign against former President Donald Trump this fall, he explained. The $6 billion arms package was therefore meant “to make Biden look resolute and consistent as he positions himself for the presidential election campaign,” the analyst said. The people of Ukraine once again had become the victims of cynical and ruthless US political manipulations and intrigues, Ford stressed.

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“..the former Ukrainian lawmaker estimates that about 1.5 million men of military age are currently on the run across Ukraine.”

• Ukraine’s Deep Manpower Shortage Overshadows Arms Deliveries (Sp.)

New arms deliveries from the US cannot compensate for Ukraine’s deep manpower shortage and exhaustion, Volodymyr Oleynyk, a Ukrainian politician and former member of the Verkhovna Rada, told Sputnik.
Although the lack of ammunition has been alleviated to some extent by foreign aid, Ukraine’s main weakness is an acute shortage of soldiers, the Western press acknowledges. Since the beginning of the special military operation, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have lost nearly 500,000 servicemen, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. To make matters worse, Ukraine has been “plagued by draft dodging,” with young men evading conscription and failing to register as required, Politico reported in March. “Many [Ukrainian] commanders say that their combat units suffer from a 30-40% deficit in manpower,” Volodymyr Oleynyk told Sputnik.

“Entire brigades break the law, violate orders and arbitrarily leave combat positions. Some of them are elite brigades. One of them was disbanded – the one that included the Right Sector*, which is considered very ‘patriotic’.” In recent months, there has been a significant increase in the number of Ukrainian troops using the special “Volga” 149.200 radio frequency to communicate their desire to disarm, according to Sputnik’s sources. The frequency was set up by Russian forces for Ukrainian troops wishing to surrender. Oleynyk quoted the head of the Ivano-Frankovsk regional military commissar as saying last month that some 30,000 potential conscripts were in hiding in the region. By 2020, Frankovshchyna will have a population of only 1.3 million. Doing the math, the former Ukrainian lawmaker estimates that about 1.5 million men of military age are currently on the run across Ukraine.

In addition, Ukrainian military personnel are increasingly deserting, Oleynyk added. “I’ve analyzed the situation for the first quarter of this year: about 20,000 criminal cases related to desertion have been opened over the past three months,” he said. “In general, it is believed that about 100,000 deserters are on the run. How many cases have been sent to court? Over these three months only 80 criminal cases were sent to court. This shows that even the judicial system does not want to consider these cases, because officials are afraid of later revenge by those convicted.”

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“..trying to blame Moscow for a wave of pro-Palestinian protests across the country..“

• Pelosi Insulting Americans – Zakharova (RT)

Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insulting American voters by trying to blame Moscow for a wave of pro-Palestinian protests across the country, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday. The senior Democrat has linked pro-Palestinian protests in the US with alleged foreign influence on multiple occasions, most recently in an interview with Irish public broadcaster Raidio Teilifis Eireann (RTE) this week. Pelosi also took issue with the ‘Genocide Joe’ nickname that US President Joe Biden has been branded with over his failure to pressure Israel into showing more restraint in its military campaign in Gaza. Pelosi acknowledged that pro-Palestinian sentiment could impact Biden’s support during the US presidential vote in November, and claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted the presumptive Republican candidate, Donald Trump, to be elected.

“It’s in Putin’s interest for – what’s his name? – to win. And therefore I see some encouragement on the part of the Russians of some of what is going on,” she alleged of the demonstrations. Pro-Palestinian activists are genuine in their feelings, she conceded, but “some of it has a Russian tinge to it.” Responding to Pelosi’s remarks in a social media post, Zakharova said they “can only be taken as an insult to the Americans and a disregard for democracy.”

In January, the former House speaker called on the FBI to investigate the financing of pro-Palestinian groups, claiming that their demands for a ceasefire in Gaza were “Putin’s message.” Pelosi was also caught on camera lashing out at hecklers outside her home, telling them to “go back to China,” supposedly where their “headquarters” were located. Biden’s approval ratings have taken a hit among Democratic voters over his pro-Israeli stance, although Pelosi insisted that the president has been “the biggest advocate for humanitarian assistance to Palestinians” amid the conflict in Gaza. “The groups outside with their protest lay some blame at his doorstep, when he is the only one advocating at that level,” she added.

