JMW Turner Lake Llanberis and Snowdon Color Study c.1800
There was the speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah today, who said “What is happening in Gaza today is not just another war; it is a decisive historical battle with consequences that will reshape the future..” That made me think of Joe Biden’s recent comments on a new world order, which were ridiculed away by Russia: “Yes, we’ll have a new world order, but you’re not going to be a -significant- part of it”.
Hamas is a formidable regional force in Gaza, but Hezbollah is of another order altogether. It controls the south of Lebanon, aka Israel’s northern border, it’s strongly related to Iran, and it’s armed to the teeth. But we’ll hear enough of Hezbollah soon enough. i wanted to talk about something else today.
Going through the news, as we do every day in our Debt Rattle aggregators, there’s a new pattern we see developing. That is, the end of the careers of both Volodymyr Zelensky as President of Ukraine, and of Benjamin Netanyahu as PM of Israel. They both appear to have a -very- limited time left in their jobs. Thanks – largely- to the US. Who propped them up in the first place.
Ex-Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk, now in exile in Russia, denounced Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in a column on Friday. The former politician said that the current Ukrainian head of state may well be the last, and Zelensky only has himself to blame. In his piece, Medvedchuk called Zelensky a merciless “professional traitor” whose pattern of stabbing everyone in the back for his own gain has ruined the country. After being elected president on a platform of peace with Russia and reconciliation with Donbass, Zelensky “ceded power to radical nationalists, adopting their rhetoric and behavior,” Medvedchuk wrote. In doing that, he betrayed the people who voted for him. “Zelensky simply got scared of becoming a peacemaker since it would require him to oppose aggressive forces inside and outside of the country,” he argued.
Funny thing is, that “ceded power to radical nationalists, adopting their rhetoric and behavior..” might just as well describe Bibi.
Joe Biden and top White House aides have discussed the likelihood that Benjamin Netanyahu’s “political days are numbered,” and are gauging potential successors as the popularity of the Israeli prime minister continues to plummet following last month’s successful Hamas attack on Israel, Politico reported on 2 November. The topic of Netanyahu’s anticipated fall from power has come up in recent White House meetings including following Biden’s most recent trip to Israel in which he met with Netanyahu following the surprise Hamas attack on 7 October, according to two senior administration officials. Biden has even suggested to Netanyahu that he should think about lessons he would share with his eventual successor, the two administration officials added. Separately, a current US official and a former US official both confirmed that the Biden administration believes Netanyahu will not remain in office for long.
So you might think this is just the US cutting its losses. But maybe there’s more to it. Maybe the US set up both for their fall. Just in case their “adventures” wouldn’t work out. This way, Washington can draw its hands off of it, blame its “partners”, and move on. We didn’t lose, our allies lost.
“Joe Biden”, just last week, demanded another $106 billion package for Israel and Ukraine, even as they know full well how limited the job prospects for both are. So why do it? ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern has an idea:
Joe Biden is trying to twist the arms of House lawmakers to pass a hefty Ukraine aid package, while at the same time the White House is resisting efforts to impose a cease-fire in Gaza amid horrific civilian casualties. While his team member, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are known for their neoconservative stance, Biden has long been considered a moderate and entered the White House with the goal of ending the “forever wars”. Now the US president has no scruples about pouring more gasoline on the flames of conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. What’s behind Joe’s “radicalization”? “Biden has a personal stake in this,” CIA veteran Ray McGovern told Sputnik. “What do I mean? If Biden loses in Ukraine, which is bound to happen in the next couple of months, it will be evident to everyone. It will be impossible to cover it up. If he loses in Ukraine, he’ll be afraid to lose the election and his fears will be well-founded. And if this is the election, what do you think he also fears? He also fears that he’ll end up in prison.”
They know what happens, but they can’t admit it. It would threaten their grip on power. They got themselves stuck with the dastardly duo of Joe and Kamala, and they have to ride this out unless one of the two dies. Do they have replacements lined up? We haven’t seen any.
In Ukraine and Israel, things might be a little different. Everyone will simply move on to the respective neo-nazi parties that support both Zelensky and Netanyahu to date. But whoever they pick, Ukraine will have to confront Russia, and we know how that went, whereas Israel faces the entire Arab world (+Russia?). Counting on US support that just ain’t there.
It’s hard to imagine that Blinken and Jake Sullivan and Nuland and Bolton had no idea this would happen. But that means the US is on a suicide mission. I’d rather not think of that. They have, what, 47 battle ships in the eastern Med, largest concentration since 1945?! As Russia, and who else(?!), have hypersonic Kinzhals to shoot them like fish in a barrel? Make peace, you fools. I’m going to have a beer outside on a terrace while I still can.
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Apologies for being late. What happened was I had a Roger Waters video from Bitchute that took over the entire text column and turned it black. Danny had it figured out in seconds. Not me.
Gonzalo 2023.02.08 The US Has Legalized Theft
“Zelensky slaughtered law and stability for the sake of applause and posturing.”
