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Debt Rattle August 3 2025

Aug 032025
 
 August 3, 2025  Posted by at 10:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  40 Responses »


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• John Solomon Says, “We’re Working to Release More Information” (CTH)
• The Russia Hoax Is Simple. Dems Lied, Half The Country Believed Them (Marcus)
• US Congressman Demands Soros Testify Over Russiagate Plot Against Trump (RT)
• Gabbard: ‘This Is Why Trump’s Mandate Is Critical’ (Fleetwood)
• Declassified Docs Prove We All Were Censored to Protect Hillary (Taft)
• Jack Smith May Finally Learn What ‘No One Is Above the Law’ Means (Manney)
• Brennan and Clapper Just Hit the Panic Button (Margolis)
• Experts Were Wrong. The Economy’s Strong—But the Fed Won’t Budge (VDH)
• ‘No Defense Against’ Russia’s Oreshnik Missile – Ex-Pentagon Analyst (RT)
• 10 or 12 Days, Then What? (Larry Johnson)
• Are Senate Democrats Finally Going to Get the Payback They Deserve? (Margolis)
• Cleavage In a Bored Country (Ben Shapiro)
• Building Eurasia’s New Fortress (Ring)
• Everyone Should Leave EU – AfD Head Weidel On “Openly Corrupt” Brussels (RMX)

 

 

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There are quite a few storylines that will have people thinking, for example; Russiagate -or Ukraine-, I’ve been reading about that for ages, boring! But we’re going to have some very long stories, with details slowly seeping through. The resistance, from media and politics, to revealing reality, is enormous. That’s why things leak out bit by bit only, it’s a tooth and nail fight. But it’s as Tulsi says once again that this is the only way, and it’s the only chance we get. Imagine what would be going on right now if Trump had not won, or survived for that matter: we would never know any of it. Better to find out day by day. Politiics. intelligence and media is a very strong force when put together.

 

 

“This is not ‘doomerism’, this is reality when you pull back from the ‘tick-tock’ grifting clickbait.”

• John Solomon Says, “We’re Working to Release More Information” (CTH)

First things first. It might not be the popular thing to accept, but it is increasingly clear there is no way to get to any form of accountability or legal exposure for Russiagate or the manufacturing of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, anywhere near former President Barack Obama. The concentric circles of plausible deniability are just too extensive. Essentially, despite the evidence of the FBI participating in a manufactured investigation predicted on false pretenses, all now supported with hindsight evidence, the fact that key IC officials, namely CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, presented the illusion of credible concern, inoculates President Obama from scrutiny. As the Supreme Court noted, the President is protected from liability for “official acts” of his office.

Yes, we all know these officials knew it was a ruse; however, in 2016 the CIA and FBI were presenting the information to Obama and saying the investigative value was potentially plausible. As such, Obama would have been within his official duty to tell the IC officials to chase down the information (continue investigating it). Then, the January 5th, 2017, meeting documented by the infamous “by the book” Susan Rice memo, further inoculates President Obama for telling the IC officials to follow careful procedures as they continued investigating whether or not the Trump-Russia collusion was a factual concern. All of these elements lead to various tentacles of plausible deniability. No court is going to find criminal action within the decision-making, regardless of how ridiculous it may look in granular hindsight.

Are all the characters guilty of perpetrating a fraud for the expressed intent of a political narrative, yes. Are they criminally liable for it, extremely unlikely. The only criminal liability that appears visible is in the Mueller probe that came along in May 2017 to coverup the prior conduct. The Mueller/Weissmann special counsel perpetrated fraud in legal filings, lied to the FISA court, and manipulated evidence. As a result, we must ask ourselves what is the value in this ongoing reveal of information? Because they were willing participants in the overall operation, the MSM media will never admit their role or culpability in the ruse. That leaves an echo-chamber of alternate media combing through the granular releases and discovering the trail of evidence represented within the declassification.

Put all that alternative media together and you impact 25 to 40% of the public. The rest don’t really care, and/or dislike President Trump too much to really care that he was targeted by the Intelligence Community. This is not ‘doomerism’, this is reality when you pull back from the ‘tick-tock’ grifting clickbait. Worse still, it is clear the ‘tick-tock’ controlled release of information is in full swing again. When you hear John Solomon saying, “we are working to release more information,” it’s worth asking yourself who exactly is this “we” that Solomon is speaking of.


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I’ve come to the conclusion the “we” consists of those within the clickbait industry who seek to make a living from the endless discussion. Solomon is not a reporter, he’s a participant. Here’s another example, courtesy of Sean Hannity and Senator Lindsey Graham.

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“To everyone involved in this hoax, the message must be clear: This is your legacy, your attempt to deceive the American people and destroy the man they elected to lead them. That is who you are..”

• The Russia Hoax Is Simple. Dems Lied, Half The Country Believed Them (Marcus)

The United States of America has now spent almost a decade embroiled in “Russiagate,” and its citizens have been bombarded from both sides with theories, names, and anonymous quotes. But it all really comes down to one thing: Democrats lied, and half the country believed them. In the 24 pages of never-before-seen declassified files released Thursday, we saw in cold, calculated black and white exactly how the Clinton campaign crafted the lie that Donald Trump was colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election. One email allegedly shows Leonard Benardo, vice president of the George Soros backed Open Society Foundation, writing in July 2016 that, “Julie [sic] says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump,” adding “Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”

Julie is Julianne Smith, then a foreign policy adviser to the Hillary Clinton campaign. You know who the FBI is. Just two days later, Bernado would allegedly send another email. “HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections,” it read. “That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level.” Benardo would also allegedly write, and this is key, “The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue,” adding, “In absence of direct evidence, Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect will supply the media…”

This all leads to a gem in the annex to John Durham’s Russia hoax probe, released Thursday, which concluded, “During the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated ‘attic-based’ technical structures that are involved in cybersecurity…from where the information would then be disseminated through leading US publications.” The Clinton campaign knew all too well that their lackeys in the media would eat up this half-baked nonsense with a spoon, and probably win awards for it, which is exactly what happened. What the media wasn’t told at the time was that field officers in the CIA objected to the lies and were run over because, according to their then-Director John Brennan “it rings true.”

This ludicrous legal standard of “rings true,” was used to convince the FISA court to renew warrants on Trump officials, which was not only a free federal law enforcement fishing expedition, but created smoke and the appearance of fire.In December of 2016, in the dying days of the Barack Obama administration, intel reports were massaged to once again create the illusion that Trump was a traitor who became president only through Russian assistance.n Thus was launched Robert Mueller’s investigation, which would last for years at a cost of more than $30 million, but ultimately exonerate Trump. Perhaps worst of all, in the midst of this Kafkaesque trial by media and secret courts, people’s lives were destroyed, crushed by false allegations, legal bills and a process that was the punishment.

One of them is Michael Caputo, a long-time member of Trump’s orbit who I talked to on Friday. “It is precious little comfort knowing we were right, we need accountability, but even accountability doesn’t feed the bulldog,” he told me, which was to say the damage to him and his family cannot be undone. Accountability comes in many forms. Caputo may never get the perp walks by former Democrat officials that he understandably desires, but this dastardly lie concocted by Democrats to smear Trump and maintain power has at least been been exposed. According to a Suffolk poll in December of 2018, “Forty-six percent are convinced that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, while 29 percent said there was no such coordination, and 19 percent weren’t sure.”

Every serious person, whether Democrat or Republican, now admits that this simply was not true. What they must also then admit is that half of Americans believed the lie only because Democrats told it so deceitfully. It was Walter Scott who wrote in his 1808 poem ‘Marmion’, “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” But in this case, Democrats wanted the web, a web so dense with so many loose ends and round corners that the truth would be forever hidden. It was Shakespeare who wrote “the truth will out,” and so it has come out, albeit not before shaking a country to its core and crushing innocent lives.

Whatever else comes from the current investigation of Russiagate, one thing is now clear, ready to be etched in the stone of history: The Democrats invented the Russian collusion lie, they did it intentionally, and they suckered their voters into buying it. To everyone involved in this hoax, the message must be clear: This is your legacy, your attempt to deceive the American people and destroy the man they elected to lead them. That is who you are.

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“Rep. Burchett (R-Tennessee) urged the panel to call Soros and Benardo to a public hearing and to subpoena them if they refuse to appear voluntarily.”

• US Congressman Demands Soros Testify Over Russiagate Plot Against Trump (RT)

US Representative Tim Burchett has formally requested that billionaire financier George Soros and his associate Leonard Benardo, senior vice president at the Open Society Foundations (OSF), testify before Congress regarding their alleged involvement in the 2016 “Russiagate” affair targeting Donald Trump. In a letter sent Friday to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky), Rep. Burchett (R-Tennessee) urged the panel to call Soros and Benardo to a public hearing and to subpoena them if they refuse to appear voluntarily. The request follows the declassification of documents by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which reportedly link Soros’s OSF to a broader effort to discredit Trump’s presidential campaign and derail his first term in office.

“As you know, DNI Tulsi Gabbard recently declassified evidence of a conspiracy by former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the national security apparatus to manufacture and politicize intelligence to subvert President Trump and the will of the American people,” Burchett wrote. “Included in this evidence is a concerning email allegedly from Leonard Benardo… plotting to discredit the incoming Trump Administration.” Burchett emphasized the OSF’s ongoing influence in US elections and said the American public deserves answers. “Should they refuse the invitation, I encourage you to use subpoena powers. Americans deserve answers into the subversion of our institutions by malicious actors,” he added.

The newly declassified 29-page annex to Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report, released this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee, alleges that the Clinton campaign, with help from OSF-linked figures, concocted the narrative of Russian interference to damage Trump politically. Emails attributed to Benardo reportedly detail efforts to disseminate unverified claims through FBI-adjacent tech firms like CrowdStrike and various media outlets. The FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane, its Trump-Russia probe, despite allegedly having obtained credible intelligence about the plot.

Critics argue that the agency’s failure to properly scrutinize intelligence pointing to a politically motivated smear campaign fueled years of disinformation, political polarization, and unjustified sanctions against Moscow. President Trump responded Friday by calling the affair “the biggest scandal in American history,” accusing the Obama administration of treason and vowing accountability. Moscow, for its part, has long denied meddling in the 2016 election and insists the Russiagate narrative was a fabricated pretext for confrontation.

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“Mockingbird Reloaded”

“Government Propaganda Is Now a Domestic Industry”

“The American people are no longer just the audience of government propaganda. They’re the enemy.”

• Gabbard: ‘This Is Why Trump’s Mandate Is Critical’ (Fleetwood)

The CIA’s infamous Cold War propaganda and psychological operation (PSYOP) program never died—it just turned inward. The question isn’t whether the government is manipulating Americans, but how they’re doing it right now—through intelligence leaks, media collusion, psychological tactics, and taxpayer-funded propaganda. That was the warning from U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard during a searing July 31 interview, where she confirmed that intelligence insiders are actively using corporate media to manipulate the American people and sabotage President Donald Trump’s agenda—echoing the tactics of ‘Operation Mockingbird.’ Every major news organization or its parent companies, from FOX News to CNN, are owned by globalist-aligned asset managers like BlackRock, an offical partner of the anti-American-sovereignty World Economic Forum (WEF).

“There are people within the intelligence community who believe that their will is more important than the will of the American people,” Gabbard told conservative host Benny Johnson. “[They] will weaponize intelligence by leaking it to their friends within the mainstream media with the intent of undermining President Trump’s agenda.” Once a covert CIA program used to plant propaganda in foreign and domestic media, Operation Mockingbird infiltrated major U.S. newsrooms throughout the 1950s–1970s. It was exposed during the Church Committee hearings, where Congress revealed that the agency maintained relationships with hundreds of journalists to shape public perception. Today, Gabbard says, that same playbook is being deployed against Americans.

Only now, it’s fully digital, algorithmic, and taxpayer-funded. “They are subverting the will of the people and therefore undermining the Constitution,” Gabbard warned. Gabbard’s warning comes as Congress continues to uncover a parallel propaganda apparatus inside U.S. health agencies. A damning House Energy and Commerce Committee report released in October 2024 found that the Biden Administration spent $900 million in taxpayer funds on a COVID-19 propaganda campaign that intentionally misled the public. “The Biden-Harris administration caused Americans to lose trust in the public health system,” said Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), accusing the CDC and NIH of using ads containing “erroneous or unproven information.”

The report revealed that: • The CDC exaggerated the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines beyond FDA authorization. • Messaging about mask effectiveness and COVID risk to children was “deeply flawed.” • Federal funds went to Big Tech companies to “track and monitor Americans,” prompting calls for stronger data privacy protections. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA) slammed the administration’s “Stop the Spread” campaign as scientifically baseless, saying it “misled the American public” and triggered a broader collapse in trust across all vaccine programs. “American trust in the CDC is at an all-time low,” said Subcommittee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY). Further validating Gabbard’s claims, behavioral scientists who advised governments during the COVID crisis have since admitted to weaponizing fear to coerce compliance—describing their actions as “unethical,” “dystopian,” and “totalitarian.”

