Aug 152023
 
 August 15, 2023  Posted by at 9:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Gypsy Camp near Arles 1888

 

Trump Indicted for 4th Time in Georgia Election Interference Case (DeMartino)
Georgia DA Charges Trump, Others With New RICO Indictment (ZH)
Judge In Trump J6 Trial Worked At Law Firm that Repped Fusion GPS (ZH)
¡No más! (Jim Kunstler)
Tucker And RFK Jr. Talk Ukraine, Biolabs, And Who Killed His Uncle (ZH)
US Expects Ukrainian Conflict To Drag On For A While – Envoy (TASS)
John Bolton Blames Biden For Kiev’s ‘Stalling’ Counteroffensive (RT)
New Defense Agreement Would See US Troops Deployed in Finland (Antiwar)
The Black Sea, Out-of-View ‘War’ (Alastair Crooke)
Zelensky Regime’s Police Raid Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Orthodox Church (Sp.)
Washington Accused Of Betraying Allies Over Niger (RT)
Full Faith & Credit of a Bankrupt Insolvent Government – Bill Holter (USAW)
US Hints At Assange Plea Deal (RT)

 

 

 

 

Dershowitz+
https://twitter.com/i/status/1691291110717390848

 

 

 

 

Weiss Maria

 

 

 

 

Biden rally

 

 

 

 

“If Trump returns to the White House in 2024, he will not be able to pardon himself in [cases handled by state courts].

Trump Indicted for 4th Time in Georgia Election Interference Case (DeMartino)

The former US president has already been hit with a total of three indictment, two of which are federal cases. To date, the Trump camp has repeatedly rejected all charges, underscoring that legal proceedings are intended to block the ex-commander-in-chief’s 2024 reelection campaign. Former US President Donald Trump was indicted for a fourth time late Monday, this time for his and his allies alleged actions to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state of Georgia. The grand jury indictment in Georgia stretched far into the night on Monday, with the indictment only becoming public just before 11 p.m. The 98-page indictment list charges a total of 19 individuals including Trump, and fellow associates Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Jeffrey Clark, among other figures.

Over 40 charges are listed in the filing, which also notes there are 30 co-conspirators who have yet to be officially indicted. Trump was specifically hit with 13 charges, including: Violation of the Georgia RICO Act, solicitation of violation of oath by public officer, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer and conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, among others. Among the charges listed in the filing against Trump, violations of the Georgia RICO (racketeering) Act is considered the most serious. RICO cases are typically used to clamp down on drug cartels or larger criminal organizations. It’s specifically used in cases where an alleged offender engaged in a minimum of two predicated crimes that were in connection to an enterprise that is either considered legal or illegal.

Shortly after the indictment was released, Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis told reporters that the defendants must surrender voluntarily no later than 12 p.m. local time on August 25. “[Trump and his allies] constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities,” Willis said at a news conference just before midnight Monday. “They knowingly and willfully joined conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.” Willis did state that she will seek to try the case within six months’ time, and that she wanted to try all defendants together, a task that insiders have already noted may pose several difficulties.

[..] Trump has also been indicted on federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents and in a New York state case over money he paid to an adult film actress to keep her from speaking about an affair she alleged to have with Trump years before the start of the 2016 US election cycle. In that case, investigators claim the payments were illegally classified as legal expenses. The cases in Georgia and New York are particularly significant because the US president does not have authority over state courts. While legal experts have debated if a president could pardon themselves in a federal case, there is no doubt they cannot in cases handled by state courts. If Trump returns to the White House in 2024, he will not be able to pardon himself in those cases.

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They have no case, so they gather everything they can think of and hope something sticks to the wall. But that’s nothing to do with justice.

Georgia DA Charges Trump, Others With New RICO Indictment (ZH)

It’s been quite a day in Atlanta (and for scrambling Democrats) as former President Trump was indicted for the 4th time. Before the Grand Jury’s verdict, Reuters reported that a document was leaked earlier in the day on the Fulton County, Georgia court’s website showing former president Trump being indicted on RICO charges (among many others). The Georgia DA released a statement calling the document “fictitious”. Trump’s team (and the entire internet) mocked this farcical comment: “This was not a simple administrative mistake.” The Grand Jury then handed down a 98-page indictment, against the former president (the jurors’ names were unredacted)… …claiming that he – and 18 of his allies – orchestrated a sweeping criminal enterprise, committing more than a dozen felonies, as he tried and failed to overturn his defeat in Georgia’s 2020 election.


Defendants include Rudy Giuliani, Mark Leadows, Sidney Powell, and John Eastman. The charging documents also list 30 unindicted co-conspirators. Trump faces 13 counts in the indictment. Here is the full list: •One count in violation of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act •Three counts of solicitation of violation of oath by public officer •One count of conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer •Two counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree •Two counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings •One count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents •One count of filing a false document •Two counts of false statements and writings All of these charges were exactly as per the leaked “fictitious” document that was found on the courthouse website hours before the Grand Jury’s decision.

Statement from the Trump Campaign: “Like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Deranged Jack Smith, and New York AG Letitia James, Fulton County, GA’s radical Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis is a rabid partisan who is campaigning and fundraising on a platform of prosecuting President Trump through these bogus indictments. Ripping a page from Crooked Joe Biden’s playbook, Willis has strategically stalled her investigation to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign. All of these corrupt Democrat attempts will fail. Combined with the intentionally slow-walked investigations by the Biden-Smith goon squads and the false charges in New York, the timing of this latest coordinated strike by a biased prosecutor in an overwhelmingly Democrat jurisdiction not only betrays the trust of the American people, but also exposes true motivation driving their fabricated accusations.

They could have brought this two and half years ago, yet they chose to do this for election interference reasons in the middle of President Trump’s successful campaign. He is not only leading all Republicans by a lot but he is leading against Joe Biden in almost every poll. President Trump represents the greatest threat to these Democrats’ political futures (and the greatest hope for America). The legal double-standard set against President Trump must end. Under the Crooked Biden Cartel, there are no rules for Democrats, while Republicans face criminal charges for exercising their First Amendment rights.

These activities by Democrat leaders constitute a grave threat to American democracy and are direct attempts to deprive the American people of their rightful choice to cast their vote for President. Call it election interference or election manipulation—it is a dangerous effort by the ruling class to suppress the choice of the people. It is un-American and wrong. They are taking away President Trump’s First Amendment right to free speech, and the right to challenge a rigged and stolen election that the Democrats do all the time. The ones who should be prosecuted are the ones who created the corruption. President Trump will never give up and will never stop fighting for you, as we all work to Make America Great Again in 2024.”

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“The very client that was in front of her in federal court was one of her former clients. That is rule #1 for disqualification.”

Judge In Trump J6 Trial Worked At Law Firm that Repped Fusion GPS (ZH)

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the Trump J6 trial being prosecuted by the Biden Justice Department, previously worked at a law firm that represented Fusion GPS, the company that helped orchestrate the Russia collusion hoax targeting former President Donald Trump. During Chutkan’s stint with Boies Schiller Flexner, the Democrat-friendly law firm also reportedly represented Clinton Cabal foot soldier Huma Abedin, the former wife of disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner. The stunning revelations came in the wake of reports that the Obama-appointed judge worked at the same Boies Schiller Flexner law firm with President Joe Biden’s embattled son, Hunter. The same law firm that employed Chutkan also reportedly represented Burisma.

Trump blasted the apparently gross conflicts of interest and bias saddling Chutkan, writing on Truth Social that, “The Obama appointed Judge in the FREE SPEECH Indictment of me by my political opponent, Crooked Joe Biden’s Department of InJustice, shared professional ties at the law firm that worked for Energy Company Burisma, based in Ukraine, of which Hunter Biden and his associate were “proud” MEMBERS OF THE BOARD, and were paid Millions of Dollars, even though Hunter knew almost NOTHING about Energy. How much was the law firm paid? So Horrible. This is a CLASSIC Conflict of Interest!” The J6 free speech trial won’t be the first time Chutkan has been entangled by court conflicts stemming from her legal workings with outfits targeting Trump.

Chutkan was forced to recuse herself from the bench when she was overseeing Fusion GPS’s attempt to block former congressman Devin Nunes and Kash Patel from outing the source of payments that funded the infamous Steele dossier. “Fusion GPS, the DNC, and the Hillary Clinton campaign paid Christopher Steele millions of dollars and they laundered it through the FBI and the FISA court to unlawfully surveil Donald Trump. That’s big-time stuff,” Patel, who served in the Trump administration, noted during an interview with America First’s Sebastian Gorka. After months of litigation before Chutkan, when it became apparent that Nunes and Patel would be successful, “she recused -on her own- from that case. Why?” Patel asked rhetorically.

“We found out her law firm, Boies Schiller, represented Fusion GPS,” Patel answered. “The very client that was in front of her in federal court was one of her former clients. That is rule #1 for disqualification.” It also sets a sterling precedent for Chutkan’s removal from the Trump J6 trial, Patel said. “She set the precedent. She cannot neutrally and arbitrarily preside over Donald Trump’s criminal trial when she recused herself from the very representation of the Democratic entrenchment: the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, because she was so biased because of her prior representation from Boies Schiller,” he argued.

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“The same David Weiss who cooked up a wrist-slap plea agreement on all this, with a hidden Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free clause inserted slyly in the fine print of the so-called “diversion agreement”..

¡No más! (Jim Kunstler)

Karma is God’s hickory switch, and almost always applied with a cosmic chortle. Things come around when a certain excess cargo of cognitive dissonance breaks the brains of those just struggling to carry on. The country has had enough — enough walking-talking hypocrisies, enough trips laid on it, enough Tik-tok lectures from the nose-rings-for-lunch-bunch. We’re at the end of something and the beginning of something new. As in: an ass-beating is coming down. Cue one Oliver Anthony, southern country boy with a flaming red beard and a new anthem for millions sore-beset by the relentless effronteries of the ruling elites. Rolling Stone Magazine, a ruling elites house organ, played the phenomenon this way:

These things listed above are…what? Things that Rolling Stone is in favor of? Pet causes? High taxes and obese people on welfare? And Mr. Anthony’s song is dissing them? You mean Right-Wing influencers shouldn’t mention Jeffrey Epstein’s name? Is it just plain rude… or does it stir up unappetizing questions that are better off not being asked (in polite company)? Kind of shows you where the battle lines are drawn now, doesn’t it? Perhaps the final insult galvanizing all this sentiment in a song was Merrick Garland’s devious Friday afternoon announcement — when, theoretically, no one was paying attention — that he appointed US Attorney David Weiss as Special Counsel in the Hunter Biden matter.


This is the same David Weiss, you understand, who oversaw the Hunter Biden investigation for the past five years before ascertaining anything that might be chargeable from a vast inventory of financial crimes with an overlay of documented sex and drug transgressions. The same David Weiss who let the statute of limitations run out on many of those crimes while he dawdled and frittered in Wilmington. The same David Weiss who cooked up a wrist-slap plea agreement on all this, with a hidden Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free clause inserted slyly in the fine print of the so-called “diversion agreement” that would have immunized Hunter B against any further inquiries — which Judge Maryellen Noreika discovered only by chance at the last moment, scotching the deal. (And yet, the government now claims that the diversion agreement — and Hunter B’s immunity from further charges — “stands alone,” is “in effect” and “still binding.” Hmmmm….)

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Great interview.

Tucker And RFK Jr. Talk Ukraine, Biolabs, And Who Killed His Uncle (ZH)

RFK Jr. and Tucker Carlson sat down for a lengthy interview published on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, in which the two discuss Ukraine, bio-labs, and who killed his uncle, JFK. Carlson made clear that he wasn’t going to badger Kennedy with questions about his stance on vaccines, which the MSM has made a central focus for obvious reasons. The interview begins by discussing the Biden administration denying RFK Jr. Secret Service protection. Despite the fact that his uncle and his father were both assassinated, the Biden administration denied SS protection “We applied for Secret Service protection in May,” said Kennedy, adding “The President has discretion to give Secret Service protection to any candidate, for any reason.” Kennedy noted that former President Barack Obama was given Secret Service protection more than 500 days before the election, and that his uncle Ted Kennedy received protection more than 450 days before an election. “I think the DNC is playing hardball,” Kennedy added.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1691239726190100481

On the topic of Ukraine (12 minutes in), Kennedy says Americans are being lied to, and were sold on a “comic book pitch, which we see in every war. There’s a bad guy who’s like, you know, unspeakably evil, who’s planning world conquest or a terrorist attack on America. And we have to be the good guys and go in and stop it.” Kennedy then explained that “a group of people who are known as Neocons, since 2001, have been talking about putting NATO in Ukraine. Now, I’ll give you some background. In 1992 the walls came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. Gorbachev went to Tony Blair and President Bush and said ‘I’m going to withdraw 400,000 Soviet troops from East Germany. I’m going to allow you to reunify Germany under NATO troops – so you’re gonna move NATO troops, a hostile force, into our barracks and our bases – and the only commitment I want from you, is that once I allow Germany top become part of NATO, that you will never move NATO further to the East.'” “James Baker, who was the Secretary of State at that time, famously said: ‘we promise that we will not move NATO one inch to the East.'” “Then, in 1996, 1997, five years later, Zbigniew Brzezinski … says ‘ok, we should start moving NATO to all the former (USSR) satellite states.'”


US Biolabs in Ukraine: At around 35 minutes into the interview, Carlson and Kennedy begin discussing the US bioweapons program. Meanwhile back home, RFK Jr. said that there are “36,000 ‘death scientists’ who are now employed full time in developing microbes that can be used to kill people.”

Tucker RFK

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As long as it keeps going, US/NATO don’t have to admit defeat…

US Expects Ukrainian Conflict To Drag On For A While – Envoy (TASS)

The United States is sinking deeper into the confrontation with Russia and expects the Ukrainian conflict to drag on for a long time, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said, commenting on the next package of US military aid to Kiev. “With persistence, worthy of a better use, Washington is sinking deeper and deeper into the confrontation with Russia, while using Ukrainians as proxies. Sends new batches of weapons and money to the Zelensky regime. It looks like the administration cannot figure out how to get out of the bloody project and save its face at the same time. The White House obviously does not care about the rapid decline in the level of support for such a strategy in the American society. Instead it hopes that the conflict will drag on for a long time.

“What is missed here is that the deadly products of the US defense corporations are used by Kiev criminals against peaceful citizens and civilian facilities,” Antonov said in a statement published on the Russian embassy’s Telegram channel. The diplomat pointed out that Washington does not want to learn from its mistakes and continues to provide military aid to Ukraine, although “such irresponsibility is already too costly for both parties involved in the conflict, as well as for a local taxpayer.” “We emphasize that it will not be possible to achieve victory over the Russian Armed Forces ‘on the battlefield’. One cannot break the stamina of a Russian soldier defending his land. All goals and objectives of the special military operation will be achieved,” Antonov pointed out.

Earlier, the US allocated Ukraine a new package of weapons and military equipment worth $200 million. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the package includes, in particular, interceptors for Patriot air defense systems, shells for HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, TOW and Javelin anti-tank missile systems, 37 tractors, artillery shells of 155 and 105 mm caliber, tank shells of 120 mm caliber, over 12 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenades, spare parts and accessories.

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Bolton doesn’t understand “checkmate”.

John Bolton Blames Biden For Kiev’s ‘Stalling’ Counteroffensive (RT)

Failures in Ukraine’s much-touted counteroffensive against Russia stem from the West’s inability to provide Kiev with the necessary military equipment within a reasonable timeframe, former US National Security Advisor John Bolton has said. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal published on Sunday, Bolton lamented that Kiev’s long-anticipated push, which started in early June, “isn’t making the headway some proponents had forecast,” adding that the disappointing results must become a “wake-up” call for Washington. The former White House official – widely regarded as a foreign-policy hawk and who has advocated regime changes in Iran, Syria, Libya, and Cuba – insisted in his article that Kiev’s “inability to achieve major advances is the natural result of a US strategy aimed only at staving off Russian conquest,” while he also urged US President Joe Biden to start “vigorously working toward Ukrainian victory.”

“Ukraine’s offensive failures and Russia’s defensive successes share a common cause: the slow, faltering, non-strategic supply of military assistance by the West,” Bolton claimed, adding that the US-led support for Kiev has been hampered further by speculation that Moscow might escalate the conflict. Bolton, who served in the Trump administration up to 2019, sought to allay those concerns, insisting that “there’s no evidence” that Russia has conventional military capability to threaten NATO or a desire to launch a nuclear strike. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it adheres to the policy that nuclear war should never be fought, and that it might resort to its atomic arsenal only if the very existence of the state is threatened.

The former national security adviser also dismissed the need for talks between Kiev and Moscow, arguing that these would only benefit Russia. Instead, he suggested that the West and Washington should radically tighten the sanctions regime. In addition, he called on Washington to slap restrictions directly on China, citing its “enormous support” for Moscow. While Beijing remains Russia’s key trade partner, it has repeatedly denied that it was providing Moscow with military support.

Ukrainian forces went on a large-scale offensive against Russian lines over two months ago, after being reinforced by hundreds of Western-supplied tanks and armored vehicles. However, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev has so far failed to gain any ground and has lost more than 43,000 service members since the start of the push. Bolton’s view on the reasons for Ukraine’s difficulties is shared by a number of Ukrainian officials, including President Vladimir Zelensky, who has suggested that without long-range weapons, it’s difficult for Kiev not only to carry out its offensive, but also to hold the frontline. Moscow has repeatedly warned Western countries against sending military assistance to Kiev, arguing that by doing so, they become engaged in a “proxy war” against Russia.

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A once proud(ly) neutral nation.

New Defense Agreement Would See US Troops Deployed in Finland (Antiwar)

Washington and Helsinki are working on a new deal to govern the military relationship between the two nations. Finland recently became the thirty-first member of NATO, doubling the alliance’s border with Russia. According to YLE News, Finnish state media, Helsinki and Washington are negotiating a new Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA). YLE said the new deal would be a “significant departure from its previous” DCA with the US. Finland held a prolonged policy of official neutrality prior to joining NATO earlier this year. However, Helsinki established deep ties with the bloc over recent decades. The new DCA will expand America’s military presence to several Finnish bases, including ports and airports.

The outlet reports the new DCA will “permit the presence of foreign troops for extended periods, specifically for conventional military exercises…[and] grant US military personnel access to facilities and areas within Finland for training, weapons storage, and equipment maintenance.” The war games and NATO soldiers will be viewed as a provocation by Russia, which shares an 800 miles border with Finland. Helsinki already hosts NATO troops for military drills near the Russian border.

When Helsinki announced its intention to join the North Atlantic bloc last year, the Kremlin warned about additional international troop deployments in Finland. Last week, Moscow announced it would deploy additional military assets to its border with NATO members. Finnish negotiations have expressed some reservations about expanding the DCA with the US. YLE explains, “noting that the agreement excludes nuclear weapons,” and Helsinki wants all integration troops deployments to be labeled as temporary.

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“..the nuances of a West teetering at the cusp of radical metamorphosis..”

The Black Sea, Out-of-View ‘War’ (Alastair Crooke)

There are signals in the American MSM that lately, U.S. policy is shifting (but is not finally settled). One thing, however, is clear: the blame for the failed offensive is being squarely laid by the U.S. on the shoulders of Ukraine – and now, for the first time, Kiev is reciprocating the jibes by ridiculing western inability to supply what it promised. Relations plainly are souring. However, in step with the West disowning and distancing itself from the military tactics deployed by Ukraine to attack the ‘Surovikin Lines’, NATO powers seemingly are backing off too from entering negotiations (in spite of a MSM lobby pressing for them). Perhaps western policy-makers now view a ‘negotiated’ outcome as potentially humiliating for Biden.

Put plainly: Does this western despairing of Ukrainian military prospects imply a coming, draw-down on the war, or alternatively, a western strategic shift towards a different mode of attritional war against Russia? In short, do the attacks at Novorossiysk presage a move to ‘real war’ – where Russia’s transport infrastructure is a priority target for attack? Or simply, were the Novorossiysk attacks merely a crude nudge to Russia, saying: ‘Re-start the export of Ukrainian grain!’? The wider issue which this Novorossiysk attack ‘opens’ is whether or not Russia might assess that it has been too cautious and incrementalist in pursuit of its strategic aims? The missile strikes on Reni and Izmail can be seen as very tentative initiatives by Russia to probe the ground and the appetite in NATO for ‘real war’ – where the enemy’s transport infrastructure would be a priority target for attacks.

Is this the moment that Russia might feel it should move to ‘real war’ – firstly, because the ground in the Ukraine suggests the moment is ripe? And secondly, because at another level, there is the need to address the perennial dilemma of all conflicts: Any military approach (i.e. such as Sun Tzu’s dictum: “It is the unemotional, reserved, calm, detached warrior who wins, not the hothead”) and one that recognises the weakness of its opponents’ psyche and the need to nudge it delicately towards acceptance of a new, unfamiliar reality, is always vulnerable to be misconstrued as signalling weakness. Starkly put: Is a Russian show of strength now needed to correct western misperceptions which continue to fantasise about weakness, unrest and the coming political collapse of Russia? Sun Tzu would retort: “Engage people with what they expect. It is what they are able to discern, and confirms their projections.