President Vladimir Zelensky condemned Ukraine to destruction in the name of Western interests because he is too incompetent and ambitious to govern it properly, exiled opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk believes. Zelensky was elected in 2019 as a “peace candidate” who pledged to put an end to the warmongering policies of his predecessor, Pyotr Poroshenko, Medvedchuk, who was the leader of the banned Opposition Platform – For Life, wrote in an article published by RIA Novosti on Wednesday. But instead of becoming “a sentence” for Poroshenko, which was his campaign promise, Zelensky became a sentence for Ukraine, the politician said. The new leader had a mandate to rebalance Ukraine’s political system and make the country neutral and peaceful, Medvedchuk wrote.
But this required a boring routine and difficult work. Zelensky “failed to put the nation in order, and found that blaming Russia rather than his own incompetence for the problems” was easier, he said. By the end of 2020, polls showed a decline in the popularity of Zelensky’s party, and likely defeat in the next presidential election by a candidate proposed by the party led by Medvedchuk, he noted. An escalation of tensions with Russia and later open hostilities saved Zelensky’s career, the politician said. “The country was plunged into a fire for the inflated ego of this man,” Medvedchuk wrote. “Today, the West flatters him at every opportunity. What luck! A ruler who would destroy his country for a photo op, boost his ratings on the blood and suffering of his citizens. Zelensky slaughtered law and stability for the sake of applause and posturing.”
The actual role of the Ukrainian president is that of a “fifth columnist” for his own nation – and Europe, considering that it pays a lot for the Ukraine conflict, Medvedchuk stated. Zelensky hopes that a military victory would wash away all the things he has done to crush his political opponents and to “lease his nation as a battlefield.” But Ukraine has “already lost,” and soon this reality will catch up with him, according to Medvedchuk. The president “acts like a winner, speaks like a winner, poses like a winner. But victory is nowhere near,” he said. Continued conflict is the only thing that delays the reckoning for the president, the politician said. Medvedchuk led the largest opposition political party in Ukraine before the Zelensky government cracked down on it and its senior figures for supposedly being pro-Russian. He now lives in exile, after being charged with treason at home.
Pepe Escobar @RealPepeEscobar: “Sy Hersh rides again. Must read, of course. But, geopolitically, a childish piece. Everyone with a brain knew the Yanks did it. Now we have the “how” and especially “who” – the full chain of command. There WILL be blowback.”
Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible. There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Forces Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.
[..] The Americans at work in Norway operated under the same dynamic, and dutifully began working on the new problem—how to remotely detonate the C4 explosives on Biden’s order. It was a much more demanding assignment than those in Washington understood. There was no way for the team in Norway to know when the President might push the button. Would it be in a few weeks, in many months or in half a year or longer? The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the procedure involved the most advanced signal processing technology. Once in place, the delayed timing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be accidentally triggered by the complex mix of ocean background noises throughout the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea—from near and distant ships, underwater drilling, seismic events, waves and even sea creatures.
To avoid this, the sonar buoy, once in place, would emit a sequence of unique low frequency tonal sounds—much like those emitted by a flute or a piano—that would be recognized by the timing device and, after a pre-set hours of delay, trigger the explosives. (“You want a signal that is robust enough so that no other signal could accidentally send a pulse that detonated the explosives,” I was told by Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and national security policy at MIT. Postol, who has served as the science adviser to the Pentagon’s Chief of Naval Operations, said the issue facing the group in Norway because of Biden’s delay was one of chance: “The longer the explosives are in the water the greater risk there would be of a random signal that would launch the bombs.”)
On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place.
“This is utterly false and complete fiction,” Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, told the media in a statement..”
Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev has said he has no information on who exactly sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines last September. He was responding to a reporter on Wednesday when asked to comment on a new investigation by American journalist Seymour Hersh, who claimed the pipelines were targeted in a US-staged clandestine operation. “If they [the Americans] report that, you can go and ask them. I don’t know who blew it up,” Patrushev claimed ahead of a meeting of security officials in the Kremlin. The report was released by Hersh earlier in the day as the debut piece on his newly-set up blog on Substack. According to an anonymous source with direct knowledge on the matter, the attack on the pipelines was commissioned by the White House and performed by the CIA and US Navy divers.
The task force planted explosives at the pipelines last June, under the guise of a BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise, according to the report. The devices were detonated remotely on September 26 with a signal from a sonar buoy, which had been dropped into the area by a Norwegian reconnaissance plane. The investigation’s conclusion has been strongly denied by multiple US officials. “This is utterly false and complete fiction,” Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, told the media in a statement. Similar messages have been transmitted by the CIA and State Department. Shortly after the blasts, Moscow branded the incident a “terrorist attack.” While falling short of blaming the US for it, the Kremlin said at the time that Washington had benefited from the incident the most, as it greatly advanced efforts to sever Europe from Russia’s gas supply, substituting it with American LNG.