Members of the UK’s ‘Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour’ (SPI-B), who advised the government’s COVID response, revealed that officials deliberately ramped up fear to push lockdowns the public might otherwise reject. “Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government,” said SPI-B psychologist Gavin Morgan. “[P]sychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative. They have too much power and it intoxicates them,” another member confessed. One warned that “people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise… We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in.”

Gabbard said her fight is not just about cleaning up rogue intelligence operators—it’s about reversing the normalization of psychological warfare on the American public. “To be able to turn the light on in places that have been dark for far too long, expose the truth, and drive accountability—that’s the only way we can actually shift this,” she said. She affirmed that Trump is fully aware of the deep-state sabotage being conducted through the media. “President Trump is enacting the very thing he promised the American people he would do in this election.”

The Church Committee once warned that Mockingbird undermined the very idea of a free press.The playbook didn’t end, it just upgraded.Today’s propaganda apparatus now includes:
• Leaked narratives from intel to legacy media
• AI-powered censorship tools on social platforms
• CDC-funded influencer campaigns targeting youth
• Federal surveillance partnerships with tech giants
• Coerced public health compliance through fear psychology

The same government that once planted editorials in The Washington Post now quietly curates your news feed, flags dissent as misinformation, and suppresses debate under the guise of “public health.” Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation is historic: the top U.S. intelligence official has publicly stated that agencies under her own leadership are using media to manipulate Americans. Operation Mockingbird didn’t end. It simply changed targets. The American people are no longer just the audience of government propaganda. They’re the enemy.

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“..the intelligence community’s [fake] new report, which ODNI and CIA clearly held back until the very moment Trump was certified President so his very first hours begin with him immediately tarred as illegitimate and possibly criminal.”

• Declassified Docs Prove We All Were Censored to Protect Hillary (Taft)

It’s hard to fathom the evil that led to creating fake intelligence to frame then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as a Russian spy and traitor to his country. We’ve seen in recently declassified documents that Hillary Clinton didn’t do this alone. She commanded dozens, if not hundreds, of willing participants, including the George Soros foundation, President Barack Obama, the FBI, the weaponized intelligence agencies, and others, to bring Donald to his knees. Buried deep in the latest tranche of declassified documents called the Durham annex report, however, a deep state hawk has found something that is equally or more evil than changing intelligence to manipulate one election’s outcome. They created a way to take over elections in perpetuity. Mike Benz, a former State Department official in the Trump 45 administration who now runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, found what is tantamount to the Rosetta stone for the Censorship Industrial Complex.

And it’s right here: “The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue. Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel menace [sic] since both POTUS and VPOTUS have acknowledged the fact [that] IC would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable.” In a series of posts on X, Benz laid out why this sentence from an email from a Soros Open Society Eurasian official told the story of how they planned to get Trump even after they’d lost the election. They magic’d up a system whereby elections would now become “critical infrastructure” run by the feds.

https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1951049741950718158?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1951049741950718158%7Ctwgr%5E5538e44395c7c09bc9d7884adfc02ddedf4f96f8%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fvictoria-taft%2F2025%2F08%2F01%2Fand-there-it-was-one-sentence-in-declassified-docs-proves-we-all-were-censored-to-protect-hillary-n4942320

“It is no coincidence both the cooked crooked intelligence community report launching Russiagate and the DHS federal takeover of elections as “critical infrastructure” (citing the same-day Russiagate intelligence assessment) BOTH happened on January 6, 2017. That was the SAME day Democrats’ hail mary last-ditch plot to stop Trump’s election certification failed, and Trump’s win was certified. With no options left to stop Trump’s presidency, they didn’t even wait a day to launch what appeared to be their Plan B: if Trump can’t be stopped from becoming President, immediately hobble his presidency that same day the presidency was inevitable.”

When their efforts to halt the certification of the election on Jan. 6, 2017, didn’t work, they went to Plan B, “tak[ing] over state-level control of voting systems.” “And in fact,” he wrote, “that is exactly the time sequence of how it played out on January 6, 2017.” First, at 1:41pm, Congress certified Trump’s election win. Then, with Trump’s win now final and no hope left for the intelligence community to obstruct it, [T]hen suddenly, magically, the entire joint US intelligence community assessment drops just 4 hours later, with a report directly insinuating Trump’s win was illegitimate because Russia intervened to help Trump win.

Then, suddenly, magically, DHS just 30 minutes after that swoops in with a permanent unilateral federal designation that it has taken over state-level control of voting systems — which we’d had in this country for 230 years — citing the intelligence community’s [fake] new report, which ODNI and CIA clearly held back until the very moment Trump was certified President so his very first hours begin with him immediately tarred as illegitimate and possibly criminal.

Benz says that the second- and third-order effects of this decision to change the rules and declare elections to be a “critical infrastructure” gave the deep state the predicate to federalize our elections for the first time since 1789. But it also did something else. In the name of keeping this “critical infrastructure” sacrosanct, it gave the ones and zeros embedded in the deep state carte blanche to censor anyone who had an opinion that questioned elections “When DHS created their Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency—we have ‘security’ in our name twice because we care so much about security—OK now we can control elections and ‘cyber’ in their name gave them a predicate to go after tweets and Facebook posts, and YouTube videos and TikTok videos and Reddit posts. It gave them the legal predicate to completely burn the U.S. Constitution.”

We at PJ Media and other conservative outlets felt the effects of this censorship. Suddenly, it was as if Lois Lerner were in charge of speech. People, mostly conservatives, were booted from Twitter 1.0. YouTube became a minefield of speech dragnets and censorship police. One social media company was shut down because posts by users were deemed dangerous. Suddenly, the news was sanitized to avoid getting canceled. The FBI began weekly meetings with Twitter and kept close tabs on other social media such as Facebook. Misinformation and disinformation police, called “fact checkers,” were deployed to censor speech. Entire university programs were set up to offer disinformation degrees. Universities began getting fat grants to come up with ways to creatively censor words, phrases, and stories that the woke mob refused to abide by.

The deep state and intelligence communities used the media to “prebunk” stories they knew would reverberate through political circles before the election, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story. Hillary Clinton can complain all she wants about 2016 being a stolen election, and the next federal election for president occurred in 2020, the one that the new cyber “expert” CISA director claimed was the “safest” one in U.S. history… because the feds were in charge. He wrote that the real January 6 insurrection occurred in 2017 when the deep state rigged the rules to depict Trump, as Hillary called him, an “illegitimate president.” And did it ever. That insurance policy paid dividends. Democrats arranged a special counsel accusing Trump of being a spy, the Ukraine hoax, two impeachments, and a partridge in a pear tree. It’s a miracle Donald Trump got anything done. That was the plan.

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“..if Smith used his badge to tip the scales, it isn’t a partisan scandal, it’s a constitutional one.”

• Jack Smith May Finally Learn What ‘No One Is Above the Law’ Means (Manney)

The left found and crowned their legal avenger: Jack Smith, their remedy in very fine suits to four years of Trump. In secret clubhouse meetings above their parents’ garage, the left whispered reverently about Smith’s independence, hailed his stoicism, and grasped him as a firewall between democracy and destruction. The right, however, looked at things differently. They saw Smith as a dogged, smirking prosecutor with a habit of filing charges just before primaries and playing a game of chicken with due process. Both sides, however, agreed on one thing: he was relentless. Now, that same man finds himself under federal investigation for potentially violating the Hatch Act, a statute meant to prevent law enforcement from becoming political tools.

Sen. Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused Smith of seeking to impact the 2024 election in his capacity as special counsel under the Biden-led Justice Department in a letter to the acting head of the Office of Special Counsel, Jamieson Greer, first obtained by Fox News Digital. “As the Office of the Special Counsel is tasked with ensuring federal employees aren’t conducting partisan political activity under the guise of their federal employment, you’re well situated to determine whether Smith broke the law,” the Arkansas Republican wrote. “Many of Smith’s legal actions seem to have no rationale except for an attempt to affect the 2024 election results – actions that would violate federal law,” he continued. That cringeworthy sound we’re not hearing? It’s the awkward silence of a media class that suddenly found itself unsure how to eulogize its white knight without tarnishing the cause.

If you forgot, here’s a quick review of the Hatch Act. This act was created to prohibit executive branch officials, such as a special counsel, from using their authority to influence elections. In this case, Jack Smith didn’t simply toe the line; he ran past it with banners flying. According to Sen. Tom Cotton, Smith timed court filings, manipulated trial calendars, and played strategic legal chess just as the 2024 campaign heated up. Smith did his bloody best to jam President Trump into a courtroom the day before Super Tuesday. If that’s not election interference, what is? The Office of Special Counsel’s Hatch Act Unit has confirmed they’re investigating Smith! OMG! Let’s examine the sequence. Smith dropped the documents case right after Trump won; he asked for appeals to be paused just as political winds shifted, and his final report was buried like bad leftovers, with Volume Two indefinitely sealed.

People defending Smith are calling this a legal strategy. But to most Americans, it appears to be weaponized prosecution. You don’t have to be a lawyer, or even a devotee of “Law & Order,” to understand when a ref tosses flags only when one team is on offense. We only have to watch long enough to see the pattern. Each time Trump’s team looked into Smith’s motivations, the same robotic chorus emerged, “No one is above the law!” Except now, the left treats that mantra as if it were a rhetorical one-way street. If you want that phrase to mean anything, then apply it when the hammer swings in the other direction. When one of your own wears the badge: Apply it! If Jack Smith was truly one of the neutral professionals they claimed he was, not only should he welcome the investigations, but he should demand them.

I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but Jack Smith wasn’t defending democracy. He was playing defense for a political establishment that couldn’t stomach losing to Trump. Twice. Smith’s job wasn’t about preserving the rule of law; it was about wrapping it in legalese, delivering it on cue, and timing it for maximum political damage, which was the legal equivalent of leaking a scandal the night before the election.Smith helped turn the DOJ into nothing but a smirking caricature, one that flinched when Hillary bleached servers and looked the other way when Hunter forgot about his illegal purchase of a gun, and suddenly found courage when Trump appeared on the docket.And now, shockingly, Smith is the story. Not his targets, but him.

We need to make one thing perfectly clear: Smith and his team were already on life support when their case collapsed in early 2025. Remember what was happening: Trump had just won the presidency, the Department of Justice had forbidden prosecuting a sitting president, and the classified documents case had fallen completely apart. When Smith finally filed his final report, it vanished behind a redacted curtain. Unfortunately for Jack Smith, Senator Tom Cotton had not forgotten. And the OSC, if it had any spine remaining, shouldn’t either. Because, quite simply, if Smith used his badge to tip the scales, it isn’t a partisan scandal, it’s a constitutional one.

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“Americans have seen behind the curtain, and no amount of op-ed space in The New York Times is going to let Brennan and Clapper gaslight the public into believing their actions were anything but politically motivated.”

• Brennan and Clapper Just Hit the Panic Button (Margolis)

With the Deep State’s lies about the Russia collusion hoax finally unraveling, panic is setting in, and some of the highest-ranking figures from the Obama administration, including Barack Obama himself, are now squarely in the Justice Department’s crosshairs. Two of the operation’s chief architects, former CIA Director John Brennan and former DNI James Clapper, just tried a last-ditch reputational rehab via a New York Times op-ed. But instead of saving face, they only reminded Americans why trust in the so-called “intelligence community” has collapsed to historic lows. Incredibly, their main defense against charges of politicizing intelligence was to point to the very thing they politicized: the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment.

They cited it like gospel, as if repeating it enough times would erase the growing mountain of evidence that it was crafted under political pressure, built on cherry-picked intel, and propped up by the now-discredited Steele dossier. It’s the equivalent of using a forged check to prove you’re not guilty of fraud. According to Brennan and Clapper, the ICA was beyond reproach simply because it claimed that Vladimir Putin had a “clear preference” for Donald Trump and ran a multi-pronged operation to help him win via hacked emails, social media posts, and internet trolls. But what they left out, conveniently, is that they helped write the script and bullied analysts into signing off on it.

They also wave around the name of special counsel John Durham like a magic shield, claiming that he “found no evidence of an Obama administration conspiracy.” Translation: nothing to see here, move along; just ignore the political pressure, the manipulated assessments, the hidden sourcing, and the whistleblower now confirming everything conservatives have said for years. The special counsel John Durham, who was appointed during Mr. Trump’s first term to investigate how the Russia probe was conducted, similarly found no evidence of an Obama administration conspiracy against Mr. Trump. But he affirmed the findings of the special counsel Robert Mueller, who conducted a separate investigation into the allegations, which found ample evidence of Russian interference in the election.