It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds – whilst you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.” Well, maybe some answers can be given: The western war hawks (to employ an old metaphor) may be ‘big talk, but NATO has no trouser’ for real war. The West, even now, is struggling at the cusp of economic crisis with supply-line disruption: A tanker war would be fatal (oil skywards and inflation too). The exit from delusion is always slow – as Sun Tzu hints. The rather tired adage is that war is the ‘extension of politics by other means’, but especially today ‘other means’ can – and often is – the extension of politics. Today, Russia is acting as ‘pathfinder’ towards a new global multi-polar bloc. In this capacity, Russia needs to act politically with its eye cocked towards the Global South, as well as to the nuances of a West teetering at the cusp of radical metamorphosis.

Military commands may chaff at it, but the Global South admires Russia precisely because it does not ape the Colonial Powers. The world respects power, yes, but is tired of just ‘fire-power’. Russia has a leading role to play now, and many are the constituencies that must be taken into account. This will be underlined in the coming days as events in Niger unfold, and as the BRICS summit proceeds with new arrangements for trading mechanisms high on the agenda. The effective use of ‘other means of asymmetric power’ is contingent upon timing above all else. (Sun Tzu for the last time): “Occupy their minds while you wait for the right moment”. It would seem that President Putin is very familiar with The Art of War.

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They’re afraid of religion. They want to be the only organization. Even the mob left religion alone.

Zelensky Regime’s Police Raid Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Orthodox Church (Sp.)

Police officers have cordoned off three buildings that are part of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, and are storming the premises, the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) said on Tuesday. “Right now, the police are storming the Lavra’s 54th, 57th and 58th buildings, where both pilgrims and some monks reside,” the UOC said in a message published on its Telegram account. According to the UOC, police officers “have already cut the locks and broke into the [Lavra’s] 57th building.” The reported developments come after Gennady Askaldovich, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s special representative for Cooperation to Promote Respect for the Right to Freedom of Religion, slammed the eviction of the monks from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, branding the move as more lawlessness and despotism by the Zelensky regime.


“If this decision [on the eviction] is carried out, the schismatics will have a direct path to seize and close the great Orthodox shrine. Another act of lawlessness and arbitrariness has taken place on the part of the Kiev regime, which fabricated a lawsuit and got the verdict it needed,” Askaldovich said in a statement. On Thursday, a Kiev court upheld a claim against the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra to remove all obstacles to the use of property. The monks can now be evicted, sources familiar with the court decision told Sputnik. Ukrainian media reported, in turn, that a commission from the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy had sealed off four buildings that are part of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
Nikita Chekman, a Kiev-Pechersk Lavra attorney and UOC archpriest, castigated the court’s decision as “one of the most shameful in Ukrainian history.”

Over the past 12 months, the Zelensky regime has orchestrated a full-blown crackdown against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Asserting its connection with Russia, local authorities in various regions of Ukraine have prohibited the church’s activities, and a bill seeking a nationwide ban on the UOC was submitted to the Ukrainian parliament. Kiev also slapped sanctions on some of the church’s clerics. The Security Service of Ukraine, in turn, began to lodge criminal cases against the church’s clergy, and also launched a “counterintelligence” crusade against UOC bishops and priests, as well as against its churches and monasteries in search of evidence of “anti-Ukrainian activities.”

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Yes, yes, Victoria Nuland…

Washington Accused Of Betraying Allies Over Niger (RT)

Washington got in the way of its own NATO ally, France, when it decided to send Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to talk to [Niger’s] new military government, Le Figaro reported over the weekend, citing a source within the French Foreign Ministry. The US “did the exact opposite of what we thought they would do,” a French diplomatic source told the paper, adding that “with allies like these, we do not need enemies.” Paris has been insisting on the reinstatement of ousted President Mohamed Bazoum ever since a new military government came to power in Niger in a coup in late July. The French government was also ready to support the use of force by West African nations for that purpose, as it upheld the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in its decision to mobilize reserve forces in the wake of the ousting.

By sending Nuland to Niger, the US demonstrated it was ready to talk to the coup leaders instead, Le Figaro said. “For [French President] Emmanuel Macron, the credibility of France, particularly in terms of discourse on democracy, was at stake. For the Americans, even if they are also concerned about a rapid return to constitutional order, the priority is the stability of the region,” the paper’s source within the foreign ministry said. Americans simply want “to keep their bases” in the region above all else, the diplomat said, adding that Washington “will not hesitate” to drop a demand for what he called “constitutional legality” to achieve this goal. Now, Paris fears that Washington could reach an agreement with Niger’s military government behind France’s back.

The US has a sizable force on the ground in Niger, amounting to some 1,300 soldiers and almost equaling that of France, which has around 1,500 servicemen in the country. American troops are divided between two bases, located in the Niger capital of Niamey and the northern city of Agadez.Agadez is reportedly of particular importance for Washington as it houses a landing strip for drones and serves as a surveillance hub for a large area stretching from West Africa to Libya in the north. According to Le Figaro, Paris is also displeased by the fact that, despite both France and the US having troops in Niger, it is only the French presence that provokes resentment among the locals. “The United States, like our other allies for that matter, has a habit of letting us take the hits,” the French diplomat told the paper.

The coup in Niger took place on July 26, when the presidential guard headed by Tchiani detained Bazoum and his family, citing a “deteriorating security situation and bad governance.” The move sparked condemnation from global powers, while ECOWAS imposed harsh sanctions on Niger and issued an ultimatum to the coup leaders to release Bazoum or face military intervention. On Monday, Niger’s military government agreed to hold talks with ECOWAS in a bid to defuse tensions in the region. Nuland visited Niger last Monday. During the talks, she warned the new military government against striking any deals with the Russian private military company Wagner and urged them to restore the Washington-friendly status quo.

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“..we are in the weeds because interest rates are at a point that nothing can be refinanced and rolled over.”

Full Faith & Credit of a Bankrupt Insolvent Government – Bill Holter (USAW)

Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter says there is a long list of financial trouble coming to America sooner than later. There is the commercial real estate implosion, rising interest rates, an exploding federal budget, banana republic political problems, but the at the top of the list is the monster unpayable debt problem and the soon-to-be failing U.S. dollar. Holter says, “You can’t have a third of the federal taxes paid out in interest, and that number is only going to grow over time. . . . If the markets would not collapse ahead of time, which they certainly will, but if they did not, we would get to the point where the interest would eat up all the tax receipts. That is a mathematical impossibility.

We’re broke. On the other side of it, we have two rules of law. We have one rule of law if you are a liar from the left and another rule of law if you are a conservative and you don’t support the bull crap rules they are putting out there. . . . This is an illustration that this country has already become a banana republic. The problem with that is the dollar issued by this country is the world’s reserve currency. It’s a huge problem.” Holter says the dollar is going to take a big hit in the next financial crisis that has already started. When it hits, Holter predicts, “The actual bottom line is dollars are just pieces of paper backed by our government. The dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of a bankrupt insolvent government, and people will figure that out very quickly.

When it comes to survival, people are not going to give up something real for nothing. . . . We are in the weeds right now because of interest rates . . . look at mortgage rates, they are well over 7% for a 30-year mortgage. So, that’s going to hurt housing. Commercial real estate has already been destroyed. . . . I think we are in the weeds because interest rates are at a point that nothing can be refinanced and rolled over.” In closing, Holter says, “This is not my opinion, it’s a mathematical equation. The debt cannot be paid back. It’s not possible. We will default one way or another. We will print the crap out of the dollar and devalue it, or outright nonpayment.” Holter predicted years ago we would end up in a “Mad Max” scenario when credit dries up and store shelves empty. Holter contends that credit is drying up with the money supply shrinking for eight straight months. The “Mad Max” world Holter is still predicting is now looking like it’s going to come true sooner than later.

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It’s a trap, he’d have to “first travel to the United States to formally admit guilt in court proceedings.”

Don’t.

US Hints At Assange Plea Deal (RT)

Caroline Kennedy, the United States’ ambassador to Australia, has indicated that the US Justice Department may consider seeking a plea deal with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that could downgrade his charges and allow him to return to his homeland. Assange, 52, faces a potential life sentence in a US prison on espionage charges linked to the 2010 release on his WikiLeaks platform of highly sensitive US Army intelligence information provided to him by former analyst Chelsea Manning. But speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald in comments published on Sunday, Kennedy said that a diplomatic remedy to the long-running Assange saga might be forthcoming, telling the newspaper, “There absolutely could be a resolution.”

When asked if the United States could arrange for a plea deal involving Assange, Kennedy said that this was “up to the Justice Department.” While there has been no official comment on the issue from the relevant US authorities, a plea deal could theoretically be sought, which would see Australian native Assange agreeing to plead guilty to lesser charges in return for being permitted to return home to serve any remaining prison time. Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since 2019 as he fights extradition to the United States. Previously, Assange had been granted political asylum by Ecuador’s embassy in London since 2012, before his arrest seven years later. “Caroline Kennedy wouldn’t be saying these things if they didn’t want a way out,” Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told the Sydney Morning Herald. “The Americans want this off their plate.”

According to international law expert Donald Rothwell, the terms of any Assange plea deal would likely require him to first travel to the United States to formally admit guilt in court proceedings. “Everything we know about Julian Assange suggests this would be a significant sticking point for him,” Rothwell told the newspaper. “It’s not possible to strike a plea deal outside the relevant jurisdiction except in the most exceptional circumstances.” However, a successful plea deal would likely require authorization from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said last month that Assange’s actions “risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries, and put named human sources at grave risk of physical harm, grave risk of detention.”

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Bosco Verticale
https://twitter.com/i/status/1691133402408275978

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Aug 052023
 
 August 5, 2023  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  27 Responses »


John Koch Conversation 1962

 

“If You Go After Me, I’m Coming After You” – Trump (RT)
Washington ‘Terrified’ Trump May Defeat Biden in 2024 Election (Sp.)
The Second Trump Indictment is a Threat to Free Speech (Turley)
Bolton Claims Trump Would Quit NATO (RT)
Hunter Biden Netted Big Money From Ukraine – Court Documents (RT)
Judge Napolitano: Biden Doesn’t Have Coherent Strategy in Ukraine (Sp.)
Zelensky’s ‘Formula’ Disregards Future Of Millions Of Russians – Lavrov (TASS)
US Has ‘No Illusions’ About Ukrainian Counteroffensive – Pentagon (RT)
There Is No Magic Wand To Conjure A Ukrainian Victory (Scott Ritter)
Desperation Creeps In (Kunstler)
Russia Was Doing Utmost To Prevent War, Protect Donbass People – Kremlin (TASS)
Niger Coup Represents European ‘Failure’ – Ex-French Ambassador (RT)
MMA Star Khabib Refuses Offer From Musk (RT)

 

 

He’s back…

 

 

Ritter Lira

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

New charges every day. 40 in total now? The idea seems to be that each time something about Hunter comes out, Trump gets a new charge.

“If You Go After Me, I’m Coming After You” – Trump (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has set off a social media firestorm by issuing an apparent threat against unidentified enemies just one day after he was indicted for the third time in four months. “If you go after me, I’m coming after you,” Trump said on Friday in a post on his Truth Social platform. He offered no context or explanation for the statement, letting supporters and critics alike infer his meaning for themselves. Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday to the latest criminal charges against him, four felonies related to an alleged conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. After leaving the federal courthouse in Washington, he claimed that politically motivated prosecutors were going after him because Biden couldn’t beat him in a 2024 election rematch.

“This is a very sad day for America,” Trump told reporters before boarding his plane. He added, “This was never supposed to happen in America. This is a persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot, so if you can’t beat him, you persecute him. We can’t let this happen in America.” Trump issued his cryptic threat on the same day that his campaign released a new ad alleging that Biden had assembled a “cast of unscrupulous accomplices to get Trump.” That group, which the ad called “the fraud squad,” includes Jack Smith, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel who’s handling the two federal cases against Trump, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who filed charges against Trump in April for allegedly making false claims in his New York business filings.

While Trump supporters interpreted his latest message to mean “the gloves are off,” and that he will take revenge on his enemies when he’s elected president again in 2024, detractors suggested that he was trying to scare anyone who would try to punish him for his alleged crimes. Magistrate Judge Moxila Updadhyaya warned Trump on Thursday that the most important condition of his release on bond was that he mustn’t commit “any new crimes” while awaiting trial, which could lead to him being jailed or sentenced more harshly if convicted. According to NPR, she told Trump that it’s a crime to “influence a juror or try to threaten or bribe a witness or retaliate against anyone connected to the case.”

Smith also filed dozens of felony charges related to Trump’s alleged mishandling of state secrets. On Friday, Trump waived his right to appear at an arraignment for the updated indictment in that case. Smith slapped Trump with three additional charges late last month for allegedly plotting to delete potentially incriminating security camera footage before FBI agents raided his home to gather evidence in the classified documents case. He pleaded not guilty in June to the 37 previously filed charges in that case. Friday’s filing said he will also plead not guilty to the new charges.

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“It isn’t Trump that poses an ‘existential’ threat to Democrats, It’s democracy itself, and that’s what they are trying to snuff out.”

Washington ‘Terrified’ Trump May Defeat Biden in 2024 Election (Sp.)

Former US President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday to four federal charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The first hearing for the trial is expected on August 28. The ex-POTUS was indicted earlier this week as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s purported push to reverse the results of the election, which was followed by the January 6, 2021 US Capitol breach. “The case brought against Trump on Thursday is another example of judicial intervention in the electoral process,” Dr. Harvey Schantz, professor of political science at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, said. He added that the 45th US president’s indictment “goes to the core of the American political system because it involves the transfer of power” from a Republican Party president to a Democratic Party president.

According to Schantz, such a change is “more momentous than ever because the two parties have very alternative views of public policy and markedly different supporters.” The political scientist argued that the Trump indictment “divides people along party affiliations, exacerbating differences between Democrats and Republicans and between Trump and [US President Joe] Biden voters.” Schantz pointed out that “the multiple cases” against the former American president “have strengthened his hold on the Republican presidential nomination, and contrary to conventional wisdom, have not as yet hurt Trump in the 2024 general election contest, in which polls have Trump and Biden running neck and neck.” Dr. Nicholas Waddy, political analyst and Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred State College, for his part, told Sputnik that Thursday’s arraignment of Trump “[…] represents a new low for the Biden Administration, progressives, and the Deep State,” who he said “are, in effect, trying to criminalize dissent, criticism, differences of opinion, and political opposition.”

Waddy insisted that ex-US president “isn’t being charged because of his actions, or his words, but because of who he is and what he represents.” “The Deep State, including [Attorney General] Merrick Garland and [Special Counsel] Jack Smith, hates Trump with every fiber of its being. They are terrified that he might be able to defeat [President] Joe Biden in the 2024 election and win a second term as president, and thus they, and numerous other state and federal prosecutors, have decided on a strategy of ‘lawfare’ to kneecap him as a candidate,” the political analyst claimed.According to him, these officials “would love to imprison Trump for the rest of his life, but their primary aim is to tie him up in legal knots throughout 2024 so that he cannot campaign effectively, and so that the entire election revolves around a debate about Donald Trump’s criminality, rather than Joe Biden’s performance in office.”

“The goal here – to interfere with the electoral process itself – is so transparent that no fair-minded person could deny it,” Waddy added. He claimed that “It isn’t Trump that poses an ‘existential’ threat to Democrats, It’s democracy itself, and that’s what they are trying to snuff out.”

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“The problem is that Trump had lawyers and others telling him that the claims were true. Smith is indicting Trump for believing his lawyers over his other advisers.”

The Second Trump Indictment is a Threat to Free Speech (Turley)

Special counsel Jack Smith made history on Tuesday. It wasn’t just the federal indictment of a former president. Smith already did that in June with the indictment of Donald Trump on charges that he mishandled classified documents. No, Smith and his team have made history in the worst way by attempting to fully criminalize disinformation by seeking the incarceration of a politician on false claims made during and after an election. The hatred for Trump is so all-encompassing that legal experts on the political left have ignored the chilling implications of this indictment. This complaint is based largely on statements that are protected under the First Amendment. It would eviscerate free speech and could allow the government to arrest those who are accused of spreading disinformation in elections.

In the 2012 United States v. Alvarez decision, the Supreme Court held 6-3 that it is unconstitutional to criminalize lies in a case involving a politician who lied about military decorations. The court warned such criminalization “would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court’s cases or in our constitutional tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a foundation of our freedom.” That precedent did not deter Smith. This indictment is reminiscent of the case against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. His conviction on 11 corruption-related counts was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that federal prosecutors relied on a “boundless” definition of actions that could trigger criminal charges against political leaders.

Smith is now showing the same abandon in pursuing Trump, including detailing his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, before the riot while omitting the line where Trump told his supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol to “peacefully” protest the certification. While the indictment acknowledges that candidates are allowed to make false statements, Smith proceeded to charge Trump for making “knowingly false statements.” On the election claims, Smith declares that Trump “knew that they were false” because he was “notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue.” The problem is that Trump had lawyers and others telling him that the claims were true. Smith is indicting Trump for believing his lawyers over his other advisers.

I criticized Trump’s Jan. 6 speech while he was still giving it and wrote that his theory on the election and the certification challenge was unfounded. However, that does not make it a crime. If you take a red pen to protected free speech in this indictment, it would be reduced to a virtual haiku. Moreover, if you concede that Trump may have believed that the election was stolen, the complaint collapses.

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Mothafu**ing roach! What damp dark spot did he crawl out of?

Bolton Claims Trump Would Quit NATO (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump will likely withdraw the world’s biggest military superpower from NATO if he wins the 2024 election, ex-White House aide John Bolton has claimed. “In a second Trump term, we’d almost certainly withdraw from NATO,” the former US national security advisor said on Thursday in an interview with US media outlet NewsNation. Bolton was ousted as Trump’s top national security aide in September 2019, after failing to persuade the president to launch regime-change wars in Iran and North Korea. Bolton — a notorious war hawk who also has pushed for regime changes in Cuba, Libya, Venezuela, Syria and Yemen – argued that Trump has an “erratic” and ineffective approach to national security.

“Donald Trump doesn’t really have a philosophy as we understand it in political terms,” the ex-advisor said. “He doesn’t think in policy directions when he makes decisions, certainly in the national security space. It’s all connected with how things benefit Donald Trump.” Despite being indicted three times on criminal charges in the past four months, Trump is polling as the top candidate for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination. He and President Joe Biden are currently tied at 43% voter support in a hypothetical rematch of their 2020 battle, according to a New York Times poll released this week.

Biden has led NATO and other US allies in imposing sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict and supplying billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Kiev. Trump has claimed that if elected again, he would end the bloodshed in 24 hours by forcing Russian and Ukrainian leaders to the negotiating table. Bolton called Trump’s agreement with the Taliban to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan a “disastrous mistake for America and for national security in the world.” He also faulted the then-president for failing to “squeeze the Iranians” after quitting the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. “He did not deal with the threat of terrorism from Iran effectively.”

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Indict Trump!

Hunter Biden Netted Big Money From Ukraine – Court Documents (RT)

Court documents stemming from Hunter Biden’s failed plea-bargain deal on federal criminal charges have revealed that US President Joe Biden’s son brought in income of more than $4.4 million, mostly from China and Ukraine, while paying no taxes in 2017 and 2018. In 2017 alone, Hunter Biden netted nearly $2.3 million from foreign sources, including over $1.6 million from his Chinese business interests and $500,000 in director’s fees from a Ukrainian energy company, according to a filingreleased documents, which Noreika released in response to a request from NBC News. Biden became addicted to crack cocaine in 2016, contributing to the collapse of his marriage and his most significant business relationship the following year.

Despite his escalating drug use, “Biden successfully entered into business ventures and landed legal clients, earning millions of dollars.” Republican lawmakers have accused the Biden family of soliciting bribes through Hunter Biden’s overseas business forays, including a stint serving as a director for Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings. Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky reportedly urged Hunter Biden, whose father was then the US vice president, to help end a corruption investigation against the company in 2015. Zlochevsky later told an FBI informant that he was coerced into paying a $10 million bribe to the Bidens and that he had multiple recordings to verify his claims.

Hunter Biden’s substance abuse worsened in 2018, when he moved to Los Angeles for a “spring and summer of nonstop debauchery,”according to the plea agreement. Weeks before his 2017 tax return was due to be filed, he received a $1 million payment for legal services to Chinese business associate Patrick Ho, but he spent almost all of the money over the next six months on travel, entertainment and other expenses. Similarly, around the time his 2018 return was due, in April 2019, he received $758,000 and spent almost all the money by the end of May. The documents showed that an unidentified third party paid Biden’s nearly $2 million in combined tax liabilities for 2017 and 2018 in October 2021.

