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Debt Rattle March 22 2024

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


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

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

Nap

 

 

AOC

 

 

Comer

 

 

J6

 

 

Benz Hunter

 

 

Belfort

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

CNN Mar A Lago

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Is he backpedalling?

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The Path to Victory for Trump (Hammer)

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

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

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

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

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

• The “Perversity” of Michael Cohen (Turley)

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

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

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

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

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

• Trump Fears Alzheimer’s – WaPo (RT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hot and empty air.

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

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

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

Varadkar

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

• Authorized Atrocities (Patrick Lawrence)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Yemen’s Indian Ocean Checkmate (Harb)

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

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

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

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

• Justice Department Considering Plea Deal for Assange (Antiwar)

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

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

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

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

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RFK Sr

 

 

Nail polish

 

 

 

 

Fish Stocking

 

 

Snake

 

 

Smart cow

 

 

Shampoo

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 16 2024

Mar 162024
 
 March 16, 2024  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


Edward Hopper The Circle Theater, New York 1936

 

• Fani Willis Told To Break Up With Nathan Wade Or Trump Case Stalls Out (ZH)
• Willis and the Ethical Option (Turley)
• Boeing Whistleblower: ‘If Anything Happens to Me, It’s Not Suicide’ (MN)
• EU Warns US About What Russian Victory In Ukraine Would Signify (RT)
• German Ruling Party’s Top Legislator Calls For End To Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• Macron Wants Crimea Seized From Russia (RT)
• Western Troops In Ukraine: How A Big Lie Could Lead To The Biggest War (Amar)
• The German-American Strategic Depth Clown Show (Pepe Escobar)
• German Taurus Attack Plan Was Leaked By The US Air Force (Helmer)
• Israeli Portrayal of Arabs Akin To Nazi Portrayal of Russians (Sp.)
• Netanyahu Is Criminally Insane! A Serial Killer of Captive Children! (GR)
• Israeli Causes ‘Complete Psychological Destruction’ of Gaza Children (CD)
• Netanyahu Approves Rafah Operation Plan (RT)
• Consequences Minus Truth (Kunstler)
• Biden Team Mocked After They Stop Reporters From Communicating With POTUS (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lara
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768684033049862282

 

 

Nap Sachs


https://twitter.com/i/status/1768646268467708219

 

 

Clinton Putin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768479658415362142

 

 

RFK Jr

 

 

 

 

Disturbing

 

 

Epidemic of Fraud

 

 

 

 

Wade is gone. But the lies are not. Or the White House.

• Fani Willis Told To Break Up With Nathan Wade Or Trump Case Stalls Out (ZH)

Update (1615ET): Hours after the judge in Trump’s Georgia election interference case issued an ultimatum to DA Fani Willis, her (ex) lover Nathan Wade has quit the case. As they say, the show must go on…

* * *
An Atlanta judge, who donated to Fani Willis when she was running for office, ruled on Friday that the highly conflicted Fulton County DA simply has to break up with her lover, Nathan Wade, who she hired to the tune of $600,000 to work on the Trump election interference case. If Willis dumps Wade the case can continue, according to Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton Superior Court, who also had the option of removing Willis over the giant conflict of interest which included lavish vacations with Wade that were effectively at the taxpayer’s expense. According to McAfee, while he found the “appearance of impropriety,” no “disqualification of a constitutional officer necessary when a less drastic and sufficiently remedial option is available,” adding “that the prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the State selects one of two options.” Either “the District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office,” or “Wade can withdraw.”

McAfee also found that there was no “actual conflict” brought about due to the relationship, a finding that would have required him to disqualify Willis. “This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment or the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing. Rather, it is the undersigned’s opinion that Georgia law does not permit the finding of an actual conflict for simply making bad choices — even repeatedly — and it is the trial court’s duty to confine itself to the relevant issues and applicable law properly brought before it.” “Without sufficient evidence that the District Attorney acquired a personal stake in the prosecution, or that her financial arrangements had any impact on the case, the Defendants’ claims of an actual conflict must be denied,” he wrote. “As the case moves forward, reasonable members of the public could easily be left to wonder whether the financial exchanges have continued resulting in some form of benefit to the District Attorney, or even whether the romantic relationship has resumed.”

Willis and Wade – whose divorce from his wife has yet to be finalized, admitted to the affair, but were caught lying about when it started. While the decision is a blow to Trump and his co-defendants, this leaves Willis tainted by weeks of embarrassing hearings and national headlines that could influence the views of a jury. Trump and his co-defendants could also appeal McAfee’s ruling, as could Willis, which would further delay the case into the election – leaving the matter unresolved (and of course, leaving the question of Trump’s guilt an open question that the media would push daily during his 2nd term, should he win in November). McAfee’s decision comes two days after he quashed six charges in the case, three of which directly applied to Trump.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1768662185939448162

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“The defense removed the lead special prosecutor while leaving Willis carrying more baggage than Amtrak..”

• Willis and the Ethical Option (Turley)

Many commentators reviewing the decision of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to disqualify lead Special Counsel Nathan Wade but not Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis as “Solomonic” or “splitting the baby” in the Trump prosecution. Indeed, it was similar in all but one respect. The baby at issue before King Solomon survived. That whole point of the story was not to kill the baby but to see which of the two women loved the baby more. In the story from 1 Kings 3:16–28, two mothers claim the male child who Solomon declares that each can get one half. One mother immediately accepts while the second woman begs him to just give the first woman the child and not to kill him. Solomon immediately gives the second woman the child as clearly the mother who loves the baby. But if either Wade or Willis truly loved “their baby” — the case against Trump — they would have removed themselves weeks ago. Their personal controversies have derailed the case and mired the prosecution in scandal.

Ethically, this should not have been a difficult question. They should have stepped aside. That conclusion is more than evident in Judge McAfee’s decision, which shreds their claims on the stand and outside of the courthouse. The court describes Willis’s controversial speech at a church as “’playing the race card . . . to cast racial aspersions at an indicted Defendant’s decision to file this pretrial motion.” He hammers Willis for her lack of professional judgment and stresses, with perhaps an unintentional pun, that “providing this type of public comment creates dangerous waters for the District Attorney to wade further into.” Judge McAfee also indicates that the testimony of Wade failed to resolve questions of filing false statements to a prior court and that his testimony on when the relationship began stood contradicted. McAfee has done a fair job throughout the case. Moreover, he makes a valid point when he notes that this evidence does not establish a strong basis for claiming that the case was brought or pursued due to this relationship or possible financial gain.

Indeed, the purpose of this case was not personal but political. While the indictments contain some valid criminal charges, they are largely minor offenses like unlawful access to voting areas. The overall racketeering claim used to ensnarl Trump is forced and weak. The problem is that the Court casts doubt on Wade’s testimony on the relationship, but ignores that Willis effectively ratified those claims in her own testimony. Willis and Wade are both prosecuting people for the very same conduct of filing false statements with courts and making false statements. The two lawyers testified in tandem but only one was disqualified. McAfee is no Solomon in this decision. He splits the accused to avoid making the harder decision. If he disqualified Willis, he would have likely have had to disqualify her entire office. That would throw the entire case (and certainly the pre-election schedule) into doubt. So he left her with the choice:

“The prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the State selects one of two options. The District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office, and refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for reassignment. Alternatively, SADA Wade can withdraw, allowing the District Attorney, the Defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case.” He is leaving Wade with no choice at all beyond an appeal. However, Willis will be allowed to place her own interests as the overriding purpose of the prosecution. In some ways, it is a result that should please no one other than Donald Trump. The defense removed the lead special prosecutor while leaving Willis carrying more baggage than Amtrak. It does not, however, serve the interests of justice. Willis will now prosecute defendants for false statements as her own questionable testimony is likely to be investigated by the state and the bar.

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Just yesterday, another panel blew off a plane mid air.

• Boeing Whistleblower: ‘If Anything Happens to Me, It’s Not Suicide’ (MN)

The Boeing whistleblower who supposedly killed himself reportedly told a close family friend not to believe it if it was announced he had committed suicide. 62-year-old John Barnett died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Charleston County coroner’s office in South Carolina said earlier this week. Barnett had previously raised concerns about the company’s production issues having worked for the company for 32 years before leaving in 2017. According to his attorneys, Barnett had “exposed very serious safety problems with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and was retaliated against and subjected to a hostile work environment” and was in the middle of a legal deposition against Boeing. “He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on. We didn’t see any indication he would take his own life. No one can believe it,” said the attorneys.

It now turns out Barnett was telling close friends not to believe it if he supposedly committed suicide. After family friend Jennifer asked Barnett if he was concerned for his safety, the former quality manager was emphatic. “Aren’t you scared?” asked Jennifer. “And he said, ‘No, I ain’t scared, but if anything happens to me, it’s not suicide.’” “I know that he did not commit suicide. There’s no way. He loved life too much. He loved his family too much. He loved his brothers too much to put them through what they’re going through right now,” she added. According to the family friend, somebody, presumably representing Boeing, “didn’t like what he had to say” and wanted to “shut him up” without it coming back to anyone. “That’s why they made it look like a suicide,” Jennifer said, who last saw the whistleblower in late February. Barnett’s attorneys said they’re still prepared to go forward with the case in June.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1768517997285482626

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“For us it is a matter of life and death; for [the US] it’s a matter of improving their tactical position [globally and in Europe]..”

• EU Warns US About What Russian Victory In Ukraine Would Signify (RT)

A Ukrainian loss to Russia would hurt Washington’s credibility as a security provider, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell warned during a trip to America. Kiev can’t wait for the presidential election in the US to get more aid, he added. Borrell spoke to the press in Washington on Thursday, after meeting senior US officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He said his message was that Ukraine badly needed the additional assistance which was currently blocked in the US House. “The next months will be decisive. Many analysts expect a major Russian offensive this summer and Ukraine cannot wait until the result of the next US elections,” Brussels’ top diplomat said.

A Russian victory in the conflict “will have enormous repercussions for America and for the system of alliances built around the US and Europe,” he added. Should that happen, “no country could be sure anymore” that Washington would “come to help any ally” under attack. Since Ukraine is not a NATO member, the US is not bound by any obligation to defend it. US President Joe Biden has pledged to help it fight Russia for “as long as it takes” to prevail. Last year, Ukrainian forces attempted to launch a major counteroffensive using Western-donated heavy weaponry, but failed to score any significant territorial gains.