More recently, the C.I.A.’s Mr. Ratcliffe ordered yet another review of the 2017 assessment, which determined that its “level of analytic rigor exceeded that of most [intelligence] assessments.” Their attempted defense, however, falls apart upon review of the evidence. The newly declassified Durham annex reveals that the Clinton campaign coordinated with George Soros’s Open Society Foundation to push the Trump-Russia collusion hoax during the 2016 election. Internal emails show Clinton approved a plan to link Trump to Russian hackers to distract from her own scandals, with help from Soros-connected operatives and DNC officials. They used cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike to plant the narrative in the media, hoping the FBI would amplify it. Which, of course, they did.

Americans have seen behind the curtain, and no amount of op-ed space in The New York Times is going to let Brennan and Clapper gaslight the public into believing their actions were anything but politically motivated. The newly released documents confirm what many suspected all along: the Obama administration was unhappy that the original intel downplayed Russia’s impact in 2016, so it ordered up the infamous January 2017 ICA, laced it with Steele dossier garbage, and forced it through the system. Thanks to courageous whistleblowers, we now know that Brennan and his inner circle strong-armed analysts into backing conclusions that they didn’t actually support. There was pushback, and for good reason: Everyone knew the dossier was pure fiction, a political hit job dressed up as intelligence. Brennan and Clapper see what’s coming. With the walls closing in, they’re not offering clarity; they’re trying to cover their backsides.

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Victor Davis Hanson. Jay Powell is choking on his own ‘logic’.

• Experts Were Wrong. The Economy’s Strong—But the Fed Won’t Budge (VDH)

I’d like to talk about the economy here at the beginning of August. We’ve just finished July. We have some of the July reports, but mostly, they’re still from June. If you look at the three or four main categories that adjudicate the health or the malady of an economy, they’re pretty good. GDP came in at 3.0. That was not predicted to be that high. The inflation rate may have just come out for July. There are different reports, but it’s about 2.7%. It was 2.6% in May. January was 3.0%. For the year, it’s about 2.4%. So, inflation is still tolerable. It’s not growing—an annualized rate at 2.4%. So, you have a good GDP, you have a good inflation rate, you have a good jobs report. We’re at about 4.1% unemployment in the month of June. We picked up 150,000 new jobs—that wasn’t predicted.

As far as money coming into the Treasury and going out, we had a historical May. We’ll wait and see what June and July are like, but we actually had more money coming into the Treasury than the government spent. I want to gauge the reaction to this good news. Of course, we expect the Left to discount it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that these figures are all bogus, even though they’re from non-administration sources, government bureaucracies. We also had a member of Congress come on and say that Donald Trump fudged them. On the GDP, we had The Wall Street Journal say, that’s just because GDP is measured also by imports and exports, and we had fewer imports and more exports. But isn’t that good? But they said that was an aberration.

So, we’ve had people attack this. Most of the people said, as far as more money coming in than going out, that’s only because of May, and it will never be true again. Well, we’ve had Mays in 2024 or 2023, all the way back to 2017, the first year of the Trump administration. This was the only one in which we had more money coming in—a surplus. Then we get to the question of Jerome Powell. He’s the head of the Federal Reserve. Usually, the Fed cuts rates when they’re worried about political and economic instability, and that means, basically, a recession. Now, remember that The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and our main media organs all told us in May when Donald Trump was talking about “art of the deal” tariffs, “I’m gonna announce a high tariff, then negotiate down to 10 or 15%,” which is precisely what he did.

But nevertheless, they said at the beginning of August, midsummer, we were going to have high inflation or stagflation, bad job growth, static GDP, and a trade war along with a Wall Street collapse. Basically, a recession. Well, Wall Street stock prices are at historical highs. Every one of those predictions was wrong. So, if they were wrong and the economy is not booming but strong, why would Powell keep interest rates at that 4.5% fed rate that translates into almost over 6% and near 7% 30-year mortgages? After all, the Fed is supposed to lower rates when we have recession. With all this recessionary talk, you thought that he would lower rates. Now, he says he’s looking at the economy and he’s not lowering rates because he doesn’t yet see a recession?

But he’s been told that he was worried about the economy. If he’s worried about a trade war and tariffs and soft job growth—which was predicted but didn’t happen—why doesn’t he lower interest rates? And the fact is, that if you look at the interest rates that he did cut right before the 2024 election and his all-over-the-map attitude toward interest rates today, there is no logic. So, now he’s rejected the earlier prognosis that we were in a recession. It makes no sense. Why is this important? Why is this important when the Washington Post says that the numbers are rigged or we’re really not as strong as we think we are with GDP, or Powell can’t be consistent and adjudicate rates going up or down based on recession or boom?

We’re paying $3 billion a day in interest. A day. Our defense budget costs less—that trillion-dollar defense budget—than the interest payments, per year. Donald Trump is trying to cut taxes and deregulate and grow the economy without increasing the deficit he inherited at about $2 trillion. He thinks that eventually, an expanded economy will bring in new revenue—sort of supply-side economics—but in the short-term, he does not want to grow that deficit by giving tax cuts. So, what is he doing? He thinks the tariffs will bring in—without hurting GDP here or abroad—about a third of a trillion dollars. He thinks if he can decrease the interest rate by a point or a point and a half, he might get another third of a trillion—maybe cut the interest cost by $1 billion a day down to $2 billion from $3 billion. So, you’re about one-third of the way to cut the deficit. That’s pretty good when you had tax cuts.

That won’t happen if the interest rates stay high and the economy stays solid and doesn’t give you any reason or worry over an inflationary spiral, which it hasn’t so far. Bottom line, things are going very well. All of the experts were wrong, and yet the experts do not admit they were wrong. They say, “We were wrong,” privately, “but we’re going to be proved right because either we hope or we expect the economy to do poorly.” My guess is, even if the economy cools down and does poorly, Powell will not cut interest rates. He has a personal stake in this. He feels aggrieved. He feels he has to be vindicated and he’s stubborn and he will not show the same flexibility he did during the campaign year 2024.

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US has no hypersonics, and no defense against the ones Russia has. Where they just started mass producing Oreshniks.

• ‘No Defense Against’ Russia’s Oreshnik Missile – Ex-Pentagon Analyst (RT)

Neither Ukraine nor its Western backers have any means to counter Russia’s newly deployed intermediate-range Oreshnik missile, Michael Maloof, a former senior Pentagon security analyst, told RT in an interview on Friday. Maloof noted that the Oreshnik could “easily shift the balance of power overwhelmingly in favor” of Russia in any conflict, including the ongoing hostilities with Ukraine. “Having a hypersonic [missile] for which there’s no defense currently… is astonishing. It absolutely alters that balance of power dramatically, for which the Ukrainians have no defense,” he said. He noted that while the US is working to adapt missile defense systems such as THAAD to counter hypersonic threats, these programs remain under development.

“There’s no operational ability at this point to deal with a hypersonic missile,” Maloof said, adding that the Oreshnik could reach its targets within mere minutes. The former analyst added that the missile also travels at a speed of over 7,000 miles (11,000km) an hour. “There’s no defense against that,” he said. The missile system, Maloof stated, has already been tested successfully in Ukraine in battlefield conditions. He was referring to a strike on Ukraine’s Yuzhmash military industrial facility in the city of Dnepr in November 2024. Russian President Vladimir Putin said afterward that the missile’s warheads flew at speeds exceeding Mach 10 and could not be intercepted by existing air defenses.

The missile could also carry conventional and nuclear payloads and travel up to several thousand kilometers. According to Putin, the Oreshnik strike on Ukraine was a response to the country’s decision to use Western-supplied long-range missiles for attacks deep into Russia. On Friday, the Russian president said that the first serially produced Oreshnik missile system had entered service with the armed forces. He also noted that the question of supplying the weapons to Belarus, Russia’s key ally, will likely be resolved by the end of the year.

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“Russian troops are pushing north in Zaporhyzhia, moving south through Sumy and Kharkiv, and advancing to the west, having already taken territory in Dniepropetrovsk. No pressure from Washington or Europe will alter this reality.”

• 10 or 12 Days, Then What? (Larry Johnson)

Donald Trump made another move in his feckless game of global checkers today in Scotland, with the announcement that he is giving Russia a new, much shorter deadline of ten days to end the war in Ukraine. Trump warned that if President Vladimir Putin does not reach a deal by around August 7–9, the US will impose new sanctions and “severe tariffs” on Russia and countries supporting its war effort. Trump’s new deadline elicited a collective yawn in Moscow. Since the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO), trade between the US and Russia has shrunk dramatically. In 2021, US exports to Russia totaled approximately $6.4 billion and US imports from Russia totaled about $29.7 billion. This resulted in a US trade deficit with Russia of about $23.3 billion for that year. In 2024, total trade in goods between the United States and Russia declined sharply due to ongoing sanctions, war-related restrictions, and other political measures.

US exports to Russia in 2024: bApproximately $526 million, marking a decrease of over 12% compared to 2023. Major U.S. exports included medical/technical equipment, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and some food and chemical products. U.S. imports from Russia in 2024: About $3.0–$3.27 billion, down more than 34% compared to 2023 and down over 75% from pre-war levels in 2021–2022. Key Russian exports to the U.S. were fertilizers (about $1.3 billion), precious metals (about $878 million), and inorganic chemicals (about $683 million). Energy imports have almost entirely ceased. Trump’s threat of new sanctions is just a blowhard bloviating… Ending shipments of fertilizers and precious metals is not going to hurt the Russian economy one bit. Thanks to the sanctions Biden levied in 2022, Russia’s economy grew to be the fourth largest in the world as measured by purchasing power parity.

Western propaganda that the Russian economy is failing–citing current growth of 1.4%–ignores the fiscal policies that the Russian central bank put in place in 2024 to cool inflation. But those measures were only temporary, with the central bank announcing a two percent cut in interest rates late last week. That means that Trump, if he is serious, will impose bone-crunching tariffs on China and India. Both countries appear unfazed by Trump’s bullying bluster. China in particular holds some very strong cards… Rare-earth minerals desperately needed by the US military industrial complex. I think this will be another Trump nothing-burger.

So why did Trump whittle down the deadline? One possible explanation concerns the rapid deterioration of the military situation for Ukraine. Russia is making rapid advances all along the line of contact and even Ukrainian media and social media outlets are expressing alarm. Is that what sparked Trump’s decision to shorten the time for Russia to agree to a ceasefire? Fifty day or 12 days, it does not matter. Trump has no leverage to compel Russia to agree to the ceasefire that the US and Europe want to be imposed. Russia is going to continue with its offensive and will take more territory in the coming weeks. Russian troops are pushing north in Zaporhyzhia, moving south through Sumy and Kharkiv, and advancing to the west, having already taken territory in Dniepropetrovsk. No pressure from Washington or Europe will alter this reality.

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“Democrats aren’t just dragging their feet—they’re torching decades of Senate norms in a blatant attempt to kneecap Trump’s presidency. They don’t care about tradition. They care about power.”

• Are Senate Democrats Finally Going to Get the Payback They Deserve? (Margolis)

After weeks of stonewalling from Democrats, the GOP is demanding action on dozens of President Trump’s pending nominees—and they’re signaling they’re ready to play hardball if they don’t get it. With the Senate set to leave town for a long recess, Republicans say enough is enough. Emerging from a closed-door lunch on Saturday, Republican senators made it clear they want the nomination backlog resolved by the end of the day. If Democrats won’t cooperate, they’re prepared to force the issue. “The immediate concern right now is can we figure something out,” Majority Leader John Thune told reporters. “If we can’t, then we will have to resort to other options, and we’ve got a lot of support for doing that.”

Translation? Republicans are done playing games. They’re ready to blow up Senate procedure if that’s what it takes to break the Democrat blockade on Trump’s nominees. Since January, not a single nominee has been confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent—a complete break from tradition. As Sen. Tom Cotton highlighted, 57% of Biden’s nominees got in without opposition. Even Trump’s first term saw 65% sail through. This time? Zero. Democrats are obstructing for the sake of “resisting” Trump—and the GOP’s finally had enough. This isn’t just gridlock—it’s deliberate sabotage. What we’re witnessing now is an unprecedented campaign of partisan obstruction. Democrats aren’t just dragging their feet—they’re torching decades of Senate norms in a blatant attempt to kneecap Trump’s presidency. They don’t care about tradition. They care about power.

Republicans are running out of patience—and fast. According to Politico, GOP senators are once again eyeing the so-called “nuclear option,” as Democrats continue to grind Trump’s nominees to a halt. While leadership originally expected any rules fight to come later in the fall, frustrations have boiled over as Republicans remain stuck in Washington with no resolution in sight. “We prefer to strike a deal,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin said, but he added that if Democrats won’t budge, Republicans are prepared to change the rules. Naturally, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended the Democrats’ obstruction, accusing Trump’s nominees of being uniquely “flawed” and “unqualified”—a laughable claim from the same party that gave us people such as Xavier Becerra, Pete Buttigieg, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and a bunch of judicial nominees who didn’t seem to know anything about the law.