That same person also paid about $243,000 on Biden’s behalf for unresolved tax liabilities from 2016 and 2019. Media outlets have identified that backer as Kevin Morris, Hunter Biden’s “sugar brother” lawyer in Los Angeles. Noreika refused to accept the plea agreement last week, saying she had concerns about the terms granted to Biden. Republicans had accused prosecutors in the Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) of giving the president’s son a “sweetheart”deal on the tax charges against him and a separate case involving an illegal gun purchase. Republican lawmakers launched an investigation this week of the DOJ’s handling of the plea and diversion agreements in Hunter Biden’s cases.

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“There’s no goal and there’s no off ramp. His internal goal is to run for reelection as a wartime president like his hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1940. But this is not a war like World War Two.”

Judge Napolitano: Biden Doesn’t Have Coherent Strategy in Ukraine (Sp.)

“Joe Biden cannot articulate what the goal of the American military involvement [in Ukraine] is,” Judge Andrew Napolitano, former New Jersey superior court judge and host of the Judging Freedom podcast, told Sputnik. “The neocons around him just love the concept of war, particularly war against Russia, particularly against Russia while Vladimir Putin is in office.” The US has been involved in the Ukraine conflict for 17 months and has already transferred over $68 billion. Nevertheless, Kiev cannot boast any considerable progress on the ground with their much-discussed counteroffensive having eventually stalled. As the conflict is continuing to drag on, Biden administration officials and the US president are still asserting to Kiev that Washington will support it “as long as it takes.”

“If you ask him, as long as it takes to do what he can’t answer the ‘To do what?’ As long as it takes to produce a stalemate? As long as it takes to produce a cease fire? As long as it takes, if you ask Victoria Nuland, to drive President Putin from office? I mean, they can’t answer that question,” Napolitano noted. The Ukraine conflict has been presented in the Western mainstream press as a way to bleed Russia dry and drain President Vladimir Putin’s “political standing with the Russian people,” the judge opined. In February 2023, President Biden made a claim in front of a Polish crowd that suggested he wanted to see the Russian president deposed: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden stated. The White House later downplayed this rally cry as a gaffe.

Still, what Team Biden and their neocon allies “don’t understand is that President Putin is enormously popular, that he’s fighting a patriotic war for a return of land, for which there is a valid legal argument, it has always been a part of Russia, culturally a part of Russia, linguistically a part of Russia,” according to Napolitano. “They think they can use Ukraine as a battering ram to drive President Putin from office. They’re crazy. It’s not going to work. Joe Biden does not have an off ramp. He doesn’t have the ability to say, okay, we’ve we’ve succeeded. It’s time for us to stop. There’s no goal and there’s no off ramp. His internal goal is to run for reelection as a wartime president like his hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1940. But this is not a war like World War Two.

This is not a war that the American public perceives as a threat to American national security. All the politicians will argue that. But they’re so tied up with the military industrial complex that, you know, you have a majority in the Congress, Republicans and Democrats, that like all wars because it enriches the military industrial complex and keeps people working in the factories.” What’s more, there is no American national security interest at stake in Ukraine, despite US neocons arguing to the contrary, according to the judge. US war hawks are continuing to claim that Washington’s military aid to Kiev is a great investment since Russia is being bashed without American lives being lost. “The Russians are dying. The best money we’ve ever spent,” as US Senator Lindsey Graham said back in May. As long as no American body bags are coming home, the public is buying into this argument.

Still, it’s no longer a secret that a limited contingent of US servicemen has been operating on the ground in Ukraine. “We know the US military is there in Ukraine out of uniform. We know it is there in Poland, operating equipment that is shooting projectiles at Russian boys,” noted the judge. US mercenaries have also joined Ukrainian battalions on the battlefield. And these Americans are dying in Ukraine: a sad statistic has already found its way out, indicating that dozens if not hundreds of US citizens have been killed in the conflict zone since February 2022.

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“Zakharova earlier stressed that Zelensky’s so-called peace plan was nothing more than another US-created manual on how to fuel the conflict in Europe..”

Zelensky’s ‘Formula’ Disregards Future Of Millions Of Russians – Lavrov (TASS)

Those countries that the West is “courting” in its efforts to promote the peace formula put forward by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky need to understand that the future of millions of Russians is at stake, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. “All the countries that the West is courting to push ‘Zelensky’s formula’ definitely need to understand that these people’s future is at stake as the Kiev regime has openly threatened to destroy them,” Lavrov said in response to a question from International Affairs magazine about initiatives aimed at resolving the Ukrainian crisis. “The need to put an end to these neo-Nazi threats is clear. However, initiatives ‘on Ukraine,’ whose number is growing, are silent about this issue, while actions violating the rights of Russian speakers continue unabated,” the top diplomat noted.

According to Lavrov, given numerous initiatives for resolving the situation in Ukraine, Russia reaffirmed that it appreciated all efforts to achieve a fair and sustainable peace. “Clearly, it’s impossible to find justice in any conflict without making sure that everyone fully respects the rights of ethnic minorities. Especially because there is no alternative to that for Ukraine, where Russian has always been the mother tongue for most of the population,” he maintained. “Why don’t his Western impresarios ask him [Zelensky] to publicly present another ‘formula’ to the international community, clarifying how Kiev envisions the status of Russians and other ethnic minorities in the country after Ukraine secures the ‘victory’ for the sake of which NATO and the EU have spared neither money nor weapons?” the Russian foreign minister asked rhetorically.

He added that this would help many countries in the Global South, which are not indifferent to the situation, to better understand what’s going on. “We could see during numerous discussions and talks at the second Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg that they are really interested in fully sorting out the root causes of the crisis and the prospects for finding a way out of it,” Lavrov emphasized.While addressing the G20 summit via video link in November 2022, Zelensky put forward a ten-point plan “to achieve peace.” The document stipulates the need to ensure nuclear, food and energy security; carry out an “all-for-all” exchange of “detained persons”; and restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier stressed that Zelensky’s so-called peace plan was nothing more than another US-created manual on how to fuel the conflict in Europe. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in turn, noted that Zelensky was making statements about a peaceful solution without taking the actual situation into account.

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“..since launching the counteroffensive, Kiev has lost over 43,000 troops..”

US Has ‘No Illusions’ About Ukrainian Counteroffensive – Pentagon (RT)

The Pentagon realizes that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will not be an easy task given the strong defensive positions established by Russian forces, US Defense Department Press Secretary Pat Ryder said on Thursday. Speaking to reporters, Ryder was asked to respond to criticism that the US has been too slow in supplying Kiev’s forces with tanks, long range missiles and other weapon systems, which in turn has held up Ukraine’s counteroffensive. The press secretary stressed that the US and its allies have been “very aggressive in providing Ukraine with a variety of capabilities” but admitted that the Pentagon holds “no illusions that this – this fight that Ukraine finds itself in – is an easy fight.” Ryder suggested that the real issue was that Russia has had time to build up strong defenses in the territories it controls.

“Ukraine is taking the fight to them and it’s going to be a tough fight,”the official said. He noted that the US has been“training the Ukrainians since 2014” and that Washington is “confident” that Kiev’s forces have “significant combat capability available to them and that they’re going to employ that at a time and place of their choosing.” Ukraine’s forces launched a series of major attacks on Russian positions in early June, in what is believed to have been the start of Kiev’s much-touted counteroffensive. However, met with formidable Russian defenses and vast minefields, Ukraine has so far suffered heavy casualties, while failing to achieve any significant territorial gains.

On Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that since launching the counteroffensive, Kiev has lost over 43,000 troops, more than 4,900 pieces of heavy weaponry, including German-made Leopard tanks and US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and some 747 artillery guns.] The slow pace of the operation and Kiev’s heavy losses have reportedly become a point of frustration for Ukraine’s backers in the US and NATO, with several Western media outlets reporting that further military support to the country could be contingent on the counteroffensive’s success. Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Aleksey Danilov, admitted on Wednesday that Kiev does not have an exact timetable for progress in its counteroffensive, and insisted that “no one but us can impose deadlines.”

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“..nothing – not even the provision of the requested weapons systems – can reverse the trajectory of strategic defeat that Kiev currently finds itself on..”

There Is No Magic Wand To Conjure A Ukrainian Victory (Scott Ritter)

In Japanese, the term Kamikaze, or ‘Divine Wind’, has taken on a dark interpretation, linked as it is to the suicidal pilots who flew their aircraft into enemy ships in the closing months of the Second World War. The original meaning of the phrase, however, was much different, drawn from Japan’s history when, in 1274 and again in 1281, powerful typhoons destroyed the fleets of the invading Mongols, saving the Japanese islands and their people from the wrath of the Mongol leader Kublai Khan. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podoliak appeared to be invoking a modern-day manifestation of the ‘Divine Wind’ of 13th century Japanese history when, in response to a statement made by the Italian Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto, he advocated for a political solution to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine by calling on the West to provide F-16 fighters, ATACMS long-range artillery rockets, and modern missile and air defense systems to Ukraine.

According to Podoliak, these weapons are needed by Ukraine to forcibly evict Russian forces from territory Ukraine claims is illegally occupied by Russia (including Crimea). Anything less than this, he contends, “will result in the collapse of the global security order and the triumph of bloody cannibals around the world.” Putting aside Podoliak’s twisted analysis of the political reality on the ground in what Russia today calls Novorossiya, or ‘New Russia’ (the territories of Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk, which became part of the Russian Federation following referendums held at the end of September 2022), the emphasis placed by the Ukrainian politician on the impact the requested weapons would have on the outcome of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is telling. On its face, Podoliak’s statement at once reveals the depth of Ukraine’s military difficulties, and the reality that nothing – not even the provision of the requested weapons systems – can reverse the trajectory of strategic defeat that Kiev currently finds itself on.

[..] Zaluzhny’s American counterpart, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, disagrees. Following a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which coordinates the supply of weaponry to Ukraine, Milley told the press that the provision of F-16s made no sense from a financial perspective. “If you look at the F-16, 10 F-16s [cost] a billion dollars, the sustainment cost another billion dollars, so you’re talking about $2 billion for 10 aircraft,” Milley said, noting that if the US had provided F-16s earlier, Ukraine would not have gotten much of the equipment Zaluzhny claimed he needed to carry out the Ukrainian counteroffensive. “There are no magic weapons in war,” Milley said. “F-16s are not and neither is anything else.”

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“..when everyone comes back from the beach or the lake after Labor Day. Banks will resume failing, too, followed by bail-out efforts that will open a trapdoor under the dollar. The country will finally learn what Bidenomics means..”

Desperation Creeps In (Kunstler)

So, the best they could do was to charge Mr. Trump with objecting vocally to an election that looked as rotten as Hunter’s uncapped teeth? We all saw what happened overnight November 3 and 4, 2020: what the numbers looked like in the swing precincts at midnight and the magic mathematics that swapped tens of thousands of votes over from the Trump column to the Biden column (say, whu?) … the shutdown of the Fulton County State Farm Arena due to a supposedly leaking toilet and the ensuing monkey business with rolly-bags full of ballots under the tables captured by the closed-circuit cameras… the miraculous wee-hour harvest of ballots in Milwaukee… US Postal Service truck full of completed ballots out of Bethpage, Long Island, that turned up in Philadelphia… Mark Zuckerberg’s $419-million-dollar operation using two front orgs, the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) to staff precinct election boards with party shills and buy votes… the thumb drives and modems in the vote-counting machines….

Special Counsel Jack Smith may find it difficult to prove that expressing an opinion about all that is some kind of crime. Meanwhile, he’s turned Mr. Trump into the poster boy for the many other aggrieved victims of a government weaponized against its own people. More than half the country sees exactly what’s going on and no amount of video footage showing “JB” and Jill holding hands on the beach is going cover for that. We are on the threshold of a king-hell national crisis.

Consider: a 27.4 percent drop in goods of all kinds “roaded-in” on semi-trucks to the northeast USA this summer. That’s everything from auto parts to lumber, clothing, and food. What else do you think sent the Yellow Corp trucking company, one hundred years old, spinning into sudden bankruptcy this week? Yellow won’t be bought and reorganized, either. It owes three quarters of a billion dollars in loans to the federal government (i.e., to us taxpayers) and untold pension obligations. Next, 22,000 Yellow Corp workers will hit the unemployment rolls. Yellow Corp had a special role in the supply chain: the LTL (less-than-truckload) niche, often the final journey of a product to the customer. It was also the cheapest. Whoever picks up the work — FedEx, ABF Freight? — will cost more, and so will everything you have to buy.

Behind this crumbling economy looms the fragile financial system of banks, securities markets, a wilderness of derivatives trades, and currencies. How long do you think it will take before that clockwork of debt obligations and ownerships in failing enterprises breaks down? Think: four to eight weeks, starting with when everyone comes back from the beach or the lake after Labor Day. Banks will resume failing, too, followed by bail-out efforts that will open a trapdoor under the dollar. The country will finally learn what Bidenomics means.

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It still is that simple.

Russia Was Doing Utmost To Prevent War, Protect Donbass People – Kremlin (TASS)

Russia was doing its utmost to prevent war and defend the rights of Donbass residents when the coup d’etat took place in Ukraine and nationalists came to power, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a youth audience at the Terra Scientia forum. “When the coup happened in Ukraine in 2014, and it was exactly a coup d’etat, when the nationalists began to take over and when Donbass refused to co-exist with them when it realized that the power of the nationalists was being established, it was a very dramatic moment,” Peskov said. “Russia [then] did its utmost to prevent war. Russia did everything in a bid to reach a peace settlement of this problem and to defend the rights of Donbass and its residents by political and diplomatic methods.”

Peskov recalled that “as a result of very difficult, titanic negotiations” the Minsk agreements were signed. “It was the product of a very complex balance of agreements and a diplomatic success of our country,” he noted, pointing out that the step-by-step implementation of the agreements at that moment “would have prevented war and would have allowed the people of Donbass to live under special conditions with special rights and to determine their future themselves through elections and referendums.”Peskov also recalled that France’s former president, Francois Hollande and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said late last year that “they were not going to fulfill anything” under the Minsk agreements.

“But we did not know that, we were on the way to implement these agreements, we were trying to force Ukraine to follow the path of the agreements in order to avoid war,” the Kremlin spokesman stressed. He drew attention to the fact that “2019 was the time when we (Russia – TASS) adhered to these Minsk agreements, and then it was really an intra-Ukrainian problem.” “Yes, it was really so,” Peskov emphasized. “But then, when it became clear that no one was going to implement the Minsk agreements, when it became clear that Ukraine was preparing for war, when it became clear that NATO military advisers were already there, when it became clear that Kiev was actually a puppet in the hands of, first of all, Washington, when it became clear that this very war could not be avoided, then the events took the current course,” he said.

The Minsk agreements were supposed to be the basis for a settlement in Donbass. They were signed on February 12, 2015. However, Kiev delayed the peace process for years and refused to implement them. Later it declared the unacceptability of the political part of this package, as well as categorically refused to enter into a direct dialog with the Donbass republics. The agreements were mediated by the OSCE, Russia, Germany and France. In December 2022, in an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the conclusion of the Minsk agreements as an attempt to give Ukraine time to become stronger. She said it was clear to everyone that the conflict was frozen and the problem was not solved, it just let Ukraine gain time. Later, Hollande, who was also involved in agreeing a set of measures to implement the Minsk agreements in 2015, confirmed Merkel’s words.

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“every liberating army becomes, after a while, an occupier.”

Niger Coup Represents European ‘Failure’ – Ex-French Ambassador (RT)

The military coup in Niger is an aftershock of the neocolonial relationship between France and various countries on the African continent, according to former French ambassador Gerard Araud. The crisis in Niger, which began last week when army general Abdouramane Tchiani toppled democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, is a “rejection of the French presence in the country,” Araud told news website Euractiv in comments published on Thursday. The 70-year-old diplomat added that the coup could be seen as a rejection of the so-called ‘Francafrique’: a term used to describe Paris’ sphere of influence over former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. The absence of a concerted African strategy is a “failure” of Europe, Araud added.

Araud, who was previously France’s ambassador to the United States, has held various high-profile diplomatic positions on behalf of France and the United Nations, as well as previously serving as the director general for political and security affairs in France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He said France’s colonial past had ushered in a “revolt of the youth” in the sub-Saharan region, with many taking that view that national governments are increasingly being seen as Paris’ puppets in Africa. He added to Euractiv that population growth and increasing levels of poverty has also fomented distrust by Africans in their established systems of government.

Despite increases in foreign security in Niger, particularly from France and the United States, insurgent attacks from Al-Qaeda and Islamic State-linked groups have continued; a factor also generally considered to be contributing to Niger’s political instability. On July 28, Tchiani, the head of Niger’s presidential guard, declared himself head of state of the African nation which has a population in excess of 25 million people. In 2021, there was a coup attempt around 48 hours before Bazoum’s inauguration as president of the West African state after he defeated opponent Mahamane Ousmane at the polls. The coup attempt was thwarted by the presidential guard.

French influence in Africa dates back to the 17th century but increased substantially in the 19th century with the invasion of the Ottoman Algiers in 1830. France took control of some areas of Niger in the 1890s. Ethnic groups in the African country rebelled against French rule before it was conquered as a colony in 1922. Niger later declared independence in 1960. However, France has maintained a stance of activity in the Sahel region of Africa – with Araud telling Euractiv that French forces were regarded as “freedom fighters” for repelling insurgents in North Mali in 2012 and 2013. However, he added that “every liberating army becomes, after a while, an occupier.”

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“UFC president Dana White has even suggested that the proposed cage match between the two billionaires could become the most profitable fight in history.”

MMA Star Khabib Refuses Offer From Musk (RT)

Former UFC champion Khabib Nurmagomedov has reportedly refused to train American billionaire Elon Musk for his fight with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to TASS news agency. A person familiar with the situation told the outlet that the undefeated Russian fighter had rebuffed an approach by Musk, who wanted him to prepare him for the bout. It is not known why Nurmagomedov turned down the offer, but the source claimed the event was being organized by UFC Eurasia CEO Andrey Gromkovsky. Earlier, the New York Times reported that Musk and Zuckerberg were in talks with the UFC about the fight. UFC president Dana White has even suggested that the proposed cage match between the two billionaires could become the most profitable fight in history.

While it has yet to be officially confirmed that Nurmagomedov has refused to train Musk, a number of MMA promoters have come out in support of his reported decision. In a statement to TASS, Russian sports manager Vladimir Khryunov said that “Khabib is a man of his own convictions” and is very serious about the sport to which he has dedicated his life. “I consider his decision to be the right one and it causes great respect for Khabib,” he added. President of the promotional company Fight Nights Global, Kamil Gadzhiev, also told the agency that Nurmagomedov’s decision was to be expected considering he has announced his retirement from MMA and is currently not even training anyone close to him. “For Khabib, it must be something super-principled to return to MMA. And Elon Musk’s fight definitely doesn’t belong to this category,” Gadzhiev added.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the richest and 10th-richest men in the world, have been trading barbs on social media for several weeks now, following the announcement and subsequent launch of Zuckerberg’s Threads – a rival to Musk’s Twitter (now called X). In June, Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a “cage match,” which drew the response: “Send me location.” Musk then tweeted: “Vegas Octagon” – the famed arena that hosts UFC fights. While many have been exicted by the prospect of seeing the two billionaires thrash it out in the ring, the probability of the bout actually happening doesn’t appear to be very high. Last week, Zuckerberg stated that he is “not sure” the cage match will “come together.”

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Favorite!

 

 

Cow snake

 

 

Lapwings

 

 

Gibbon

 

 

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Jun 102023
 


Edgar Degas Les repasseuses (women ironing) 1884

 

Reminder, What Was in The Mar-a-Lago Documents (CTH)
So About Trump’s Second Indictment (Denninger)
Snowden Weighs In On Trump’s Classified Docs Indictment (RT)
The Great DOJ Werewolf Hunt (Jim Kunstler)
To The Pompous But Dim-Witted Critics Of Russia (Medvedev)
A War Long Wanted (Matthew Hoh)
Biden’s Reputation Hinges On Kiev’s Counteroffensive – Politico (RT)
When Could West Pull the Plug on Military Assistance to Kiev? (Sp.)
West Planning ‘Second Ukraine’ In Moldova – Moscow (RT)
Ukraine Shifts Timeline For Crimean Incursion (RT)
Media: One Side “Says” – The Other “Provides No Evidence” (MoA)
Asia, Not Europe As A Laboratory For The Multipolar World (Lukyanov)
Saudi Crown Prince Threatened To Damage US Economy – Media (RT)
Ban Use Of Fossil Fuels In Making Wind Turbines And Solar Panels (CSD)
Media Blames Climate Change For Canada Wildfires Despite Multiple Arrests (LSN)
Over 66% Of US At Risk Of Power Outages Due To Green Transition (JTN)
New Twitter Files: FBI Worked With Ukraine To Censor Twitter Accounts (Fox)

 

 

 

 

RFK vaccines

 

 

RFK on Ukraine

 

 

 

 

Chomsky China

 

 

 

 

Tucker pedophilia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1666942224620216321

 

 

 

 

Sundance brings the receipts.

“President Trump declassified documents that show how the institutions within the U.S. government targeted him..”