This week, local authorities across the US used force to disperse pro-Palestinian rallies at university campuses, with mass arrests reported in some cases. Protesters were targeted at Yale, Harvard, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Southern California, and other institutions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed the US crackdown, branding the activists “anti-Semitic mobs” and comparing them to Nazi sympathizers in the 1930s. Putin has publicly stated that he would be more comfortable with “predictable” and “old-school” Biden than Trump as the next US president.

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Your bank spies on you…

• US Congress Probing 13 Banks For January 6 ‘Collusion’ (RT)

Republicans in the House of Representatives have sent letters to 13 financial institutions they suspect of colluding with the FBI and the Treasury Department to spy on Americans without a warrant in relation to the 2021 Capitol riot. Supporters of then-President Donald Trump had stormed the legislature just as Republican lawmakers were starting to register objections to certifying the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden. Democrats labeled the unrest as an “insurrection” and sought to arrest over 1,000 people involved in any way. Some of these people were apparently targeted by financial institutions working with the FBI and Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), according to the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by the Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

“The Committee and Select Subcommittee remain concerned about how and to what extent federal law enforcement and financial institutions continue to spy on Americans by weaponizing backdoor information sharing and casting sprawling classes of transactions, purchase behavior, and protected political or religious expression as potentially ‘suspicious’ or indicative of ‘extremism’,” said a letter from Jordan, which the Daily Mail obtained exclusively on Thursday. Jordan has pointed to evidence that the FBI and FinCEN instructed banks to look for purchases of Bibles or search terms such as “Trump” or “MAGA,” the acronym for the 45th president’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” Congress was already investigating Bank of America, Chase, US Bank, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank and Truist. Thursday’s letter was sent to Charles Schwab, HSBC, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, PayPal, Santander, Standard Chartered and Western Union. That makes 13 banks or financial institutions potentially involved in the dragnet.

Bank of America alone sent data on 211 individuals to the FBI and FinCen by January 17, 2021. However, its Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) was sent after the federal agencies asked banks to look for “extremist” purchases. Four of the 211 were tagged for a follow-up and visited by FBI agents. None of them ended up being charged with anything. “This kind of warrantless financial surveillance raises serious concerns about the federal government’s respect for Americans’ privacy and fundamental civil liberties,” Jordan wrote in a separate letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, also obtained by the Daily Mail. Since 2021, the FBI has targeted “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as well as parents who spoke up at school board meetings – on issues such as mask mandates or critical race theory – as potential domestic terrorists. Both programs were officially denounced after being revealed by whistleblowers.

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” What future can such a collection of morons have?”

• Biden: White Americans Are the Threat (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Main Goal of the Biden Regime Is to Sell-out the Majority White American Population and to declare them as a menace. Tucker Carlson points out that president Biden, illegitimately in office due to the theft of the 2020 election, has as president of the United States defined America’s majority white population as the major cause of racism and a threat to national unity. Note: it is the majority that is the threat. Yet, tens of millions of dumbshit white Americans designated as America’s worst threat by Biden vote for him. What future can such a collection of morons have?

A white heterosexual who votes for Biden is expressing a death wish. It is the US whose Democrat Government is alienated from its own white majority population that intends to fight wars against Russia, Iran, and China. This is insanity. Who is going to fight these wars for Biden? The answer is Europeans and the immigrant-invaders into America thanks to Biden’s open border policy. Like Rome in its own self-inflicted decay, the US will be dependent on troops from the immigrant-invaders overrunning its own borders to fight its wars abroad in defense of the borders of foreign countries.