Amid Kiev’s battlefield failures, the issue of continued aid has become embroiled in US partisan politics. The Republican-controlled House has blocked Biden’s request for an additional $60 billion in assistance, with speaker Mike Johnson arguing that the White House was unable to present a convincing strategy for achieving victory in Ukraine. Borrell pledged the EU’s continued military support for Kiev, but said the US needed to pull its weight too. Moscow perceives the Ukraine conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia and has stated that it is risking far more than the West. “For us it is a matter of life and death; for [the US] it’s a matter of improving their tactical position [globally and in Europe],” President Vladimir Putin reiterated in an interview this week.

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“Isn’t it about time we talked not only about how one wages a war, but also thought about how one can freeze and later also end a war.”

• German Ruling Party’s Top Legislator Calls For End To Ukraine Conflict (RT)

It is about time Germany shifted its deliberations toward winding down, freezing and ending the Ukraine conflict, the head of the ruling Social Democratic Party in the German parliament has argued. Rolf Mutzenich also defended Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s staunch refusal to provide log-range Taurus missiles to Kiev. Russia has repeatedly stated that it is open to peace negotiations in principle. Earlier this week, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was “ready for serious negotiations” that would be based on today’s “realities” and include “security guarantees for the Russian Federation.” Speaking in the Bundestag on Thursday after lawmakers voted against arming Ukraine with Taurus rockets, Mutzenich said: “Isn’t it about time we talked not only about how one wages a war, but also thought about how one can freeze and later also end a war.”

He also criticized those in the ruling ‘traffic light’ coalition, which also encompasses the Green and Free Democratic parties, who oppose Chancellor Scholz’s stance on potential Taurus missile deliveries. Mutzenich charged that “all sense of measure is gone within the coalition.” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who called on her government on Monday to “intensively consider” the potential delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, shook her head and was visibly displeased when she heard these statements, local media have reported. The opposition Christian Democratic Party rebuked the head of the SPD bloc in parliament, with one lawmaker dismissing the suggestion of freezing the conflict as “unbelievable.” Andrey Melnik, who served as Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin between 2015 and late 2022, also chimed in.

The diplomat, known for his controversial remarks and the use of obscene language when addressing German officials, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that he has “always said: this guy was and remains the most obnoxious German politician. Forever and ever,” referring to Mutzenich. Addressing lawmakers on Wednesday, Chancellor Scholz insisted that the delivery of Taurus missiles was “a line that I don’t want to cross as chancellor.” He explained that such a shipment would inevitably require the presence of German military personnel on Ukrainian soil – a development that is “out of the question.” While Kiev has been asking Berlin to supply the rockets for months, German authorities have stressed that the weapon’s long range would enable it to strike targets deep inside Russia, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, potentially exacerbating the conflict.

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WWIII.

• Macron Wants Crimea Seized From Russia (RT)

Ukraine must regain control over all the territories it once held, including Russia’s Crimean Peninsula, French President Emmanuel Macron has said. Otherwise, no “lasting peace” will be possible, he claimed. The president made the remarks on Thursday in an interview with broadcasters TF2 and France 2, bluntly describing Russia as France’s “adversary.” At the same time, he insisted that Paris has not been “waging war on Russia” but merely “supporting” Kiev in the conflict. “Certainly, today, Russia is an adversary. The Kremlin regime is an adversary,” Macron stated. “We are doing everything so that it can put Russia in check because, I will tell you very simply, there is no lasting peace if there is no sovereignty, a return to the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine, including Crimea.”

The latest remarks by the French president got a cold reception in Russia, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating that Macron apparently “won’t mind increasing the degree of his involvement” in Russia-Ukraine hostilities. “Yes, it’s obvious that Russia is an adversary of France because France is already involved in the war in Ukraine; it is indirectly taking part in this war,” Peskov told reporters. The French president has produced increasingly belligerent statements lately, standing by the remarks he made late in February, that a potential deployment of NATO troops into Ukraine cannot be “excluded.” The remarks prompted a wave of denial from fellow members of the US-led bloc. In this latest interview, Macron refused to elaborate on the matter, claiming he wanted to maintain “strategic ambiguity” and that he has “reasons not to be precise.”

Macron’s remarks echo the position repeatedly voiced by the top Ukrainian leadership, which proclaimed the goal of seizing from Russia all the territories that ended up being held by Kiev following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Crimea broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, promptly rejoining Russia after a peninsula-wide referendum. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics emerged this year as well, with the botched attempt of Kiev’s new authorities to suppress them by force resulting in years-long conflict in then-Ukrainian Donbass. The two republics, as well as the formerly Ukrainian Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, were incorporated into Russia in late 2022 after the idea was overwhelmingly backed by locals in referendums separately held in each territory. Moscow has repeatedly signaled that its sovereignty over Crimea and any other Russian territories is not a subject to negotiation with anyone.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1768560179971285313

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“..the fall now is only a matter of time – and not much time at that..”

• Western Troops In Ukraine: How A Big Lie Could Lead To The Biggest War (Amar)

The current situation in the conflict between Ukraine – serving (while being demolished) as a proxy for the West – and Russia, can be sketched in three broad strokes. First, Russia now clearly has the upper hand on the battlefield and could potentially accelerate its recent advances to achieve an overall military victory soon. The West is being compelled to recognize this fact: as Foreign Affairs put it, in an article titled “Time is Running Out in Ukraine,” Kiev and its Western supporters “are at a critical decision point and face a fundamental question: How can further Russian advances… be stopped, and then reversed?” Just disregard the bit of wishful thinking thrown in at the end to sweeten the bitter pill of reality. The key point is the acknowledgment that it is crunch time for the West and Ukraine – in a bad way.

Second, notwithstanding the above, Ukraine is not yet ready to ask for negotiations to end the war on terms acceptable to Russia, which would be less than easy for Kiev. (Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, reiterated in an important recent interview that Moscow remains principally open to talks, not on the basis of “wishful thinking” but, instead, proceeding from the realities “on the ground.”) The Kiev regime’s inflexibility is little wonder. Since he jettisoned a virtually complete – and favorable – peace deal in the spring of 2022, President Vladimir Zelensky has gambled everything on an always improbable victory. For him personally, as well as his core team (at least), there is no way to survive – politically or physically – the catastrophic defeat they have brought on their country by leasing it out as a pawn to the Washington neocon strategy.

The Pope, despite the phony brouhaha he triggered in Kiev and the West, was right: a responsible Ukrainian leadership ought to negotiate. But that’s not the leadership Ukraine has. Not yet at least. Third, the West’s strategy is getting harder to decipher because, in essence, the West cannot figure out how to adjust to the failure of its initial plans for this war. Russia has not been isolated; its military has become stronger, not weaker – and the same is true of its economy, including its arms industry. And last but not least, the Russian political system’s popular legitimacy and effective control has neither collapsed nor even frayed. As, again, even Foreign Affairs admits, “Putin would likely win a fair election in 2024.” That’s more than could be said for, say, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Olaf Scholz, or Emmanuel Macron (as for Zelensky, he has simply canceled the election).

In other words, the West is facing not only Ukraine’s probable defeat, but also its own strategic failure. The situation, while not a direct military rout (as in Afghanistan in 2021) amounts to a severe political setback. In fact, this looming Western failure is a historic debacle in the making. Unlike with Afghanistan, the West will not be able to simply walk away from the mess it has made in Ukraine. This time, the geopolitical blowback will be fierce and the costs very high. Instead of isolating Russia, the West has isolated itself, and by losing, it will show itself weakened. It is one thing to have to finally, belatedly accepted that the deceptive “unipolar” moment of the 1990s has been over for a long time. It is much worse to gratuitously enter the new multipolar order with a stunning, avoidable self-demotion. Yet that is what the EU/NATO-West has managed to fabricate from its needless over-extension in Ukraine. Hubris there has been galore, the fall now is only a matter of time – and not much time at that.

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“..Liver Sausage Chancellor Scholz and his Totalenkrieg Minister Pistorius learned about the Taurus plan no less than four months later..”

• The German-American Strategic Depth Clown Show (Pepe Escobar)

The Four Stooges saga of Bundeswehr officers plotting to blow up the Kerch bridge in Crimea with Taurus missiles and getting away with it is a gift that keeps on giving. President Putin, in his comprehensive interview to Dmitry Kiselev for Russia 1/RIA Novosti, did not fail to address it: “They are fantasizing, encouraging themselves, first of all. Secondly, they are trying to intimidate us. As for the Federal Republic of Germany, there are constitutional problems there. They correctly say: if these Taurus hit that part of the Crimean Bridge, which, of course, even according to their concepts, is Russian territory, this is a violation of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany.” Yet it gets curioser and curioser. When the transcript of the Taurus leak was published by RT, everyone was able to hear Brigadier General Frank Gräfe – head of operations of the German Air Force – speaking with Lieutenant Colonel Fenske from the German Space Command Air Operations on the plan to deploy Taurus systems in Ukraine.

A key point is that during the plotting, these two mention that plans were already discussed “four months ago” with “Schneider”, the successor of “Wilsbach”. Well, these are German names, of course. Thus it did not dawn on anyone that (Kevin) Schneider and (Kenneth) Wilsbach could instead be… Americans. Yet that did raise the eyebrows of German investigative journalist Dirk Pohlmann – who I had the pleasure to meet in Berlin years ago – and his fellow researcher Tobias Augenbraun. They found out that the German-sounding names did identify Americans. Not only that: none less than the former and the current Commanders of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces. The Four (actually Six) Stooges element gets an extra boost when it is established that Liver Sausage Chancellor Scholz and his Totalenkrieg Minister Pistorius learned about the Taurus plan no less than four months later.