“..if you peel away all the layers of lies, manipulations and corruption, what you find at the heart of their conduct is fear. The need for control is a reaction to fear. What do they fear most? …..THIS!”

Reminder, What Was in The Mar-a-Lago Documents (CTH)

The NSA compliance officer notified NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers of unauthorized use of the NSA database by FBI contractors searching U.S. citizens during the 2015/2016 presidential primary. That 2016 notification is a classified record. The response from Mike Rogers, and the subsequent documentary evidence of what names were being searched, is again a classified record. The audit logs showing who was doing the searches (which contractors, which agencies and from what offices), as noted by Director Rogers, were preserved. That is another big-time classified record. In addition, we would have Admiral Rogers writing a mandatory oversight notification to the FISA court detailing what happened. That’s a big and comprehensive classified record, likely contained in the documents in Mar-a-Lago… and then the goldmine, the fully unredacted 99-page FISA court opinion detailing the substance of the NSA compromise by FBI officials and contractors, including the names, frequency and dates of the illegal surveillance.

That is a major classified document the Deepest Deep State would want to keep hidden. These are the types of documents within what former ODNI John Ratcliffe called, “thousands of pages that were declassified by President Trump,” and given to both John Durham and Main Justice with an expectation of public release when the Durham special counsel probe concluded. That is why the DOJ has to make their moves now. The Durham probe has concluded. In short, President Trump declassified documents that show how the institutions within the U.S. government targeted him. However, the institutions that illegally targeted President Trump are the same institutions who control the specific evidence of their unlawful targeting.

These examples of evidence held by President Donald Trump reveal the background of how the DC surveillance state exists. THAT was/is the national security threat behind the DOJ-NSD search warrant and affidavit. The risk to the fabric of the U.S. government is why we see lawyers and pundits so confused as they try to figure out the disproportionate response from the DOJ and FBI, toward “simple records”, held by President Trump in Mar-a-Lago. Very few people can comprehend what has been done since January 2009, and the current state of corruption as it now exists amid all of the agencies and institutions of government.

Barack Obama spent 8 years building out and refining the political surveillance state. The operators of the institutions have spent the last six years hiding the construct. President Donald Trump declassified the material then took the evidence to Mar-a-Lago. The people currently in charge of managing the corrupt system, like Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Chris Wray and the Senate allies, are going bananas. From their DC perspective, Donald Trump is an existential threat. Given the nature of their opposition, and the underlying motives for their conduct, there is almost nothing they will not do to protect themselves. However, if you peel away all the layers of lies, manipulations and corruption, what you find at the heart of their conduct is fear. The need for control is a reaction to fear. What do they fear most? …..THIS!

People forget, and that’s ok, but prior to the 2015 MAGA movement driven by President Donald J Trump, political rallies filled with tens-of-thousands of people were extremely rare – almost nonexistent. However, in the era of Donald J. Trump the scale of the people paying attention has grown exponentially. Every speech, every event, every rally is now filled with thousands and thousands of people. The frequency of it has made us numb to realizing just how extraordinary this is. But the people in Washington DC are well aware, and that makes President Trump even more dangerous. Combine that level of support with what they attempted in order to destroy him, and, well, now you start to put context on their effort. The existence of Trump is a threat, but the existence of a Trump that could expose their corruption…. well, that makes him a level of threat that leads to a raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago.

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“There is every reason to believe that the cover-up of this is why there is a war in Ukraine right now and is directly why tens of thousands are dead..”

So About Trump’s Second Indictment (Denninger)

…. I don’t care. I should, of course. We all should. But I don’t. I don’t because nobody else has for thirty years when it comes to wild-eyed felony violations of the law, each carrying ten years in prison for each and every person involved, that occur by the tens of thousands every day. I’m talking about 15 USC Chapter 1 and violations that, collectively, amount to roughly 15% of the entire federal budget, all of which every one of us pays for, and another several trillion in “private” spending which we also pay for via crazily-hiked “insurance” premiums and similar. We pay for it in $500 medications that cost $10 anywhere else in the world, procedures that are billed at a thousand percent over what they cost anywhere else in the world, we’re billed at different rates depending on who your insurance carrier is, which for most people is not a choice they actually have (it comes through their job) and more.

I also don’t care because on the same day this indictment was announced it was also announced that the FBI has had hard evidence that both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden himself took $5m in bribes each and the target of same was explicit policy actions by the government which, I remind you, Joe Biden bragged about on national television — yet he still sits in the Oval Office. There is every reason to believe that the cover-up of this is why there is a war in Ukraine right now and is directly why tens of thousands are dead, infrastructure has been destroyed and tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money have gone to waste prosecuting same. Never mind that Biden committed the very same offense according to the record, the FBI knew it, and covered it up before the midterm elections; they knew Biden had classified documents in multiple places he had no right to possess — including in his garage.

We, the people of this nation, have allowed this, along with the original coup, where literal murder took place at Maidan and members of our government, including sitting Senators, cheered same on, to occur — all while our current President was vice-President and Obama, who was President at the time presided over that entire sordid mess and he too is still a free man. So…… do I care that the government has done this? No. We didn’t care enough to do anything about any of the above for three decades, a million Americans are dead over the last three years because of said medical monstrosity, tens of thousands of Russians and Ukranians are dead because of what our government has done over there, we have a sitting Senator who on camera stated that the killing of Russian soldiers was a “great investment” and our current sitting President appears to have taken a five million dollar bribe which the FBI knew about three years ago, prior to the election for the specific purpose of actual corrupt purpose WHILE IN OFFICE, they have done nothing about it and the American people have let all this go on for decades.

Mark Levin

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“Then said Jesus unto him, put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword..”

Snowden Weighs In On Trump’s Classified Docs Indictment (RT)

Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of state secrets is common behavior in Washington and typically goes unpunished, former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has argued in response to the former US president’s indictment. “All kidding aside, it’s not wrong to say that the indictment of Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents is a case of selective prosecution,” Snowden said on Friday in a Twitter post. “Spilled secrets are very much the currency of Washington, and Trump was not alone in splashing them around. He was just the least graceful.” Trump was charged with 37 felonies in a federal grand jury indictment that prosecutors unsealed on Friday. He’s accused of knowingly retaining classified documents after leaving office, conspiring to keep federal authorities from retrieving them and obstructing an investigation into their whereabouts.

Snowden marked the 10-year anniversary this week of his exposure of mass spying on US citizens by their government. He said Trump failed to fix the system that has now come back to haunt him. “It’s hard to feel sorry for a man who had four years in the White House to reform that broken system and instead left it in place to the detriment of the American public. He is caught within the same gears his own hands once turned,” Snowden tweeted. Some observers pointed out that Trump is being prosecuted under the same law – the Espionage Act – that Washington has wielded against Snowden and WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange. As president, Trump declined to issue pardons for both men, who were charged with crimes after exposing US government wrongdoing.

“Then said Jesus unto him, put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” Snowden said, using a Bible verse to point out the irony of Trump’s latest legal predicament. Snowden has railed against the US government’s abuse of secrecy since 2013, when he exposed the widespread NSA spying on American citizens. He was forced to seek refuge in Russia after Washington annulled his passport mid flight, eventually becoming a Russian citizen. Asked on Friday what he’d do if he were the US president, he said, “I’d surely reduce the number of things we classify by more than 99% – and you would not find the remainder in my bathroom or behind my Corvette.”

Snowden’s quip alluded to allegations that Trump had classified records stored in a bathroom at his Florida resort, as well as revelations earlier this year that President Joe Biden improperly kept secret documents and stored them in multiple locations, including the garage at his home in Delaware. Trump and his allies have argued that Biden weaponized the justice system to take out his top opponent in the 2024 presidential election, all while being excused for his own mishandling of state secrets. Trump also argued that he had the authority to declassify the records in his possession, unlike Biden, whose documents were acquired when he served as vice president. The former president blasted Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the indictment against him, as a “deranged lunatic” with a history of political bias.

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“Unlike the Donald Trump werewolf hunt, the “Joe Biden” classified-docs-in-a-garage case is moving at the speed of an Amtrak train with a broken Johnson rod stuck on a sidetrack outside Joppatowne, Maryland, in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve.”

The Great DOJ Werewolf Hunt (Jim Kunstler)

At long last you know what those plangent cries of Russia! Russia! Russia! ringing across the land signify: America has been turning into Russia, Joe Stalin-vintage, since 2016, just as Lon Chaney turned into a werewolf on-screen back in 1941. Trump Derangement turns out to be an extreme presentation of mass Species Identity disorder, a national altered state that (Wikipedia says): “…typically involves delusions and hallucinations with the transformation only seeming to happen in the mind and behavior of the affected person.”

Clinical lycanthropy is a very rare condition and is largely considered to be an idiosyncratic expression of a psychotic or dissociative episode caused by another condition such as Dissociative Identity Disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or clinical depression. It has also been associated with drug intoxication and withdrawal, cerebrovascular disease, traumatic brain injury, dementia, delirium, and seizures…. However, there are suggestions that certain neurological conditions and cultural influences may result in the expression of the human-animal transformation theme that defines the condition.”

So, now we are to have a grand show trial, in the Stalinist mode, of presidential candidate (and werewolf) Donald Trump on charges actually concocted off-site in the Lawfare laboratory of Commissar for Werewolf Activities Andrew Weissmann and sidekick, Brookings Institute fellow Norm Eisen, late counsel to the House Committee that impeached the werewolf with disappointing results over a telephone call to Ukraine in 2019. And, yes, that would be the same Andrew Weissmann who previously (but surreptitiously) led the team of intrepid Lawfare werewolf exorcists fronted by dementia victim Robert Mueller. Mr. Weissmann’s previous two-year-long werewolf hunt was a bust, too, of course. The werewolf slipped off into the moonstruck night to gnaw on Democrat loins again!

This time Mr. Weissman’s front-man is federal attorney Jack Smith, new to the werewolf hunting scene, packing a seven-shot indictment of silver bullets, aiming to show America how it’s done. And just in case he misses those shots, he’s got another gun strapped to his ankle chambering silver bullets engraved with “Jan 6” on the slugs. If you think our world has gotten interesting, better buckle into your Big Boy lounger because this werewolf movie is going places like none before. You may have noticed the timing of this new werewolf hunt has a near-magical synchronicity with oddly identical circumstances shimmering around the current occupant of the White House — another case of misplaced official papers. Unlike the Donald Trump werewolf hunt, the “Joe Biden” classified-docs-in-a-garage case is moving at the speed of an Amtrak train with a broken Johnson rod stuck on a sidetrack outside Joppatowne, Maryland, in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve.

But those purloined classified papers may be the least of “Joe Biden’s” concerns. Why, just the other day a single “whistleblower” document turned up in the House Oversight Committee’s SCIF — a special room for the performance of secret rituals — suggesting that “JB” was on the receiving end of $5 million gratis from some generous soul connected to a Ukrainian natgas company. That payday, for services left murky, when “JB” happened to be Barack Obama’s vice-president, came around the same period as yet other multi-million-dollar gift parcels from China, Russia, and Romania flew into a long list of companies operated by “JB’s” son Hunter, with no known business other than receiving large sums of money and then writing checks to various Biden family members. “Well Sonofabitch…!” as the president himself once said apropos of legal doings in Ukraine.

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A tweet.

To The Pompous But Dim-Witted Critics Of Russia (Medvedev)

To the pompous but dim-witted critics of Russia, and those who somehow managed to put all of their memory down the drain: let’s once again go through some of the major military operations of the U.S. and NATO after World War II.

1950 – The US is leading an intervention by the UN forces during the Korean War.
1954 – The US participates in the military coup in Guatemala and the follow-up intervention.

1961 – The US is launching the Bay of Pigs Operation in order to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba.
1964 – The US gets massively involved in the Vietnam war.
1981 – The US incites the civil war in Nicaragua.

1989 – The US invades Panama.
1999 – NATO’s war against Yugoslavia.
2001 – The US starts a war in Afghanistan.
2003 – The US launches a war in Iraq.
2011 – NATO’s first intervention in Libya.
2014 – The US and its allies invade Syria.
2015 – NATO’s second intervention in Libya.

The list is far from complete but quite telling. None of the major regional conflict of the past decades did without either direct or indirect involvement of American “benefactors.” The outcome is millions of dead people. Their blood is on the hands of ALL the American presidents, of various corrupted bastards, and other demented old men from the US Administration and US Congress. And yet, after all this, some seniles like Biden and other hypocrites have the nerve to criticize Russia for its actions aimed at protecting its own compatriots and defending its historical territories? Who are you to open your foul mouths? Just zip it up!

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“NATO expansion was a cash bonanza for a weapons industry that originally saw destitution as the fruit of the Cold War’s end..”

A War Long Wanted (Matthew Hoh)

At the end of the Cold War, the military-industrial complex faced an existential crisis. Without an adversary like the Soviet Union, justifying massive arms spending by the United States would be difficult. NATO expansion allowed for new markets. Countries coming into NATO would be required to upgrade their armed forces, replacing their Soviet-era stocks with Western weapons, ammunition, machines, hardware and software compatible with NATO’s armies. Entire armies, navies and air forces had to be remade. NATO expansion was a cash bonanza for a weapons industry that originally saw destitution as the fruit of the Cold War’s end. From 1996–1998, US arms companies spent $51 million ($94 million today) lobbying Congress. Millions more were spent on campaign donations.

Beating swords into plowshares would have to wait for another epoch once the weapons industry realized the promise of Eastern European markets. In a circular and mutually reinforcing loop, Congress appropriates money to the Pentagon. The Pentagon funds the arms industry, which, in turn, funds think tanks and lobbyists to direct Congress on further Pentagon spending. Campaign contributions from the weapons industry accompany that lobbying. The Pentagon, CIA, National Security Council, State Department and other limbs of the national security state directly fund the think tanks and ensure that any policies promoted are the policies the government institutions themselves want.

It is not just Congress that is under the sway of the military-industrial complex. These same weapons companies that bribe members of Congress and fund think tanks often employ, directly and indirectly, the cadre of experts that litter cable news programs and fill space in news reporting. Rarely is this conflict of interest identified by American media. Thus, men and women who owe their paychecks to the likes of Lockheed, Raytheon or General Dynamics appear in the media and advocate for more war and more weapons. These commentators and pundits seldom acknowledge that their benefactors immensely profit from the policies of more war and more weapons.

The corruption extends into the executive branch as the military-industrial complex employs scores of administration officials whose political party is no longer in the White House. Out of government, Republican and Democratic officials head from the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department to arms companies, think tanks and consultancies. When their party retakes the White House, they return to the government. In exchange for bringing their rolodexes, they receive lavish salaries and benefits. Similarly, US generals and admirals retire from the Pentagon and go straightto arms companies. This revolving door reaches the highest level. Before becoming Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State and Director of National Intelligence, Lloyd Austin, Antony Blinken and Avril Haines were employed by the military-industrial complex. In Secretary Blinken’s case, he founded a firm, WestExec Advisors, devoted to trading and peddling influence for weapons contracts.

There is a broader level of commercial greed in the context of the Ukraine War that cannot be dismissed or ignored. The US fuels and arms the world. US fossil fuel and weapons exports now exceed its agricultural and industrial exports. Competition for the European fuel market, particularly liquid natural gas, has been a primary concern over the last decade for both Democratic and Republican administrations. Removing Russia as the key energy supplier to Europe and limiting overall Russian fossil fuel exports worldwide has greatly benefited American oil and gas companies. In addition to wider commercial trade interests, the sheer amounts of money the American fossil fuel business makes as a result of denying Europeans the option of buying Russian fossil fuels cannot be disregarded.

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Not true. The Biden team has been busy covering their hurt butts from day one. They will simply blame Zelensky. “We gave you everything and you f*cked up!”

Biden’s Reputation Hinges On Kiev’s Counteroffensive – Politico (RT)

Washington’s future military support for Ukraine and President Joe Biden’s reputation depend largely on the outcome of Kiev’s counteroffensive against the Russian forces, senior American officials have told Politico. The White House “anxiously watches” Kiev’s attempts to retake territories it lost to Russia, the US outlet reported on Thursday. If the counteroffensive succeeds, Ukraine would be able to count on additional military and economic assistance from the US and its allies, but if it fails, Western support may dry up, with Kiev facing calls to find a swift diplomatic resolution to the conflict, the report said. Five US officials, who spoke to Politico on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that they weren’t sure if lawmakers would vote for more aid for President Vladimir Zelensky’s government when funds approved last year are depleted.

The House Republicans may use any setbacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) to derail the efforts of the Democrats to boost military aid, they pointed out. According to the outlet, Washington has been increasingly unhappy about Ukrainian attacks inside Russia such as an attempted drone strike on the Kremlin in early May and the assassinations of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky and journalist Darya Dugina. Those moves by Kiev have led to “several private, stern admonishments in diplomatic backchannels,” it added. The political uncertainty in the US and developments on the ground in Ukraine are among “mounting concerns that could sully Biden’s hoped-for triumphant return to the world stage” at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July, the officials stressed.

The gathering in the Lithuanian capital will be a “key moment” for the American leader, who’ll face questions about US security guarantees for Kiev, the deliveries of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine and its potential membership in NATO, Politico pointed out. During his meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi SuNak on Thursday, Biden expressed belief that the administration will “have the funding necessary to support Ukraine as long as it takes” and that this support will be “real.” Earlier that day, senior US officials told CNN that the AFU had suffered “significant” casualties in its unsuccessful attempts to mount a counteroffensive against the Russian forces over the past week. Kiev’s troops have been met with “greater than expected resistance” when trying to break through Russian lines, they said. According to Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, Ukraine has lost around 5,000 soldiers and 100 tanks in combat since Sunday.

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“..such a scenario is fraught with a “very rapid collapse” of the Zelensky regime because it can no longer exist without Western assistance..”

When Could West Pull the Plug on Military Assistance to Kiev? (Sp.)

Touching upon Kiev’s chances to get the F-16s, Podolyaka suggested that “If the so-called counteroffensive ends up at least in a draw, or with some small victories for the AFU, then, of course, the fighter jets will be in place in Ukraine.” But if the AFU sustains a defeat, then “it is quite possible” that the Americans and Europeans will think that the supply of the F-16s to Kiev is irrelevant, he said, adding “everything will depend on the results of the battle that is now unfolding.” When asked if the West will continue increasing its military supplies to Kiev given the AFU’s stuttering attempts to launch a counteroffensive, the military expert referred to what he described as Americans and Britons’ practical approach to things.

“They are business people. They understand that if the project is unsuccessful, then it is not worth investing in it. And they are already directly saying and hinting to the Kiev regime that ‘if you don’t achieve any significant results as a result of the counteroffensive, […] then there will be a decrease in investments,” according to Podolyaka. He explained that such a scenario is fraught with a “very rapid collapse” of the Zelensky regime because it can no longer exist without Western assistance.

“Militarily, the Ukrainian state would have been destroyed long ago but for the West’s aid. […] The Zelensky regime will fall or [be] significantly weakened as soon as Western assistance dries up, something that Kiev is afraid of. That is why they have launched this suicidal counteroffensive, knowing about all the risks related to the decision,” Podolyaka noted. Giving his insight into when it is relevant to expect the above-mentioned “significant results,” he underlined that one should wait and see how developments will further unfold given the fact that the AFU will almost certain try to reverse the tide of the battle in its favor in the coming days.

[..] Deputy chief of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev also commented on the matter, writing on his Telegram page that “While Fogh Rasmussen previously was not a very smart person, he has now completely fallen into doctrinaire dementia.” He also warned that a possible scenario of NATO forces being deployed to Ukraine may have a negative impact on the US. “What does Uncle Sam think about this? After all, they’ll be impacted too. […] This is what happens when one becomes a freelance adviser to all sorts of greedy scumbags like former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and other corrupt Nazis at an inappropriate time,” Medvedev added.

Dwelling on the issue, Podolyaka, in turn, said that he was “sure that Poland will try to seize a significant piece of land from Ukraine”, something that he added cannot be resolved without the Polish entering Ukrainian soil. He added that while the probability of the scenario of Polish forces being stationed in Ukraine remains, this won’t take place right now because Warsaw “will wait for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to fall apart” as a result of the Russian special military operation. At the same time, Poland hopes that Russia will be purportedly weakened due to NATO’s actions and that it will allow Warsaw to claim and annex the territory of Western Ukraine in line with the 1939 borders,” he concluded.

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Losing on one front is not enough?!

West Planning ‘Second Ukraine’ In Moldova – Moscow (RT)

The US and its allies are looking to use the former Soviet Republic of Moldova to contain Russia and turn it into “a second Ukraine,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin has warned. “Absolutely irresponsible, absolutely short-sightedly, the West is eyeing Moldova for the role of a second Ukraine, and, unfortunately, the current Moldovan leadership is actively involved in this,” Galuzin told Rossiya 24 broadcaster on Thursday. The government in Chisinau “walks the path of a pro-Western policy; takes part in the anti-Russian policy of the US and its satellites; follows the path of initiating that same escalation in relations with Russia” as Kiev did in the years leading up to its current conflict with Moscow, he pointed out.