There is no discussion of this whatsoever.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Swan

 

 

Tokyo

 

 

Fukuoka Imaya Hamburger
https://twitter.com/i/status/1783862345821016170

 

 

70 meters

 

 

Tusk

 

 

Rope

 

 

Drink of water

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 18 2019

Jul 182019
 
 July 18, 2019  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


Mathew Brady Abe Lincoln 1864

 

• Showdown With Trump Looms As House Votes To Block Arms Sale To Saudi Arabia (AP)
• House Votes Down Democrat’s Bid To Impeach Trump Over Recent Tweets (AP)
• Feds End Investigation Into Trump Org And Hush Money Payments (CNN)
• Foreign Purchases Of US Homes Plunge 36%, Chinese Flee The Market (CNBC)
• New Zealand’s Armour-Plated Housing Bubble (Hickey)
• Extraordinary Collapse In Home Ownership In Sydney And Melbourne (SMH)
• Paradigm Shifts (Ray Dalio)
• Ray Dalio Says Gold Top Investment During Upcoming ‘Paradigm Shift’ (CNBC)
• US Removes Turkey From F-35 Program After S-400 Purchase From Russia (R.)
• Chelsea Manning’s Daily Fines for Grand Jury Resistance Increase to $1000 (SP)

 

 

It’s showdowns all the way down. It would be good if they can do this one with a bit more smart. But they’re losing everything so far, so no high hopes. Of course it’s beyond gross to be chanting “send her home” at a rally. But he’s winning it all and they are not. The Democrats need a plan, they need brains, they need to organize.

• Showdown With Trump Looms As House Votes To Block Arms Sale To Saudi Arabia (AP)

Congress is heading for a showdown with President Donald Trump after the House voted to block his administration from selling weapons and aircraft maintenance support to Saudi Arabia. The Democratic-led House on Wednesday passed the first of three resolutions of disapproval, 238-190, with votes on the others to immediately follow. Trump has actively courted an alliance with Riyadh and has pledged to veto the resolutions. The Senate cleared the measures last month, although by margins well short of making them veto proof. Overturning a president’s veto requires a two-thirds majority. The arms package is worth an estimated $8.1 billion and includes precision guided munitions, other bombs, ammunition, and aircraft maintenance support.

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Very predictable and therefore very stupid. It’s no time to start fights you can’t possibly win.

• House Votes Down Democrat’s Bid To Impeach Trump Over Recent Tweets (AP)

The House easily killed a maverick Democrat’s effort Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump for his recent racial insults against lawmakers of color, in a vote that provided an early snapshot of just how divided Democrats are over trying to oust him in the shadow of the 2020 elections. Democrats leaned against the resolution by Texas Rep. Al Green by about a 3-2 margin as the chamber killed the measure 332-95. The vote showed that so far, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been successful in her effort to prevent a Democratic stampede toward impeachment before additional evidence is developed that could win over a public that has so far been skeptical about ousting Trump.

Even so, the numbers also showed that the number of Democrats open to impeachment remains substantial. About two dozen more conversions would split the party’s caucus in half over an issue that could potentially dominate next year’s presidential and congressional campaigns. “There’s a lot of grief, from a lot of different quarters,” Green, speaking to reporters after the vote, said of the reaction he’s received from colleagues. “But sometimes you just have to take a stand.” Every voting Republican favored derailing Green’s measure.

Pelosi and other party leaders considered his resolution a premature exercise that needlessly forced vulnerable swing-district lawmakers to cast a perilous and divisive vote. It also risked deepening Democrats’ already raw rift over impeachment, dozens of the party’s most liberal lawmakers itching to oust Trump. Recent polling has shown solid majorities oppose impeachment. Even if the Democratic-run House would vote to impeach Trump, the equivalent of filing formal charges, a trial by the Republican-led Senate would all but certainly acquit him, keeping him in office.

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And here’s another loss. It doesn’t stop.

• Feds End Investigation Into Trump Org And Hush Money Payments (CNN)

Federal prosecutors in New York have ended their investigation into the Trump Organization’s role in hush money payments made to women who alleged affairs with President Donald Trump and have been ordered by a judge to release additional information connected to their related probe of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, according to court documents filed Wednesday. CNN reported Friday that the Manhattan US Attorney’s office had approached the end of its investigation of the Trump Organization and wasn’t poised to charge any executives involved in the company’s effort to reimburse Cohen for money he paid to silence one of the women. That payment constituted an illegal campaign contribution, according to prosecutors. Trump has denied the affair allegations.