So here apparently we have a clear cut case of top German military officers taking direct orders regarding an attack on Crimea – part of the Russian Federation – directly from American officers in the Pacific Air Forces. That in itself opens the dossier to a large spectrum ranging from national treason (against Germany) to casus belli (from the point of view of Russia). Of course none of that is being discussed on German mainstream media. After all, the only thing that seems to disturb Brigadier General Gräfe is that German media may start seriously prying on the Bundeswehr’s Multiple Stooges methods. The only ones who actually did proper investigation were Pohlmann and Augenbaun. It would be too much to expect from German media of the “Bild” type to analyze what would be the Russian response to the Multiple Stooge shenanigans against Crimea: a devastating retaliation against Berlin assets.

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And the story keeps on giving…

• German Taurus Attack Plan Was Leaked By The US Air Force (Helmer)

A little bird has materialized to sing that the record of the German generals discussing their plan to attack Russian targets with the Taurus missile was intercepted and leaked to the Russians by the Americans.A big bird, actually. The telephone conference of German Luftwaffe chief General Ingo Gerhartz (lead image, left), one of his staff generals, and two Luftwaffe lieutenant-colonels on February 19 was listened to by US signals intelligence after the first meeting the Germans had with a new regional US Air Force (USAF) commander, General Kevin Schneider; Schneider took command of the USAF Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) on February 9 after two and a half years in a senior staff post at the Pentagon under General Charles Brown Jr. Brown was promoted from USAF chief to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on October 1, 2023. When Schneider left Brown’s staff, he took a promotion from lieutenant general to four-star general.

Schneider has never flown or staffed USAF operations against Russia. He was in Singapore for the bi-annual Singapore Air Show to demonstrate what the USAF press office called “the opportunity to sharpen ties with Singapore, demonstrate flexible aircraft capability, enable engagement with foreign partners, and expand power projection.” His agenda of meetings with other country airforce officers is classified. Intelligence coverage of the airshow proceedings by the US, Russia, and China was especially intense because of the participation in the show of aircraft from the warfighting states. Russia, which has participated actively in past Singapore airshows, did not participate officially this time. The allegation that the Gerhartz teleconference was intercepted by the Russians originated from the Germans and British, and has been amplified in US and NATO media. The first Russian report that it was US intelligence which picked up the call and then leaked it, appeared in Moscow on March 4.

What has now surfaced is the audio record and transcript of the first minutes of the teleconference, before Gerhartz came on the line. In these five minutes, much more has been revealed by the three German officers than has been published by RT in Moscow on March 1, when the audio record and transcript began with Gerhartz’s appearance. [..] The publication date is March 1. The voices recorded at the beginning are those of Captain Hergang, who introduced and managed the teleconference from Germany; Luftwaffe Brigadier General Frank Graefe, speaking in his Singapore hotel room and describing what he could see out his hotel window; Luftwaffe Lieutenant Colonel Udo Fenske and Lieutenant Colonel Sebastian Florstedt, who are speaking from Germany. A report and transcript in German, auto-translated into English, was published by Tobias Augenbraun in Dirk Pohlmann’s internet platform Free21 on March 8.

The interpretation of the additional evidence by Augenbraun and Pohlmann is that “apparently, the plans were already presented to [USAF] General [Kevin] Wilsbach in October 2023, which are also the subject of further discussion… This is astonishing for the following reason: All the rest of the conversation is about how to bring Taurus closer to the Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius… How can it be that top German generals have already presented these plans to a US general, a full 4 months… before talking about how to discuss these plans with Boris Pistorius (Minister of Defense). Something seems to have gone badly wrong with the order here. Is it normal to first talk to generals from other countries before initiating your own defense minister? Who is in charge in Germany? Is the military out of control?”

Augenbraun and Pohlmann believe the German operational plan discussed with Wilsbach last October was the Gerhartz missile attack on Russia, and that the German Defense Ministry and the Chancellery were unaware of it at the time. This interpretation has been amplified in a report by a Brazilian who claims “here apparently we have a clear cut case of top German military officers taking direct orders regarding an attack on Crimea – part of the Russian Federation – directly from American officers in the Pacific Air Forces.”

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“The Jews experienced pogroms and real persecution and atrocities by the Nazis, but [Israel is] doing the same thing now, and they can’t see that.”

• Israeli Portrayal of Arabs Akin To Nazi Portrayal of Russians (Sp.)

Days after the Hamas surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israeli Defense Minister said they were fighting “human animals” and called for a “complete siege” on the Gaza strip. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and will act accordingly,” he said. The language Israeli officials are using to describe Palestinians and other Arab peoples seems ripped out of the Nazi propaganda playbook, journalist and managing editor of Covert Action Magazine Jeremy Kuzmarov told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Thursday. “The Jews experienced pogroms and real persecution and atrocities by the Nazis, but [Israel is] doing the same thing now, and they can’t see that. They’re using dehumanizing language. That’s the language of genocides… that’s what I heard out of Israeli leaders,” Kuzmarov asserted.

“How [Nazis] portrayed the Russians when they invaded Russia… as these Salvs, subhuman animals. That’s how they could carry out these horrific atrocities on the eastern front… The exact quote [from Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant] ‘human animals’ could have come from a Nazi official talking about the Russians.” The reason this can go on while Israel still receives significant, though decreasing, support from the US population comes from a lack of historical knowledge, Kuzmarov argued. “We see this phenomenon in the US. The media is so biased and the education system conditions people to think in certain ways. In the Israeli context, they are cut off from the true nature of history. They view Israel as this proud nation that had to fight off all these hostile forces. They don’t consider the history of the Nakba, or the Six-Day War,” Kuzmarov explained, comparing it to the conflict in Ukraine.

“Americans were never told the backstory of how the US interfered in Ukraine… they just thought “oh, Putin is a madman. He woke up one day to take over Ukraine’ and they didn’t have any knowledge that the CIA set up bases in Ukraine for years and they were provoking the Russians and attacking the people of eastern Ukraine.” During the conversation, show host Ted Rall noted the breaking news that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a statement saying that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “lost his way” and called for a new leadership in Israel. “He’s been a staunch supporter of military aid to Israel as well as Ukraine, so it’s coming a bit late in the game for him,” Kuzmarov recalled. “On the other hand, it is pretty significant that somebody in his position would make those kinds of statements. It goes to show [that] Netanyahu has totally lost. Even his own allies are turning against him because he’s just gone way too far.”

But Schumer’s words, as with US President Joe Biden’s recent comments distancing himself from Netanyahu, must be backed up with action to be taken seriously, Kuzmarov said. “We have Democratic Party politicians who may be conscious of public opinion [with] an election coming up in November,” he began. “So, they’re making certain public statements but we’ve never seen any overtures towards actually cutting off that money.” Kuzmarov thinks that is unlikely because US “foreign policy elites” depend on Israel to act as an American proxy in the region. “Schumer and Biden and the corporate Democrats are pro-imperialists and committed to Americans expanding or entrenching American power in the Middle East and accessing Middle Eastern oil. Whatever public statements they make, I don’t know that they’ll actually carry out any concrete action against Israel. If they did, that would be amazing to see, but my prediction is that they won’t.”

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“..there are more than a few Israelis, even rabbis, who are led to believe genocide can be God’s will..”

• Netanyahu Is Criminally Insane! A Serial Killer of Captive Children! (GR)

Benjamin Netanyahu, as the Prime Minister of State of Israel, has commanded the murder, maiming and starving to death 31,000 captive Palestinians under Israel’s Illegal Military Occupation by his four months long orders for Israel’s air forces to continuously bomb and air strike Israel’s illegally military occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza, and by his orders blocking food, water, electricity, fuel and medicine from entering Gaza. Jan 30th Satellite data analysis showed the extent of the destruction. The analysis suggests between 144,000 and 175,000 buildings across the whole Gaza Strip had been destroyed or damaged already six weeks before this writing. That was already between 50% and 61% of Gaza’s buildings. As of March 5th, 70% of homes in Gaza are thought to be destroyed. Soon after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, Israel (read Netanyahu) blocked entry of all food, water, fuel, medicine and other supplies into Gaza.

Under U.S. pressure, Netanyahu began to allow a trickle of aid trucks to enter from Egypt at the Rafah crossing, and in December opened one crossing from Israel into southern Gaza. Only someone criminally insane would starve children to death — if we hear of someone starving a child, don’t we call the police? Where is everyone? Especially in the global south where murderous colonialism is remembered? At this writing a total of 13,430 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli airstrikes and ground operations ordered by criminally insane Prime Minister Netanyahu since Oct. 7. What is more precious than the life of a child and why hasn’t Netanyahu been stopped taking already 13,500 children’s lives?

It noted that 8,900 women were killed over the course of 150 days, adding that 7,000 people, 70% of whom are women and children, are still under the rubble or missing. Only a racist madman would continue ordering thousands the deaths of thousands of women along with their children. The Gaza media office said that 364 health personnel and 132 journalists also lost their lives during the period. So it’s kill, kill everyone! And nobody says much about it. Warning against a growing famine in Gaza, the Gaza Media Office said Israeli military has prevented the entry of food and aid supplies and has even targeted aid vehicles trying to reach the region, causing the deaths of dozens of people looking for food for their families.[4]

Under International Humanitarian Law, “the occupying power must ensure the humane treatment of the population and provide for their basic needs, including food and medical care.” Netanyahu has had the Israeli military push 85% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN. Israel not Netanyahu stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Nations cannot be prosecuted. Individual perpetrators of crimes must be prosecuted. “Whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.” [Article IV Convention on Genocide.] That is an obligation of international customary law and therefore, binding on all States, whether or not they have ratified the Genocide Convention. Article II reads, “Genocide means acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Unfortunately, there are more than a few Israelis, even rabbis, who are led to believe genocide can be God’s will. Deuteronomy 2:16: “You must not let any living thing survive among the cities of these people the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.” Genesis 15:18: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.” 1 Samuel 15:3: “… and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling” [Standard Bible]

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“..she “wouldn’t even say that their mental health has deteriorated—it’s been obliterated..”