According to the diplomat, the Russian side is not doing anything to stoke tensions with the people of Moldova – a small nation of 2.6 million people, sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania. “Those are not our methods,” he insisted. In May, the EU launched a partnership mission in Moldova under its Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), with the proclaimed aim of helping the country with crisis management and tackling hybrid threats. The bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the move was necessary due to “continued Russian attempts to destabilize Moldova with hybrid actions.” Galuzin also said the EU’s mission was anti-Russian in its very essence, as it is designed to further strengthen Chisinau’s pro-Western course and direct the country towards confrontation with Moscow. While pursuing closer ties with the West, the country’s officials are ignoring the interests of a large portion of Moldova’s population, who want good relations with Russia and don’t believe in stories about the perceived “Russian threat,” the deputy FM added.

Earlier this week, Moldova’s parliament terminated agreements on military cooperation and tackling the aftermath of natural disasters with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – an organization comprised of Russia and most other former Soviet republics. Last month, President Maia Sandu claimed that membership in the CIS was “not beneficial to the citizens of Moldova, and we proceed from the interests of the citizens.” In late May, NATO said it had “mutually beneficial” relations with Moldova, as the US-led military bloc has been helping the country “with efforts to reform and modernize its defense and security structures and institutions.” NATO also described Chisinau as a “valued contributor” to the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, where 40 Moldovan troops are deployed.

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Keep them out of Crimea!

Ukraine Shifts Timeline For Crimean Incursion (RT)

A spokesman for Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) has downplayed a failed prediction made by his boss, Kirill Budanov, who had claimed that Ukrainian troops would enter Crimea by the end of spring. The new target is sometime this year before the weather turns cold, the official insisted. When asked about Budanov’s inaccurate assessment by the Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper on Friday, spokesman Andrey Yusov said it was not “a bookmaker’s bet or a date on a tear-off calendar.” “But the overall situation and the wider assessment remain the same: Ukraine will definitely return Crimea. And then Budanov’s words would be prophetic,” Yusov claimed. He declined to set a more specific deadline, citing battlefield uncertainties, but suggested that the touted breakthrough would happen “while it is warm.”


Crimea rejoined Russia in 2014, after the local population voted overwhelmingly in favor of the move following a Western-backed armed coup in Kiev. The Ukrainian government and its supporters rejected the outcome of the plebiscite, and claim that the territory is illegally occupied. Budanov has made several predictions on when Ukrainian troops would supposedly enter Crimea. In May 2022, he set the end of the year as the deadline, while in October he claimed Kiev would “liberate” Crimea in the spring of 2023. He publicly expressed confidence in that time frame as late as April. Russian officials have warned that an attempted military invasion of Crimea would be countered with major resistance. The pushback would “obviously involve the use of all defensive measures, including those articulated in the nuclear doctrine,” Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of the Security Council and former Russian president, told journalists in March.

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“Did any of the U.S. or NATO leaders really think that the Ukrainian forces would have a f***ing chance by senselessly running into well prepared Russian defenses?”

Media: One Side “Says” – The Other “Provides No Evidence” (MoA)

“Ukraine Mounts Multiple Attacks on Russian Occupiers” – New York Times – June 8, 2023. On one side – just flat out statements taken for granted: “Three senior U.S. officials, as well as military analysts, said that a long-awaited major Ukrainian counteroffensive appeared to be underway, after months spent mobilizing and training new units, and arming them with advanced Western weapons … Kyiv said little about the intensified fighting, neither confirming nor denying Russian claims, and Ukrainian officials have said they will not discuss details for reasons of operational secrecy. A Ukrainian deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, said a battle was underway in the area of a larger town about 10 miles away in the neighboring Donetsk region, Velyka Novosilka, but it was unclear if she was referring to the same clash.

The other side’s claims are depicted as dubious: “The Russian war bloggers, who have become a major source of information from the front lines, said Ukraine’s forces had suffered heavy losses, though such claims could not be confirmed and in the past have often been exaggerated. The Russian account, like most claims about what was happening at the front, could not be confirmed independently, but videos verified by The New York Times showed a Ukrainian armored vehicle near Velyka Novosilka hitting a land mine.” I could add a dozen more pieces that follow the scheme. Ukrainian or U.S. claims lead the piece without being put into doubt. Russian counterclaims come a few paragraphs down and are immediately said to lack any evidence.

By the way: What the New York Times claims to have confirmed via video is just one of many screw ups on the Ukrainian side that can be seen these days. Over the last 48 hours I have watched half a dozen drone videos of Ukrainian vehicles rumbling in tight columns over open fields, without minesweepers, without smokescreen or artillery cover, only to get blown up in minefields and massacred by anti-tank missiles. No seasoned platoon or company leader would plan and execute attacks like that but, watching those videos, I doubt that the Ukraine still has any of those. Then we have this:

“Ukrainian forces have suffered losses in heavy equipment and soldiers as they met greater than expected resistance from Russian forces in their first attempt to breach Russian lines in the east of the country in recent days, two senior US officials tell CNN. One US official described the losses – which include US supplied MRAP armored personnel vehicles as “significant.” Did any of the U.S. or NATO leaders really think that the Ukrainian forces would have a f***ing chance by senselessly running into well prepared Russian defenses? Really???

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“.. a couple of landmark events at the 2023 edition. Perhaps the most interesting was Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu’s refusal to meet Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin on the margins..”

Asia, Not Europe As A Laboratory For The Multipolar World (Lukyanov)

Last week, Singapore hosted the annual Asian Shangri-La Dialogue security conference. It has been organized for over 20 years by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. It’s probably the most representative forum in the region, even though the agenda is set by Westerners. It’s also arguably still the most accurate indicator of the general Asian mood and is now beginning to dictate the general global atmosphere. There were a couple of landmark events at the 2023 edition. Perhaps the most interesting was Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu’s refusal to meet Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin on the margins. The démarche was quite clear, although both ministers’ speeches expressed the unacceptability of confrontation, the consequences of which could be catastrophic.

Washington and Beijing have opposing visions in their assessment of future possibilities. In the US, there is a clear and almost unanimous view that Beijing is a rival that must be reined in at almost any cost. And those that shape opinion believe it will get worse. China is outraged that the US itself is dismantling a system of relations that has enriched both sides to their mutual satisfaction for decades. In Beijing’s view, the Americans are overstepping the bounds of reason by demanding that their Asian partners submit to their interests – or even whims. From Washington’s point of view, allowing China to continue to rise means having a challenger for world domination in the near future, with whom a clash is inevitable. Not a good position to be in. Thus, the paradox is that while both sides are openly preparing for confrontation, they are very wary of it.

Neither side is confident of imminent success. Logically, China’s primary interest is to postpone the moment of conflict as long as possible, if it is to be seen as inevitable. After all, Beijing has always been a catch-up actor, and on the military side it has much less experience than the Americans. The latter, on the other hand, may assume that the sooner the relationship is clarified, the better their chances of success. Of course, the US is now involved in a confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, and the prospect of a second front in Asia is worrying. This would not necessarily be a direct military engagement (no one believes this is likely in the short term), but a general increase in politico-military tensions, draining resources in that direction. The recent dangerous proximity of warships in the South China Sea is a familiar sight to the various Baltic and Black Sea confrontations. At the same time, diplomatic and intelligence contacts are taking place to “keep the lines of communication open.” However, these are much less busy than in the recent past.

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Biden has no idea how the world has changed. He goes in there and says: You ungrateful desert rat! I remember what we did for you! And MbS will say: I’m too young to remember, but I still do know what WE did for YOU!.

Saudi Crown Prince Threatened To Damage US Economy – Media (RT)

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman privately threatened to harm the American economy after President Joe Biden warned Saudi Arabia of “consequences” for agreeing an oil production cut with Russia, the Washington Post reported, citing leaked material. The Biden administration had said it would re-evaluate relations with the kingdom following a decision by Riyadh to slash crude production against the wishes of the US.The Crown Prince, who is widely referred to as MBS, warned that he would not deal with the US administration anymore if Biden penalized Saudi Arabia. He also promised “major economic consequences for Washington,” the Post reported on Thursday. The threat was contained in a classified document that was leaked on a Discord server, but it was not clear whether the remark was part of intercepted communications or a message sent privately to the US.

Biden made his dissatisfaction with Riyadh clear last October after the OPEC+ group of major oil producers including Russia agreed to cut production by two million barrels a day. Washington was working to punish Moscow with sanctions on its oil trade over the conflict in Ukraine. “There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done with Russia,” the US president said in an interview with CNN at the time, without specifying any possible measures. On the campaign trail before his election, Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the Crown Prince’s alleged role in the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which Riyadh blamed on rogue agents.

This threat never materialized, with White House insiders indicating that the Biden administration had opted against jeopardizing bilateral relations. Under a decades-old arrangement, the US provides security to Saudi Arabia, and in exchange retains access to its oil, which the kingdom trades for dollars, propping it up as a global currency. A number of top US officials recently traveled to Saudi Arabia, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken. These relations contrast with the reportedly poor personal chemistry between Biden and MBS, who have not met since last July. The 37-year-old Saudi Crown Prince, who is responsible for the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom in lieu of his father, King Salman, reportedly mocks Biden in private, making fun of his gaffes and mental lapses. Critics of the US president have accused him of caving in to Saudi pressure.

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“It is the height of hypocrisy to pretend that solar panels and wind turbines will save us from ‘evil’ fossil fuels..”

Ban Use Of Fossil Fuels In Making Wind Turbines And Solar Panels (CSD)

New York state Sen. George Borrello, R-Wyoming County, has introduced a bill to require that all wind turbines, solar collectors and infrastructure for producing green energy be manufactured and constructed without the use of fossil fuels. His bill would also apply to the manufacture and distribution of electric vehicles. If the bill were to become law, it would be the end of renewable energy. There’s no feasible way to manufacture and transport wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles without fossil fuels. Borrello is well aware of this fact and said he suspects most of his colleagues in the New York Legislature do too.

Like a resolution that was introduced in the last Wyoming legislative session earlier this year that would’ve banned auto dealerships from selling electric vehicles, the goal of Borrello’s bill is to get people thinking a bit harder about the outcomes of extreme green energy policies. “The intent of the bill is to start an honest conversation about the reality of wind turbines and solar panels,” Borrello told Cowboy State Daily. “These energy sources are praised as the answer to reducing emissions and saving the planet. However, rarely discussed is the environmental damage that results from the manufacture, transport and installation of these systems.” In the last session of the Wyoming Legislature, Sen. Jim Anderson, R-Casper, sponsored a resolution requiring the state’s auto dealerships to phase out the sale of electric vehicles by 2035.

Anderson and the co-sponsors never intended the resolution to pass. They only wanted to start a conversation about bans on the sale of gas-powered vehicles that were adopted in California and considered in Colorado. He was successful. After Cowboy State Daily first reported on the measure, Anderson was interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business and Newsmax, as well as news outlets in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida and Pennsylvania. “It was successful at starting the conservation and getting a lot of comments from the ignorant,” Anderson told Cowboy State Daily. He said it’s possible he’ll pursue similar legislation in future sessions, perhaps a bill rather than a resolution, which is nonbinding. With bans on the sale of gas-powered cars in California and New York, along with bans on natural gas hookups in new construction, Anderson said more conversation is needed.

“There’s so many of these stupid laws being passed. It’s really getting out of hand,” Anderson said. Borrello said solar panels require the mining of rare earth metals, which is done with diesel-powered machinery, and they are typically manufactured with coal-fired electricity. Likewise, metallurgical coal is burned to forge steel for the foundations of wind towers. Diesel-powered heavy equipment, Borrello continued, transports the components, prepares the sites and assembles the structures. “It is the height of hypocrisy to pretend that solar panels and wind turbines will save us from ‘evil’ fossil fuels, when the reality is that renewables — just like modern life as we know it — cannot exist without them,” Borrello said.

Patrick Moore

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“..statistics from Canadian National Fire Database reveal that wildfires across Canada have decreased in recent years, having peaked in 1989..”

Media Blames Climate Change For Canada Wildfires Despite Multiple Arrests (LSN)

Despite the arrest of multiple arsonists, the mainstream media in Canada seems intent on attributing the nation’s recent wildfires to “climate change.” As wildfires continue to spread across western, and now central and eastern Canada, burning forestland and homes, the mainstream media continues to imply that climate change is the main culprit, despite a growing number of reports showing that arsonists have been arrested for allegedly setting dozens of fires. “Several arsonists have been arrested in the past weeks in different provinces for lighting forest fires,” People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier tweeted. “But the lying woke media and politicians keep repeating that global warming is the cause.”

The severe nature of the wildfires has caused Canadians to wonder why they have spread so rapidly, especially as many of the affected areas are not typically impacted by wildfires of this degree or at this time of the year. In the past months, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have arrested several arsonists who have been charged with lighting fires across several provinces including Nova Scotia, Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta. The motive behind lighting the fires is unclear. One Albertan, John Cook, has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of arson after setting a string of wildfires in and around Cold Lake, a hamlet near Edmonton. In addition to damaging vehicles and structures, Cook was charged with setting aflame the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Cherry Grove, Alberta.

A Vancouver man charged with arson has been released until his trial on October 9, with Cpl. Michael Gauthier asserting that he is not a risk to light further fires. “This incident was not random in nature and we do not believe there is risk to other members of the public or businesses from the individual who was arrested,” Gauthier stated. Despite the numerous arrests, mainstream media outlets continue to publish articles attributing the wildfires to climate change. “Rise in extreme wildfires linked directly to emissions from oil companies in new study,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported. “Canadian forest fires are the latest costly climate disaster that public accounts fail to capture,” another CBC headline read.

“Climate change is increasing the risks of wildfires in the country, experts say,” Global News attested. Despite these claims, statistics from Canadian National Fire Database reveal that wildfires across Canada have decreased in recent years, having peaked in 1989. Notably, the mainstream media outlets attributing the increase of wildfires to climate change have received funding from the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which is actively pushing for increased bans on using natural resources in Canada to combat “climate change.”

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“the electric grid is operating ever closer to the edge” resulting in higher chances of “more frequent and more serious disruptions.”

Over 66% Of US At Risk Of Power Outages Due To Green Transition (JTN)

At least two-thirds of America is expected to be hit with summer blackouts due to President Joe Biden’s push to end the use of fossil fuels, according to the organization that oversees the nation’s power grid stability. A 2023 “Summer Reliability Assessment” published by North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) cites “new environmental rules” cracking down on power plant emissions as a culprit. In May, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) threatened to shut down coal plants that fail to meet an effective zero-carbon emissions mandate by 2038. The problem, according to NERC, is that the U.S. government is creating greater energy demand by pushing out traditional energy sources (coal, natural gas and nuclear) for less reliable and insufficient alternatives like solar and wind power.


“Natural gas supply and infrastructure is vitally important to electric grid reliability even as renewable generation satisfies more of our energy needs,” NERC wrote in the assessment. NERC’s president, James B. Robb, warned Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee members that “the electric grid is operating ever closer to the edge” resulting in higher chances of “more frequent and more serious disruptions.” Robb also referred to natural gas as “fuel that keeps the lights on” and said improving its infrastructure is “required” to keep America’s grid afloat.

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“..authentic news outlets and reporters who cover the conflict with a pro-Russian stance are unlikely to be found in violation of our rules..”

New Twitter Files: FBI Worked With Ukraine To Censor Twitter Accounts (Fox)

The latest Twitter Files uncovered the FBI requesting the social media company to censor accounts accused of spreading misinformation about the Ukraine-Russia war and collect their personal information. A special agent from the FBI reached out to Twitter with a list of accounts according to The Grayzone News host Aaron Maté, who reported on the latest Twitter Files. “The FBI is helping Ukraine censor Twitter users, including journalists,” Maté reported. “The FBI aided a Ukrainian intelligence effort to ban Twitter users and collect their data. Twitter declined to censor journalists targeted by Ukraine.” Maté was included on the list of accounts.

FBI Special Agent Aleksandr Kobzanets, the assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, reportedly contacted a pair of Twitter executives in March 2022 on behalf of Ukraine’s intelligence agency, the SBU. The agent reportedly sent a list of 163 Twitter accounts, stating that “These accounts are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation.” Along with the list of accounts, the agent also reportedly forwarded a request from Ukraine’s SBU, which said, “we kindly ask you to take urgent measures to block these Twitter accounts and provide us with user data specified during registration.” However, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety at the time, responded to the FBI about how they would check the authenticity of some of the accounts listed, but he shared concerns with censoring American and Canadian journalists.

“In an initial look, they do appear to be a mix of individual accounts (that may or may not be authentic), some official Russian accounts (including state media accounts which are already labeled under our policies), and even a few accounts of American and Canadian journalists (e.g. Aaron Mate),” Roth wrote. “Our reviews are going to focus first and foremost on identifying any potential inauthenticity,” he continued. “In general, though, authentic news outlets and reporters who cover the conflict with a pro-Russian stance are unlikely to be found in violation of our rules absent other context that might establish some kind of convert/deceptive association between them and a government.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Mantis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1667165836249890817

 

 

Doggo tornado

 

 

Awwww
https://twitter.com/i/status/1666906748806914053

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 312023
 
 March 31, 2023  Posted by at 9:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Dora Maar au chat 1941

 

NYT: Donald Trump Has Been Indicted (Techno Fog)
The Impact of Sanctions on the De-Dollarization of Int’l Trade (Gonzalo Lira)
Saudi Arabia Makes Move Towards Russia-China Bloc (RT)
Brazil and China Sign Pact To Abandon Dollar (RT)
Russia, China Have To Take Measures To Protect Relations – Zakharova (TASS)
Beijing Demands That US Stop Provoking China (TASS)
Senior Orthodox Bishop Invokes Woe On Zelensky (RT)
Kiev Demands Cut Of Western ‘War Profits’ – Politico (RT)
Kuleba: If US Stops Supporting Ukraine, World Order Will Collapse (Az.)
Ukraine’s Military Losing 500 Troops Daily Near Bakhmut – LPR (TASS)
Russian General Staff Says No Plans To Hold Second Wave Of Mobilization (TASS)
Russian Central Bank Reveals How It Braced For Western Dollar Grab (RT)
London Totally Ruined Architecture Of Relations With Moscow – Ambassador (TASS)
The Most Dangerous International Treaty Ever Proposed (Kingsley)
Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century (Siegel)

 

 

 

 

 

 

PCR

Hoeg

 

 

 

 

Jordan Peterson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641206079844483073

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How much longer will the States remain United?

NYT: Donald Trump Has Been Indicted (Techno Fog)

Breaking news from the New York Times today: “A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to four people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges. The felony indictment, filed under seal by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, will likely be announced in the coming days. By then, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, will have asked Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment on charges that remain unknown for now.”


A felony indictment. We’ll have more information and more analysis after the indictment is unsealed. But as we stated yesterday regarding the reported “delays” and the potential charges: “In New York, the falsification of business records is a misdemeanor that is subject to a two-year statute of limitations. Bragg, however, is supposedly pursuing felony charges against Trump for falsifying business records to conceal federal campaign finance violations. The felony has a five-year statute of limitations, one which Bragg can manipulate to perhaps apply to Trump.” The indictment is an absolute scandal, the banana republic on parade, the prosecutor using the weapons of his office to attack his political opponent.

Whitlock

Bragg and his predecessor’s slow-walking of the investigation, with its inception by Manhattan DA goes back to 2019, evidences both the dubious nature of the case against Trump and the political motivations for prosecuting Trump. Theoretically, this should be a simple case. Yet the investigation went on for nearly five years, despite what they’ve possessed: overzealous prosecutors who wanted to charge Trump with racketeering, the cooperating witnesses, the likely millions of pages of materials from the Trump Organization. Now suddenly, the insanely pro-criminal Manhattan DA, who demanded his prosecutors reduce charges for violent criminals, is prioritizing law and order. It’s hard to believe there are legitimate reasons – for prosecutors, that means seeking justice – for that transformation. Why bring the case now? It’s the start of the 2024 presidential campaign season.


[..] Don’t be surprised if the trial date is set for the first half of 2024. And don’t understate the danger to Trump, who will face a jury of Biden voters. Biden won Manhattan 86.7% to 12.3% according to the New York Times. The jury of Trump’s peers will be friendly to the prosecution. That’s all the Manhattan DA might need to secure a conviction. Trump could very well win on appeal but the damage – which carries national repercussions – might already have been done. And that’s the whole point of this dirty scheme.

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Twitter thread. Russian sanctions drive countries away from the dollar.

The Impact of Sanctions on the De-Dollarization of Int’l Trade (Gonzalo Lira)

The Russian sanctions have caused a worldwide de-dollarization, as countries are unable to use dollars to buy essential commodities from Russia. This has led to countries signing treaties to trade in yuan, as it is a more reliable currency. This de-dollarization has caused a decrease in demand for dollars overseas, leading to American domestic inflation and an inability to continue piling on debt, which will ultimately lead to dollar hyperinflation. Why are so many countries all of a sudden turning to the yuan to buy their essential commodities? Why is the world de-dollarizing so quickly? Simple — the Russian sanctions.