But at this point, Republicans know the game, and they may finally be ready to stop playing by the Democrats’ rules. As much as I believe in the idea of preserving tradition, Democrats have shown a willingness to rewrite the rules to suit their needs, and Republicans need to show they’re willing to fight fire with fire. Staff for Thune and Schumer are now quietly negotiating. Schumer made a counteroffer Friday night. But if you think that’s a sign Democrats are taking the threat seriously, think again. The deal they offered was a joke.

They offered to confirm a small batch of nominees now in exchange for unfreezing some funding, with another batch later—unless the administration submits another spending clawback. The whole thing would require unanimous consent on the Senate floor. Republicans shouldn’t bite. Democrats are offering crumbs while demanding the GOP surrender leverage on spending. It’s absurd. Republicans already have the power to jam these nominees through—no need to trade it away. Yes, preserving Senate norms is ideal. But Democrats burned that bridge long ago—nuking filibusters, gutting procedures, and tossing precedent out the window. They won’t honor any deal once they’re back in power.

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“..praising the genes of a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman with an hourglass figure is somehow an ode to the Third Reich.”

• Cleavage In a Bored Country (Ben Shapiro)

Some countries have true, serious problems. Then there are countries that have national discussions over a buxom young white woman in a jeans commercial. This week, the internet—and the media more generally—exploded over a commercial starring actress Sydney Sweeney for American Eagle. The spot features Sweeney, lying seductively on the ground as she buttons her jeans, stating, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.” The ad concludes with the tagline: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” According to those who apparently have far too much time on their hands, this ad is reminiscent of Nazism. Washington Post fashion critic Rachel Tashjian lamented that the ad felt “regressive.”

A wide variety of colorfully haired and bewilderingly pierced TikTok users labeled the ad a “Nazi dog whistle,” presumably based on the idea that praising the genes of a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman with an hourglass figure is somehow an ode to the Third Reich. Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic wrote, “(Sweeney’s) image has been co-opted by the Right, accurately or not, in part because of where she’s from (the Mountain West) and some of her hobbies (fixing cars). Even her figure has become a cultural stand-in for the idea, pushed by conservative commentators, that Americans should be free to love boobs.” Yes, we have now reached the point in American life that it is controversial to suggest that men like breasts; it is now apparently “right-coded.” This is patently insane.

But perhaps the insanity isn’t just a sign of a culture infected with terrible ideas, ranging from the mutability of gender to the evisceration of beauty standards to the willfully ridiculous attempt to treat the male sex drive as uniquely evil. Perhaps it’s a sign of a culture that has lost touch with actual, real problems in the world. A culture that is out of touch not just with reality, but with threat. For a while, such cultures can survive. After all, America is uniquely placed in the world: thousands of miles from any direct foreign policy threat, blessed by natural resources beyond those of any other country, heir to a robust tradition of Anglo-American law and custom that have generated an unprecedented level of economic prosperity.

But reality has a funny way of clocking such cultures back into reality. It turns out that history never stops moving, that threats never stop militating. And what’s more, a self-obsessed and shallow culture that worries about whether boobs in jeans ads are a return to Hitler makes itself uniquely vulnerable to such threats. A people who imbibe the stupidity that trauma amounts to taking mild offense at a dumb pun in an advertisement is a people utterly unprepared for the return of reality. The great German leader Otto von Bismarck once remarked, “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.” We can only pray that Providence continues to protect us from our own idiocy as we sink ever deeper into social media reveries of borderline psychopathy.

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Water or land? I think you’ll need both in today’s world. Hoe about skies?

• Building Eurasia’s New Fortress (Ring)

For over a century, two dead advisors have shaped the way great powers view the world. On one side, we have Alfred Thayer Mahan—the American naval officer who believed sea power determined global supremacy. According to Mahan, controlling the oceans means controlling trade. If you control trade, you control wealth. If you control wealth… well, you get the picture. On the other side is Halford Mackinder, the British geographer who argued the exact opposite. Forget the seas, he said. Whoever controls the “World Island”—Eurasia—controls the world. Railways, rivers, pipelines, and land empires are what count. Not frigates and aircraft carriers. Mahan and Mackinder are no longer with us, but their ideas continue to influence the world today. And we’re watching it unfold.

It’s Mahan’s World… For Now. The United States and the United Kingdom—Mahan’s spiritual children—have long benefited from an ocean-based order. Ruling the waves built their prosperity and power. The British Empire’s reach was maritime. The U.S. Navy now patrols every major sea lane. The dollar reigns supreme because oil, commodities, and trade settle in greenbacks. That world—the Mahan world—is why Americans live like kings while land powers like Russia and China have spent decades playing catch-up. But Mahan’s world has limits. Especially when you try to keep your rivals bottled up in theirs. That’s precisely what the U.S. has tried to do with China. The First and Second Island Chains—stretching from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines to Guam and Indonesia—are like maritime prison bars hemming China in.

They prevent Beijing from turning its navy into a global force and restrict its access to the open Pacific. And that’s no accident. It’s U.S. policy. So what did China do? Simple: they pivoted landward. Hence, the Belt and Road Initiative. If the Americans and their allies can dominate the seas, the Chinese reasoned, then the answer lies in dominating the land. Ports, railways, roads, pipelines, dry docks, fiber optic cables, and power grids. Not just in Asia, but across Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa, and even into Europe. What Mackinder once called the “Heartland” is now becoming a Chinese-funded construction site. And then there’s Russia. After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the West slapped Moscow with every sanction it could think of. No dollars. No euros. No Swift. No tank parts. No semiconductor chips. No comfy Davos forums.

In effect, the West attempted to sever Russia’s ties to the global economy. Cut it off from the ocean-based system. And how did Russia respond? They doubled down on Mackinder. On land power. On rivers, specifically. If you watch the YouTube video How Russia Plans to Rule Eurasia by River—and I strongly suggest you do—it outlines Moscow’s plan to build out an internal network of rivers, ports, and rail links that integrate the entire Eurasian landmass. The Volga. The Don. The Ob. The Lena. Not names we normally associate with global trade, but maybe we should.

What’s emerging is a strategic marriage between Chinese capital and Russian geography.One has money and ambition. The other has territory, rivers, and a pressing need to stay relevant. Together, they’re laying the foundation for a new continental infrastructure—one that’s largely immune to the U.S. Navy, the EU’s bureaucracy, or whatever sanctions the White House dreams up next. Think about what that means. New trade corridors will be built from China to Europe, bypassing the Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal. Russian river ports will feed Chinese rail lines into Kazakhstan, Iran, and Turkey. They’ll have pipelines that carrier groups can’t blockade. Their digital infrastructure routed through friendly capitals, not Silicon Valley or Brussels. A Mackinder world. Built in plain sight.

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Penalties will be prohibitive if you try it alone.

• Everyone Should Leave EU – AfD Head Weidel On “Openly Corrupt” Brussels (RMX)

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, says Germany is digging its own grave. Her words came during an interview Weidel gave to Hungary’s Patriot Extra program, covered by Mandiner. According to the nationalist politician, the European Union has “completely degenerated,” does not represent nation states or sovereign peoples, and has now become a machine run by overpaid bureaucrats that only causes harm. Weidel says Germany’s economic decline is rooted in domestic decisions. High energy prices, the green transition, and the phase-out of nuclear power have made German industry uncompetitive, especially the automotive industry, which she says is being deliberately destroyed by Brussels regulations.

“All the bad rules were made in Brussels,” she said, emphasizing that the ban on internal combustion engines and environmental sanctions benefit China and American companies, not European workers. According to Weidel, Germany and Europe need a free market where everyone can produce and buy what they want. Weidel also said the German government was playing politics against the population, lying to people, and doing the opposite of what it promised. On Angela Merkel, the AfD leader said that she was “the first Green Chancellor, not the conservative leader of the CDU.” She also called current Chancellor Friedrich Merz a representative of the “losing side.” Weidel contrasted Germany with Hungary, praising Viktor Orbán for his “common sense” and as a role model for national sovereignists. “I can only congratulate Viktor Orbán, Hungary is doing much better,” she said.

“Hungary is the only one that clearly stands out and says: this cannot be done with us,” she said. According to Weidel, in Germany, on the other hand, there is an unstable government that is deliberately worsening the financial situation of the population in order to make people vulnerable. Weidel further stated that she believes Hungarians live relatively better than Germans, compared to the country’s economic performance. According to Weidel, “Everyone should leave the EU.” Weidel claimed Brussels is trying to build an “artificially created political product” against Viktor Orbán in the person of opposition leader Péter Magyar to interfere in Hungary’s internal affairs. However, Péter Magyar, supported by green and woke politicians and whom Ursula von der Leyen is feeding from the palm of his hand, is doomed to failure, she said, stating that Orbán will emerge from this fight stronger.

She sees similar interventions from Brussels in Romania and Germany, where the AfD is openly persecuted and even faces a potential ban. Weidel was particularly critical of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whom she called “openly corrupt,” specifically commenting on the SMS agreements made for Pfizer vaccine purchases during Covid. “I wonder where the commissions went?” she asked, adding that Von der Leyen and the Brussels elite were “only working to line their own pockets” and that the EU’s institutional system could not be reformed but must be completely rebuilt. In the interview, Weidel outlined what reforms an AfD government would introduce: immediate border closure and mass deportations; social benefits reform, i.e., only those who have paid into the system would receive support; tax cuts for workers; the return of nuclear energy and cheap energy sources; lifting the ban on internal combustion engines; radical reduction of bureaucracy.

“The whole Brussels superstructure is impoverishing us all,” she stressed, adding that the German people are increasingly angry because instead of a “brave new world,” they have been given a more expensive, poorer, and more vulnerable life. Weidel said Germany should return to the ideal of a strong, independent middle class, which Hungary represents in Europe today. According to Weidel, the European elections and the processes in Germany also show that people are fed up with globalist, centralized power. He believes that the restoration of national sovereignty, a strong middle class, and the free market are inevitable, even in the face of Brussels. “The question is whether Germany can still change or will it be completely absorbed by the Brussels deep state,” she told viewers.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

RFK

Yeadon

Gates

Engineer

Calf

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle June 23 2022

Jun 232022
 
 June 23, 2022  Posted by at 8:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  28 Responses »


Georges Seurat Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” 1884

 

• Why Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky Won’t Say Ukraine Is Winning the War (NW)
• Jay Powell: Not Russia That Created U.S. Inflation, It Is Joe Biden Policy (CTH)
• Exile on Main Street: The Sound of the Unipolar World Fading Away (Escobar)
• Russia Says West Is Spreading Lies About Causes of World’s Food Crisis (R.)
• Letter from Faina Savenkova (Saker)
• Covid Vaccines More Likely to Put You in Hospital Than Keep You Out (DS)
• We Must Never Forget (Siglaugsson)
• The Neocon’s Dream – Decolonize Russia, Re-colonize China (MoA)
• China’s Ties to Russia Looms Large at NATO’s Madrid Meeting (Celente)
• Sri Lanka Economy Has ‘Completely Collapsed’ – PM (Sky)
• Ghislaine Maxwell: US Prosecutors Urge 30-Year Minimum Prison Sentence (G.)
• Extraditing Assange Would Be a “Legalized” Rendition to US Torture (Kanji)
• Assange Put on Suicide Watch After Patel Decision (Lauria)

 

 

My initial take was slightly different: Get your photo taken with Ben Stiller, and you’ll be taken down shortly afterward…

 

 

Bottom Gun

 

 

 

 

“Germany shuts down nuclear reactors.
Then buys gas from Russia.
Then Russia cuts gas supply.
Then Germany reopens coal plants.
The coal is bought from Russia.”

 

 

Dore Tucker

 

 

 

 

 

 

Priceless. Newsweek outperforms itself.

• Why Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky Won’t Say Ukraine Is Winning the War (NW)

Russia had lots of guns and materiel but it proved to be a hulking monster on the ground: poorly led, badly trained. Seventy-two hours became a week, then another, then the week after, then right after the next victory, then next month, and now, in the words of NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, “years.” Yet despite the setbacks, somehow the widespread notion has remained that mighty Russia will inevitably prevail over a weaker Ukraine. It won’t. At some turning point, after those 72 hours, after the bogged-down convoy, after the valiant and heartbreaking defense of Mariupol, after the failure to establish air superiority, after running low on precision weapons, after the withdrawal from the north, after more and more friends entered the fight on Ukraine’s side—Javelin, Stinger, Switchblade, M777—after deaths and injuries in the thousands, after desertions and refusals to fight, after failure upon failure on the battlefield, after one month, after two, after 100 days, the tide turned.