In light of the Seymour Hersh bombshell on the U.S. and Norway blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, let's recall how U.S. officials openly incited against it for months, then blamed… Russia.https://t.co/qp1d7Jx9rypic.twitter.com/V0Cy2JPSXI
“..insufficient to the task, resulting in poorly trained crews taking extremely complicated weapons systems into the most dangerous environment in the world for a tank..”
It takes 22 weeks to train a basic American M1 Abrams crewmember. That training just gives the soldier the very basic skill set to be functional. Actual operational expertise is only achieved through months, if not years, of additional training in not just the system itself, but employing it as part of a similarly trained combine arms team. Simply put, even a Ukrainian tank crew experienced in the operation of Soviet-era T-72 or T-64 tanks will not be able to immediately transition to a Western-style main battle tank. First and foremost, the crew size of a Soviet-era tank is three, reflecting the reality that the Soviet tanks make use of an automatic loading mechanism. Western tanks have four crew members because the loading of the main tank gun is done manually. Adapting to these dynamics takes time, and requires extensive training.
Training is expensive. NATO is currently providing Ukraine with three types of Western main battle tank: the British Challenger 2, the German Leopard 2, and the American M1A2. There is no unified training course—each tank requires its own unique training prospectus that is not directly transferable to another system. The decentralized training processes created by such a diverse approach promotes inefficiencies and generates discrepancies in outcome—one crew will not be like another, which in combat, where units are supposed to be interchangeable to promote predictable outcomes if all other circumstances remain the same, is usually fatal.
Moreover, these problems will only be enhanced by the emphasis that will be placed on rapid outcomes. The reality is whatever training programs that are developed and delivered by the nations providing the tanks will be insufficient to the task, resulting in poorly trained crews taking extremely complicated weapons systems into the most dangerous environment in the world for a tank—the teeth of a Russian Army designed and equipped to kill these very same tanks. Tanks are among the most technically challenging weapons systems on a modern battlefield. They are constantly breaking down, especially if not properly maintained. For the M1 Abrams, for every hour a tank is in the field, there are three hours of maintenance time required. This problem only becomes magnified in combat.
Normally an armor unit is equipped with highly specialized organic maintenance crews that can repair most of the minor issues that can sideline a tank. Given the training requirements to produce this level of high-quality mechanic, it is unlikely Ukraine will be provided with this kind of maintenance support. This means that the tanks that are being provided to Ukraine will need to be returned to NATO nations for any significant repairs of equipment that is damaged through simple usage or actual combat. In short, it is highly likely that a Western main battle tank in Ukrainian hands will break down at some point during its operational use by Ukraine, meaning that the total number of tanks available to Ukraine will be far less than the number of tanks provided.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Britain on Wednesday to drum up aid, winning a pledge to train Ukrainian pilots on advanced NATO fighter jets, a big symbolic step up in Western military support. London was his first stop on only his second trip abroad since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. An EU diplomat said Zelenskiy would travel on to Brussels on Thursday, where the European Union is holding a summit. “The United Kingdom was one of the first to come to Ukraine’s aid. And today I’m in London to personally thank the British people for their support and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for his leadership,” Zelenskiy posted on social media, under a picture of himself and Sunak at Stansted Airport. Zelenskiy was also due to meet King Charles III, address parliament and visit Ukrainian troops training in Britain.
“President Zelenskiy’s visit to the UK is a testament to his country’s courage, determination and fight, and a testament to the unbreakable friendship between our two countries,” Sunak said in a statement. Sunak’s office announced additional sanctions on Russia, as well as plans to accelerate the supply of military equipment to Kyiv. For the first time, Ukraine’s air force and marines would now be included in the British training programme. “The training will ensure pilots are able to fly sophisticated NATO-standard fighter jets in the future,” it said. That appeared to signal a notable shift in Western support, as countries have so far held back from providing jets or other weapons capable of striking deep into Russia.
The statement gave no timeframe for the training, and British officials have said teaching pilots to fly British jets takes years. But the first commitment of its kind signals an endorsement of a long-term security relationship with Kyiv, and could pave the way for allies to send planes. Last month, Britain was the first Western country to promise Kyiv advanced battle tanks. It offered just 14, but within two weeks the United States and European allies pledged scores, ending months of debate. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who came under fierce criticism for perceived foot-dragging on approving tank deliveries, said arms supplies should be coordinated confidentially rather than announced by individual countries. “What harms our unity is a public competition to outdo each other,” he told the Bundestag lower house of parliament, according to a manuscript of his speech.
Historians still debate the causes and origins of World War I. George Kennan traced the origins of what an earlier generation called the “Great War” to the end of German Chancellor Bismarck’s European order and the “fateful alliance” between Russia and France. Robert Massie pointed to Germany’s naval challenge to Great Britain. Still others, such as German historian Fritz Fischer, blamed Germany’s hegemonic ambitions. More recently, British historian Christopher Clark argued that Europe’s statesmen “sleepwalked” into the war. This topic has assumed relevance today as the United States and NATO get closer and closer to co-belligerent status with Ukraine. Newsweek reports that 12 NATO countries, including the United States and Germany, have agreed to supply more tanks to Ukraine.