Russia is the biggest single commodity producer in the world — they have oil AND gas AND agro AND minerals AND anything else. But because of the sanctions, Russia CANNOT take dollars (or euros) for sales of their commodities. First, the sanctions disconnected Russia from SWIFT, meaning Russians can’t pay for things they would want to buy with dollars. So why would Russia take dollars for their commodities — if they can’t buy stuff with those dollars. Plus their dollar assets get confiscated in the West. So why hold dollars, and dollar assets to park them in, if they will be stolen? So because of sanctions, Russia has been FORCED to de-dollarize. Russia didn’t want to de-dollarize — they were obliged. By the West. But Russia still has to trade, because it still has to acquire things it cannot produce at home, and still has a surplus of commodities with which to acquire these foreign goods.

Apart from the West, Russia’s major trading partners are China and India. So it makes sense for Russia to sell its commodities in yuan and rupees: Sell oil/agro/gas in yuan, and buy Chinese goods with those yuan. Same with India. But why are OTHER countries signing treaties to trade in yuan, like France and Brazil in the last few days? They’re getting ahead of the curve. As more commodities trading takes place in yuan and rupees, the more demand for those currencies. Hence it becomes smart to cut a deal with China NOW — to fix an exchange rate of yuan. In essence, these deals are longs on the yuan. The effect is, these trade deals eventually lead to more de-dollarization—which becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, as dollars become less valuable (because they can buy less commodities) so more countries want yuan, leading to more de-dollarization, leading to a weaker dollar.

All this leads to the collapse of the dollar into hyperinflation. The dollar was valuable BECAUSE it was the currency in international commodities trade, which created the demand for dollars and dollar assets outside the US — thereby financing the enormous American debts. With trade de-dollarization, there’s no longer as much demand for dollars overseas, leading to American domestic inflation and an inability to continue piling on debt. Ultimately, the Federal Reserve will be forced to simply print — which will lead to dollar hyperinflation. BTW, Russia didn’t cause this. The sanctions which triggered this worldwide de-dollarization was just the final straw. It didn’t help that American leadership seems capricious and hysterical, making other countries very nervous that they might be sanctioned too.

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Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Africa, Naledi Pandor: “Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, Argentina, Mexico and Nigeria want to join BRICS.”

Saudi Arabia Makes Move Towards Russia-China Bloc (RT)

King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has signed the documents granting Saudi Arabia the status of “dialog partner” with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – the political, economic and security bloc currently chaired by China. The king signed off on the memorandum of understanding at the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, held at the al-Salam Palace in Jeddah, the Saudi Press Agency reported. In addition to formalizing the partnership, King Salman also approved the technical and vocational training with China. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman thanked Beijing for mediating the talks with Iran, which culminated in the re-establishment of “good neighborly relations” earlier this month. The Saudi state agency also said that Iran was set to join the bloc “soon.” Tehran had applied for membership in 2021.


The SCO was created in 2001 by Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. It has since expanded to India, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan as full members. The status of dialog partner was created in 2008, and includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Egypt, Nepal, Qatar, Sri Lanka and Türkiye. The bloc initially focused on security concerns, primarily terrorism, separatism and extremism. It has an agreement with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on jointly addressing security, crime and drug trafficking. Over the years, it began fostering cooperation in matters of trade, economics, and culture as well. In addition to taking a step closer to the SCO, Saudi Arabia is reportedly interested in joining the BRICS group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – Russia’s ambassador to the kingdom, Sergey Kozlov, said in February.

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“25 countries are already making settlements with China in yuan.”

Brazil and China Sign Pact To Abandon Dollar (RT)

Beijing and Brasilia have signed an agreement on trade in mutual currencies, abandoning the US dollar as an intermediary, and are also planning to expand cooperation in the field of food and minerals. According to media reports, the deal will enable the two BRICS members to conduct their massive trade and financial transactions directly, exchanging renminbi for real and vice versa instead of using the greenback for settlements. “The expectation is that this will reduce costs… promote even greater bilateral trade and facilitate investment,” AFP quoted the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency as saying on Wednesday. The countries also reportedly announced the creation of a clearinghouse that will provide settlements without the use of the US dollar, as well as lending in national currencies.


The move is aimed at facilitating and reducing the cost of transactions between the sides, and getting rid of dollar dependence in bilateral relations. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced earlier that such arrangements will boost the usage of the renminbi for cross-border transactions between enterprises and financial institutions in the two countries, and further facilitate bilateral trade and investment. China has been Brazil’s largest trading partner for more than a decade, with bilateral trade hitting a record $150 billion last year. According to the Secretary for International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance of Brazil, Tatiana Rosito, 25 countries are already making settlements with China in yuan.

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“..both sides view the strengthening of relations as a “natural process,..

Russia, China Have To Take Measures To Protect Relations – Zakharova (TASS)

Moscow and Beijing have to take adequate measures in current geopolitical circumstances in order to protect their multifaceted cooperation from the harmful effect of illegal unilateral sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing Thursday. “In current geopolitical circumstances, Moscow and Beijing have to take adequate measures in order to protect the positive groundwork of multifaceted cooperation, which took many years to accumulate, from the harmful effect of illegal unilateral sanctions,” the diplomat noted.


Meanwhile, the spokeswoman underscored, both sides view the strengthening of relations as a “natural process,” defined by long-standing ties and geographical proximity. “Unlike the westerners, we seek to build cooperation with external partners exclusively based on principles of equality, mutual consideration of each other’s interests, instead of building some coalition or some exclusive clubs with an ‘anti-‘ prefix,” Zakharova noted.

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641539345101324288

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“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army will take all necessary measures to protect national sovereignty and security and will resolutely defend peace and stability in the South China Sea..”

Beijing Demands That US Stop Provoking China (TASS)

The US Armed Forces must stop provoking China in the South China Sea, otherwise they will bear responsibility for any potential incidents, Chinese Defense Ministry Spokesman Tan Kefei warned on Thursday. The comment was Tan’s response to a US Navy vessel that allegedly sailed near the China-controlled Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. “We sternly demand that the United States immediately stop such provocations, otherwise it will bear full responsibility for all the serious consequences of their causing a potential incident,” the Chinese Defense Ministry quoted him as saying on WeChat. “The Chinese People’s Liberation Army will take all necessary measures to protect national sovereignty and security and will resolutely defend peace and stability in the South China Sea,” Tan assured.


The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius passed near the Paracel Islands last Friday. China’s top brass claimed that the US warship did this without the Chinese government’s permission and had violated China’s sovereignty. The US 7th Fleet replied by saying in a news release that the US destroyer had acted in line with international law, while conducting a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP). Beijing has disputed the territorial jurisdiction of some islands in the South China Sea where large hydrocarbon reserves were found with Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia. The most disputed territories are the Xisha Islands, also known as the Paracel Islands, the Nansha or Spratly Islands and Huangyan Island (Scarborough Reef).

Read more …

“You’ll disappear like dew in the sun, because all who take up the sword will perish by the sword..”

Senior Orthodox Bishop Invokes Woe On Zelensky (RT)

A senior bishop in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) has issued a strongly-worded rebuke to President Vladimir Zelensky over his role in a crackdown that the country’s largest religious denomination is currently facing. “I am telling you, Mr President, and your entire pack, that our tears will not fall to the ground, but on your head,” Metropolitan Pavel said in a video address on Wednesday. “You think today that after taking power on our backs, [based] on our wishes, you can treat us like that. Our Lord will not forgive this action, neither to you nor to your family,” the bishop warned. Pavel heads the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the largest Orthodox monastery in the country. The Ukrainian ministry of culture denied the UOC a renewal of tenancy in the property, which means that some 220 monks living there would be “kicked out to the streets,” as Pavel described it.

The deadline for the expulsion comes this week. The bishop blasted the president for refusing to meet senior UOC clerics to discuss the situation. This was particularly hypocritical, he remarked, considering that, as a presidential candidate, Zelensky had sought and received the blessing to run for office from Metropolitan Onufry, the Church leader. “You have failed to stop the culture minister, who is possessed by hateful malice and devilish fury. This means he is acting with your permission; Woe to you, have fear,”the bishop said. The minister, Aleksandr Tkachenko, has said that UOC monks could stay at Lavra if they agreed to defect to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), a rival schismatic organization backed by Kiev.

The OCU received recognition as a legitimate church in 2019 from the Constantinople Patriarchate, causing a major schism among the Orthodox faithful of the world. Metropolitan Pavel has also accused Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople of having given impetus to the crackdown with this move. “Woe and shame on you, so-called patriarch [Bartholomew], because everything done today is done with your ill-fated and evil blessing,” he said. The bishop also likened the current detractors of the UOC to the Bolshevik and communist leaders, who’d cracked down on all religions when they were in power. He expressed faith that his church will survive the new period of suppression, just like it had the previous one. “You’ll disappear like dew in the sun, because all who take up the sword will perish by the sword,” he said, quoting in the same sentence from the Ukrainian national anthem and from the Gospels.

Pavel

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“..the record profits had been achieved purely because of the conflict in his country..”

Kiev Demands Cut Of Western ‘War Profits’ – Politico (RT)

Major oil companies have made record profits as a result of the conflict in Ukraine and should pay to rebuild the country’s war-torn infrastructure, Ukrainian Minister of Energy German Galushchenko said on Wednesday in an interview with Politico. According to Galushchenko, oil and gas majors have generated windfall profits of more than $200 billion due to wild swings in global energy prices, and should transfer some of those funds to Ukraine. Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the past year in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine have sent energy prices soaring. In 2022, oil majors Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and TotalEnergies posted a combined profit of $196.3 billion, marking an all-time high for the industry.


“I think it would be fair to share this money with Ukraine. I mean, to help us to restore, to rebuild the energy sector,” Galushchenko said on a visit to Brussels, adding that the record profits had been achieved purely because of the conflict in his country. According to the latest assessment by the Ukrainian government, the World Bank, the European Commission, and the UN, the estimated cost of the country’s reconstruction and recovery will be over $400 billion. The Ukrainian energy minister also called on the West to take further steps to plug sanctions loopholes that allow Russian energy producers to continue exports.

IAEA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641206842415108098

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And the sun will stop shining too. Insert biblical reference.

Kuleba: If US Stops Supporting Ukraine, World Order Will Collapse (Az.)

If support for Ukraine does not continue after the US presidential elections next year, world order and security will collapse, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, Report informs via RBC-Ukraine. He said the matter is not only about the fate of Ukraine: “We must also consider international security. If the support for Ukraine stops, the countries will know that they can invade the neighboring country. If so, world security will collapse.”

Austria

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“It continues replenishing the losses that the Ukrainian army is suffering..”

Ukraine’s Military Losing 500 Troops Daily Near Bakhmut – LPR (TASS)

The Ukrainian military is daily losing 500 fighters in the area of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine), Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) people’s militia retired Lieutenant-Colonel Andrey Marochko said on Thursday. “In my estimates, about 500 personnel daily [as casualties] there [in the Artyomovsk area]. These are both sanitary and irretrievable losses,” the retired officer said in a live broadcast on Komsomolskaya Pravda radio. The Ukrainian military experiences a shortage of fighters due to huge casualties and continues replenishing its troops, Marochko said. “It continues replenishing the losses that the Ukrainian army is suffering,” the retired officer said. Marochko told TASS on March 27 that the Ukrainian military had lost as many as 1,500 soldiers in battles with Russian forces in the Artyomovsk area over the week.


Artyomovsk is located on the Kiev-controlled part of the Donetsk People’s Republic and is a major transportation hub for the Ukrainian army’s supplies in Donbass. Fierce fighting for the city is underway. Yan Gagin, military-political expert and adviser to the acting head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said on March 22 that the city had been practically sealed off by Russian forces and all approaches to Artyomovsk were under Russian artillery control. He earlier said that Russian forces controlled about 70% of the city. Acting DPR Head Denis Pushilin has repeatedly said that there is no evidence of the Ukrainian army’s plans to leave Artyomovsk. Meanwhile, Kiev claims that the city’s defense will be bolstered. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky earlier said that Ukrainian troops would not surrender Artyomovsk and would fight for it as long as they could.

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..”the number of citizens who decided to join the Russian armed forces under the enlistment contract has increased significantly as of lately.”

Russian General Staff Says No Plans To Hold Second Wave Of Mobilization (TASS)

The Russian General Staff is not planning to hold the second wave of mobilization, because the current number of volunteers and servicemen is sufficient for fulfilling the tasks of the special operation, said Rear Adm. Vladimir Tsimlyansky, the head of the Russian General Staff’s main organization and mobilization department. “I would like to assure you that the General Staff’s plans do not include the second wave of mobilization. The current number of conscripts and people who volunteered to participate in the [special] operation is sufficient for fulfilling the objectives,” he said during a briefing devoted to Russia’s spring draft. In his words “the number of citizens who decided to join the Russian armed forces under the enlistment contract has increased significantly as of lately.” This year’s spring draft in Russia will be held during its usual timeframe of April 1 – July 15 for a total of 147,000 Russians aged between 18 and 27.

Polish TV

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The need for dollars is already shrinking.

Russian Central Bank Reveals How It Braced For Western Dollar Grab (RT)

The Bank of Russia had been preparing for an escalation of Western sanctions since 2014 and was beefing up additional funds as a hedge against future restrictions on its foreign exchange reserves, the regulator revealed on Wednesday. Amid “increasing geopolitical risks” the central bank ramped up investments in assets “that cannot be blocked by unfriendly nations”and transferred part of its reserves to gold, Chinese yuan and foreign currency in cash, the regulator announced in its annual report. The central bank managed to stash billions of imported dollars “in volumes limited by logistics capabilities,” the report said without specifying the amount of accumulated funds. Alternative reserves in dollars and gold bars have been stockpiled in the vaults of the Bank of Russia.

“This safety cushion was created in the form of alternative reserves – less liquid and convenient in everyday life, but more reliable in the face of a tough geopolitical scenario,” the regulator explained. It was impossible to abandon reserves in dollars and euros, as these currencies were used for settlements in international trade as well as in the domestic financial sector, the central bank added. “Therefore the structure of foreign exchange reserves needed to take into account the needs of citizens and businesses,” the regulator concluded. The central bank could have “unloaded” part of this money to banks during the first wave of Western sanctions to stabilize Russia’s banking system and offset the withdrawal of dollars and euros by “panicking depositors,”the chief analyst from Ingosstrakh-Investment, Viktor Tunyov, believes.

According to some estimates, last year almost $20 billion was withdrawn by depositors from the country’s second largest bank, VTB, alone. In 2022, Russia was hit by sweeping Western economic sanctions, which included measures to cut the Russian central bank off from the international financial system, while around $300 billion of the bank’s foreign reserves were frozen. Moscow has criticized the seizure of its assets, saying it constitutes theft.

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“Because it leads to wrong decisions, to the wrong decision-making process. They need to hear what we say, our arguments, then they will have a broader perception of the real state of affairs..”

London Totally Ruined Architecture Of Relations With Moscow – Ambassador (TASS)

Russia and the UK have no political dialogue after London completely ruined the architecture of relations between the countries, Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin said in an interview with RTVI television on Thursday. “We now in principle have no political communication, no political dialogue, unlike it was with the UK in the past, about key aspects of international affairs,” he said. The ambassador said “London ruined the entire architecture of bilateral relations.” “It broke it down in the economic area, the humanitarian area, the scientific one, the educational one and the political one first of all. It was purely its initiative – the destruction of that architecture,” Kelin went on to say.


“We are in contact with the Foreign Office. Russian diplomats, including the ambassador of the Russian Federation, are forbidden from going to parliament. This is so by a decision of the parliament’s speaker. This is very bad, because the British people, British officials, British lawmakers, they remain uninformed about the other side, uninformed about the situation as a whole,” the ambassador said. According to Kelin, this is a “categorical mistake.” “Because it leads to wrong decisions, to the wrong decision-making process. They need to hear what we say, our arguments, then they will have a broader perception of the real state of affairs,” Kelin said.

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“..there would be no requirement for an “actual” health emergency [..] it would be sufficient for the DG, acting on his or her discretion, to have identified the mere “potential” for such an event.::

The Most Dangerous International Treaty Ever Proposed (Kingsley)

Human history is a story of forgotten lessons. Despite the catastrophic collapse of European democracy in the 1930s, it appears that the tale of the twentieth century – in which citizens, cowed by existential threats, acquiesced in the rejection of liberty and truth in favour of obedience and propaganda, whilst allowing despotic leaders to seize ever more absolutist powers – is perilously close to being forgotten. Nowhere is this more evident than in relation to the apparent nonchalance which has greeted two international legal agreements currently working their way through the World Health Organisation: a new pandemic treaty, and amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations, both due to be put before the governing body of the WHO, the World Health Assembly, in May next year.

As concerned scholars and jurists have detailed, these agreements threaten to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the WHO, national governments, and individuals. They would hardwire into international law a top-down supranational approach to public health in which the WHO, acting in some cases via the sole discretion of one individual, its Director General (DG), would be empowered to impose sweeping, legally binding directions on member states and their citizens, ranging from mandating financial contributions by individual states; to requiring the manufacture and international sharing of vaccines and other health products; to requiring the surrender of intellectual property rights; overriding national safety approval processes for vaccines, gene-based therapies, medical devices and diagnostics; and imposing national, regional and global quarantines preventing citizens from traveling and mandating medical examinations and treatments.

A global system for digital ‘health certificates’ for verification of vaccine status or test results would be routinised, and a bio-surveillance network whose purpose would be to identify viruses and variants of concern – and to monitor national compliance with WHO policy directives in the event of them – would be embedded and expanded. For any of these sweeping powers to be invoked, there would be no requirement for an “actual” health emergency in which people are suffering measurable harm; instead it would be sufficient for the DG, acting on his or her discretion, to have identified the mere “potential” for such an event.

Read more …

Fighting disinformation with ….disinformation. Long article.

Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century (Siegel)

No one thought Trump was a normal politician. Being an ogre, Trump horrified millions of Americans who felt a personal betrayal in the possibility that he would occupy the same office held by George Washington and Abe Lincoln. Trump also threatened the business interests of the most powerful sectors of society. It was the latter offense, rather than his putative racism or flagrant un-presidentialness, that sent the ruling class into a state of apoplexy. Given his focus in office on lowering the corporate tax rate, it’s easy to forget that Republican officials and the party’s donor class saw Trump as a dangerous radical who threatened their business ties with China, their access to cheap imported labor, and the lucrative business of constant war. But, indeed, that is how they saw him, as reflected in the unprecedented response to Trump’s candidacy recorded by The Wall Street Journal in September 2016:

“No chief executive at the nation’s 100 largest companies had donated to Republican Donald Trump’s presidential campaign through August, a sharp reversal from 2012, when nearly a third of the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies supported GOP nominee Mitt Romney.” The phenomenon was not unique to Trump. Bernie Sanders, the left-wing populist candidate in 2016, was also seen as a dangerous threat by the ruling class. But whereas the Democrats successfully sabotaged Sanders, Trump made it past his party’s gatekeepers, which meant that he had to be dealt with by other means. Two days after Trump took office, a smirking Senator Chuck Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that it was “really dumb” of the new president to get on the bad side of the security agencies that were supposed to work for him: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.”

Trump had used sites like Twitter to bypass his party’s elites and connect directly with his supporters. Therefore, to cripple the new president and ensure that no one like him could ever come to power again, the intel agencies had to break the independence of the social media platforms. Conveniently, it was the same lesson that many intelligence and defense officials had drawn from the ISIS and Russian campaigns of 2014—namely, that social media was too powerful to be left outside of state control—only applied to domestic politics, which meant the agencies would now have help from politicians who stood to benefit from the effort.

Immediately after the election, Hillary Clinton started blaming Facebook for her loss. Until this point, Facebook and Twitter had tried to remain above the political fray, fearful of jeopardizing potential profits by alienating either party. But now a profound change occurred, as the operation behind the Clinton campaign reoriented itself not simply to reform the social media platforms, but to conquer them. The lesson they took from Trump’s victory was that Facebook and Twitter—more than Michigan and Florida—were the critical battlegrounds where political contests were won or lost. “Many of us are beginning to talk about what a big problem this is,” Clinton’s chief digital strategist Teddy Goff told Politico the week after the election, referring to Facebook’s alleged role in boosting Russian disinformation that helped Trump. “Both from the campaign and from the administration, and just sort of broader Obama orbit…this is one of the things we would like to take on post-election,” Goff said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Fact checkers
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641376196758847489

 

 

 

 

Candace

 

 

Fox
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641123059011817472

 

 


China High Speed Trains

 

 

Lions
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641192412356681731

 

 

Chromatophores

 

 

 

 

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Jun 042019
 
 June 4, 2019  Posted by at 7:30 pm Finance, Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Francisco Goya The dog 1820-23

 

What follows are items from sources not everyone may like, such as Fox and The Hill. But please bear with me, because if you want to understand what is about to happen in the US, you’re going to need this kind of info, and you’re not likely to get it from the mainstream media.