Yet scarcely anyone wants to say that Russia has lost. Ukrainian President Zelensky, desperate for external support and more guns, motivator of the people and rouser of the troops, has to keep the tension high and the prospects dire, lest all of the urgency and attention dissipate. President Biden and his fellow Western leaders speak of the defense of freedom and democracy, of the heightened threat to Europe and the free world, of the inevitability of China following Putin’s path, all to feed the military beast, excite the public, keep “national security” at the top of everyone’s agenda. And Putin obviously can’t admit it, determined equally to stay in power and to avoid the humiliation and danger of defeat. Putin doesn’t motivate the troops—he sends them. For weeks, Ukraine has been releasing snippets of intercepted conversations between these lowly soldiers and their parents, wives and girlfriends back home.

The soldiers complain that there is no information and no support. They are confused about the point of the war and its objectives. They are not allowed to take a break from fighting. They are poorly equipped and supplied. There is not enough medicine or doctors. “Our command has left,” one soldier told his wife, referring to platoon and company commanders who were deserting their units and the battlefield. “Well, they didn’t leave– they dropped their weapons.” It’s a myth, the soldier says, that “Russians do not let Russians down.” They’ve been let down and they all know it. Morale is so bad, British intelligence says, that there have been armed standoffs between political enforcers and individuals and even units on the battlefield that have refused to follow their orders. Russia is suffering “very heavy casualties, combat stress, continued poor logistics, and problems with pay,” the U.K. reported.

“Morale problems in the Russian force are likely so significant that they are limiting Russia’s ability to achieve operational objectives.” Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, head of the British Armed Forces was more blunt. “Russia will never take control of Ukraine,” he said. “Ukraine has shown how courageous it really is. Russia has vulnerabilities because it’s running out of people, it’s running out of hi-tech missiles,” Radakin said. “Any notion that this is a success for Russia is nonsense. Russia is failing. It might be getting some tactical successes over the last few weeks. And those might continue for the next few weeks. But Russia is losing.”

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Under the bus.

• Jay Powell: Not Russia That Created U.S. Inflation, It Is Joe Biden Policy (CTH)

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell admitted the obvious in his senate testimony today when asked about U.S. inflation. However, his testimony directly contradicts the White House claims. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), member of the Senate Banking Committee, walked through the inflation timeline and asked Chairman Powell about the cause of the escalated inflation in 2021. Powell admitted the massive rise in inflation had nothing to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Jay Powell

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“The rupture with the West is irreversible and definitive. No pressure from the West will change it..”

• Exile on Main Street: The Sound of the Unipolar World Fading Away (Escobar)

The era of the unipolar world is over. The rupture with the West is irreversible and definitive. No pressure from the West will change it. Russia has renewed with its sovereignty. Reinforcement of political and economic sovereignty is an absolute priority. The EU has completely lost its political sovereignty. The current crisis shows the EU is not ready to play the role of an independent, sovereign actor. It’s just en ensemble of American vassals deprived of any politico-military sovereignty. Sovereignty cannot be partial. Either you’re a sovereign or a colony. Hunger in the poorest nations will be on the conscience of the West and euro-democracy. Russia will supply grains to the poorer nations in Africa and the Middle East. Russia will invest in internal economic development and reorientation of trade towards nations independent of the U.S.

The future world order, already in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states. The ship has sailed. There’s no turning back. How does it feel, for the collective West, to be caught in such a crossfire hurricane? Well, it gets more devastating when we add to the new roadmap the latest on the energy front. Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, in St. Petersburg, stressed that the global economic crisis is gaining momentum not because of sanctions, but exacerbated by them; Europe “commits energy suicide” by sanctioning Russia; sanctions against Russia have done away with the much lauded “green transition”, as that is no longer needed to manipulate markets; and Russia, with its vast energy potential, “is the Noah’s Ark of the world economy.”

For his part Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller could not be more scathing on the sharp decline in the gas flow to the EU due to Siemens’ refusal and/or incapacity to repair the Nord Stream 1 pumping engine: “Well, of course, Gazprom was forced to reduce the volume of gas supplies to Europe by 20%+. But you know, prices have increased not by 20%+, but by several times! Therefore, I’m sorry if I say that we don’t feel offended by anyone, we are not particularly concerned by this situation.” If this pain dial overdrive was not enough to hurl the collective West – or NATOstan – into Terminal Hysteria, then Putin’s sharp comment on possibly allowing Mr. Sarmat to present his business card to “decision-making centers in Kiev”, those that are ordering the current shelling and killing of civilians in Donetsk, definitely did the trick:

“As for the red lines, let me keep them to myself, because this will mean quite tough actions on the decision-making centers. But this is an area that shouldn’t be disclosed to people outside the military-political leadership of the country. Those who deserve appropriate actions on our part should draw a conclusion for themselves – what they may face if they cross the line.”

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“..disrupting payment systems, shipping, insurance which had prevented many Russian exports of food and fertiliser..”

• Russia Says West Is Spreading Lies About Causes of World’s Food Crisis (R.)

Russia on Wednesday said the West was spreading lies about the causes of the global food crisis which Moscow said was being stoked by the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and European Union due to the invasion of Ukraine.[..] Western sanctions, Zakharova said, had tipped agricultural markets towards the edge of the abyss by disrupting payment systems, shipping, insurance which had prevented many Russian exports of food and fertiliser. “It is illogical – on the one hand the European Union… says a threat to global food security is being created but at the same time they block the delivery routes of goods to themselves on their own continent,” Zakharova said. President Vladimir Putin and Russian officials do not use the words “war” or “invasion”. They cast the action as a “special military operation” aimed at preventing the persecution of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.


Putin also casts the war as a revolt against the United States, which he says has humiliated Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by pushing for the enlargement of the NATO military alliance westwards. Ukraine says it is fighting for its survival against a land grab by Russia and that it will fight to the end to free its territory from Russian control. Kyiv dismisses claims that Russian-speakers have been persecuted. Eritrea, Armenia, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Somalia, Belarus, Turkey, Madagascar, Lebanon, Egypt and Pakistan depend on Russia or Ukraine for more than 70% of their wheat imports in 2021, according to United Nations data. Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Serbia, Honduras and Ghana rely on Russia for 50% or more of their fertiliser imports in 2021, according to the data.

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“If there is chaos around, there must be people who can show the way out to the others..”

• Letter from Faina Savenkova (Saker)

Truth is the way out of chaos. To Journalist Tucker Carlson. Hello, Tucker. I am 13 years old and I live in Lugansk. I think many people from the American authorities do not even know where it is, but they continue to supply weapons to Ukraine for the war with Russia. For a week now, Ukrainian artillery has been mercilessly shelling Donetsk, killing civilians in the Donbass. It’s one thing to fight with the army, and another to just shoot guns at schools, kindergartens and sleeping residents. Many will say that this is deception and propaganda, but it is not so. I was born and live in Lugansk. I spent the entire war – since 2014 – in my hometown. Living in a war for 8 years is very hard. It’s very scary when your childhood is spent in such conditions. 8 years of hope for peace, which never came. But it didn’t break me. I keep telling the truth about what’s going on here.

And I know that you do the same thing when you talk about America. I do not consider you a friend of Russia, but the fact that you are telling the truth and do not want a war with Russia pleases me. After all, if there is a nuclear war, there will be no winners in it. I’ve had to turn to world leaders a lot. I’ve been trying to stop the war for three years, but they, like musicians and politicians, are deaf and dumb. Perhaps someone wants to calmly meet old age, someone is afraid of change, and someone simply does not understand what war is. After all, it is not next to them. Last year, Ukrainian nationalists entered my personal data on the “myrotvorets.center” (english: “Peacemaker”) website, posting them in open access. After that, I started receiving threats. You may ask, “What is a myrotvorets.center?” Indeed, many in the US do not know what it is.

If we compare, imagine if the Ku Klux Klan in the USA created its own website and posted there the addresses, bank accounts and other personal data of all politicians, actors and musicians who disagree with them. And the authorities would help them at the same time. This is what is happening in Ukraine now. A lot of my friends from Ukraine faced the same problem: “myrotvorets.center ” published their personal data, including address and phone number. Can you imagine such a thing in the USA? No. It’s hard for me to say what will happen to me tomorrow. After all, I live in a war where shells arrive every day. But I believe that the war will end, just like the confrontation between Russia and the United States. And personally, Tucker, I want to wish you good luck. Thank you for trying to tell the truth, because someone has to do it. If there is chaos around, there must be people who can show the way out to the others.

Faina Savenkova, playwright and writer, 13-year-old girl, Lugansk

Read more …

“… BMJ Editor’s Analysis of Pfizer and Moderna Trial Data Finds..”

Whatever mistakes BMJ Editor Dr. Peter Doshi may have made, this is still significant.

• Covid Vaccines More Likely to Put You in Hospital Than Keep You Out (DS)

A new paper by BMJ Editor Dr. Peter Doshi and colleagues has analysed data from the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccine trials and found that the vaccines are more likely to put you in hospital with a serious adverse event than keep you out by protecting you from Covid. The pre-print (not yet peer-reviewed) focuses on serious adverse events highlighted in a WHO-endorsed “priority list of potential adverse events relevant to COVID-19 vaccines”. The authors evaluated these serious adverse events of special interest as observed in “phase III randomised trials of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines”. A serious adverse event was defined as per the trial protocols as an adverse event that results in any of the following conditions:

• death; • life-threatening at the time of the event; • inpatient hospitalisation or prolongation of existing hospitalisation; • persistent or significant disability/incapacity; • a congenital anomaly/birth defect; • medically important event, based on medical judgement. Dr. Doshi and colleagues found that the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest of 10.1 events per 10,000 vaccinated for Pfizer and 15.1 events per 10,000 for Moderna (95% CI -0.4 to 20.6 and -3.6 to 33.8, respectively). When combined, the mRNA vaccines were associated with a risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated (95% CI 2.1 to 22.9).

The authors note that this level of increased risk post-vaccine is greater than the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalisation in both Pfizer and Moderna trials, which was 2.3 per 10,000 participants for Pfizer and 6.4 per 10,000 for Moderna. This means that on this measure, the Pfizer vaccine results in a net increase in serious adverse events of 7.8 per 10,000 vaccinated and the Moderna vaccine of 8.7 per 10,000 vaccinated. Addressing the difference between their findings and those of the FDA when it approved the vaccines, the authors note that the FDA’s analysis of serious adverse events “included thousands of additional participants with very little follow-up, of which the large majority had only received one dose”.

The FDA also counted ‘people affected’ rather than individual events, despite there being twice as many individuals in the vaccine group than the placebo group who experienced multiple serious adverse events. The authors wonder where the U.S. Government’s own studies of adverse events are. They note that in July 2021, the FDA reported detecting four potential adverse events of interest following Pfizer vaccination – pulmonary embolism, acute myocardial infarction, immune thrombocytopenia and disseminated intravascular coagulation – and stated it would further investigate the findings. However, no update has yet appeared. They also note that “while CDC published a protocol in early 2021 for using proportional reporting ratios for signal detection in the VAERS database, the agency has not yet reported such a study”.

Read more …

“There will be a scramble for alternative truths once the narrative starts crumbling..”

• We Must Never Forget (Siglaugsson)

Recently the Icelandic chief epidemiologist said in an interview the lockdowns hadn‘t been stringent enough. And he blamed those few politicians who voiced their doubts and worried about the well-being of society as a whole, for undermining the solidarity behind the measures. As if he were the emperor, the politicians only his servants. And he is not alone. Many of those people will continue pushing the narrative even as it crumbles around them. They will be the first targets of people‘s anger. Then it will be the politicians, pharmaceuticals, media and big tech. There will of course be strong pushback. There will be a scramble for alternative truths once the narrative starts crumbling; for something to keep the veil on the lies and atrocities. The push for continued masking, lockdowns, vaccine mandates will continue for a while.

And we shouldn‘t forget there are huge interests at stake here, to certain very big business sectors, lockdowns are a godsend; human interaction is a threat to them. The censorship will be ramped up even further. But despite all the power, money and technology, the facts will emerge, the truth will prevail in the end. It always does. Some might say I‘m too optimistic, that we are already under the control of conspiring media, big-tech and corrupt officials, with no way out. But is it really so? Recently a US attempt at handing unprecedented powers over to the WHO was averted, thanks mostly to African leaders and strong public opposition. The vaccine mandates are disappearing and what will eventually come of the still existing plans for health passes is unclear. But of course the danger is still there.

What really matters is how we react as the narrative crumbles. Will we just shrug and move on with our daily lives, not caring about the threat to our freedom and humanity? Or will we face the consequences of our failure to think critically, of our gullibility, our lack of moral integrity, as the German people were forced to do after World War II, as the Icelanders had to do after 2008? Will we bring those responsible to court? Will we learn, once again the hard way, how the only thing that can prevent such catastrophes in the future is taking responsibility as thinking, doubting individuals?

And will we finally understand the true meaning of Hannah Arendt‘s conclusion in The Origins of Totaliarianism, that flawed as it may be, it is only a sovereign nation state of free people, governed by elected representatives who take their responsibility seriously; as they did in the tiny Faroe Islands during the pandemic; and not unelected officials, supranational organizations or huge corporations; that only the nation state is really able to protect universal human rights? We have to move on. We have to rebuild our societies, reestablish our moral values and our rights, rebuild trust in science and trust within our communities. But to truly move on, we must face, understand and act on the roots of the catastrophe, and take full responsibility for the part each of us played. This is why we must not forget. We must never forget.