The Biden administration will send 31 M1 Abrams tanks, while Germany is sending 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks. Ukraine’s ambassador to France said that Western countries have agreed to supply Ukraine with 321 tanks. Russia called this latest move a “blatant provocation” and more evidence of “direct involvement” in the war by Western powers. Despite the seriousness of these decisions, some Western observers are acting like Russia’s generals in the lead-up to World War I. The Guardian columnist Martin Kettle claims that the new tanks will give Ukraine “a military advantage” that could transform the war to Ukraine’s favor. The new weapons, he asserts, have the potential to “put Kyiv in a position to dictate ceasefire and peace terms to Moscow.” The Economist opines that sending Ukraine tanks and long-range missiles will enable it to “withstand the next Russian offensive and to take back the territory that is theirs.”
American war hawk Max Boot is confident that the supply of tanks will enable Ukraine to mount a “successful offensive” and to take back its territory. Boot asserts that the tanks along with long-range rockets and advanced fighter planes supplied by the West will “determine the course of the war.” Jeffrey Cimmino and Shelby Magid of the Atlantic Council urge NATO to speed-up production and delivery of even more weapons systems to help Ukraine defeat Russia and integrate Ukraine in Western institutions. Which leads me to ask: Where are the American Count Witte’s? There don’t seem to be any in the Biden administration. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are all in for co-belligerency in order to preserve the “rules-based international order.” It was Kennan who warned in 1997 that NATO expansion would revive the worst aspects of Russian nationalist and imperialist traditions.
sThat same year, in an open letter to then-President Bill Clinton, a large group of elder statesmen, including Paul Nitze, Fred Ikle, Robert Bowie, Arthur Hartman, Gordon Humphrey, Stansfield Turner, Edward Luttwak, Richard Pipes, and Sam Nunn, voiced opposition to NATO expansion. Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock agreed with this sentiment and has urged the U.S. to press for a ceasefire in the war. International relations scholar John Mearsheimer has provided Witte-like warnings about the risks of catastrophic escalation in the Ukraine war. The American Conservative’s Douglas Macgregor and the CATO Institute’s Doug Bandow have written eloquently about the dangers of escalation and the need to avoid greater U.S. and Western involvement in the war. But these modern-day Witte’s are all outsiders. They are not even on the fringes of power like elder-statesman Witte was in 1914. And Witte failed. Are there any Democratic Party elder statesmen who will rise to this challenge? If not, it may soon be too late.
After a surprise UK visit, Ukraine’s President Zelensky went to Paris immediately afterward in a whirlwind European tour to meet with Western leaders. In Paris he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz Macron asserted during the visit that Russia cannot win the war against Ukraine. “Ukraine can count on France, its European partners and allies to win the war. Russia cannot and must not win,” Macron said before a working dinner among the three leaders at the Elysee Palace. Just ahead of the meeting, Zelensky in an interview with Le Figaro hailed a change of heart in Macron. “I think he has changed, and changed for real this time,” Zelensky said. “After all, it is he who paved the way for the delivery of tanks. And he has also supported Ukraine’s membership to the EU. I think that was a real signal.”
Macron had angered Kiev when in June he said the West must not “humiliate Russia, so that when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means.” Macron has also come under fire for being among the only Western leaders to hold frequent phone conversations with President Vladimir Putin, in order to attempt a diplomatic breakthrough towards ending the war. But Ukrainian leaders have suggested such diplomatic efforts are a form of ‘capitulation’. As for Macron’s slow pivot away from pursuing a diplomatic offramp, the Associated Press now describes: Macron has said France hasn’t ruled out sending fighter jets but set conditions, including not leading to an escalation of tensions or using the aircraft “to touch Russian soil,” and not resulting in weakening “the capacities of the French army.”
As for Scholz, he was cited in the following on Wednesday: He added that Paris would “continue the efforts” to deliver arms to Kyiv. Mr Scholz also assured the Ukrainian president of enduring allied support. “We will continue to do so as long as necessary,” he told reporters, noting Germany and its partners had backed Ukraine “financially, with humanitarian aid and with weapons”. He added that Ukraine belongs to the European family.
A staple trait of Biden’s presidency is that he repeatedly claims that he is making things better for ordinary Americans. In his own words, he is creating jobs, bringing down inflation and “delivering for families”. He frames himself as an FDR style titan who is reinvigorating the US following troubled times, and, in his words, making it “more competitive” than ever. In reality, his statements could not be further from the truth.The United States is in chaos and the Biden administration faces painfully low approval ratings, crippling levels of inflation, weak 2022 GDP and a looming recession. Whatever the expectations of Joe Biden were, he has proved himself to be the most dangerous and hawkish Democrat leading the US since Harry Truman. As America tears itself apart at home, it is also doing so abroad.