• Israeli Causes ‘Complete Psychological Destruction’ of Gaza Children (CD)

In addition to killing, maiming, and forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has wrought tremendous psychological damage upon kids in the embattled strip, as detailed by a Save the Children report published Tuesday. The charity’s report—entitled Trapped and Scarred: The Compounding Mental Harm Inflicted on Palestinian Children in Gaza—examines how “five months of violence, displacement, starvation, and disease on top of nearly 17 years of a blockade have caused relentless mental harm to children in Gaza.” Jason Lee, Save the Children’s country director for the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement that “it is unacceptable that any child should contend with the horrors that those in Gaza have lived through. While dodging bombs and bullets, fleeing through streets littered with debris and corpses, being forced to sleep in the open air, and going without the basic food and clean water they need to survive, children in Gaza are going through a period of mass-scale shock and grief.”

“Children in Gaza were already living with unimaginable distress following 16 years of blockade and successive escalations in violence,” Lee added. “This war and the physical and mental scars it is leaving on children is further eroding their resilience.” One mother of four children aged 7-14 told Save the Children that she “wouldn’t even say that their mental health has deteriorated—it’s been obliterated. Complete psychological destruction.” Another Gaza mother said: “Our children have already lived through different wars. They already lacked resilience and now it’s very difficult to cope. The children are scared, angry, and can’t stop crying. Even many adults do the same. This is too much for adults to cope with, let alone children.” Waseem, a father, said that “children here have seen everything. They’ve seen the bombs, the deaths, the bodies—we can’t pretend to them anymore. Now they understand and have seen everything. Now, my son can even tell what types of explosives are falling—he can hear the difference.”

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, Gaza is “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child,” as more than 13,000 Palestinian minors have been killed, and many thousands more wounded, by Israeli attacks and hundreds of thousands of children are among the approximately 2 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people who have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment and invasion. Palestinian youth who survive Israel’s bombs and bullets face rampant disease and hunger that’s now killing not only infants and children but also teens and elderly adults as Israeli soldiers and civilians alike continue to block lifesaving aid from entering Gaza. U.N. experts say Israel’s forced starvation of Gazans is a genocidal act of the kind Israel was ordered to prevent in the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) January 26 preliminary ruling in response to South African-led allegations of Israeli genocide.

Many surviving Palestinian children have lost one or both parents. Some have lost entire families. A new acronym has even been coined to describe some of these orphans: WCNSF, or “wounded child, no surviving family.” Around 1,000 of those wounds required the amputation of one or more of a child’s limbs. Due to a lack of medication caused by Israel’s siege, many little arms and legs have been sawed off without anesthesia. Screams and prayers fill the air of makeshift operating rooms, as Israel’s relentless onslaught has obliterated Gaza’s hospitals, clinics, and healthcare infrastructure. Sometimes, even survivor stories have tragic endings, as in the case of Dunia Abu Mohsen, a 12-year-old who first lost one of her legs, her parents, and two siblings in an Israeli airstrike, and then her life when an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank fired a shell at the hospital in which she was recovering. Or 2-year-old Kareem Abu Zaid, who survived three different Israeli airstrikes that killed close relatives including his mother and sister before he was killed in a fourth IDF strike.

Read more …

More children.

• Netanyahu Approves Rafah Operation Plan (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the latest truce and prisoner-exchange proposal by Hamas and has approved an IDF plan to launch an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Israeli media reported on Friday. ”The IDF is prepared for the operation and to evacuate the [civilian] population,” the PM’s office said in a statement, as cited by the Times of Israel. Earlier in the day, Hamas announced on social media that it had presented its “vision” of a prisoner swap with Israel to Qatari and Egyptian mediators and was looking towards a ceasefire agreement which would involve the withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces from Gaza. As reported by Reuters, which has seen the proposal, the Palestinian militants proposed the release of Israeli women, including female soldiers, children, the elderly and ill hostages, in exchange for Israel freeing between 700 and 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Once the prisoner exchange is complete, Hamas said it would be ready to negotiate a date for a permanent ceasefire.

The Jewish state, however, dismissed the proposal and accused Hamas of making “unrealistic demands. On Thursday, Netanyahu also reiterated Israel’s determination to complete its mission of “eliminating” Hamas. Israel’s decision to proceed with a ground incursion into Rafah comes after repeated warnings from the international community, including the US and Egypt, not to enter the city where some 1.5 million Palestinians are currently sheltering. After Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israeli settlements last October 7, which saw 1,100 people killed and 250 taken hostage, Israel has been conducting a relentless siege on Gaza. According to the latest information from Palestinian health authorities, at least 31,341 people have been killed and 73,134 others injured in Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in the enclave over the past half a year.

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“People crave trust in others, because God is found there.” — Dom de Bailleul

• Consequences Minus Truth (Kunstler)

The rewards of civilization have come to seem rather trashy in these bleak days of late empire; so, why even bother pretending to be civilized? This appears to be the ethos driving our politics and culture now. But driving us where? Why, to a spectacular sort of crack-up, and at warp speed, compared to the more leisurely breakdown of past societies that arrived at a similar inflection point where Murphy’s Law replaced the rule of law. The US Military Academy at West point decided to “upgrade” its mission statement this week by deleting the phrase Duty, Honor, Country that summarized its essential moral orientation. They replaced it with an oblique reference to “Army Values,” without spelling out what these values are, exactly, which could range from “embrace the suck” to “charlie foxtrot” to “FUBAR” — all neatly applicable to our country’s current state of perplexity and dread.

Are you feeling more confident that the US military can competently defend our country? Probably more like the opposite, because the manipulation of language is being used deliberately to turn our country inside-out and upside-down. At this point we probably could not successfully pacify a Caribbean island if we had to, and you’ve got to wonder what might happen if we have to contend with countless hostile subversive cadres who have slipped across the border with the estimated nine-million others ushered in by the government’s welcome wagon.

Momentous events await. This Monday, the Supreme Court will entertain oral arguments on the case Missouri, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al. The integrity of the First Amendment hinges on the decision. Do we have freedom of speech as set forth in the Constitution? Or is it conditional on how government officials feel about some set of circumstances? At issue specifically is the government’s conduct in coercing social media companies to censor opinion in order to suppress so-called “vaccine hesitancy” and to manipulate public debate in the 2020 election. Government lawyers have argued that they were merely “communicating” with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others about “public health disinformation and election conspiracies.”

You can reasonably suppose that this was our government’s effort to disable the truth, especially as it conflicted with its own policy and activities — from supporting BLM riots to enabling election fraud to mandating dubious vaccines. Former employees of the FBI and the CIA were directly implanted in social media companies to oversee the carrying-out of censorship orders from their old headquarters. The former general counsel (top lawyer) for the FBI, James Baker, slid unnoticed into the general counsel seat at Twitter until Elon Musk bought the company late in 2022 and flushed him out. The so-called Twitter Files uncovered by indy reporters Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and others, produced reams of emails from FBI officials nagging Twitter execs to de-platform people and bury their dissent. You can be sure these were threats, not mere suggestions.

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“..He’s praying to god, jeebus and all the saints that Joe doesn’t malfunction..”

• Biden Team Mocked After They Stop Reporters From Communicating With POTUS (Sp.)

US voters have repeatedly expressed doubt about Joe Biden’s physical and mental competence to perform his duties, especially in light of the upcoming presidential election in the country. Twitter users have lashed out a “horrible incident”, in which US President Joe Biden’s press office staff quickly removed the press when POTUS said he would take questions at a campaign event in Saginaw, Michigan. “They not even trying to hide it anymore that he can only speak when he has a script in front of him,” one user wrote in a post. Another user pointed out that the 46th US president “looked totally lost and beyond feeble in Michigan” and that “his handlers knew they had to get people away ASAP.” “All you need to do is look at Blinken’s face when Joe speaks anywhere near a camera. That face says it all. He’s praying to god, jeebus and all the saints that Joe doesn’t malfunction. Less stressful to just shut him off from the press,” one more web surfer noted, referring to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Other users wrote that Biden’s team is “afraid to let the man talk as they should be” and that they “already know anytime Biden speaks it’s going to be bad.” At Biden’s campaign stop in Michigan, the US president visited a Victorian mansion owned by members of the Saginaw City Council and Saginaw Public Schools Board of Education. POTUS stood on the porch at the mansion with his back to reporters and could be heard saying, “Can I take a couple questions?” However, members of Biden’s team immediately started raising their arms and walking to journalists, loudly repeating, “Thank you, press, back to the cars.” The incident comes as the 81-year-old Biden faces serious questions about his age and mental acuity as he continues his campaign. The latest NBC News national poll showed that at least three-quarters of voters, including half of Democrats, admit that they have concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health, which could prevent him from running.

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Cats

 

 

Reindeer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768648115421409515

 

 

Liquor

 

 

Hugs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768683237864292821

 

 

Arctic fox

 

 

Steller’s sea eagle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768577126528094523

 

 

Baby rhino

 

 

Octopus

 

 

Sardines

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 24 2021

Jun 242021
 
 June 24, 2021  Posted by at 8:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Edward Hopper Rooms by the sea 1951

 

• The Jabs Must Be BANNED (Denninger)
• Fully Vaccinated Israelis Exposed To “Delta” May Be Forced To Quarantine (ZH)
• Israel Urges Parents To Vaccinate Kids Ages 12-15 (JPost)
• WHO Official: Mask Mandates, Social Distancing Must Continue Indefinitely (SN)
• Optimizing Decision-Making Processes in Times of COVID-19 (FIP)
• More Than 2m Adults In England Have Had Long Covid For Over 12 Weeks (G.)
• England Set to Drop Face Mask Rules After Huge Economic Impact Revealed (SN)
• Pursuing Truth In Covid Drug Treatment Amid A Censored Media Landscape (Hecker)
• Hillary Clinton Privately Warned France About Wuhan P4 Lab (HE)
• Elephants’ 500km-Trek Across China Baffles Scientists (BBC)
• High Court Delays as Assange Remains in Jail (Craig Murray)

 

 

 

 

 

 

“If you coerced some young person to get the jab and they get hammered you should forfeit your own children’s lives as you are the reason they got ****ed.”

• The Jabs Must Be BANNED (Denninger)

… in those under 18 and strongly discouraged in healthy adults under 50. Those who promoted them in people under the age of 30 in addition must face justice. There was never any science supporting it on a risk:benefit basis. The CDC documents about 35 total Covid-related deaths in people under the age of 18 years all the way back to March of 2020. This table is utterly gob-smacking damnable and is what we get for “Warp Speed” — a litany of serious harms, many of which will wind up as deaths — more deaths in those under 18 than Covid caused.