The overall term here is questions. There are too many to list. Some will merely be asked, some will be asked and answered, others will not be asked at all. It’s going to be a jousting match between lawyers and prosecutors, investigators and politicians. It’s safe to say it’s going be ugly.

First off, as Zero Hedge reports, Christopher Steele, after long refusing to, has agreed to talk to investigators from the US Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General.

 

Steele Agrees To Discuss Trump Dossier With DOJ Inspector General

Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele has finally agreed to meet with US officials to discuss his relationship with the FBI, and the now-infamous dossier of unfounded claims against Donald Trump which he assembled on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The 54-year-old Steele has agreed to meet with investigators from the US Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), according to The Times of London, after a former US official told Politico that the OIG report would “try to deeply undermine” Steele.

The news marks a 180-shift in Steele’s past refusals to engage with US authorities. In April, Politico reported that Steele would not meet with the OIG to assist them with their investigation, while just last week, Reuters reported that he wouldn’t meet with US attorney John Durham, who was handpicked by AG William Barr to review the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.

Steele, a MI6 Russia specialist for more than two-decades, has worked with the FBI as a confidential source since 2010. According to the report, he will retain the services of a top American attorney if the interview goes ahead, and is only willing to discuss the narrow scope of his dealings with US intelligence. Steele also wanted US officials to seek the approval of the British government.

Steele’s lawyers will try to limit the topics on the table as much as they can. But that may not be enough. There are very serious doubts and allegations surrounding the Steele Dossier, as well as the clients he prepared the report for. There’s Hillary Clinton, there’s the DNC, there’s their law firm Perkins Coie, there’s Fusion GPS, there’s its CEO Glenn Simpson, there’s the FBI, there’s the 2016 DOJ, and then there’s John Brennan and James Clapper. All these parties have played roles in making sure the dossier was ‘prepared’.

That is a lot of parties. How Steele is going to talk under oath without implicating one or more of them in shady dealings if not downright criminal activities is hard to imagine. If only because the dossier leads straight to the Mueller report, which would never have been written if the Steele dossier had not been used to -possibly illegally- get FISA warrants.

Moreover, Robert Mueller is now being accused of tampering with evidence he used in his report. I know I seem to be jumping from Steele to Mueller kind of suddenly, but these things are very closely connected, so I’ll allow myself that freedom.

It appears from files released on the order of judge Sullivan that Mueller has tampered with his own evidence. He omitted part of a phone conversation between lawyers for Trump and those for Michael Flynn, ostensibly to create the impression that the former sought confidential information.

 

Ex-Trump Lawyer John Dowd Slams Mueller Report As A ‘Fraud’

Nunes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, was reacting to the release of a voicemail message that John Dowd, a former lawyer for President Trump, had left for a lawyer representing former national security adviser Michael Flynn, in which Dowd asks for a “heads up” if Flynn planned to say anything damaging about Trump to Mueller’s team. Nunes retweeted a side-by-side comparison of the Dowd transcript text and the Mueller report text, suggesting that the Mueller report did not disclose the full Dowd message.


The Mueller report had redacted the part of the voicemail where Dowd said he wanted the heads up “not only for the president but for the country” and that he wasn’t asking for “any confidential information.” Alan Dershowitz claimed on “Hannity” Monday night that the quotation was “distorted.” “This is a very, very serious issue,” he said. “The distortion of the Dowd quote is very serious. Especially since, remember, that a report by a special counsel is always going to be one-sided. Therefore, you have to trust it.”

 

Totally separate from the above development, Democrat House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wants Mueller to talk to Congress no matter what. The Dems of course want to get dirt on Trump from Mueller, but given that development, added to many other questions GOP Congressmen already wanted to ask him, the Mueller testimony may well backfire in spectacular fashion. Do they realize this?

 

Hoyer: Democrats Should Subpoena Mueller If Necessary

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that Democrats should insist on special counsel Robert Mueller’s appearance before Congress, even if it requires a subpoena. “I think he ought to testify. He may want a subpoena, for all I know,” Hoyer said during his weekly press briefing in his Capitol office. “He indicated that his report speaks for itself. Very frankly, … questioning is an important fact-finding pursuit.”

Mueller said last week during brief remarks at the Justice Department that he hoped those statements — combined with his 488-page report — would be his last word on the topic. It was a clear indication that the former FBI chief — who’s built a reputation for nonpartisanship over his long career in Washington — is hoping to avoid the political circus that would surely accompany his return to Capitol Hill.

But Democrats are fighting to secure his testimony, emphasizing the importance of hearing the author of the report elucidate its conclusions. Both Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, are in negotiations with Mueller’s team in an effort to secure the special counsel’s testimony. [..] Another Democratic lawmaker familiar with the talks said a major sticking point remains Mueller’s reluctance to testify publicly, as Democrats are insisting.

“We’re trying to do everything possible to get him out in the open,” said the lawmaker, who spoke anonymously to discuss the sensitive negotiations. Democrats are also wary that Mueller will be unwilling to answer clarifying questions outside the literal text of his report, the lawmaker said. “The concern is that Mueller is just going to sit there like a parrot and parrot the report,” the lawmaker said. “And there’s not going to be anything meaningfully new coming out of the testimony.”

Here are a few questions Mueller may be called upon to answer, courtesy of Sharyl Attkisson at The Hill. Most if not all appear to me to be reasonable, and there seems to be little reason not to demand they are answered. The credibility of the entire American political system, as well as the intelligence community, is at stake.

 

Robert Mueller’s Parting Shot: 10 Questions I’d Like To Ask

The statement Mueller chose to give carries with it an implication that his team looked for evidence of President Trump’s innocence but simply could not find it. With that in mind, I thought of a short list of questions I’d like to ask Mueller, if ever permitted to do so:

1) What witnesses did you interview and what evidence did you collect in an attempt to exonerate Trump or prove him not guilty? (I believe the answer would be, “None. It’s not the job of a special counsel or prosecutor to do so.” Therefore, was Mueller’s comment appropriate?)

2) Does it concern you that the FBI claimed “collection tool failure” in stating that 19,000 text messages between former FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strozk had been deleted and were unavailable for review by the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general? Is it worth investigating how the inspector general was able to recover the messages, when the FBI said it could not? Does the FBI lack the technical expertise, or the will? Isn’t it a serious issue that should be addressed, either way?

3) Along the same lines, do you think it strange or inappropriate that the DOJ wiped text messages between Strzok and Page from their special counsel cell phones? The deletions happened shortly after they were ejected from the team and before the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General could review them — at a time when all had been informed that their actions were under review. Did technicians attempt to recover the messages? Were the circumstances of the deletions thoroughly investigated?

4) When did you first learn that the FBI and DOJ signed off on and presented unverified, anti-Trump political opposition research to a court to get wiretaps on an innocent U.S. citizen? Doesn’t this violate the strict procedures enacted while you were FBI director, intended to ensure that only verified information is seen by the court? Who will be held accountable for any lapses in this arena?

5) Do these issues point to larger problems within our intelligence community, in terms of how officials operate? Does that put you in a position where there’s a conflict of interest since you were in charge of the FBI when prior surveillance abuses were identified by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? Did you consider disclosing this potential conflict and stepping aside, or referring any issues that overlap with your interests?

6) What steps did you take after Strzok and Page were exposed, to try to learn if other investigators on your team likewise were conflicted? Did you take action to segregate the work of these agents and any potential biases they injected into your investigation and team? Wasn’t their behavior a beacon to call you to follow an investigative trail in another direction?

7) Did you become concerned about foreign influence beyond Russia when you learned that a foreign national, Christopher Steele, claimed to have obtained opposition research from Russian officials connected to Putin — and that the FBI and DOJ presented this material to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain wiretap approvals?

8) Were you aware that some Democratic Party officials acknowledged coordinating with Ukraine in 2016 to undermine Trump and his associates and to leak disparaging information to the news media?

9) Is it true that you applied for the job as FBI director but Trump rejected you, the day before then-Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed you as special counsel to investigate Trump? Does that put you in a potentially conflicted position?

10) Do you think Donald Trump is guilty of a crime? If so, then do you believe he is perhaps the most clever criminal of our time since he was able to conceal the evidence despite all the government wiretaps, investigations, informants, surveillance and hundreds of interviews spanning several years?

And then when the DOJ, as well as AG William Barr’s team, are done with Mueller, The Hill’s John Solomon has another set of questions, this time for Hillary Clinton. And again, the credibility of the entire American political system, as well as the intelligence community, is at stake. Is Hillary untouchable?

 

Hillary Clinton’s Russia Collusion IOU: The Answers She Owes America

Here are 10 essential questions:

1) In January 2018, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a formal investigative request for documents and written answers from your campaign. Do you plan to comply?

2) Please identify each person in your campaign who was involved with, or aware of, hiring Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele.

3) Please identify each person in your campaign, including Perkins Coie lawyers, who were aware that Steele provided information to the FBI or State Department, and when they learned it.

4) Describe any information you and your campaign staff received, or were briefed on, before Election Day that was derived from the work of Simpson, Steele, Fusion GPS, Nellie Ohr or Perkins Coie and that tried to connect Trump, his campaign or his business empire with Russia.

5) Please describe all contacts your campaign had before Election Day with or about the following individuals: Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele, former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, former foreign policy scholar Stefan Halper and Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud.

6) Did you or any senior members of your campaign, including lawyers such as Michael Sussmann, have any contact with the CIA, its former Director John Brennan, current Director Gina Haspel, James Baker, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page or former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe?

7) Describe all contacts your campaign had with Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal concerning Trump, Russia and Ukraine.

8) Describe all contacts you and your campaign had with DNC contractor Alexander Chalupa, the Ukraine government, the Ukraine Embassy in the United States or the U.S. Embassy in Kiev concerning Trump, Russia or former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

9) Why did your campaign and the Democratic Party make a concerted effort to portray Trump as a Russian asset?

10) Given that investigations by a House committee, a Senate committee and a special prosecutor all have concluded there isn’t evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, do you regret the actions by your campaign and by Steele, Simpson and Sussmann to inject these unfounded allegations into the FBI, the U.S. intelligence community and the news media?

The Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, had their day in the sun with the 2 years Mueller probe. Now ‘the other side’ has its turn. And it makes no difference what side you are on, or even whether you think that is fair, this is going to happen. How it can go down without people being indicted, I can’t see. Same as with some Trump allies. Paul Manafort was sent to Rikers Island today.

Still, in the same way that it’s impossible to predict which questions will eventually be asked, and which the legal experts on all sides decide should not be asked, it’s not possible at this point to foresee where the hammer will come down hardest. But it’s not going to be pretty.

Then again, we’re looking, down the line, at Brennan and Clapper and the entire intelligence community. Do Barr and IG Horowitz have the clout and the strength and determination to clean up that mess? Here’s hoping that they do. America needs a thorough cleansing, badly.

 

 

 

 

Feb 042019
 


Rembrandt van Rijn Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer 1653

 

That statement is going to make me real popular, right? Any criticism of Robert Mueller for many people equals support for President Trump. But it doesn’t, and Mueller really is a coward and a liar, and it’s not hard to make that case, it’s even easier than how he makes his cases, because we can actually prove ours. We also don’t have to pervert the law, but he does.

Robert Mueller is a coward because he again, in his indictment of Roger Stone last week, makes claims against people who can’t defend themselves, and who moreover have in at least one case, that of Julian Assange, previously and repeatedly denied those claims. And Robert Mueller’s a liar because many of his claims are evidently not true; but though he will never be able to prove them, and he knows it, he still makes his ‘case’ based on them.

It’s also public knowledge that Mueller has lied since at least the WMD facade. On February 11 2003, then FBI director Mueller testified before Congress: “..as Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical, or radiological material.”

We know today he was lying, as was Colin Powell (and the entire Bush administration). Which is also interesting because a number of Mueller’s accusations against various ‘suspects’ are basically just that: someone has lied to Congress and must be punished for it. This is again the case in Roger Stone’s indictment, which would ring awfully hollow without it. And we don’t have to know how true that accusation is to realize that it’s being brought by someone who himself lied to Congress, but was never indicted for it. That is curious no matter how you look at it.

So what would happen if Mueller takes any of his present indictments into a courtroom? Note: as long as he treats those he indicts the same way he treated Paul Manafort and others, he’ll probably never have to present anything in a court; every ‘suspect’ will sign a plea deal because he threatens to destroy them, their freedom, their finances, their families. But what IF he did, purely hypothetically? What proof -not allegations- could he present to a judge about Russians hacking US-based servers or computers?

And what evidence of Julian Assange working with Russians, or with the Trump campaign? He has none. All there is is US intelligence agencies making claims without providing evidence. And they are a party to the whole story, they are not mere observers, so no judge worth his/her salt can accept their word on anything just because it’s them saying it. Even the FBI has to present evidence. In court, that is.

In the meantime, in the absence of a courtroom, Robert Mueller has been free to accuse people for 20 months now, without proof. And what those 20 months have shown us culminates in the Roger Stone indictment, which makes clear -once more- that there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

 

Given his legal status, Mueller should be invested with the power to demand he gets the opportunity to talk to Assange. And in the unlikely event that he’s not provided with that opportunity by his superiors, at the very least he must stop talking about Assange. Can’t talk TO him, then stop talking ABOUT him. Sure, he never mentions his name, but that’s just more cowardice. We all know who Organization 1 is in Mueller’s indictments. And we all know who spoke for Organization 1 before he was muzzled.

Mueller could for instance travel to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, after negotiating, both with the man himself and with ‘authorities’ from Ecuador, UK and US, to have a meeting with Assange. Considering his importance as head of an investigation into collusion that might topple a president and start a new cold war with Russia, that should be easy to do. But Mueller hasn’t talked to Assange. Nor has he indicated that he tried.

Mueller accusing Assange without talking to him should raise suspicions that he is not interested in finding the truth, but has other goals. And that shines a dark light on his entire investigation. Because of the fact itself, but also because Assange is a pivotal person in the entire Russia collusion narrative. Mueller can’t make his case without accusing, defaming Assange.

Assange is crucial in the Mueller indictment of 12 Russians issued conveniently three days before the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, he’s crucial in the case made against Paul Manafort, and he’s again crucial in the indictment of Roger Stone. Without Assange, Mueller’s hands are empty. Julian is presented as the conduit between Trump and Russia. No conduit, no connection. And Assange has always denied the entire thing, all of it.

 

People who have been accused of, let alone indicted in, a crime, must be given their day in court, says American law, to be able to defend themselves against their accusers. But Assange is not, which means Robert Mueller is no less than a grave threat to the entire American justice system. Not Mueller alone, for sure, but he, along with the Attorney General and Deputy AG (and believe it or not, the President), are immediately responsible for the way the justice system is being perverted. That is very serious business.

As I said above, Mueller first, supposedly accidentally, dragged Assange into his investigation three days before the July 16 2018 Trump/Putin meeting in Helsinki, when he indicted 12 Russians and ‘Organization 1’. That indictment is here. It was arguably the first tangible thing that came out of the investigation, and while it was heralded as gospel by everyone who wants Trump to hang, it was shot so full of holes by others in no time that the term ‘tangible’ perhaps needs to be replaced.

That first indictment was not based on facts, it was based on faith (in US intelligence). 12 Russians who can’t defend themselves were grouped together as Guccifer 2, whose Russian lineage was also shot to smithereens within hours, and then there was Assange. Last week’s indictment, that of Roger Stone, perhaps -we can’t even be sure- alludes to Stone colluding with either Russians or Assange, but it carries no evidence of any collusion.

As WikiLeaks tweeted: “The indictment doesn’t have any reference to Stone talking to Assange, or Assange talking to Stone, or anyone at WikiLeaks telling him anything, whatsoever. It’s literally old men reading the news and wishing for things.

 

The job of a Special Counsel, his/her mandate, is to gather evidence of those crimes (s)he has been tasked with investigating. That mandate can be wide, but certainly not unlimited. The job at hand is not to suggest that things MIGHT have happened. It is not to blindly follow everything US intelligence may or may not claim is true, because all accusations will eventually have to be proven in a courtroom.

And it is not to point fingers at people for things the Special Counsel can’t prove they’ve done, or to accuse people who cannot defend themselves against whatever it is he or she might say (because then (s)he might say anything).

Mueller has never charged Assange with anything, despite the fact that Julian is all over all of his indictments. Mueller also refuses to talk to Assange, ostensibly because that way he can continue to accuse him of all manner of unproven ‘crimes’, and if he doesn’t have to prove what he accuses Assange of, he can accuse anyone of being in touch with Assange and conspiring to enact all sorts of collusion.

 

It’s a pity that America is so divided into a pro-Trump and anti-Trump side, and never the twain shall meet, because the perversion of the justice system exemplified by the Mueller investigation is very real; it’s rotting from the inside. This has not about Trump, if anything it’s about the justice system granting someone the right to defend themselves, which is being violated by Robert Mueller on a daily basis.

In early 2017, the DOJ attempted to set up meetings with Assange, who in the process offered evidence that there was no Russian involvement in the files WikiLeaks published in 2016. Those attempts, when near completion, were halted by Mueller’s very good friend James Comey and Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.).

Warner last week in his capacity as Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman said about the Stone indictment: “It is clear from this indictment that those contacts [between Stone and WikiLeaks] happened at least with the full knowledge of, and appear to have been encouraged by, the highest levels of the Trump campaign..” No, Mr. Warner, that is sort of the exact point here. It is not clear. Nor is it true. And you know that, sir.

A year and a half later, in July 2018, Senator Rand Paul said that if Assange would agree to testify in the US, “I think that he should be given immunity from prosecution in exchange for coming to the United States and testifying” Nothing came from that either. Where was Mueller?

Every single American should be alarmed by this perversion of justice. Nothing to do with what you think of Trump, or of Assange. The very principles of the system are being perverted, including, but certainly not limited to, its deepest core, that of every individual’s right to defend themselves.

Just so Robert Mueller can continue his already failed investigation into collusion that has shown no such thing, and which wouldn’t have been started 20 months ago if we knew then what we know now.

Get off your Trump collusion hobby-horse, that quest has already died regardless, and start defending the legal system and the Constitution. Because if you don’t, what’s to keep the next Robert Mueller from going after you, or someone you like or love? It’s in everyone’s interest to demand that these proceedings – like all legal proceedings- are conducted according to the law, but in Mueller’s hands, they are not.

And that should be a much bigger worry than whether or not you like or dislike a former game-show host.

 

 

Jul 142018
 
 July 14, 2018  Posted by at 12:14 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Weeping woman 1883

 

The indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose task it is to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and ‘Russians’, that was released yesterday by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, raises so many questions one has to be picky.

Many people have already stated that the report contains no proof of anything it claims, and that Mueller doesn’t have to prove a thing, because the 12 Russians he accuses will never show up in a US court. Many of course also have at least questioned the timing of the release, 3 days before the Putin-Trump summit in Helsinki, of information Mueller and Rosenstein have allegedly been sitting on for months.

The idea that the event was not coordinated to inflict maximum damage to the summit seems indeed far-fetched. But something else struck me in the report: the role of WikiLeaks (labeled “Organization 1”). Mueller very much focuses on both Julian Assange -though he doesn’t get named and is not indicted- and his presumed links to the indicted Russians, who -allegedly- posed as Guccifer 2.0:

 

Use of Organization 1

47. In order to expand their interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Conspirators transferred many of the documents they stole from the DNC and the chairman of the Clinton Campaign to Organization 1. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, discussed the release of the stolen documents and the timing of those releases with Organization 1 to heighten their impact on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

a. On or about June 22, 2016, Organization 1 sent a private message to Guccifer 2.0 to “[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing.” On or about July 6, 2016, Organization 1 added, “if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.” The Conspirators responded, “ok . . . i see.” Organization 1 explained, “we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary . . . so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting.”

b. After failed attempts to transfer the stolen documents starting in late June 2016, on or about July 14, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, sent Organization 1 an email with an attachment titled “wk dnc link1.txt.gpg.” The Conspirators explained to Organization 1 that the encrypted file contained instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC documents. On or about July 18, 2016, Organization 1 confirmed it had “the 1Gb or so archive” and would make a release of the stolen documents “this week.”

48. On or about July 22, 2016, Organization 1 released over 20,000 emails and other documents stolen from the DNC network by the Conspirators. This release occurred approximately three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention. Organization 1 did not disclose Guccifer 2.0’s role in providing them. The latest-in-time email released through Organization 1 was dated on or about May 25, 2016, approximately the same day the Conspirators hacked the DNC Microsoft Exchange Server.

49. On or about October 7, 2016, Organization 1 released the first set of emails from the chairman of the Clinton Campaign that had been stolen by LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators. Between on or about October 7, 2016 and November 7, 2016, Organization 1 released approximately thirty-three tranches of documents that had been stolen from the chairman of the Clinton Campaign. In total, over 50,000 stolen documents were released.

 

This means Mueller et al claim that WikiLeaks received the DNC files from Russian parties which had hacked into DNC(-related) servers. Something Julian Assange has always denied. Now, remember that the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former US intelligence professionals, as well as others, have said that the speed with which the files were downloaded from the server(s) indicates that they were not hacked, but put onto a hard drive.