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“Russia sells its oil to China and India where it gets refined. The resulting gasoline and diesel is then exported to the U.S.. That is good for India and China as they buy the oil with a rebate and sell the end products with a substantial margin..”

• The Neocon’s Dream – Decolonize Russia, Re-colonize China (MoA)

The neo-conservatives are back using a new narrative to push their old agenda. Russian officials will love such talk: “Today’s panel is a further step forward in that it tells ordinary Russians that even regime change and democracy is not good enough for them. They require the partition of their country into smaller (more easily controlled) polities, so that they can be free. Needless to say, this is a propaganda coup for Putin and the Kremlin as it allows them to paint the conflict in Ukraine as an existential fight.” The Kremlin has no need to ‘paint’ the conflict as an existential fight. The Russians know that it is such a fight. Biden’s haplessness continues to tank the Democrats chances to keep house majority. In a meager attempt to tackle the high fuel price he will today call on Congress to suspend the tax on fuel for three month. It is just a gimmick which would have little effect at the pump and has no chance to pass Congress:

“GOP lawmakers have been hammering Biden and Democrats on the campaign trail over inflation and fuel prices. They argue that such measures are political theater that will do little to make long-term dents in oil prices. The best way to reduce oil prices, they say, is to loosen regulations and increase U.S. oil production. … California had the highest average gas price of any state at $6.398 per gallon. The gas tax suspension would reduce the cost of a gallon of diesel fuel by 24 cents.” The real reason for high fuel prices is Biden’s misguided foreign policy. Three of the biggest oil producers on the globe, Venezuela, Iran and Russia, are under U.S. sanctions that limit their oil exports:

The sanctions have made it more difficult for Russia to sell its oil. Biden has also banned the import of Russian oil, and last month Europe announced it was imposing a partial embargo on it. As of 2020, Russia was the world’s third-largest producer of petroleum, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As the New York Times correctly headlines: “Western Move to Choke Russia’s Oil Exports Boomerangs, for Now”. That move will continue to boomerang. Russia sells it oil to China and India where it gets refined. The resulting gasoline and diesel is then exported to the U.S.. That is good for India and China as they buy the oil with a rebate and sell the end products with a substantial margin. It is a ‘win’ ‘win’ ‘win’ for Russia, India and China with the sole loser being the ‘west’. Whatever NYT hope of sanction success is expressed in its ‘for now’ addition to the headline is not going to change that.

Meanwhile Russia is announcing the next target of its campaign to counter ‘western’ misbehavior – the reserve status of the U.S. dollar and the Euro: “MOSCOW, June 22. /TASS/. The issue of creating an international reserve currency based on currencies of BRICS member-states is under consideration, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday in the welcome address to BRICS Business Forum participants. “The matter of creating the international reserve currency based on the basket of currencies of our countries is under review,” the Russian leader said. BRICS currently consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Together those countries represent 3.2 billion people and a third of the world’s purchase power GDP. The new international reserve currency would therefore have a much larger backing than the U.S. dollar or the Euro.

Read more …

Still longing for total control.

• China’s Ties to Russia Looms Large at NATO’s Madrid Meeting (Celente)

Less than a month after President Joe Biden was sworn into office, he took a 10-minute drive from the White House to the Pentagon to meet with his top military leaders, including Lloyd Austin, his new defense secretary. Biden was there for one reason: China. Biden told workers there that he was briefed about a Defense Department-wide task force headed by Austin that would look at “operational concepts, technology, and force posture,” to counter the growing competition from Beijing. Biden said the U.S. will “meet the China challenge” by taking a “whole-of-government effort, bipartisan cooperation in Congress, and strong alliances and partnerships.” No presidency is ever without surprises, but even with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems that it’s China that keeps Washington awake at night.

Need proof? About a month before Russia’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine, Biden announced that U.S. troops will not fight Russians in Ukraine, which was not protected by NATO’s Article 5. But he said twice -in roughly the same time frame – that U.S. would defend Taiwan against China. (The White House on both occasions corrected the record and said Washington’s position of strategic ambiguity has not changed, but the sentiment was there.) China has recognized Russia’s security concern over an expanding NATO while calling an end to the conflict. Hua Chunying, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said the invasion of Ukraine was not what Beijing hoped to see. “China has taken a responsible attitude and persuaded all parties not to escalate tensions or incite war,” she said.

“Those who follow the U.S.’s lead in fanning up flame and then shifting the blame onto others are truly irresponsible.” Beijing has lashed out at the U.S. over its interference over Taiwan. It is widely believed that Putin informed his Chinese counterpart about his intention to invade Ukraine during their meeting at the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. “The Chinese side stands ready to work with the Russian side to push for steady and long-term development of practical bilateral cooperation,” President Xi JinPing said, after a phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Xi said trade with Russia over the first half of this year has been [in the tens of billions of U.S. dollars] and we “can expect new records in upcoming months, which is a testament to the great cooperation between our two nations.”

Read more …

Test case?!

• Sri Lanka Economy Has ‘Completely Collapsed’ – PM (Sky)

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said the country’s economy has “completely collapsed”, leaving it unable to pay for essentials such as oil imports. It follows months of shortages of food, fuel, and electricity, and the realisation that even the credit lines from neighbouring India that have sustained the country so far will not be enough. Mr Wickremesinghe told Sri Lanka’s parliament: “We are now facing a far more serious situation beyond the mere shortages of fuel, gas, electricity and food. “Our economy has completely collapsed – that is the most serious issue before us today.” Mr Wickremesinghe said that the state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation is $700m (£572m) in debt, adding: “As a result, no country or organisation in the world is willing to provide fuel to us.

“They are even reluctant to provide fuel for cash.” Sri Lanka has been struggling under the weight of its debt, combined with the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, including a loss of tourism revenue and the rising cost of commodities. In April, it suspended payment on the equivalent of £9.8bn in foreign debt. Mr Wickremesinghe said that efforts to turn the situation around had failed, adding: “If steps had at least been taken to slow down the collapse of the economy at the beginning, we would not be facing this difficult situation today. “But we lost out on this opportunity. “We are now seeing signs of a possible fall to rock bottom.” Previous prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned in May after months of protests and clashes between government supporters and those demanding a change in leadership.

This brought veteran Mr Wickremesinghe to the role for a sixth time, in a move that opposition politicians said was aimed at protecting President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family from protesters’ anger. A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrived in Colombo earlier this week and talks with them have made progress, Mr Wickremesinghe said on Wednesday, adding that an agreement was likely by the end of this month. “We have discussed multiple points including fiscal policy, debt restructuring and direct cash transfers,” he said. “Parallel to this, we have also started talks on a debt restructuring framework, which we hope will be completed in July.”

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“She will be sentenced on 28 June..” How about her clients?

• Ghislaine Maxwell: US Prosecutors Urge 30-Year Minimum Prison Sentence (G.)

Ghislaine Maxwell should get at least 30 years’ imprisonment for sex trafficking when she is sentenced next week for her role in facilitating the abuse of teenage girls by Jeffrey Epstein, New York federal prosecutors have said in court filings. “Ghislaine Maxwell sexually exploited young girls for years. It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of her crimes and the harm she caused. Her crimes demand justice,” they said in a court filing on Wednesday. “The government urges the court to impose a sentence within the applicable guidelines range of 360 to 660 months’ imprisonment.” The prosecution’s filing comes one week after Maxwell’s lawyers argued that she should receive “well below” the 20-year sentence recommended by sentencing officials.


Although Maxwell’s defense attorneys and prosecutors each make their arguments for an appropriate sentence, the decision ultimately rests with Alison Nathan, the judge. “Maxwell’s conduct was shockingly predatory,” prosecutors said in arguing for a lengthy sentence. “She was a calculating, sophisticated, and dangerous criminal who preyed on vulnerable young girls and groomed them for sexual abuse. “Not only did her conduct exhibit a callous disregard for other human beings, but her practice of targeting vulnerable victims reflects her view that struggling young girls could be treated like disposable objects.” Maxwell was convicted on 29 December for her role in the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of girls, some as young as 14, who she brought into his orbit. She will be sentenced on 28 June. She maintains her innocence.

Read more …

Very good angle.

• Extraditing Assange Would Be a “Legalized” Rendition to US Torture (Kanji)

As the British government moves ever closer to extraditing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, the pantomime of “justice” cloaking his persecution in the regalia of the “rule of law” continues to unfold: a torture rendition by another name, inching forward as the world watches in real time. On June 17, the U.K.’s Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition of Assange to the United States, following the magistrate court’s order that the transfer should proceed. In this fundamentally skewed process, Assange’s capacity to meaningfully defend himself has been systematically assaulted by government smear campaigns; surveillance of his lawyers; and stultifying, arbitrary rules and restrictions obstructing him from participating in his own case — as documented in detail by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer in his recent book, The Trial of Julian Assange.

Previously, U.S. officials discussed “options” for kidnapping Assange and assassinating him by poison — tactics ultimately dismissed as “something we’d do in Afghanistan,” Egypt or Pakistan, but not the U.K. Therefore, they’ve opted for the more “civilized” alternative. Instead of kidnapping, extradition. And instead of assassination, entombment in the torturous U.S. carceral system, where Assange faces a death-in-prison sentence of 175 years for exposing U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. How is this, in essence and effect, anything but the “legal” equivalent of an extraordinary rendition — defined by the American Civil Liberties Union as “the practice of capturing people and sending them to countries that use torture or abuse in interrogations”?

While the U.S.’s infamous extraordinary rendition program has (now) been officially condemned and supposedly ceased, rendition to torture via legalized means is enduringly embraced. In “extraordinary” rendition, hundreds of “war on terror” detainees were secretly imprisoned and brutalized in CIA black sites around the world. In “legalized” rendition, the torture chambers are not foreign black sites but prisons transformed into “Guantánamo Norths” within the U.S. itself. In “extraordinary” rendition, victims were seized off the streets extrajudicially by the CIA. In the “legalized” version, the condemned are delivered into U.S. hands through judicially sanctioned means such as extradition — abusive processes accorded an aura of legal legitimacy.

U.S. courts have upheld transfers into U.S. custody even when the targets have been abducted at gunpoint, severely beaten, burned, kept in secret offshore captivity for weeks or months (an increasingly popular practice with U.S. law enforcement), and electrocuted in their feet and genitals: acts of violence for which the courts have refused to provide any legal redress because they occurred outside the U.S. In “legalized” rendition, as in “extraordinary” rendition, detainees have been subjected to intensive solitary confinement, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, sensory deprivation, extreme light and temperature exposure, and other mechanisms of deliberate “psychic demolition”; although the degree of isolation and control achieved in domestic U.S. prisons under regimes such as “special administrative measures” is in many ways even more totalizing than at Guantánamo Bay.

Dail Assange

Read more …

Sweet Jesus….

• Assange Put on Suicide Watch After Patel Decision (Lauria)

After British Home Secretary Priti Patel signed Julian Assange’s extradition order on Friday the authorities in Belmarsh prison stripped Julian Assange and threw him into a completely empty cell in an attempt to prevent his suicide, Assange’s father has said. It was just one more instance in which the prison humiliated his son, Shipton told a rally on Tuesday night at the offices of the junge Welt newspaper in Berlin. About 300 people attended, with an overflow crowd watching on close circuit TV in the courtyard. Testimony was heard from expert defense witnesses during Assange’s extradition hearing that he might try to end his life in prison once he learned he was going to the United States.

It is not the end of the road for Assange legally, however. His lawyers have until July 1 to file for an appeal of Patel’s decision to the High Court. They also intend to apply for a cross appeal of issues such as the political nature of the charges, the threat to free speech and the reported C.I.A. plot to kidnap or kill Assange before his arrest. Shipton and Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, are in Berlin to lobby the German government to put pressure on the United States to drop the case against Assange. On Monday, the Shiptons met with Tobias Lindner, the minister of state, at the German foreign ministry. “It was a practical and appropriate step for Tobias to take, to welcome Julian Assange’s father and bother into the foreign ministry,” John Shipton said.

“The invitation in itself and the meeting in the foreign ministry indicates that the German government is sincere in bringing about the freedom of Julian Assange.” But Shipton said he would like to hear a public statement from Germany in support of his son. “We’d like Tobias to confirm what he’s said.” A German government spokesman on Monday said however that Germany was unlikely to intervene with either the U.K. or the U.S. “This is a legal process that is already in motion, so I would be a little wary of political intervention,” he said, the French Press Agency (AFP) reported.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine the collapse of this…..

 

 

Mike Lynch

 

 

Cave of El Castillo, Spain. Hands and a Bison. Some of the hand stencils, mostly near the front and middle sections of the cave, were painted more than 37,000 years ago, but some of the more recent hand stencils are 24,000 years old.