When Joe Biden entered office, many people expected he would be different than Donald Trump. After four years of what the media described as chaos and internal turmoil in America, Biden was heralded as a breath of fresh air who would be normal, sane and moderate. What these arguments actively overlooked was that Donald Trump was not the problem, but rather a symptom of broader American failure and decline. As the world has changed, in particular through the lingering impact of globalized neoliberal capitalism, digitization and shifts in the geopolitical balance of power, the United States has struggled to assert a coherent identity amidst a changing world which has produced deep divisions and large-scale political conflict.
This is the era of “post-truth”, and as a result, Joe Biden is not in fact better than Trump, he is infinitely worse. While Donald Trump was a populist figure who railed against the political establishment, Joe Biden is a long-standing member of the political establishment. As such, he has used his reign in office to reassert its influence and give it “Trumpian characteristics”. That includes the same brand of conceited bragging, populism and political squabbles at home, but with a foreign policy abroad which is dangerously more aggressive than anything Trump ever conceived. America’s increasingly dangerous involvement in the Ukraine conflict is a prime example.
The underlying factor here is the effort by the United States to resuscitate its unconditional hegemony over the rest of the world by force, having sensed that a political shift has taken place. This change is reflected in the anger and resentment of blue collar, white Americans, and a primary driver for Trump’s election. The product of the Trump and Biden administrations has been to project those changes into resentment of China, culminating in events like the recent “Chinese spy balloon” saga that have been hyper-dramatized. China has become the designated enemy, and it appears there is a political consensus in the US around this, irrespective of the consequences.
There are some critical differences between the two administrations in how this is being pursued. While Trump operated US foreign policy on “quid-pro-quo” terms, stressing the “America First” philosophy, the Biden administration sees opportunity not through trade wars or bargaining, but through the escalation of geopolitical conflict. Biden’s team is sacrificing stability on every front for the sake of power. As such, the Biden White House, despite fawning over American jobs and prosperity, has thought nothing about tearing up global supply chains, driving up prices, accelerating geopolitical bloc confrontation, pursuing large scale sanctions and whipping up global uncertainty for hegemonic gain.
The US-led military bloc has sent the government in Kiev over a hundred billion dollars over the past year, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday in a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington. Since last February, NATO has provided “unprecedented support to Ukraine, around 120 billion dollars in military, humanitarian and financial assistance,” Stoltenberg told reporters at the State Department. While the US has played an “indispensable role,” Canada and the European members have contributed “over half” of the overall assistance, “including tanks, advanced air defense systems” and other weapons, he added.
According to Blinken, the US has contributed “nearly $30 billion” worth of military aid, while other NATO members gave $13 billion, as well as “tens of billions more in humanitarian and economic support.” sBlinken also said that “tilting the battlefield in Ukraine’s favor” is the key to the eventual diplomatic solution of the conflict. After their joint press event, Stoltenberg and Blinken went to meet with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, with even more funding for Ukraine on the agenda. In December, the Russian Defense Ministry estimated that the collective West had provided Ukraine with $97 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and supplies. Moscow has repeatedly warned the West that arming Ukraine only prolongs the conflict and risks a direct confrontation.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements for peace in the Donbass and insisting that its neighbor pledge to never join any Western military bloc. Ukrainian, German and French leaders have since admitted that the Minsk negotiations were a ploy to buy Ukraine time to prepare for war with Russia. Though multiple Western officials have publicly said Ukraine is fighting for their “values” and world order, and Ukraine’s own defense minister said Kiev is carrying out a NATO mission, the US and NATO maintain they are technically not participants in the conflict.
Twenty years ago, former Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his now-infamous address before the United Nations Security Council, making the case for war against Iraq. The presentation would later be revealed as lies. Sadly, it would also turn out that no one seemed to care.On February 5, 2003, I watched it all with a sense of boiling anger. The day before, I had made the following prediction to Japanese media: “He’s [Powell] going to present circumstantial evidence that packaged together and presented will make a compelling case that [UN weapons] inspections don’t work, inspections can’t work, that Iraq is actively conspiring against inspections, thereby, denigrating the efficacy of inspections, while the world waits for inspectors to do their job. The purpose of Colin Powell’s presentation tomorrow is to destroy international trust and confidence in weapons inspections and that is a darn shame.”
I was 100% correct in my assessment. I was in Japan at the invitation of Japanese activists to generate political opposition to America’s looming war on Iraq. I addressed the Japanese parliament and spoke with several major Japanese media outlets. Shortly after Powell finished speaking, I gave an interview with Kyodo News, where I dismissed Powell’s assertions that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction as “unsubstantiated.” “There’s nothing here that’s conclusive proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction,” I told Kyodo News. “Everything in here is circumstantial, everything in here mirrors the kind of allegations the US has made in the past in regard to Iraq’s weapons program,” I said. “He just hits you, hits you, hits you with circumstantial evidence, and he confuses people – and he lied, he lied to people, he misled people.”