The experience .vs. expected rate is anywhere from ten to one hundred times higher than “random chance” in those under 24 years old, and form 3-30 times higher in those under 30. If we presume that one in ten of these cases will eventually kill the person involved, which is likely conservative (the usual expectation is that half of these cases in the population generally that result in hospitalization eventually progress to heart failure and either a transplant or death within five years) these “side effects” will kill more people in the under-25 group than Covid has all the way back to the start of the pandemic. The others, who are not killed, will wind up with monstrous medical bills they will have to pay and some amount of permanent damage to their cardiac health.

This is from one side effect alone. Only those over 50 have an incidence of this result that is inline with expectations; everyone younger is either at or beyond the upper boundary. In addition this data is almost-certainly incomplete as VAERS is a non-mandatory system and thus does not capture all events. The degree of under-reporting is not able to be accurately bracketed but that it occurs is an absolute fact. Therefore these reports are floors, not ceilings, and as such must be taken as a lower boundary only, yet even in that context they demonstrate utterly unacceptable risk that, in any ordinary civil proceeding would lead to strict liability.

THESE SHOTS MUST BE IMMEDIATELY STOPPED FOR ALL HEALTHY PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF 30 and strongly recommended against up to the age of 50 years unless the person receiving them has a serious morbid condition and has been tested negative for prior exposure to the virus itself. That the CDC delayed this meeting for “Juneteenth” ought to get people imprisoned; this is an immediate emergency action item and to postpone it was utterly indefensible.

Any college administration that continues to hold forth a “requirement” for these shots in students should have their children put up as collateral to face the same outcome as any of the students who die as a result of these jabs, with said bond being good for the next ten years since myocarditis often leads to heart failure with the next five years in people it strikes. If you coerced some young person to get the jab and they get hammered you should forfeit your own children’s lives as you are the reason they got ****ed.

Administration of these shots to a previously-recovered person under 50 is, on the strength of this data, gross negligence and, if they get hit, attempted manslaughter or, if the person ultimately suffers heart failure, actual manslaughter. And no, gross negligence is not covered by the “immunity” that HHS gave the vaccine manufacturers and health professionals; any person or organization administering such a shot to someone who is healthy and under 30 should be immediately sued as their so-called “protection” is presumptively void.

Read more …

Geert VanDen Bossche: FAQ updated: May 25, 2021

[#13 ]How can it be explained that in Israel it seems that the massive vaccination has almost stopped the pandemic and no dramatic effects are being observed over people that have been vaccinated?

It’s just a matter of weeks for a surge in Israel to occur due to resistance of the virus to vaccinal antibodies in vaccinees. I expect this surge to occur before summer.

• Fully Vaccinated Israelis Exposed To “Delta” May Be Forced To Quarantine (ZH)

As concerns about the threat posed by the “Delta” variant, a mutant strain of COVID-19 first discovered in India that’s believed to be much more dangerous than rival strains, intensify, Israeli health officials have just been given the authority to quarantine pretty much anybody who is exposed to “Delta”, even if the individual is already fully vaccinated, Reuters reports. The heavy-handed decision comes after a warning by new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday over new outbreaks caused by “Delta” . Bennett complained that daily infections have been rising again in Israel after weeks of a low plateau credited to the country’s record mass-vaccination drive.

Under the updated Health Ministry directive, vaccinated or formerly infected people can be ordered to self-isolate for up to 14 days if authorities suspect they may have passed in “close contact with a carrier of a dangerous virus variant.” This could include having been passengers on the same plane, the ministry said, a possible dampener on Israel’s gradual opening of its borders to vaccinated summer tourists. Addressing the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said fines of “thousands of shekels” might be levied against Israeli citizens or residents who travel to countries blacklisted as high COVID-19 risks.

On June 16, the Health Ministry listed Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, India, Mexico and Russia as off-limits to Israeli citizens or residents unless they receive special permission. Some 55% of Israel’s 9.3MM population have received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and a steep drop in cases had prompted most economic restrictions to be lifted. But just days earlier, Israel announced plans to start vaccinating teenagers between the ages of 12 and 15.

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There you go. Why bother about what the WHO says? What do they know anyway?

• Israel Urges Parents To Vaccinate Kids Ages 12-15 (JPost)

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz and other relevant officials and experts, including transportation, interior and education ministers met Sunday night to decide on new measures to address the risk of increased morbidity following a number of coronavirus outbreaks at several Israeli schools. They agreed to task some additional 250 police officers to enforce isolation requirements for those returning from abroad, build a new testing complex at Ben-Gurion Airport and increase the number of testing stations, as well as carry out a communication campaign to foster awareness of the importance of respecting quarantine regulations among the public.


In addition, the authorities will investigate the gap between the number of violations of quarantine and the fines given, and will consider the position of parents whose unvaccinated children do not quarantine after returning from abroad. The ministers also confirmed that Israelis are not going to be allowed to fly to countries under travel ban – Argentina, Brazil, India, Mexico, Russia and South Africa, unless they obtain a special permission from the dedicated government committee. A further meeting to discuss the issues related to the coronavirus will be scheduled in the next few days.

Tucker WHO

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Sorry, bud, not going to happen.

• WHO Official: Mask Mandates, Social Distancing Must Continue Indefinitely (SN)

A top WHO official says that mask mandates and social distancing should continue indefinitely in order to protect against new variants of COVID-19. The comments were made on Sky News by Special Envoy on Covid for the World Health Organisation (WHO). Dr David Nabarro. Nabarro suggested that there would be a long list of mutations of the Indian variant which would in some cases evade the protection offered by vaccines. “We will go from Delta to Lambda and then on to the other Greek letters, that’s inevitable, and some of these variants will be troublesome,” he said. “I’m basically saying variants are going to go on coming. That’s part of life, we need to pick them up fast, we need to move quickly if we see them in a certain location, we need to build the management of variants into what we call our Covid-ready strategy, which is going to be the pattern for the foreseeable future,” he added.


According to Nabarro, mask mandates and social distancing need to remain in place for the foreseeable future “as part of our defence” against COVID, particularly in regions which have high infection rates. As we highlighted earlier, England is set to drop all face mask rules on July 19 after it was revealed that they were having a massive negative impact on businesses and wiping billions off the economy. Several government advisers have called for coronavirus restrictions to continue forever, not just to defend against COVID, but also to fight influenza. Former Communist Party member and SAGE adviser Susan Michie said earlier this month that mask mandates and social distancing should continue “forever” and that people should adopt such behaviour just as they did with wearing seatbelts. It never ends.

Read more …

Referenced by Robert Malone.

• Optimizing Decision-Making Processes in Times of COVID-19 (FIP)

The effectiveness of policymakers’ decision-making in times of crisis depends largely on their ability to integrate and make sense of information. The COVID-19 crisis confronts governments with the difficult task of making decisions in the interest of public health and safety. Essentially, policymakers have to react to a threat, of which the extent is unknown, and they are making decisions under time constraints in the midst of immense uncertainty. The stakes are high, the issues involved are complex and require the careful balancing of several interests, including (mental) health, the economy, and human rights. These circumstances render policymakers’ decision-making processes vulnerable to errors and biases in the processing of information, thereby increasing the chances of faulty decision-making processes with poor outcomes.

Prior research has identified three main information-processing failures that can distort group decision-making processes and can lead to negative outcomes: (1) failure to search for and share information, (2) failure to elaborate on and analyze information that is not in line with earlier information and (3) failure to revise and update conclusions and policies in the light of new information. To date, it has not yet been explored how errors and biases underlying these information-processing failures impact decision-making processes in times of crisis. In this narrative review, we outline how groupthink, a narrow focus on the problem of containing the virus, and escalation of commitment may pose real risks to decision-making processes in handling the COVID-19 crisis and may result in widespread societal damages.

Hence, it is vital that policymakers take steps to maximize the quality of the decision-making process and increase the chances of positive outcomes as the crisis goes forward. We propose group reflexivity—a deliberate process of discussing team goals, processes, or outcomes—as an antidote to these biases and errors in decision-making. Specifically, we recommend several evidence-based reflexivity tools that could easily be implemented to counter these information-processing errors and improve decision-making processes in uncertain times.

Tucker Robert Malone

Read more …

Hmmm. Not sure. Many healthy people also have “fatigue-related symptoms” due to lockdowns.

• More Than 2m Adults In England Have Had Long Covid For Over 12 Weeks (G.)

More than 2 million adults in England have experienced coronavirus symptoms lasting over 12 weeks, government data suggests – double the previous estimate for long Covid. The study, one of the largest to date, found that people with ongoing symptoms tended to fall into two categories: those with respiratory symptoms, who often experienced more severe illness when they first got sick, and a second group with fatigue-related symptoms. Like previous studies, it found that women were more commonly affected and that the prevalence of ongoing symptoms increased with age. Researchers described the findings as “alarming”.

The React-2 study is a government-funded population surveillance study that uses finger-prick antibody tests from randomly selected adults in England to assess how far coronavirus has spread. Between September and February, 508,707 participants were also asked whether they thought they had had Covid and about the presence and duration of 29 different symptoms. The research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that 37.7% of those who had symptomatic Covid experienced at least one symptom lasting 12 weeks or more – equivalent to 2 million people – while 14.8% experienced three or more persistent symptoms.

“The scale of the problem is quite alarming,” said Prof Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University. “The results can’t tell us clearly how serious those symptoms were in terms of their effects on the patients’ lives. Some may not be very serious, but some of them certainly are, and these results clearly point out how vital it is to understand them properly and to provide adequate treatment and support services for the people involved.”

Read more …

“The Science”.

• England Set to Drop Face Mask Rules After Huge Economic Impact Revealed (SN)

England is set to drop all face mask rules on July 19th after it was revealed that keeping such restrictions in place is costing the economy billions and will force many businesses to close. “The requirement to wear facemasks on public transport and in shops will be replaced with guidance advising people to wear masks in certain circumstances, rather than compelling them,” reports the Times. The decision follows the findings of an internal economic impact assessment produced by the government’s Events Research Programme which detailed the massive impact social distancing measures are having on businesses. Politico Playbook reveals that, “keeping any measures would cost the economy billions and see many businesses close.”