The person who is supposed to have done that is Seth Rich. Who was murdered on July 10 2016. Kim Dotcom has long claimed to have evidence that Seth Rich was indeed the person who provided the files to Assange. Today he said on Twitter that his lawyers warned him about exposing that evidence, citing his safety and that of his family.

Half a year after Rich’s -never solved- murder, in the first months of 2017, the US Department of Defense was involved in negotiations with Assange in which the latter was offered -temporary- ‘safe passage’ from the Ecuador Embassy in London where he is holed up, in exchange for Assange ‘redacting’ a batch of files on the CIA known as Vault 7.

These negotiations were suddenly halted in April 2017 through the interference of James Comey -then FBI chief- and Mark Warner, a US Senator (D-VA). In the talks, Assange had offered to prove that no Russians were involved in the process that led to WikiLeaks receiving the files.

Today, of course, Assange is completely incommunicado in the Ecuador embassy, so he cannot defend himself against the Mueller accusations. Mueller really doesn’t have to prove anything: he can say what he wants. Comey and Warner prevented Assange from providing evidence exonerating ‘the Russians’, and Assange has been shut down.

Let me reapeat once again: Assange is fully aware that the smallest bit of non-truth or half-lie would mean the end of WikiLeaks. It is based on ultimate trust. Nobody would ever offer a single file again if they wouldn’t have full confidence that Wikileaks would treat it -and them- with the utmost respect. So the American approach is to smear Assange in any way possible, rape allegations, collusion with Russian agents, anything goes.

And ‘the Russians’ can be ‘freely’ accused in a 29-page indictment released on the eve of the first summit President Trump is supposed to have with his Russian counterpart a year and a half into his presidency, where his predecessors all had such meetings much earlier into their presidencies. With many lawmakers calling on him to cancel it.

Do we all still remember the true meaning of ‘collusion’?

 

 

Nov 032016
 
 November 3, 2016  Posted by at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Debt Rattle November 3 2016


Lewis Wickes Hine Berrie pickers, Seaford, Delaware. ’17 children and 5 elders live here’ 1910

S&P 500 Logs Longest Losing Streak Since 2011 (CNBC)
EU Plans New Rules To Cap US, UK’s £440bn Per Day Derivatives Business (Ind.)
Vancouver Home Sales Plunge 39% as New Rules Chill Market (BBG)
Clinton Foundation Case Moving Towards “Likely an Indictment” (RCP)
Obama Slams FBI Over New Hillary Clinton Emails (MJ)
Secret Recordings Fueled FBI Feud in Clinton Probe (WSJ)
Senior FBI Officials Were Told Of New Emails In Early October (WaPo)
South Korea’s Out-of-Control Presidential Crisis (CNBC)
UK High Court To Declare If Government Has Right To Trigger Brexit (G.)
Car Makers To Get More In Brexit Subsidies From UK Than They Pay Workers (R.)
Make Finance The Servant, Not The Master (Pettifor)
Western Australia: Masterclass In What Not To Do With A Resources Boom (Con.)

 

 

Long but shallow. There’s another 7 days of suspense. The next bombshell might energize the decline.

S&P 500 Logs Longest Losing Streak Since 2011 (CNBC)

The S&P 500 has fallen in seven straight sessions through Wednesday, the first time the large-cap index has done that since 2011. The last streak also came in a November, culminating with a 0.27% slip on Nov. 25. And while the market’s past can never predict its future, it is notable that the November 2011 seven-session losing streak was immediately followed by a jump of nearly 3%. Yet even amid all of the declines, the S&P has fallen less than 2.5% in the past seven sessions. To put that into context, the market has suffered a greater%age drop on two separate days this year.

And some see a bright side in all the losses. For Frank Cappelleri, a trader and technical analyst at Instinet, the losing streak is a sign that “the [S&P 500] SPX is sequentially oversold and seemingly ready for at least a counter-trend bounce.” However, he added in his Wednesday morning note that since the S&P hasn’t fallen by all that much, “the index doesn’t exactly appear washed out at this stage.” The recent market decline has come as oil has slid, and as Republican Donald Trump’s perceived chances of winning the presidential election have risen. Meanwhile, Wednesday afternoon’s Federal Reserve statement, which could have been the event of the week, delivered little that was unexpected.

Read more …

The insanity of the world of finance. “The loss of euro clearing would cost 100,000 UK jobs..”

EU Plans New Rules To Cap US, UK’s £440bn Per Day Derivatives Business (Ind.)

EU officials have discussed new laws to undermine the UK’s multi-billion pound clearing business after Brexit, London Stock Exchange chief executive, Xavier Rolet told a House of Lords Committee. Financial transactions can currently be cleared anywhere in the world and London has a dominant position in the market, processing £440 billion of trades every day and supporting 100,000 jobs. But the EU is now considering limiting the amount of euro transactions that can be processed outside the EU, so that it can force the industry to move within its borders after Brexit, according to Rolet Millions of euro-denominated transactions are currently cleared in New York, but a cap on US trades is now being considered, so that similar restrictions can be placed on London when it is outside the EU, a move that could fatally undermine the industry.

“I understand that some discussions have already originated in the EU for limiting the ability of US-based clearinghouses to clear euro-denominated securities by capping or somehow restricting their ability to engage meaningfully in their business,“ Rolet said. The loss of euro clearing would cost 100,000 UK jobs, fragment markets and force banks to tie up an extra £70 billion in “margin” or cash to back up trades. That money that could otherwise aid economic growth, Rolet said. If customers decided they cannot wait for the outcome of Britain’s trade negotiations with the EU, then the “whole engine” of clearing across all major currencies in London would be at risk, he added.

Read more …

But prices still rise.

Vancouver Home Sales Plunge 39% as New Rules Chill Market (BBG)

Vancouver home sales plunged 39% in October from a year earlier, the biggest drop since 2010, as new regulations chill Canada’s most expensive property market. Sales in the Pacific coast city fell to 2,233 in the month, from 3,646 a year earlier, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said Wednesday. That was 15% below the 10-year average for October. The slowdown follows a series of measures aimed at curbing price gains in Vancouver, which topped a list of global cities identified by UBS as most at risk of a housing bubble. The British Columbia government imposed a 15% tax on foreign buyers in August, the city plans to start taxing vacant homes next year and the federal government tightened mortgage insurance eligibility requirements on Oct. 3.

Read more …

If elected, Hillary will have two separate major investigations running against her.

Clinton Foundation Case Moving Towards “Likely an Indictment” (RCP)

BRET BAIER: Here’s the deal: We talked to two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations. One: The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far… Several offices separately have been doing their own investigations. Two: The immunity deal that Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, two top aides to Hillary Clinton, got from the Justice Department in which it was beleived that the laptops they had, after a narrow review for classified materials, were going to be destroyed. We have been told that those have not been destroyed – they are at the FBI field office here on Washington and are being exploited. .

Three: The Clinton Foundation investigation is so expansive, they have interviewed and re-interviewed many people. They described the evidence they have as ‘a lot of it’ and said there is an ‘avalanche coming in every day.’ WikiLeaks and the new emails. They are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case.” Remember the Foundation case is about accusations of pay-for-play… They are taking the new information and some of them are going back to interview people for the third time. As opposed to what has been written about the Clinton Foundation investigation, it is expansive. The classified e-mail investigation is being run by the National Security division of the FBI. They are currently combing through Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

They are having some success – finding what they believe to be new emails, not duplicates, that have been transported through Hillary Clinton’s server. Finally, we learned there is a confidence from these sources that her server had been hacked. And that it was a 99% accuracy that it had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that things had been taken from that… There has been some angst about Attorney General Loretta Lynch — what she has done or not done. She obviously did not impanel, or go to a grand jury at the beginning. They also have a problem, these sources do, with what President Obama said today and back in October of 2015… I pressed again and again on this very issue… The investigations will continue, there is a lot of evidence. And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment.

Read more …

Not particularly presidential.

Obama Slams FBI Over New Hillary Clinton Emails (MJ)

President Barack Obama harshly criticized the FBI’s actions informing Congress about the discovery of new Hillary Clinton emails, suggesting to NowThisNews on Wednesday that the much-criticized letter was outside of law enforcement protocol. “We don’t operate on innuendo,” Obama said in his first remarks since the FBI’s announcement last Friday. “We don’t operate on incomplete information and we don’t operate on leaks. We operate based on concrete decisions that are made. “When this was investigated thoroughly, the last time, the conclusion of the FBI, the conclusion of the Justice Department, the conclusion of repeated congressional investigations was that she had made some mistakes but that there wasn’t anything there that was prosecutable.”

The president also reiterated his support for Clinton and urged young people not to allow the ongoing email investigation affect their votes. “I trust her, I know her,” he said. “I wouldn’t be supporting her if I didn’t have absolute confidence in her integrity and her interest in making sure that young people have a better future.” The interview comes just one day after White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to defend or criticize FBI Director James Comey over the decision. Since the ambiguous letter was released on Friday, the Clinton campaign has accused Comey of improperly interfering with the election, thus benefiting her opponent. “That announcement has allowed for Donald Trump to take advantage of the absence of facts to wildly speculate and lie about Hillary Clinton,” campaign manager Robby Mook said on Monday.

Read more …

Is obstruction of FBI agents equal to obstruction of justice?

Secret Recordings Fueled FBI Feud in Clinton Probe (WSJ)

Secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation fueled an internal battle between FBI agents who wanted to pursue the case and corruption prosecutors who viewed the statements as worthless hearsay, people familiar with the matter said. Agents, using informants and recordings from unrelated corruption investigations, thought they had found enough material to merit aggressively pursuing the investigation into the foundation that started in summer 2015 based on claims made in a book by a conservative author called “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” these people said. The account of the case and resulting dispute comes from interviews with officials at multiple agencies.

Starting in February and continuing today, investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and public-corruption prosecutors became increasingly frustrated with each other, as often happens within and between departments. At the center of the tension stood the U.S. attorney for Brooklyn, Robert Capers, who some at the FBI came to view as exacerbating the problems by telling each side what it wanted to hear, these people said. The roots of the dispute lie in a disagreement over the strength of the case, these people said, which broadly centered on whether Clinton Foundation contributors received favorable treatment from the State Department under Hillary Clinton. Senior officials in the Justice Department and the FBI didn’t think much of the evidence, while investigators believed they had promising leads their bosses wouldn’t let them pursue, they said.

These details on the probe are emerging amid the continuing furor surrounding FBI Director James Comey’s disclosure to Congress that new emails had emerged that could be relevant to a separate, previously closed FBI investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement while she was secretary of state. [..] Amid the internal finger-pointing on the Clinton Foundation matter, some have blamed the FBI’s No. 2 official, deputy director Andrew McCabe, claiming he sought to stop agents from pursuing the case this summer. His defenders deny that, and say it was the Justice Department that kept pushing back on the investigation.

Read more …

Comey seems to have been prudent.

Senior FBI Officials Were Told Of New Emails In Early October (WaPo)

Senior FBI officials were informed about the discovery of new emails potentially relevant to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server at least two weeks before Director James B. Comey notified Congress, according to federal officials familiar with the investigation. The officials said that Comey was told that there were new emails before he received a formal briefing last Thursday, although the precise timing is unclear. The information goes beyond the details provided in the letter that Comey sent to lawmakers last week declaring that he was restarting the inquiry into whether Clinton mishandled classified material during her tenure as secretary of state. He wrote in the Friday letter that “the investigative team briefed me yesterday” about the additional emails.

[..] senior officials had been informed weeks earlier that a computer belonging to former congressman Anthony Weiner contained emails potentially pertinent to the Clinton investigation. [..] Comey did not notify Congress as soon as he learned about the emails because officials wanted additional information before proceeding, the officials said. [..] It is unclear what FBI agents have learned since discovering the emails in early October. But officials say they gained enough information from the email metadata to take the next step, seeking a warrant to review the actual emails. That legal step prompted Comey’s letter to Congress, which has made him a central figure during the stretch run of the presidential campaign. “He needed to make an informed decision, knowing that once he made that decision, he was taking it to another level,” an official said.

Soon after the investigators found the new trove of thousands of emails, they notified the separate team of FBI agents in Washington that worked on the probe into Clinton’s private email server, officials said. Comey said in July that the investigation was complete and that he would recommend to prosecutors that no charges be brought. After the agents on the Clinton case were notified in early October about the newly discovered emails, they in turn told FBI leaders about them. At that point, the leaders did not believe they had enough information to make a decision about what to do next, officials said.

Read more …

There was a time when this would have been crazier than what happens stateside.

South Korea’s Out-of-Control Presidential Crisis (CNBC)

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, under fire in what critics are calling the nation’s biggest-ever political scandal, seems to be digging herself into a deeper hole. The President replaced her prime minister, finance minister and public safety minister on Wednesday in an attempt to contain public anger over a spiraling corruption scandal that has hit the ruling Saenuri party. But the surprise cabinet reshuffle may do more harm than good. “Despite her expectations, these snap nominations backfired. Critics angrily charged that the move is part of a strategy to maintain control and does not jive with plans being discussed to form a neutral cabinet with a prime minister empowered to dominant policymaking, with Park taking a back seat,” Scott Seaman, senior Asia analyst at Eurasia, explained in a note.

Opposition parties will now likely use their combined majority in the National Assembly to hinder Park’s attempts to install her candidates, he continued. Furthermore, Park is essentially powerless to ignore their objections given her current fragile standing, he added. Park, 64, faces calls to resign or face impeachment for allowing a close friend, Choi Soon-Sil, to interfere in state affairs. Choi reportedly had access to classified documents without security clearance and was involved in presidential decision making, local media said. Choi, 60, is also accused of embezzlement, forcing conglomerates to make massive donations to nonprofit foundations, and getting preferential treatment from banks for loans.

Read more …

Super Thursday today in Britain.

UK High Court To Declare If Government Has Right To Trigger Brexit (G.)

The lord chief justice is to deliver the high court’s momentous decision on whether parliament or the government has the constitutional power to trigger Brexit. After less than three weeks considering the politically charged case with two other senior judges, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd will read out a summary of their decision at 10am on Thursday to a packed courtroom in London’s Royal Courts of Justice. In order to prevent leaks of the market-sensitive ruling, which involves a large number of parties, preliminary drafts of the judgment have unusually not been sent out in advance to the lawyers. The outcome of the case, which ventures into constitutionally untested ground, will resolve whether MPs or ministers have the authority to formally inform Brussels about whether the UK intends to leave the EU.

The legal dispute focuses on article 50 of the treaty on EU, which states that any member state may leave “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements” – an undefined term that has allowed both sides to pursue rival interpretations. The arguments deployed during the three-day hearing last month appear, at the very least, to have reinforced political pressure for parliament to be given a greater role in negotiating Brexit. Whether the high court finds in favour of the claimants or Theresa May’s assertion that the prime minister has power under the royal prerogative to inform Brussels of the UK’s intention to leave, one side or the other is likely to appeal to the supreme court. However, there has been speculation that the government could decide not to appeal if it loses, calculating that enough MPs will feel bound by the result of the referendum to vote to leave the EU. There may be stiffer opposition in the House of Lords.

Read more …

What’s this other than a major step towards universal income?

Car Makers To Get More In Brexit Subsidies From UK Than They Pay Workers (R.)

Compensating carmakers in Britain for any post-Brexit tariffs on exports to Europe could see the government hand the companies more money than they need to pay the salaries of all their British workers, a Reuters analysis of corporate filings shows. Japan’s Nissan said in September it would only commit to new UK investment if it received a guarantee of compensation to offset any such tariffs. Last week, it agreed to build new models in the country after Prime Minister Theresa May assured it the government would provide support to preserve its competitiveness in the EU market after Brexit. The nature of the Nissan deal – which gave Britain a crucial corporate endorsement as it prepares for life outside the European Union – is unknown. The government said there hadn’t been a “detailed and specific” agreement on tariffs.

If Britain does not secure a free-trade deal with the EU, car makers in the country could face export tariffs of 10% – the level the EU imposes on cars imported from outside the bloc. The cost of compensating Nissan, which has £2.9 billion ($3.5 billion) of annual EU exports, would be £290 million a year. That would exceed the company’s British wage bill, which was £288 million in 2015, accounts for Nissan’s main UK operating unit show. The pattern is followed across Britain’s car-making industry. Reuters examined the accounts of eight of the biggest car exporters, including Jaguar Land Rover, Toyota, Bentley, Mini, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin and Honda, which are all foreign-owned. Their wage bills averaged 7.5% of total operating costs and 7.7% of turnover. This suggests the cost of tariffs on vehicles exported from Britain to the continent – levied at 10% of turnover – would exceed the wages paid to British workers to build those vehicles.

Read more …

Long read by Ann Pettifor on the history of the growth paradigm, and what needs to be done now it’s dead.

Make Finance The Servant, Not The Master (Pettifor)

Before the Second World War the concept of ‘growth’ scarcely existed, as Geoff Tily explains in his PRIME essay On Prosperity, Growth and Finance. “National accounts and measures of national income (the forerunners of GDP) were devised in the 1930s, in the wake of the great depression. Policymakers and economists were preoccupied by getting the economy and financial system to function and addressing a crisis in unemployment. Later in the Second World War economic statistics were needed to try and prevent inflation, given that all resources – especially labour – were fully utilized. Then, later in the Bretton Woods era, full employment was regarded as the proper goal of economic policy-making.” With financial liberalization all this was to change.

Financiers could make extraordinary capital gains from financial speculation – far more than the average industrial capitalist could make in profits. This was largely because financiers can gamble and make gains in money markets without engaging with either the land – in the broadest sense of the word – or labour. Industrial capitalists by contrast have to engage with both land and labour. The substantial capital gains made from speculation by increasingly deregulated financiers were then pitted against the lower profits made by industrial capitalists from investment, employment and output. As financiers became more dominant, competition with industrial capitalists intensified. It is hard to pinpoint the exact timing for the shift of emphasis, but under the surface changes were underway from at least the 1950s.

The pressure on industrial capital was applied by both the finance sector, but also by friends in the economics profession, and in particular economic commentators. The latter began to reframe the key concept of levels of economic activity, and invented the term growth. Growth follows the trajectory of capital gains more closely than it follows that of more volatile profits. Capital gains – like those made from winning the lottery – can rise exponentially (until they crash). Profits rise and fall as capitalists battle the land and labour. In the UK one of the most prominent campaigners for the concept of ‘growth’ was Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times: he proudly identified himself as a ‘growthman’. At a time of full employment, he and other economists castigated the government (and industry) for what they regarded as an economy less profitable or dynamic than that seen in other countries.

To apply pressure on those active in the real economy, they had to raise the bar of economic expectations. Full employment was not a sufficient goal. It was to be abandoned. The concept of growth was subsequently adopted as the goal of all economy policy by the newly-founded OECD in 1961. In that year the organisation agreed an extraordinary fifty per cent growth target for the whole of the 1960s, as Tily explains: The aim of fixing the level of employment and output to sustainable levels had been abandoned. Instead the world had officially been set a systematic and improbable target: to chase growth. Nobody seems to have paused to consider whether growth derived as the rate of change of a continuous function was a meaningful or valid way to interpret changes in the size of economies over time.”

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Transferring back into a wasteland.

Western Australia: Masterclass In What Not To Do With A Resources Boom (Con.)

Every policymaker in Australia should be made to read Paul Cleary’s excellent analysis of the way Norway handled its boom: Trillion Dollar Baby. The experience could hardly be more different and the comparison would be laughable were it not for the fact that future generations will come to rue the folly and myopia of our current leaders. The key lesson that emerges from Cleary’s analysis is that even small states can have a big say in determining what happens to the windfall revenues booms generate – but only if they understand what is happening at present and have a plan for the long-term future of the country. Norway had both. First, they had a capable government and skilled bureaucrats (yes, they are valuable and important) who quickly realised that Norway’s oil boom had to be managed for the benefit of Norway, not the multinational oil companies.

This meant not being intimidated by powerful multinational corporations and recognising the inherent bargaining strength of national governments. You can only exploit resources where they are. Host governments can – and should – determine how they are developed. In contrast to successive state and federal governments in Australia, this is precisely what the Norwegians did. Firstly, they compelled the oil majors to build their required oil platforms in Norway, developing a world class manufacturing capability in the process. Secondly, and in another unflattering and revealing contrast to Australia, they ensured 90% of the windfall revenues derived from the oil boom in Norway remained there.

Norway’s “problem”, unlike ours, has been what to do with the astounding amounts of wealth generated as a direct consequence of its activist and enlightened policies. A third critical innovation was establishing a sovereign wealth fund. Sovereign wealth funds serve two purposes. First, they put aside the windfall revenues of today for future generations – a possibility our own leaders seem incapable of contemplating given their truncated political horizons. Second, by investing most of the wealth overseas, they put downward pressure on the domestic currency, allowing other domestic industries to survive. At a time when we are collectively waving farewell to much of the manufacturing sector, this is another sobering lesson – especially for the young who will not benefit from all that squandered wealth and may wonder where they will actually work.

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