 

 

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

 

 

 

Debt Rattle June 12 2020

Jun 122020
 
 June 12, 2020  Posted by at 11:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  20 Responses »


Gustave Dore Dante looks upon the negligent rulers 1868

 

• Here’s What Caused The Worst Stock Market Sell-Off Since March (F.)
• Trump Admin. Won’t Disclose Corporate Recipients of $500 Billion Bailout (CD)
• The Real Economic Catastrophe Hasn’t Hit Yet. Just Wait For August (BF)
• UK Economy Suffers Record Slump With GDP Plunging By 20.4% (Sky)
• BA, easyJet and Ryanair Begin Court Action Over UK Quarantine Rules (G.)
• US Virus Hotspots Reopen Despite Second Wave Specter (R.)
• Trump Campaign Rally Signup Form Includes COVID19 Warning/Disclaimer (JTN)
• Retired Generals Who Denounced Trump Could Be Recalled, Prosecuted (JTN)
• Twitter Deletes Over 170,000 Accounts Tied To Chinese Propaganda (Hill)
• US Intel Bulletin Says ‘Malign Actors’ Target US Over Protest Fallout (ABC)
• Obama Retread Sees Moscow’s Hand in Protests (Giraldi)
• Flynn’s Lawyers Say Judge ‘Exceeded His Power’ In Not Dismissing Case (JTN)
• Flynn Case: 85 Lies, Contradictions, Oddities, and Unusual Occurrences (ET)

 

 

Worldometer reports new cases for June 9 (midnight to midnight GMT+0) at + 136,757. Another new record.

My count from about 6 am EDT to 6 am EDT is + 139,460 cases.

 

 

 

 

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 23,300
• Brazil + 39,928
• Russia + 8,987
• India + 11,128
• Pakistan + 6.397
• Mexico + 4,.790

 

 

• Cases 7,622,021 (+ 139,460 from yesterday’s 7,482,561)

• Deaths 424,325 (+ 4,837 from yesterday’s 419,488)

 

 

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-:

 

 

From Worldometer:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

“Fed chair Powell yesterday really reminded investors that there’s a huge, huge gap between the economic reality and the market reality..”

He should know, because he’s created that gap. It’s dead simple: there is no stock market left, only something that looks like it.

To have a market, you need price discovery. Jay Powell makes sure there isn’t any, because everyone’s afraid of what price discovery would do.

The entire financial world fears honesty and truth, and the Fed makes sure these are gone.

• Here’s What Caused The Worst Stock Market Sell-Off Since March (F.)

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 6.9%, nearly 1,900 points, in its worst single-day drop since the coronavirus sell-off in March. The S&P 500, which fell 5.9%, also had its worst day since March. Stocks plunged on rising concerns about a second wave of coronavirus infections: Many states that loosened lockdown restrictions saw a spike in new cases. Texas and Florida, for example, were among some of the first states to reopen, and they are now reporting record numbers of hospitalizations. A total of 21 states reported an increase in new cases last week, according to a Reuters analysis. Thursday’s sell-off follows the Federal Reserve’s grim update on the economy:


A day earlier, the Central Bank forecasted a long recovery, with unemployment set to remain high for years and interest rates staying near zero until at least 2022. “Fed chair Powell yesterday really reminded investors that there’s a huge, huge gap between the economic reality and the market reality,” Tom Essaye, founder of the Sevens Report, told CNBC. “Just that reminder combined with a lot of the second wave headlines prompted an opportunity to take profits… stocks can’t go up forever.” Expectations for a quick economic recovery are dwindling: Investors are now dumping stocks that would benefit from a reopening—including airlines, retailers and cruise operators—after they led the market rally over the past month.

Wall Street traders are instead rotating back into stay-at-home stocks, such as Netflix and Zoom, as well as big tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet. The stock market’s fear gauge, the CBOE Volatility Index, skyrocketed over 47% on Thursday, breaking above the 40 threshold for the first time in over a month. “The REAL reasons stocks are down doesn’t have much to do with fundamentals – the tape had become GROSSLY overbought (with valuations hitting multi-decade, unsustainable highs),” according to Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge. “A lot of reluctant buyers were sucked in off the sidelines these last few weeks, creating a giant downside air pocket that’s now being filled.”

BIG NUMBER: MORE THAN 44 MILLION. That’s how many people have filed for unemployment over the last three months, as the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to shut down on an unprecedented scale. Jobless claims fell for the tenth week in a row on Thursday, with 1.5 million more Americans filing for unemployment during the week ending June 6. While that number continues to decline, millions are still unemployed and the job market’s recovery is expected to take years. TANGENT “We can’t shut down the economy again,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC on Thursday morning. “I think we’ve learned that if you shut down the economy, you’re going to create more damage,” he warned.

Both the S&P 500 and Dow are still up more than 40% from their coronavirus low point on March 23. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell reiterated at his press conference on Wednesday that while “there is great uncertainty about the future,” the Central Bank is strongly committed to doing “whatever we can, for as long as it takes” to help support the economy.

Read more …

Fits perfectly in the climate the Fed has created.

• Trump Admin. Won’t Disclose Corporate Recipients of $500 Billion Bailout (CD)

Progressive critics and advocacy groups are responding with alarm and anger to the Trump administration’s refusal to disclose the names of more than 4.5 million companies that have collectively received over $500 billion in corporate bailout money through a federal program created to provide businesses with relief from the coronavirus pandemic. The over $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed by President Donald Trump in March established the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) with $349 billion in funding for forgivable loans. After the initial capital ran out in just 13 days, lawmakers approved $310 billion more—though over $130 billion of that amount was still left as of Tuesday.


Although, as the Washington Post reported, the Small Business Administration (SBA) “typically discloses names of borrowers from the loan program” on which the PPP is based, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testified to the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship that he won’t be following that model for the Covid-19 program, despite concerns about which companies are benefiting from it. As Mnuchin told the Senate committee Wednesday: “We believe that that’s proprietary information, and in many cases for sole proprietors and small businesses, it is confidential information.” The secretary’s comments provoked a barrage of condemnation, particularly among individuals and groups that had previously expressed concern about the PPP.

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Getting poorer as your income rises.

• The Real Economic Catastrophe Hasn’t Hit Yet. Just Wait For August (BF)

More than 40 million people lost their jobs in the last few months, in the fastest and deepest economic slowdown ever recorded. More than half of all households with low incomes in the United States have experienced a loss of earnings, as have a quarter of all adults. The numbers are grim — but as bad as things look today, they’re on track to get much, much worse. The US economy right now is like a jumbo jet that’s in a steady glide after both its engines flamed out. In about six weeks, it will likely crash into the side of a mountain. What’s kept us in the air so far is an extraordinary government relief effort. In most states, evictions have been temporarily banned, preventing a mass homelessness crisis.


Most federal student loan payments have been put on hold, removing one of the largest recurring monthly expenses that millions of people face. Banks were ordered to give their customers a six-month break on mortgage payments if requested. Most importantly, and counterintuitively, household income sharply increased in April as hundreds of billions of dollars in lost wages were replaced by trillions in government spending. The government sent out more than 159 million stimulus payments of up to $1,200 per adult (more if you have kids), and more than 20 million unemployed people became eligible for an extra $600 a week in federal unemployment benefits. The result, according to Bloomberg, was the largest monthly increase in household income ever recorded.

This happened in April, when there were far fewer things to spend your money on; shops and restaurants were closed, nobody went to the ball game or took the kids to a theme park, and a shaggy nation longed for a haircut. Meanwhile, the prospect of a massive economic crash meant that Americans who were still on the job were more likely to tuck money away that they might otherwise have spent. So the national savings rate — the share of people’s income that is saved rather than spent — hit 33%, according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, also the highest level ever recorded. In the same month that we reached the worst mass unemployment in living memory, Americans saved a total of $6.15 trillion — up by $4 trillion from the month prior.

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What’s worse for the UK is this is not the worst. They have allowed the virus to be everywhere.

• UK Economy Suffers Record Slump With GDP Plunging By 20.4% (Sky)

Britain’s economy suffered a record collapse during April’s coronavirus lockdown with GDP plunging by 20.4%, the Office for National Statistics said. The fall is the biggest the UK has ever seen – worse than anything during the financial crash – and underlines the damage inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw many businesses shut down in a bid to curb the spread of infection. The economy was around 25% smaller in April than it was in February, bringing the threat of mass job losses. Reacting to the figures, health minister Edward Argar told Sky News the drop was “clearly a significant contraction” but was “not unexpected” given the coronavirus crisis.


Widespread contractions across the economy contributed to the fall in GDP. In the three months to April, the ONS data shows that accommodation and food services plummeted by 40.1%, with the closure of hotels, bars and restaurants throughout March and April. Manufacturing and construction also saw significant falls of 10.5% and 18.2% respectively. The ONS will not reveal what happened to the economy in May until next month, but it is likely to show another dramatic drop, as it covers the a period before restrictions started to ease in some parts of the economy. Chancellor Rishi Sunak said: “In line with many other economies around the world, coronavirus is having a severe impact on our economy.

Jonathan Athow, deputy national statistician for economic statistics, said: “April’s fall in GDP is the biggest the UK has ever seen, more than three times larger than last month and almost 10 times larger than the steepest pre-COVID-19 fall. “In April, the economy was around 25% smaller than in February. “Virtually all areas of the economy were hit, with pubs, education, health and car sales all giving the biggest contributions to this historic fall. “Manufacturing and construction also saw significant falls, with manufacture of cars and housebuilding particularly badly affected. “The UK’s trade with the rest of the world was also badly affected by the pandemic, with large falls in both the import and export of cars, fuels, works of art and clothing.”

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It’s too late anyway. But is going back to “normal” a good idea?

• BA, easyJet and Ryanair Begin Court Action Over UK Quarantine Rules (G.)

Britain’s three biggest airlines have filed papers in the high court to seek an urgent judicial review of the government’s quarantine laws, which they say are having a devastating effect on tourism and the wider economy. British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair say the rules, which came into effect on Monday and require passengers arriving from abroad to self-isolate at a single address for 14 days, are flawed and will cost thousands of jobs. The airlines sent a letter to the government last week to start their legal challenge, and court proceedings are now in train. The airlines have requested a hearing as soon as possible.

Despite reports of private briefings that “air bridges” allowing travel between the UK and some other European countries could be established by the end of the month, the three airlines say they have not yet seen any evidence of how and when they would be implemented. Instead, they are urging the government to revisit a policy briefly introduced in March that targeted passengers entering from “high-risk” countries for quarantine. They said: “This would be the most practical and effective solution and enables civil servants to focus on other, more significant issues arising from the pandemic while bringing the UK in line with much of Europe which is opening its borders mid-June.”

The airlines’ chief executives have been outspoken in their criticism of the rules. Willie Walsh, the boss of BA’s parent company IAG, has described them as “irrational and disproportionate”, while Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has said they are “nonsense”. In the legal filing, the airlines argue that the rules are more stringent than those applied to people who have Covid-19 and leave their home, that there was no consultation on the policy and no scientific evidence provided to support it, that exemptions for commuters undermine the policy, and that the government is seeking to ban travel to and from countries with lower infection rates than the UK.

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Some of the numbers get scary.

• US Virus Hotspots Reopen Despite Second Wave Specter (R.)

The moves by governors of states such as Florida and Arizona came as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States could not afford to let the novel coronavirus shut its economy again and global stocks tanked on worries of a pandemic resurgence. As Florida reported its highest daily tally of new coronavirus cases on Thursday, Governor Ron DeSantis unveiled a plan to restart public schools at “full capacity” in the autumn, arguing the state’s economy depended on it. North Carolina reported record COVID-19 hospitalizations for a fifth straight day on Thursday, a day after legislators passed a bill to reopen gyms, fitness centers and bars in a state where more than one in ten workers are unemployed.

Governors of hotspot states face pressure to fire up economies facing fiscal year 2021 budget shortfalls of up to 30% below pre-pandemic projections in the case of New Mexico, according to data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank. Nevada, which has seen cases increase by nearly a third in the past two weeks, is suffering 28% unemployment, based on U.S Bureau of Labor statistics. “This is about saving lives, this is also about livelihoods in the state of Arizona,” Governor Doug Ducey told a news briefing, adding that a second shutdown of the economy was “not under discussion” despite official figures showing a 211% rise in virus cases over the past 14 days. About half a dozen states including Texas and Arizona are grappling with rising numbers of coronavirus patients filling hospital beds.

[..] A second wave of coronavirus deaths is expected to begin in the United States in September, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said on Thursday, citing a surge in mobility since April. Its latest model projects 170,000 deaths by Oct. 1, with a possible range between 133,000 and 290,000. A note of caution came from Utah, where Governor Gary Herbert said most of the state would pause its reopening after a 126% rise in cases over the past two weeks. Austin, Texas on Thursday also said it would likely extend stay-at-home and mask orders past June 15 after the state reported its highest new case count the previous day. Austin health officials blamed a record week of infections on easing business restrictions and Memorial Day gatherings.