Specifically, indoor seated venues such as the arts, cinemas and business events would achieve just 59 per cent of their 2019 turnover if restrictions remain, costing them a whopping £4.88 billion over the next year. Even if the only remaining restriction kept in place is face masks, “The entire events industry would reach just 82 percent of its 2019 turnover. Indoor seated venues would get just 72 percent. Indoor non-seated just 65 percent. Outdoor non-seated venues would manage just 82 percent of their 2019 figure.” The events industry as a whole is bringing in only 60 per cent of normal revenue under the current restrictions, which will likely continue until July 19th.

Read more …

Gotta love her.

• Pursuing Truth In Covid Drug Treatment Amid A Censored Media Landscape (Hecker)

Finally covering the story on COVID drug treatments that I wasn’t allowed to air on FOX. A look at why one Houston hospital has a dramatically lower COVID death rate than anywhere else and the ways the media skated around the facts at that hospital. [..] The death rate from COVID-19 is dramatically low at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, TX compared to other hospitals across the nation and the world. Despite Dr. Joseph Varon’s popularity on TV, news personalities avoid questions of why he’s having success treating his patients. As it turns out, he’s using drugs the WHO and CDC recommend against.

Read more …

Bioweapons.

• Hillary Clinton Privately Warned France About Wuhan P4 Lab (HE)

In a leaked State Department cable from 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that the Wuhan Institute of Virology could lead to “biological weapons proliferation concern.” The cable, obtained via Wikileaks, was sent from the State Department in June 2009 to all embassies in member nations ahead of the Australia Group plenary session in Paris, September 21-25, 2009. The Australia Group is an international export control forum organized to prevent the spread of technologies and research that could be used in chemical and biological weapons. All Five Eyes nations are members of the group, including the EU, India, Japan, and South Korea. China is not a member of the group.

The cable stated, “We believe it is important to focus on emerging chemical and biological technologies, trends in the trade of CBW-related goods and threats.” When it came to France, Secretary Clinton’s cable noted: “The U.S. believes participants would benefit from hearing about your experiences assisting China in setting up a Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology from the export control and intangible technology transfer perspectives. We are particularly interested to know how China plans to vet incoming foreign researchers from countries of biological weapons proliferation concern.”

More broadly on the question of China’s biological weapons program, Secretary Clinton’s cable noted: “The U.S. believes AG members would be interested in any information you can share related to China and North Korea, specifically information related to: • China’s Institutes of Biological Products (locations in Beijing and Wuhan), to include overhead imagery analysis, if possible. • Your perceptions of the CBW proliferation activities by Chinese entities. • Your perceptions of Chinese government efforts to enforce its export control rules.”

Read more …

Is the matriarch disoriented?

• Elephants’ 500km-Trek Across China Baffles Scientists (BBC)

Elephants are by nature fiercely intelligent beasts and experts who study them day in day out already know a great deal about them. And yet a herd of endangered elephants in China has completely dumbfounded scientists globally, while captivating an entire nation in the process. It’s not unusual for elephants to move small distances. But this herd has been lumbering its way across China for more than a year now. The elephants have now strayed almost 500km (310 miles), a mammoth trek from their original habitat. It’s thought that they started their journey last spring from Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in the southwest of the country, near the border with Myanmar and Laos.

They began moving north and in the last few months, the elephants have popped up in a number of villages, towns and cities. They’ve been seen smashing down doors, raiding shops, “stealing” food, playing around in the mud, taking a bath in a canal and napping in the middle of a forest. They’ve also been spotted hoovering up crops in their wake and moseying into people’s houses – on one occasion, lining up in a courtyard to drink water, successfully turning on a tap with their trunks. It is thought they have started to move south again, and were last spotted in Shijie – a town near the city of Yuxi.

It’s unclear whether they are headed back, or why they even embarked on this journey in the first place – the farthest known movement by elephants in the country. Or what might come next. “The truth is, no-one knows. It is almost certainly related to the need for resources – food, water, shelter – and this would make sense given the fact that, in most locations where Asian elephants live in the wild, there is an increase in human disturbances leading to habitat fragmentation, loss and resource reduction,” Joshua Plotnik, assistant professor of elephant psychology at Hunter College, City University of New York, told the BBC.

Read more …

Treatment of Murray is scandalous too, but nothing like Assange. John McAfee’s death is worrisome in this regard.

• High Court Delays as Assange Remains in Jail (Craig Murray)

Julian Assange remains in a maximum-security jail, despite never being sentenced for anything but a long ago served spell for bail-jumping, and despite the U.S. government’s request for extradition having been refused. It is approaching six months since I was in court to hear the decision rejecting Assange’s extradition, and it was in the same week that Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser ordered Assange be kept in jail pending a U.S. appeal. Since then, the U.S. has submitted its appeal, which is somewhat intemperate in its efforts to discredit a number of highly distinguished expert witnesses at the hearing. The defense has submitted its response, including notice of points, where Baraitser found for the U.S. that the defense intend to counter-appeal.

Then for over three months — nothing. The High Court has not only not set a date for the U.S. appeal, it has not even indicated if the U.S. appeal meets the bar to be heard. There is some thought that the appeal lacks any arguable points of law and may be simply rejected. But the seemingly leisurely approach of the High Court to look at the matter is entirely inappropriate given that, in the meantime, an innocent man is suffering the most extreme form of incarceration available in the U.K. Assange’s status is that his extradition has been rejected. He ought not to be in jail at all, let alone in such harsh conditions. By contrast, I am sitting in my study despite being sentenced to eight months in jail. I am at liberty while the U.K. Supreme Court decides whether to hear my appeal.

My lawyers believe, from their contact with the court administrators, that it is entirely possible that the Supreme Court will decide on whether to take my appeal, within the four-week suspension of my jail sentence granted by Judge Lady Dorrian. This is because otherwise I might be imprisoned. Why can the Supreme Court potentially decide whether to hear my appeal so quickly due to the threat of imprisonment, when the High Court is taking six times or more as long to decide whether to hear the U.S. appeal, when an innocent man is already imprisoned? It makes no sense. It is not due to complexity: while of course Julian’s case is more important, any points of law at issue in the U.S. appeal are notably less complex than in my own appeal. To me, the only possible explanation is the determination of the state to keep Julian imprisoned at all costs.

Read more …

 

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November 30, 2019.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty & well preserved body; but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, & loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”
~Hunter S. Thompson

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 6 2020

Oct 062020
 
 October 6, 2020  Posted by at 9:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  9 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Old Man Sitting 1631

 

• ‘Don’t Let It Dominate You. Don’t Be Afraid Of It’ – President Trump (JTN)
• WHO: 760 Million May Have Been Infected With Novel Coronavirus (JTN)
• CDC Acknowledges Coronavirus Spreads Through Airborne Transmission (CNBC)
• Gina Haspel Banks On Trump Loss To Keep Russiagate Documents Hidden (Fed.)
• Carter Page Wants McCabe Subpoenaed To Testify Before Senate (JTN)
• Ginsburg’s Nightmare: The Democratic Plan To Destroy The Supreme Court (Turley)
• Out of the Woods? (Jim Kunstler)
• 100,000 Ballot Requests Invalidated In Iowa (IC)
• Debt Collectors Have Made a Fortune This Year. They’re Coming for More (PP)
• Facebook Refuses To Appoint Turkey Representative, Faces Penalties (Ahval)
• UK Court Decision on Venezuela Gold Deals Blow to Regime Change Efforts (MPN)
• Former Reserve Bank Of Australia Boss: Low Rates Haven’t Done Any Good (AFR)
• John McAfee Arrested In Spain On Tax Evasion & Crypto Fraud, Awaits Extradition To US (RT)
• Trump Briefly Leaves Hospital To Wave To Supporters From F-22 Raptor (BBee)

 

 

Trump has long known that it makes no difference what he says or does, everything will be presented in a form that can be used against him anyway. If he says: don’t be afraid of it, the media will tell everyone to be very afraid.

There’s only one exception: if he would start a war. Let’s hope he doesn’t fall into that trap.

 

 

US national debt
https://twitter.com/GeorgeGammon/status/1313124363541991425

 

 

 

 

Media reaction: be afraid! And: don’t let Trump dominate you! Bit late for that now.

• ‘Don’t Let It Dominate You. Don’t Be Afraid Of It’ – President Trump (JTN)

President Trump on Monday night released a new video message in which he urged Americans to be cautious but not fear the coronavirus or allow it to consume their lives. “I just left Walter Reed Medical Center and it’s really something very special, the doctors, the nurses, the first responders, and I learned so much about coronavirus,” the president said. “And one thing that’s for certain: Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it. We have the best medical equipment. We have the best medicines, all developed recently.” “I went, I didn’t feel so good. And two days ago, I could’ve left two days ago. Two days ago I felt great, like better than I have in a long time. I said just recently, better than 20 years ago,” Trump said.


“I stood out front. I led. Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did. And I know there’s a risk, there’s a danger, but that’s ok. And now I’m better, and maybe I’m immune, I don’t know. But don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there. Be careful. We have the best medicines in the world and it all happened very shortly and they’re all getting approved. And the vaccines are coming momentarily,” the president said. President Trump on Monday evening departed Walter Reed Medical Center, where he had been staying since Friday evening, and returned to the White House.

Read more …

Based on what information?

• WHO: 760 Million May Have Been Infected With Novel Coronavirus (JTN)

The World Health Organization estimated Monday that roughly 1 in 10 people worldwide have been infected by the novel coronavirus – more than 20 times the number of confirmed cases. The estimate was made by Dr. Michael Ryan, who leads the WHO’s emergencies division, during a session with the group’s 34-member executive board He said that the number was his “best estimates” and that “the vast majority of the world remains at risk.” He also said “many deaths have been averted and many more lives can be protected.” The new estimate from the WHO would indicate that 760 million people worldwide have been infected with the novel virus, a number far surpassing the currently reported 35 million confirmed cases. Ryan also said that the group is getting reports of a surge of cases in Asia and Europe. The doctor cautioned that the world may now be “heading into a difficult period. The disease continued to spread. It is on the rise in many parts of the world.”