“The campaign finance violations discussed in the Materials are a matter of national importance,” US District Court Judge William Pauley wrote in his decision. “Now that the Government’s investigation into those violations has concluded, it is time that every American has an opportunity to scrutinize the Materials.” Pauley ordered a copy of the government’s July status report and copies of search warrant materials from the Cohen case to be filed publicly with very limited redactions by Thursday at 11 a.m. ET. The conclusion of federal prosecutors’ investigation of the Trump company’s role in the Cohen matter marks a significant victory for the President’s family business, although it likely doesn’t come as a complete surprise.

There had been no contact between the Manhattan US Attorney’s office and officials at the Trump Organization in more than five months, CNN reported Friday. A lawyer for Trump, Jay Sekulow, said: “We are pleased that the investigation surrounding these ridiculous campaign finance allegations is now closed. We have maintained from the outset that the President never engaged in any campaign finance violation.”

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I see many Chinese tourists here in Athens. And often think Beijing can’t let that trend continue, because these people can’t pay for their trips in yuan. But yes, it’s easier to start with halting the outflow of larger amounts.

• Foreign Purchases Of US Homes Plunge 36%, Chinese Flee The Market (CNBC)

Challenging conditions in the U.S. housing market, along with tighter currency controls by the Chinese government, caused a stunning drop in foreign demand for American homes. The dollar volume of homes purchased by foreign buyers from April 2018 through March 2019 dropped 36% from the previous year, according to the National Association of Realtors. The decline was due to a drop in the number and average price of purchases. Foreigners bought 183,100 properties with a total value of about $77.9 billion, down from 266,800 valued at $121 billion in the previous period. They paid a median price of $280,600, which is higher than the median for all existing homebuyers ($259,600), but it was down from $290,400 the previous year.


“A confluence of many factors — slower economic growth abroad, tighter capital controls in China, a stronger U.S. dollar and a low inventory of homes for sale — contributed to the pullback of foreign buyers,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “However, the magnitude of the decline is quite striking, implying less confidence in owning a property in the U.S.” The Chinese were the leading buyers for the seventh consecutive year, purchasing an estimated $13.4 billion worth of residential property. Yet that was a 56% decline from the previous 12 months and comparatively the biggest percentage drop of all foreign buyers. Chinese economic growth slowed to 6.3% in 2019 compared with 6.9% in 2017, when the previous buyer survey began. The Chinese government also tightened its grip on the outflow of cash to purchase foreign property.

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New Zealand housing, like Australia and Vancouver, depends on the Chinese too.

• New Zealand’s Armour-Plated Housing Bubble (Hickey)

New Zealanders usually welcome the praise when overseas authorities describe us as the best in the world. This time, not so much. In the past fortnight, global economic news authorities The Economist and Bloomberg Economics have both declared New Zealand houses to be vastly over-valued relative to both rents and incomes. They describe New Zealand as in bubble territory similar to those seen in other countries before the Global Financial Crisis and vulnerable to the sort of 30-40 percent price crash seen in the likes of Ireland and parts of the US through 2007 to 2010. The Economist’s long-running Global House Price Index was refreshed on June 27 with March quarter data for most countries and showed New Zealand top of the pops when it came to over-valuation relative to incomes and second most over-valued relative to rents behind Canada.

It found New Zealand prices in the December quarter of 2018 to be 57 percent over-valued relative to rents, just above Australia’s 42 percent overvalued in the March quarter. New Zealand was 113 percent over-valued relative to rents, just behind Canada’s 120 percent, The Economist found. New Zealand prices have more than trebled since 1990, while British and American prices are still less than double what they were 30 years ago. “On this basis, house prices appear to be on an unsustainable path in Australia, Canada and New Zealand,” The Economist wrote. “Ten years ago they reached similarly dizzying heights against rents and incomes in Spain, Ireland and some American cities, only to endure a brutal collapse,” it concluded.