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Coming to a theater, sports arena etc, near you.

• Trump Campaign Rally Signup Form Includes COVID19 Warning/Disclaimer (JTN)

President Trump is slated to hold a campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., on June 19, but people who sign up for tickets will encounter a warning about possible exposure to coronavirus. “By clicking register below, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present,” the warning says. “By attending the Rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, or volunteers liable for any illness or injury,” the note declares.


The event will be the the president’s first campaign rally in some time. Areas around the nation are emerging from coronavirus-related lockdowns and restrictions, and large protests have sprung up around the country in the wake of the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minnesota. The Associated Press reports that many states have seen an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

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They appear convinced Trump will lose, and want to get out of the way.

• Retired Generals Who Denounced Trump Could Be Recalled, Prosecuted (JTN)

Retired four-star military officers who lambasted President Trump could be recalled to active duty and prosecuted for violating the U.S. Code, military law experts told Just the News. “Retired officers can’t make contemptuous remarks of the commander-in-chief,” said John Dowd, a former Marine Corps Judge Advocate and former Trump legal advisor. “They’re all subject to recall. They’re subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice until they die.” The pertinent law is Title 10 of the U.S. Code, Section 888, the experts said. “As part of the UCMJ, governing military law, you cannot use contemptuous words against certain officials, including the president,” one active duty Army Judge Advocate General Corps officer said. “That is a court-martial offense, and yes, you can be recalled to active duty to be court-martialed.”

The outspoken retired officers know they could be held to account, the JAG officer said. “I don’t know who the hell they think they are,” Dowd said. “It’s stunning to me. I guess the law doesn’t apply to them.” The retired officers comprise some of the biggest marquee military names in recent times. They include former Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis and former Special Operations Command chief Adm. William McRaven. With increasing frequency over the past couple years, and in quick succession over the past week, they have leveled serious accusations against Trump, and have called for him to be removed from office. In late 2019, McRaven published a New York Times op-ed titled “Our Republic Is Under Attack From the President,” and later told CNN interviewer Jake Tapper that Trump is working to destroy the country.

On June 7, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell — also speaking to CNN’s Tapper — said that Trump has “drifted away” from the U.S. Constitution. Elsewhere, Powell said Trump “lies all the time,” and called him a “menace.” Retired Lt. Gen. John Allen, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in an interview that the Constitution is under threat — not from violent anarchists, but from the president of the United States. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who led U.S. Southern Command and served in Bill Clinton’s cabinet, denounced Trump as a threat to national security. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen — who in 2012 surrendered his computers to the FBI in the course of a cybersecurity investigation — accused Trump of giving succor to foreign detractors.

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I guess it gets ever easier to confuse me. The 170,000 accounts “had tweeted almost 350,000 times before being shut down.” That’s barely 2 tweets per account. How does one influence anything that way?

If the “[25,000 accounts that formed what Twitter described as the “core network]” tweeted more often than 2x, scores of the accounts must have never tweeted. Hardly effective.

At the same time, the 1,000 “Russian” accounts and 7,000 Turkish ones tweeted 40 million times. How then is this a story about China? Remind me what rats smell like.

• Twitter Deletes Over 170,000 Accounts Tied To Chinese Propaganda (Hill)

Twitter announced Thursday that it had deleted more than 170,000 accounts tied to a Chinese state-linked operation that were spreading deceptive information around the COVID-19 virus, political dynamics in Hong Kong, and other issues. Almost 25,000 of the accounts that were deleted formed what Twitter described as the “core network,” while around 150,000 accounts were amplifying messages from the core groups. “In general, this entire network was involved in a range of manipulative and coordinated activities,” the company wrote in a blog post. “They were Tweeting predominantly in Chinese languages and spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China (CCP), while continuing to push deceptive narratives about the political dynamics in Hong Kong.”

Twitter noted that the accounts taken down this week were tied to a Chinese state-backed operation last year that attempted to sow political discord in Hong Kong. Those accounts were also taken down. According to an analysis of the accounts by the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), many of the accounts shut down were tweeting about the COVID-19 pandemic, with activity around this issue beginning in late January and reaching its peak in late March. The accounts primarily praised China’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. While most of the accounts had less than 10 followers and no bios, the SIO found that they had tweeted almost 350,000 times before being shut down.

“Narratives around COVID-19 primarily praise China’s response to the virus, and occasionally contrast China’s response against that of the U.S. government or Taiwan’s response, or use the presence of the virus as a means to attack Hong Kong activists,” the SIO wrote in its analysis. “The English-language content included pointed reiterations of the claim that China – not Taiwan – had a superior response to containing coronavirus.”

Twitter on Thursday also shut down thousands of accounts tied to Russian and Turkish state-linked misinformation efforts. The over 1,000 Russian accounts removed were tied to state-backed political propaganda within Russia, while the over 7,300 Turkish accounts removed were primarily spreading information favorable to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his political party. While the amount of Russian and Turkish-linked accounts was less than those tied to China, the Russian and Turkish accounts were found by the SIO to have tweeted a combined almost 40 million times before Twitter took action.

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What can they do without RussiaRussia? It’s their lifeblood.

• US Intel Bulletin Says ‘Malign Actors’ Target US Over Protest Fallout (ABC)

As protesters hit the streets in cities across the country, America’s foreign adversaries have flooded social media with content meant to sow division and discord in the wake of George Floyd’s death, according to a U.S. government intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News. The bulletin, distributed Tuesday to law enforcement by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), accuses Russia, China and Iran of “employing state media, proxy outlets, and social media accounts to amplify criticism of the United States related to the death of George Floyd and subsequent events.” These “malign actors” also appear intent on drawing attention to alleged hypocrisy in the Trump administration’s handling of protesters, the report found.

The death of 46-year-old George Floyd last month, at the hands of a former Minneapolis police officer, has sparked outrage and protest from coast to coast, prompting calls for an overhaul of police practices. In the intervening weeks, foreign adversaries have sought to leverage the residual domestic strife resulting from Floyd’s death to pursue geopolitical goals, the bulletin claimed, including an ongoing effort to weaken Washington’s image on the international stage. “These actors criticize the United States as hypocritical, corrupt, undemocratic, racist, guilty of human rights abuses and on the verge of collapsing,” the report found. For Russia, this finding represents the latest chapter in Moscow’s age-old information warfare playbook, according to John Cohen, a former senior DHS official and current ABC News contributor.

“This is yet another indicator that Russia is using the combination of overt propaganda and covertly disseminated disinformation to sow discord across our populace, expand the cracks in our society, and undermine the credibility of the U.S. government,” Cohen said.

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“..go out and face your people, look them in the eye and try telling them that they are being controlled by the Russians through YouTube and Facebook. And I will sit back and watch ‘American exceptionalism’ in action.”

• Obama Retread Sees Moscow’s Hand in Protests (Giraldi)

How convenient is it to fall back on Russia which, together with the Chinese, is reputedly already reported to be working hard to subvert the November U.S. election. And what better way to do just that than to call on one of the empty-heads of the Barack Obama administration, whose foreign policy achievements included the destruction of a prosperous Libya and the killing of four American diplomats in Benghazi, the initiation of kinetic hostilities with Syria, the failure to achieve a reset with Russia and the assassinations of American citizens overseas without any due process. But Obama sure did talk nice and seem pleasant unlike the current occupant of the White House.

The predictable Wolf Blitzer had a recent interview with perhaps the emptiest head of all the empowered women who virtually ran the Obama White House. Susan Rice was U.N. Ambassador and later National Security Advisor under Barack Obama. Before that she was a Clinton appointee who served as Undersecretary of State for African Affairs. She is reportedly currently being considered as a possible running mate for Joe Biden as she has all the necessary qualifications being a woman and black. While Ambassador and National Security Advisor, Rice had the reputation of being extremely abrasive. She ran into trouble when she failed to be convincing in support of the Obama administration exculpatory narrative regarding what went wrong in Benghazi when the four Americans, to include the U.S. Ambassador, were killed.

In her interview with Blitzer, Rice said: “We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we’re all wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who’ve come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they’re probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I’m not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well. I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form.”

It should be noted that Rice, a devout Democrat apparatchik, produced no evidence whatsoever that the Russians were or have been involved in “fomenting” the reactions to the George Floyd demonstrations and riots beyond the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden all believe that Moscow is responsible for everything. Clinton in particular hopes that some day someone will actually believe her when she claims that she lost to Trump in 2016 due to Russia. Even Robert Mueller, he of the Russiagate Inquiry, could not come up with any real evidence suggesting that the relatively low intensity meddling in the election by the Kremlin had any real impact. Nor was there any suggestion that Moscow was actually colluding with the Trump campaign, nor with its appointees, to include National Security Advisor designate Michael Flynn.

[..] Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova accurately described the Rice performance as a “perfect example of barefaced propaganda.” She wrote on her Facebook page “Are you trying to play the Russia card again? You’ve been playing too long – come back to reality” instead of using “dirty methods of information manipulation” despite “having absolutely no facts to prove [the] allegations… go out and face your people, look them in the eye and try telling them that they are being controlled by the Russians through YouTube and Facebook. And I will sit back and watch ‘American exceptionalism’ in action.”

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Today at 9.30 am EDT. Court of Appeals hearing.

• Flynn’s Lawyers Say Judge ‘Exceeded His Power’ In Not Dismissing Case (JTN)

Lawyers for Michael Flynn argued in a brief filed Thursday that Judge Emmet Sullivan “exceeded his power” when he refused to dismiss a case per a Justice Department request, arguing that the judge is legally compelled to follow federal prosecutors’ desire to end prosecution against the former Trump national security adviser. The Justice Department in a surprise move last month announced it would be dismissing its case against Flynn, who had plead guilty to lying to FBI agents but later withdrew the plea. Federal officials in May claimed the FBI interview with Flynn had been immaterial to its investigation of him, as part of the federal Russia collusion probe, and that his statements in the 2017 meeting were thus legally irrelevant.


But Sullivan, who is overseeing Flynn’s case, refused to accept the Justice Department request, instead calling in ex-Judge John Gleeson to file an an opinion arguing in favor of keeping the case against Flynn. In their Thursday filing, Flynn’s lawyers slammed Sullivan, arguing that he is “not in the Executive branch and, being an Article III judge, has no authority to gin up his own case or controversy where none exists.” “The game is over and this Court should order the umpire to leave the field,” they wrote of the case, arguing that the ultimate authority for dismissing charges lies with prosecutors. Gleeson in his filing earlier this week argued that the court should consider Flynn’s withdrawal of his guilty plea to itself be perjury, and that Sullivan “should take Flynn’s perjury into account in sentencing him on the offense to which he has already admitted guilt.”

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I have no space for 85.

• Flynn Case: 85 Lies, Contradictions, Oddities, and Unusual Occurrences (ET)

The case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is inevitably heading toward its conclusion. While the presiding district judge, Emmet Sullivan, is trying to keep it going, there’s only so much he can do, chiefly because there’s nobody left to prosecute the case after the Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped it last month. In the latest developments, the District of Columbia appeals court set a hearing in the case for tomorrow (June 12), while the DOJ’s solicitor general himself, as well as five of his deputies, urged the court to order the lower-court judge to accept the case dismissal. “I cannot overstate how big of a deal this is,” commented appellate attorney John Reeves, former assistant Missouri attorney general, in a series of tweets on June 1. Personal involvement of the solicitor general “is highly unusual and rare,” he said.

“Unusual” seems a fitting euphemism for the Flynn case, which has been filled with contradictions, falsehoods, apparent blunders, extraordinary moves, and strange coincidences. The Epoch Times has so far counted 85 such instances. Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration and former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to one count of lying to FBI agents during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview. The FBI officially opened an investigation on Flynn on Aug. 16, 2016, based on a suspicion that he “may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security.”

What activity? The case was opened under a broader investigation into whether the Trump 2016 presidential campaign conspired with Russia to steal emails from the Democratic National Committee and release them through Wikileaks. Flynn was an adviser to the campaign at the time. By its own admission, the FBI had little reason to suspect the campaign. The bureau learned from the Australian government that its then-ambassador to the UK, Alexander Downer, spoke with Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who “suggested” that the campaign received “some kind of suggestion” that Russia could help it by anonymously releasing some information damaging to Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The FBI didn’t know what Papadopoulos actually said or what he was talking about. Officially, this information was used by the FBI to comb through its databases for information on people associated with the Trump campaign and open investigations on four individuals supposedly linked to Russia. Because Flynn’s paid speaking engagements in years past included some for Russian companies—one for Kaspersky Lab and one for RT television in Moscow—the FBI decided to open a counterintelligence investigation on the retired three-star general. But the FBI seemed to have trouble getting its story straight.

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