Read more …

Are these people trying to clarify something, or just to confuse me? What of this didn’t we already know?

• CDC Acknowledges Coronavirus Spreads Through Airborne Transmission (CNBC)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its coronavirus guidance Monday, acknowledging that it can sometimes spread through airborne particles that can “linger in the air for minutes to hours” and among people who are more than 6 feet apart. The CDC cited published reports that demonstrated “limited, uncommon circumstances where people with COVID-19 infected others who were more than 6 feet away or shortly after the COVID-19-positive person left an area.” “In these instances, transmission occurred in poorly ventilated and enclosed spaces that often involved activities that caused heavier breathing, like singing or exercise,” the CDC said in a statement. “Such environments and activities may contribute to the buildup of virus-carrying particles.”

The agency added that it is “much more common” for the virus to spread through larger respiratory droplets that are produced when somebody coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes. People are infected through such droplets mostly when they are in close contact with an infected person, the CDC said. “CDC’s recommendations remain the same based on existing science and after a thorough technical review of the guidance,” the agency said. “People can protect themselves from the virus that causes COVID-19 by staying at least 6 feet away from others, wearing a mask that covers their nose and mouth, washing their hands frequently, cleaning touched surfaces often and staying home when sick.” To what degree the coronavirus can spread through airborne particles has been a contentious debate among scientists for months.

Some epidemiologists have charged that the World Health Organization as well as federal regulatory agencies in many countries have been slow to accept that the virus can spread by air. It’s a debate that could have implications for the importance of air filtration in reopening businesses and schools. Dr. Bill Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, said the new guidance is largely in line with what he says the science indicates about the coronavirus spreading through the air. He said in a phone interview after reviewing the new guidance that airborne transmission is something of a “side street” for spread. “Some cars do get through on the side street,” he said. “But the highways of transmission are close in, usually within enclosed spaces and for periods of time longer than 15 minutes with people standing within three to six feet of each other.”

[..] Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist and biodefense expert at the University of Arizona, said the new CDC guidance is “quite good.” She added that “the term airborne means so much to so many people,” and the guidance does a good job of emphasizing that the virus appears to only spread by air in certain environments, such as crowded indoor and poorly ventilated spaces. “We know that these events are occurring, but they’re not the primary driver,” she said in a phone interview. “This is a good reminder that there are environments that are higher risk for airborne transmission and we just need to communicate that.”

Read more …

Running out the clock. Trump picked the wrong people in many high positions.

• Gina Haspel Banks On Trump Loss To Keep Russiagate Documents Hidden (Fed.)

CIA Director Gina Haspel is personally blocking the declassification and release of key Russiagate documents in the hopes that President Donald Trump will lose his re-election bid, multiple senior U.S. officials told The Federalist. The officials said Haspel, who served under former CIA Director John Brennan as the spy agency’s station chief in London in 2016 and 2017, is concerned that the declassification and release of documents detailing what the CIA was doing during the 2016 election and the 2017 transition could embarrass the CIA and potentially even implicate Haspel herself. “Haspel and [FBI Director Christopher] Wray both want Trump to lose, because it’s the only chance they have of keeping their jobs,” one senior intelligence official told The Federalist.

“They’re banking on Biden winning and keeping them where they are.” The Federalist first reported last week that Haspel had emerged as the primary roadblock to declassification of materials showing that the U.S. intelligence community knew prior to the 2016 election that the allegations that Trump colluded with Russia were themselves the products of Russian disinformation. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released a declassified summary last week that disclosed that Russian intelligence officials were aware that former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had planned to smear Trump as a treasonous Russian asset to distract from the Clinton’s e-mail scandal. As part of her operation, Clinton hired a foreign agent who was himself working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch to spread unverified smears against Trump.


One of the key sources of collusion allegations peddled by that foreign agent via the now-infamous Steele dossier was suspected by FBI authorities of being a Russian spy.“It’s far more important for Haspel to block any embarrassment of herself or her agency than to have full transparency and accountability,” another senior intelligence official told The Federalist. “She’s just hoping she can get past the election so the documents will never come out.” “This is not a source protection issue, it’s an embarrassment issue,” the intelligence official added. Officials also accused Haspel of repeatedly lying to the White House about the status of documents that are in the pipeline for declassification and release. These officials said that Haspel has consistently provided baseless excuses for her failure to produce certain documents, falsely claiming that she can’t physically locate documents, or that her agency doesn’t technically own them and therefore cannot release them.

Read more …

New: refusing to testify by video because of coronavirus.

• Carter Page Wants McCabe Subpoenaed To Testify Before Senate (JTN)

Former Trump 2016 campaign adviser Carter Page says former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe should be subpoenaed to testify Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, after backing out over coronavirus concerns. “Hopefully a subpoena is issued today,” Page told “Just the News AM” host Carrie Sheffield. “It’s now Monday morning, and I hope that is resolved so that he can show up and be held to account and answer for these terrible problems that were created.” McCabe was set to testify before the committee on the FBI’s now-discredited Trump-Russia probe.


However, the committee postponed the hearing over McCabe’s coronavirus concerns, after two GOP members, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), tested positive for the virus in recent days. McCabe’s attorney said the alternative, to testify remotely via video camera, would be too complex and contentious. “I think it’s another example of the complete double standards,” said Page. “So many Trump supporters including myself, were dragged in front of not only the U.S. Senate, which is what’s in question here, but the House.” Page, on whom the FBI illegally eavesdropped, also expressed frustration about being a target in special counsel Robert Mueller’s years-long collusion probe.

Read more …

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed it was wrong to demand assurances on how justices will vote. In her confirmation hearing in 1993, she refused to give the answer that Blumenthal, Gillibrand, Sanders, Clinton, and others now demand from her potential successor.”

• Ginsburg’s Nightmare: The Democratic Plan To Destroy The Supreme Court (Turley)

[..] the call for a litmus test for Supreme Court nominees and the packing of the Supreme Court with up to six new members to secure a majority. Both ideas were expressly denounced by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Indeed, to achieve these objectives, the Democratic members will have to tear down the very rule established by Ginsburg in her confirmation hearing. The refusal of Vice President Joe Biden to answer repeated questions about his position on the packing of the Supreme Court is deeply troubling. This is a proposal raised not by the Republicans but his own running mate Kamala Harris and leading Democrats. It would destroy the Supreme Court and voters should know if Biden would consider such an irresponsible act, particularly when he previously denounced it.

The refusal to stand against the proposal is a fundamental failure of leadership. Rather than confront the most extreme elements of his party, Biden has chosen to remain silent on a major issue in this election. Frankly, that is not the Biden that many of us knew from his time in the Senate. He should take a stand against this pernicious idea and defend the institution, as he did in 2019 [..] Subtlety has been a stranger to our politics. This is the age of rage, and there is little room for nuance. That is evident in the intense debate over the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Democrats have dispensed with any pretense in their calls to block her and pack the bench with more justices. What they want is a Supreme Court with litmus test confirmations where Senate votes are conditioned on pledges.


Several Democrats have said they will ask Barrett about her view of any challenge to Roe versus Wade, and cases like the pending challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, she faced such demands from Richard Blumenthal and others for her confirmation as a federal appellate judge, and several Democrats voted against her since she did not promise to uphold Roe. In their campaigns last year, Kirsten Gillibrand and Bernie Sanders pledged to nominate only those who would uphold Roe. [..] Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed it was wrong to demand assurances on how justices will vote. In her confirmation hearing in 1993, she refused to give the answer that Blumenthal, Gillibrand, Sanders, Clinton, and others now demand from her potential successor. In calling to protect the legacy of Ginsburg, these politicians have to first tear down the Ginsburg rule.

Read more …

“..a keening wail of lamentation rings out across the land at Mr. Trump’s possible, dastardly recovery. How dare he! — to paraphrase Saint Greta Thunberg.”

• Out of the Woods? (Jim Kunstler)

CNN had a whack attack. Brian Stelter was beside himself, hinting that sinister forces had punked the network, and all the other righteous Resistance cadres, and that Mr. Trump could be endangering every federal employee down to the enlisted men posted overseas by venturing from his sickroom. The New York Times went farther afield (of course), declaring that “the murky and shifting narrative of his illness was rewritten again with grim new details.” Nicely put by an outfit that has come to specialize in shifting narratives! And indeed, the new Resistance narrative demands to know just exactly when did the president start to feel ill? Did he, perhaps on-purpose, haul his ailing, hulking, scheming Golem ass into the Cleveland debate venue with the hope of infecting his rival, delicate Ol’ White Joe Biden?

Did he recklessly put at risk the White House staff, dignitaries and luminaries coming and going, their family members, associates, underlings, servants, children? Did he threaten the global order, world peace, the fate of humanity? So now, a keening wail of lamentation rings out across the land at Mr. Trump’s possible, dastardly recovery. How dare he! — to paraphrase Saint Greta Thunberg. 209,000 other Americans died, and not him! What vile and unholy devices got him out of a sure death sentence? No doubt Democratic Party astrologasters and consulting augurers will be searching for clues among the orbiting planets and the spilled organs of sacrificed chickens in the days to come. Perhaps Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) can snare a few of the president’s attending physicians into his House Intel Committee and rev up another impeachment for going against doctors’ orders.


Wouldn’t that be a delectable counter to the looming confirmation process for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement next door in the Senate this month? Over his dead body, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is hinting — a tantalizing prospect, with Covid-19 on the loose. It was Chuck who memorably told Rachel Maddow of MSNBC in 2017 that the Deep State “has six ways from [sic] Sunday at getting back at you.” By my count, they’re well over their allotted six by now. Not only did they all fail, but the seditionists behind them are liable to wind up behind bars before this is all over, perhaps even a few of Senator Schumer’s colleagues.

Read more …

Many stories developing. A mess overall. Seemingly impossible to regulate on a federal level.

• 100,000 Ballot Requests Invalidated In Iowa (IC)

In 2018, Democrats won three of Iowa’s four congressional districts, picked up five seats in the state House, and lost the governor’s race by less than 3 points. The state has only trended more Democratic since, giving the party real hope that its six electoral votes could wind up in the camp of Joe Biden and that its Senate seat, now held by Republican Joni Ernst, could flip to Democrat Theresa Greenfield. It may all hinge, however, on an absentee ballot snafu affecting tens of thousands of voters that the party is scrambling to rectify. In July, the top elections officials in Linn and Johnson counties went ahead and began mailing out absentee-ballot request forms with some voter information already filled in, like names and dates of birth.