Powell’s iconic moment was when he raised a vial of white powder – a proxy intended to simulate dry powder anthrax, a potent biological weapons agent, in an effort to link Iraq with the terrorist attacks in the US in October 2001 where dry powder anthrax was sent through the US postal system in envelopes. Ironically, the anthrax in question was actually produced by the US. Iraq is only known to have produced liquid bulk anthrax, which has a shelf life of only three years, and the last known batch of liquid bulk anthrax was produced in 1991 at a state-owned factory which was destroyed in 1996. “Colin Powell holds up a vial of dry powder anthrax and he makes allusions to the attack in the United States through the letters. That was US government anthrax! It had nothing to do with Iraq,” I said. Powell, I explained, was engaging in “classic bait-and-switch” in his presentation. “Iraq, anthrax, vial, dry powder – what connection do they have? None!”
“..the Times and the Post were so busy self-mythologizing that they untethered themselves from accountability mechanisms that once kept papers out of trouble..”
The Columbia Journalism Review stunned many last Monday by publishing “The Press Versus the President,” a 24,000-word autopsy of press coverage in the Trump years, focusing on the the Trump-Russia collusion scandal colloquially known as “Russiagate.” The piece was written by Jeff Gerth, a long-serving New York Times writer who is as credentialed as they come in the legacy press, having among other things won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 (for reporting, incidentally, not commentary or public service). In retirement at the start of the Trump years, Gerth watched with growing alarm as venerable institutions like the Times and the Washington Post continually made high-stakes assertions in headlines that appeared based on thin or uncheckable sourcing.
The pile of such stories was already stacked to skyscraper height, and commemorated by awards like a joint Times-Post Pulitzer, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrapped up an investigation of the matter without indicting Trump or anyone else for the supposed conspiracy. There was no way for Mueller’s probe to have ended the way it did and for years of “worse than Watergate” news reports about Trump-Russian collusion to be true, so Gerth went back to the beginning in search of the real story of what, if anything, went wrong on the coverage side. The result is a long, almost book-length compendium of errors and editorial overreach. It could have been longer. Gerth focused on the would-be investigative reports at papers like the Times and the Post that drove Russiagate, mostly leaving alone the less serious players at cable news and at online journals whose main contribution was making the click-bomb bigger.
A brief note on some issues that were already popping up as problems in the media business heading into 2016-2017, and which are important subtext to Gerth’s piece: All the President’s Men was a great movie, but it may have infected the media world with a delusion. Alan J. Pakula’s atmospheric thriller depicted journalists as modern-day noir detectives, with the bustling Washington Post newsroom replacing the stylish offices of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, and Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman giving America a portrait of reporters as sexy young rebels who could topple a president with a keystroke. The job is virtually never like that, but a generation of reporters and editors grew up with this ideal, on the alert for that one great scoop that would lead to lucrative book and movie deals and model-level actors playing them onscreen.
I don’t think it’s an accident that just as journalism was beginning to lose its way, Hollywood began cranking out All the President’s Men homages one after another, from Spotlight to She Said to The Post. Gerth doesn’t say that great papers like the Times and the Post were so busy self-mythologizing that they untethered themselves from accountability mechanisms that once kept papers out of trouble, but it’s implied in the facts he uncovers. Perhaps the most damning scene in the four-part series comes in Part Two, when in an astonishing display of hubris the Times invites a documentary crew to film them for a series called The Fourth Estate. The problem is, the scene they invite Showtime to record is perhaps the biggest screwup in the Russiagate years. This is the journalistic equivalent of Captain Edward Smith inviting cameras to record him snoring away as his Titanic drives into an iceberg.
Rep. Matt Gaetz early this week took an extremely unpopular position within the D.C. swamp, saying just before President Biden’s Tuesday night State of the Union address, “How much more for Ukraine? Is there any limit?” From the swamp’s point of view, he has certainly “stepped out of line”… but from the point of view of average Americans struggling to pay rising grocery, utility, and housing costs as billions of US tax dollars remain flowing to a corrupt foreign government, Gaetz in his lonely but outspoken stance is saying precisely what needs to be said at this late stage. The Florida Republican went off in a House floor speech Monday: “How much more for Ukraine? Is there any limit?” And posed: “Which billionth dollar really kicks in the door? Which redline we set will we not later cross?”
He had earlier previewed Biden’s State of the Union address in saying: “Tomorrow, President Biden will tell us how much more we must do for Ukraine,” Gaetz said. “Look around your house. How much stuff is made in Ukraine, or even Russia for that matter?” “So why Ukraine, a country that just rounded up dozens of senior leaders in its government over overt corruption?” Gaetz asked. “Perhaps the answer is as simple as the Hunter Biden life motto: the grifters gotta grift.” He emphasized the huge risk of D.C. pursuing its policy of arming Ukraine at all costs while inching toward nuclear-armed superpowers clashing, while at the same time most Americans find the Biden administration’s rationale for the unprecedented defense aid for Kiev to be unclear.