[..] New Zealand’s housing market is now worth NZ$1.13 trillion, which is up by more than $1 trillion from NZ$123 billion in 1990. The increase is more than triple because there are more houses with more extras (decks/garages/rooms) added on. That’s $1 trillion in untaxed capital gains, which at the top marginal rate would have generated extra tax revenues of $330 billion, or enough to build nearly 700,000 new state houses or fund the next 14 years of New Zealand Superannuation payments. Our housing market is worth 3.9 times our GDP and more than 7.2 times the value of our stock market. For comparison sake, Australia’s housing market is worth A$6.6 trillion or 3.5 times Australia’s GDP and 3.3 times the value of its stock market. America’s housing market is worth US$33.3 trillion or 1.6 times US GDP and 1.5 times the value of the US stock market.

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Governments like bubbles.

• Extraordinary Collapse In Home Ownership In Sydney And Melbourne (SMH)

The number of people owning their home outright has collapsed by a third as house prices have soared four-fold over the past two decades, leaving a growing number of older Australians shackled to mortgages as they head into retirement. In the mid-1990s, almost 44 per cent of people in NSW owned their home outright, but according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics this has now fallen to just 29.7 per cent. At the same time, the proportion of people in NSW with a mortgage has jumped by more than 30 per cent, with many of those heading towards their retirement years. The swing from ownership to mortgage has occurred over the past 20 years as the median house price in Sydney lifted by 460 per cent, even taking into account the recent market softening.

It’s a similar story in Victoria, where in the mid-1990s more than 45 per cent of people were mortgage-free, but now that figure has fallen to just 31 per cent. Victorians are among the most exposed to changing interest rates, with more than 37 per cent of people holding a mortgage. Two decades ago less than 30 per cent held a housing debt with their bank. Over the same period, the median house price in Melbourne has soared from $126,131 to $806,000. The Northern Territory has the smallest proportion of people who own their home outright, at just 17 per cent. Among the states, just 27 per cent of residents in Queensland and Western Australia enjoy life without a mortgage or rental payments.

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Dalio channels Minsky: stability leads to instability. He must be aware of that.

• Paradigm Shifts (Ray Dalio)

There are always big unsustainable forces that drive the paradigm. They go on long enough for people to believe that they will never end even though they obviously must end. A classic one of those is an unsustainable rate of debt growth that supports the buying of investment assets; it drives asset prices up, which leads people to believe that borrowing and buying those investment assets is a good thing to do. But it can’t go on forever because the entities borrowing and buying those assets will run out of borrowing capacity while the debt service costs rise relative to their incomes by amounts that squeeze their cash flows. When these things happen, there is a paradigm shift.

Debtors get squeezed and credit problems emerge, so there is a retrenchment of lending and spending on goods, services, and investment assets so they go down in a self-reinforcing dynamic that looks more opposite than similar to the prior paradigm. This continues until it’s also overdone, which reverses in a certain way that I won’t digress into but is explained in my book Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises [..] Another classic example that comes to mind is that extended periods of low volatility tend to lead to high volatility because people adapt to that low volatility, which leads them to do things (like borrow more money than they would borrow if volatility was greater) that expose them to more volatility, which prompts a self-reinforcing pickup in volatility.

There are many classic examples like this that repeat over time that I won’t get into now. Still, I want to emphasize that understanding which types of paradigms exist and how they might shift is required to consistently invest well. That is because any single approach to investing—e.g., investing in any asset class, investing via any investment style (such as value, growth, distressed), investing in anything—will experience a time when it performs so terribly that it can ruin you.

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Think he means that for pension funds as well?

• Ray Dalio Says Gold Top Investment During Upcoming ‘Paradigm Shift’ (CNBC)

Hedge fund kingpin Ray Dalio is seeing a case for gold as central banks get more aggressive with policies that devalue currencies and are about to cause a “paradigm shift” in investing. Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, wrote in a LinkedIn post that investors have been pushed into stocks and other assets that have equity-like returns. As a result, too many people are holding these types of securities and likely to face diminishing returns. “I think these are unlikely to be good real returning investments and that those that will most likely do best will be those that do well when the value of money is being depreciated and domestic and international conflicts are significant, such as gold,” the Bridgewater Associates leader said.