Crucially, voters need to know their voter ID number. Most don’t, and Linn County Auditor Joel Miller had the state’s vendor fill it in for them. Republicans protested, and courts sided with the GOP, saying that Miller’s decision to proceed with the mailing violated a “clear directive” from Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate. More than 100,000 absentee ballot requests have already been invalidated in several Iowa counties. In late August, judges ordered two Iowa counties to invalidate at least 64,000 ballot requests, siding with a challenge brought by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and the GOP, which have been filing similar lawsuits nationwide.


About 50,000 voters in Linn County and at least 14,000 in Woodbury will be informed that their absentee-ballot requests won’t count and that anyone who still wants to vote by mail in November will have to send in a new form in order to receive their ballot. In a separate case in Johnson County, home to the University of Iowa, more than 92,000 ballot request forms were voided.

Read more …

The ultimate growth industry.

• Debt Collectors Have Made a Fortune This Year. They’re Coming for More (PP)

Earlier this year, the pandemic swept across the country, killing 100,000 Americans by the spring, shuttering businesses and schools, and forcing people into their homes. It was a great time to be a debt collector. In August, Encore Capital, the largest debt buyer in the country, announced that it had doubled its previous record for earnings in a quarter. It primarily had the CARES Act to thank: The bill delivered hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stimulus checks and bulked-up unemployment benefits to Americans, while easing pressures on them by halting foreclosures, evictions and student loan payments. There was no ban on collections of old credit card bills, Encore’s specialty.

At the same time, the pandemic compelled households to cut spending. Finding themselves with enough money to settle old debts, people responded to collectors’ calls and letters. Debt-buying executives couldn’t help marveling at their good fortune. All this created “a perfect storm from a cash perspective,” the CEO of Portfolio Recovery Associates, Encore’s main competitor, told Wall Street analysts. After its record second quarter, analysts expect Encore to blow past $200 million in profit this year and reward stockholders with 40% earnings growth compared with last year. Portfolio Recovery is set for similar growth. The share prices of both have soared off their early April lows.


[..] In recent months, the only real bad news for debt buyers was that local courts across the country temporarily shut down. Debt collection lawsuits provide a key source of revenue for the companies, a way to extract payment from consumers, typically low-income, who don’t offer it up. But now even that hiccup is over. After a bit of a lull in the spring, Encore and other debt buyers are back at it, filing suits by the thousands every week, according to ProPublica’s analysis of state court filings. In August alone, Encore filed about 1,000 suits in Indiana and over 2,000 suits in the metro Atlanta area. Other debt buyers jumped back in as well. In Chicago, Portfolio Recovery filed over 3,000 suits in July, while LVNV, a major debt buyer privately owned by Sherman Financial Group, filed over 2,700 suits in Maryland in August.

Read more …

Might as well leave right now.

• Facebook Refuses To Appoint Turkey Representative, Faces Penalties (Ahval)

Social media giant Facebook has decided against appointing a Turkey representative, defying a requirement placed on certain social media platforms by the Turkish government, cyber rights expert Yaman Akdeniz said on Monday. “Facebook has decided not to appoint a Turkey representative in line with (Turkey’s) newly-passed Social Media Law,’’ Akdeniz said on Twitter. In July, Turkish parliament ratified a bill introducing new powers to control social media. The bill was passed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), stipulates that social media companies with more than one million users must appoint a legal representative in Turkey to address the authorities’ concerns over content and includes deadlines for its removal.


Akdeniz said it remains to be seen what the government’s reaction would be, but underlined that the bill was passed by parliament in a period of 10 days without consultation and posed serious problems regarding basic rights and freedoms. Facebook’s refusal to comply with the law would mean they will be faced with “a tiered penalty system,’’ Akdeniz said. “They will be slapped with a penalty of 10 million lira ($1.28 million) in November, followed by 30 million lira in December,’’ he said. “There is a six-month period ahead that leads all the way to the reduction of Internet bandwidth.’’ According to the law, companies could face fines, blocked advertisements or have their bandwidth slashed by up to 90 percent.

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Did that coup fail or what?

• UK Court Decision on Venezuela Gold Deals Blow to Regime Change Efforts (MPN)

United Kingdom court has handed the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro a major win today, overturning a previous ruling from a lower court that legitimized the British government’s decision to freeze Venezuelan government gold reserves held in the Bank of England. The English Court of Appeal ruled that the Conservative administration of Boris Johnson’s position that Juan Guaidó is the country’s legitimate ruler was far from equivocal, potentially paving the way for some $1.95 billion of the Central Bank of Venezuela’s gold to be accessed.

Following President Trump’s lead, in July, the U.K. government took the extraordinary step of derecognizing President Maduro in favor of the self-declared Guaidó, despite the fact that for nearly six months, he had not even been a member of his Popular Will party, let alone its leader. The move was labeled “highway robbery” by supporters of the Venezuelan government. A nearly unheard of politician before his ascension to the role of head of the Venezuelan National Assembly (a post given out on a yearly rotational basis among all parties in the institution) in January 2019, Guaidó shocked the country by using his appointment to unilaterally declare himself president of the country. He then led a series of coup attempts throughout 2019 and 2020, the last of which involved paying Trump-linked American mercenaries to shoot their way into the presidential palace.


However, the plan ended in complete disaster, with the Americans subsequently sentenced to 20 years of prison time. Guaidó based his claim to power on Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution, which allows a president to be removed if he “abandons his position” or becomes “permanently unavailable to serve” for whatever reason. Maduro, however, had clearly not left his post. Regardless, if he had, Article 233 states that the vice-president would take charge until a new election by universal suffrage was held. Guaidó’s party was not even registered to stand in elections, having boycotted them the year previously under U.S. orders.

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They’ve done a lot of harm though.

“Once the majority do it, you really have no choice,” Mr Macfarlane said..”

• Former Reserve Bank Of Australia Boss: Low Rates Haven’t Done Any Good (AFR)

Former Reserve Bank of Australia governor Ian Macfarlane says cutting interest rates to near zero has not done “any good” and warned ultra-loose monetary policy will have long-term costs for pensioners and insurance companies. In a very rare public critique of the RBA by a former governor, Mr Macfarlane said technology and globalisation were now more powerful forces than interest rates in affecting inflation, but central bankers were reluctant to admit their limitations. “I’ve been disappointed with the recent cuts in interest rates, all of them since about 2015,” Mr Macfarlane said. “The latest round of cutting interest rates and quantitative easing, I myself don’t think they’ve done any good.

“I thought, ‘wow, you didn’t need to do that’ but I don’t think there’s any way my successors could have stood there and said to the world ‘we’re not going to do that, we’re going to do it our way’.” The Australian dollar would have jumped “through the roof” if the RBA refused to follow other central banks cutting interest rates to near-zero, to buy government bonds and deploy other extraordinary monetary stimulus, he said. “Once the majority do it, you really have no choice,” Mr Macfarlane said in long interview on The Jolly Swagman podcast. Mr Macfarlane, RBA governor from 1996 to 2006, said there would be long-term economic costs of prolonged ultra-low interest rates.


“I think the jury is out on monetary policy for another decade or more because there are very big costs to having almost zero interest rates,” he said. “The whole retirement income industry – the pension funds, the superannuation funds, including insurance companies and businesses like that – don’t quite know how to operate with interest rates that are negligible because they’ve never had to do it before.” [..] “Monetary policy hasn’t lost its power, it’s used up all its power and there isn’t any more room.”

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Perhaps John should have seen a shrink.

• John McAfee Arrested In Spain On Tax Evasion & Crypto Fraud (RT)

Former software guru and one-time presidential candidate John McAfee has been nabbed in Spain on tax evasion and cryptocurrency fraud, ending his year long stint as a globetrotting fugitive. He now faces extradition to the US. The US Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission both announced charges for McAfee on Monday, hitting the security software founder with 10 counts linked to dodging the IRS and another series of charges for promoting investments in cryptocurrencies without disclosing that he was paid some $23 million to do so. “John McAfee earned millions in income from promoting cryptocurrencies, consulting work, speaking engagements, and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary,” the DOJ said in a statement. “From 2014 to 2018, McAfee allegedly failed to file tax returns, despite receiving considerable income from these sources.”


McAfee was charged on five counts for willful failure to file a tax return, each of which carries a sentence of up to one year in prison, while the other five charges are linked to tax evasion itself, which could each result in up to five years behind bars. Originally filed in June, the newly unsealed indictment does not implicate McAfee’s former software company, which bears his name. The SEC also accused McAfee of promoting “multiple [initial coin offerings] on Twitter” while “pretending to be impartial and independent even though he was paid more than $23 million in digital assets for the promotions.” The complaint also alleges that McAfee and his bodyguard, Jimmy Watson Jr., engaged in a separate scheme to promote cryptocurrencies on Twitter and then sell them off as their price rose. The government did not name the particular currencies in its complaint.

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What could have been.

• Trump Briefly Leaves Hospital To Wave To Supporters From F-22 Raptor (BBee)

A nurse working at Walter Reed Medical Center checked in on Trump but was shocked to discover his room was empty. She looked out the window, and sure enough, he had tied bedsheets together and escaped. Just then, the nurse noticed a cup of Diet Coke left by the bedside began to ripple and shake. “Oh, no,” she murmured. “Not again!” Looking out the window, she saw a speck on the horizon. A rapidly growing speck. It was Trump, gloriously flying by in an F-22 fighter jet. “Sorry, Pence — but it’s time to buzz the tower!” Trump radioed to his wingman, who flashed him a smile and a thumbs-up. He flew by the hospital and waved to his cheering supporters.


“America!” the president cried as he flew by the ecstatic crowd, though they couldn’t hear him over the roar of the fighter jet’s engines. “I feel the need — the need for speed!” Media condemned the move, saying Trump could very well have spread COVID to every person on the planet with his little stunt, though he was all alone in a tiny cockpit far above the ground.

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