“Why should we do more for a country that just rounded up dozens of its senior officials over overt corruption?” he asked the administration and its supporters. For many months now going back to last spring, Gaetz has warned fellow lawmakers and the public of a “bipartisan push to go to war with Russia” – which could unleash nuclear apocalypse. Ironically, Joe Biden himself in so many words has warned of the same thing, in an October speech admitting that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is the highest it has been for 60 years, since the Cuban missile crisis.
Central banks closed out 2022 with reported net purchases of 28 tons of gold in December. Including large unreported purchases, this brought total central bank gold buying in 2022 to 1,136 tons. It was the second-highest level of net purchases on record dating back to 1950, and the 13th straight year of net central bank gold purchases. China officially started buying gold again in November and made another large purchase of 30 tons in December. That raised China’s total gold reserves to over 2,000 tons for the first time. The Chinese central bank accumulated 1,448 tons of gold between 2002 and 2019, and then suddenly went silent. Many speculate that the Chinese continued to add gold to its holdings off the books during those silent years. There has always been speculation that China holds far more gold than it officially reveals.
As Jim Rickards pointed out on Mises Daily back in 2015, many people speculate that China keeps several thousand tons of gold “off the books” in a separate entity called the State Administration for Foreign Exchange (SAFE). The Central Bank of Türkiye (Turkey) continued its consistent buying in December, adding another 25 tons to its swelling gold reserves. Over the course of 2022, Turkey added about 150 tons of gold to its hoard. Croatia bought 2 tons of gold after having not reported any changes in its gold reserves since 2001. After a pause in November, the Reserve Bank of India resumed purchasing gold in December, with a modest 1-ton purchase. India ranks as the ninth largest gold-holding country in the world. Since resuming buying in late 2017, the Reserve Bank of India has purchased over 200 tons of gold.
In August 2020, there were reports that the RBI was considering significantly raising its gold reserves. These purchases were partially offset by large sales by Kazakhstan (29 tons) and Uzbekistan (1 ton). It is not uncommon for banks that buy from domestic production – such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan – to switch between buying and selling. December purchases brought the total net increase in central bank gold reserves in Q4 to 417 tons. Through the second half of 2022, central banks bought 862 tons of gold.
The total increase in reserves was a combination of reported buying, along with an estimate for significant unreported buying. Central banks that often fail to report purchases include China and Russia. Many analysts believe China is the mystery buyer stockpiling gold to minimize exposure to the dollar. According to the World Gold Council, “Should more information about this unreported activity become available, these estimates may be revised.” Total 2022 central bank purchases of 1,136 tons represented a 152% increase from 2021. It was the highest level of annual net central bank gold purchases since the suspension of dollar convertibility into gold in 1971, and the second-highest annual total on record. (The record was in 1967.)
The UK’s leading Jewish organisation and a group of MPs have called on GB News and the media regulator Ofcom to tackle the broadcaster’s indulgence of conspiracy theories, warning that some recent segments and guests risked spreading ideas linked to antisemitism. The criticism comes as the channel faces increasing scrutiny over its mix of serious news with programmes that delve heavily into conspiracies about areas including Covid vaccines and a plot to create a world government. The decision by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism to speak out follows a recent edition of the weekly GB News show hosted by Neil Oliver, the broadcaster and historian.
Oliver, who delivers trademark monologues to camera, used the show last Saturday to discuss what he called a “silent war” by generations of politicians to take “total control of the people” and impose a “one-world government”. The idea seemingly echoes a noted conspiracy theory document called Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, supposedly a secret manual for world government found by chance in 1986. This has a long section on the role of the Rothschild banking dynasty, a common antisemitic trope. On the same show, one of Oliver’s guests was a man called William Keyte, introduced as a “constitutional expert”, who is a supporter of a fringe campaign group called the New Chartist Movement. Keyte’s focus is on the supposed primacy of common law over parliament, which has no crossover with antisemitic ideas.
[..] Keyte told the Guardian his interest was in constitutional law. He said: “It seems a shame that rather than focus on the important issues I raised in the interview with Neil in which so many people appear to be interested, you seem to be embarking on a piece about antisemitism. I do not condone antisemitism, but nor do I support the use of the subject to detract from other important issues.” A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said: “It is highly concerning that GB News continues to air a show which embraces all manner of conspiracy theories. Somewhat inevitably, some of those invited on to this show represent organisations that promote antisemitic conspiracy theories. If the channel will not act, we expect that Ofcom will.”
James O’Keefe, the founder and chairman of Project Veritas, has taken a paid leave from the conservative nonprofit media organization as its board considers whether to remove him from his leadership position, according to current and former employees of the organization.