“Additionally, for reasons I will explain in the near future, most investors are underweighted in such assets, meaning that if they just wanted to have a better balanced portfolio to reduce risk, they would have more of this sort of asset. For this reason, I believe that it would be both risk-reducing and return-enhancing to consider adding gold to one’s portfolio. I will soon send out an explanation of why I believe that gold is an effective portfolio diversifier.” [..] Dalio’s call comes two weeks before the Federal Reserve is expected to cut its benchmark interest rate by at least a quarter point. That move comes after a three-year cycle of raising rates from the historically accommodative near-zero levels implemented during the financial crisis.

The fresh trends are part of what he labeled a new “paradigm shift” that comes after the last one during the crisis. Investors, Dalio said, are going to need to change their mindset about what will work after the longest bull market run in Wall Street history. “In paradigm shifts, most people get caught overextended doing something overly popular and get really hurt,” he wrote. “On the other hand, if you’re astute enough to understand these shifts, you can navigate them well or at least protect yourself against them.”

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“Turkey makes more than 900 parts of the F-35..”

• US Removes Turkey From F-35 Program After S-400 Purchase From Russia (R.)

The United States said on Wednesday that it was removing Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program, a move long threatened and expected after Ankara began accepting delivery of an advanced Russian missile defense system last week. The first parts of the S-400 air defense system were flown to the Murted military air base northwest of Ankara on Friday, sealing NATO ally Turkey’s deal with Russia, which Washington had struggled for months to prevent. “The U.S. and other F-35 partners are aligned in this decision to suspend Turkey from the program and initiate the process to formally remove Turkey from the program,” Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told a briefing.

Turkey’s foreign ministry said the move was unfair and could affect relations between the two countries. Lord said moving the supply chain for the advanced fighter jet would cost the United States between $500 million and $600 million in non-recurring engineering costs. Turkey makes more than 900 parts of the F-35, she said, adding the supply chain would transition from Turkish to mainly U.S. factories as Turkish suppliers are removed. “Turkey will certainly and regrettably lose jobs and future economic opportunities from this decision,” Lord said. “It will no longer receive more than $9 billion in projected work share related to the F-35 over the life of the program.”

The F-35 stealth fighter jet, the most advanced aircraft in the U.S. arsenal, is used by NATO and other U.S. allies. Washington is concerned that deploying the S-400 with the F-35 would allow Russia to gain too much inside information about the aircraft’s stealth system. “The F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities,” the White House said in a statement earlier on Wednesday.

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One of my greatest heroes. She does what Muhammad Ali did.

• Chelsea Manning’s Daily Fines for Grand Jury Resistance Increase to $1000 (SP)

Daily fines against Chelsea Manning for resisting a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks increased to $1000 on July 16. On May 16, Judge Anthony Trenga held Manning in civil contempt and ordered her to be sent back to the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria. The court also imposed a fine of $500 per day after 30 days, and then a fine of $1000 per day after 60 days. From June 16 to July 15, the court fined her $500/day. Those fines total $15,000. If Manning “persists in her refusal” for the next 15 months or until the grand jury’s term ends, her legal team says she will face a total amount of fines that is over $440,000. This excessive amount may violate her Eighth Amendment rights under the Constitution.


In May, Manning’s attorneys filed a motion challenging the harshness of the fines. The federal court has yet to rule on the motion or hold a hearing. The motion asserted there is no “appropriate coercive sanction” because Manning will never testify. She should be released from jail and relieved of all fines. “Ms. Manning has publicly articulated the moral basis for her refusal to comply with the grand jury subpoena, in statements to the press, in open court, and most recently, in a letter addressed to this court,” her attorneys stated. “She is suffering physically and psychologically, and is at the time of this writing in the process of losing her home as a result of her present confinement.”

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