An internal message sent to Project Veritas employees by the organization’s executive director, Daniel Strack, said that O’Keefe would be taking “a few weeks of well-deserved PTO.” An image of the message was shared by a source familiar with the organization’s internal operations, and its authenticity was confirmed by a current employee. When reached for comment on his personal cell phone, O’Keefe said nothing in response and did not respond to follow-up calls and text messages. Through a Project Veritas spokesman, Strack later released a statement on behalf of the organization. “Like all newsrooms at this stage, the Project Veritas Board of Directors and Management are constantly evaluating what the best path forward is for the organization,” the statement read in part. It did not directly address questions about O’Keefe’s employment status. “There are 65+ employees at Project Veritas dedicated to continuing the mission to expose corruption, dishonesty, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions,” the statement read. “To our supporters: We hear you, we care about you, and we will never give up.”
O’Keefe is his organization’s guiding ideological force and onscreen face, but his status as its day-to-day manager has become uncertain amid reports of internal turmoil, lawsuits from former employees, leaks about its internal workings, and a federal investigation into its conduct in purchasing a diary stolen from Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter. Strack’s internal message to employees made reference to what he called “a distracting time” and said that a board meeting had been held to discuss “the health of the organization” and that while “we have not come up with final solutions yet we have made a few immediate decisions.” The message said two top Project Veritas executives, including the nonprofit’s chief financial officer, had been “reinstated.” Multiple sources said that the pair had recently been fired by O’Keefe.
“They utterly smashed the world as we knew it—violating all human rights—in order to test out a new technology at great profit to themselves. In other words, they treated us all as lab rats.”
“An entire generation of politicians needs to be toppled from power all over the world. The same goes for media professionals, tech CEOs, and public-health officials. They all have to go..”
What if Dr. Anthony Fauci co-authored an article on vaccines that would have gotten you and me blocked and banned at any point in the past three years? That just happened. His article in Cell—“Rethinking next-generation vaccines for coronaviruses, influenzaviruses, and other respiratory viruses”—says it as plainly as possible: the COVID vaccine did not work because it could not work. [..] Now, it’s not as if Fauci admits that the vaccine was a complete flop. Of course, he has to engage in the usual incantations of the glories of the COVID vaccination. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid development and deployment of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines has saved innumerable lives and helped to achieve early partial pandemic control.”
Note the word “innumerable.” It means there is no number and no possibility of a number. Exactly. Also note “early partial”—weasel words to cover the reality of egregious failure. If you click through the citation to this dubious claim, it is from April 2021, early in the mutation process when we hardly had any data at all to justify such celebration. Why is Fauci citing a two-year-old piece in defense of the vaccine? Because that’s all there is to cite: two-year-old hagiographies without meaningful data. How precisely can we account for this fiasco? If they knew, and they did know, how is it that they put us through this horrible upheaval? The most dreadful theory is that they knew for sure that the virus would become endemic through exposure.
But the point of “slowing the spread” and “flattening the curve” (lockdowns and masking), while trashing and nearly banning other therapeutics, was to preserve the customer base for the new experimental product. That product was mRNA which is supposed to be a platform for future vaccines. This is why the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was taken off market. Under this theory, they wanted to prolong the pandemic for as long as possible so they could collect data on how well the vaccine worked. And they wanted to try it universally, which is why we did not hear much at all about the risk gradient of the vaccine itself. This also accounts for the deliberate drumming up of disease panic and forced distancing. So let that sink in.
They utterly smashed the world as we knew it—violating all human rights—in order to test out a new technology at great profit to themselves. In other words, they treated us all as lab rats. An entire generation of politicians needs to be toppled from power all over the world. The same goes for media professionals, tech CEOs, and public-health officials. They all have to go. And we need a thorough accounting not to mention guarantees that nothing like this will ever happen again. As for Moderna and Pfizer, one could easily make a case for forcing their immediate end as corporate entities.
BREAKING NEWS: Swiss President and the Minister of Health are under investigation, indictment, and prosecution by the Attorney General for Covid Crimes involving lying about the vaccine effectiveness and safety. Thailand convening war crime tribunals to nullify Pfizer Contracts. pic.twitter.com/3RfT4t3puq
Founded in 1971 by Schwab himself, the WEF is “committed to improving the state of the world through public-private cooperation”, also known as multistakeholder governance. The idea is that global decision-making should not be left to governments and nation-states — as in the post-war multilateralist framework enshrined in the United Nations — but should involve a whole range of non-government stakeholders: civil society bodies, academic experts, media personalities and, most important, multinational corporations. In its own words, the WEF’s project is “to redefine the international system as constituting a wider, multifaceted system of global cooperation in which intergovernmental legal frameworks and institutions are embedded as a core, but not the sole and sometimes not the most crucial, component”.
While this may sound fairly benign, it neatly encapsulates the basic philosophy of globalism: insulating policy from democracy by transferring the decision-making process from the national and international level, where citizens theoretically are able to exercise some degree of influence over policy, to the supranational level, by placing a self-selected group of unelected, unaccountable “stakeholders” — mainly corporations — in charge of global decisions concerning everything from energy and food production to the media and public health. The underlying undemocratic philosophy is the same one underpinning the philanthrocapitalist approach of people such Bill Gates, himself a long-time partner of the WEF: that non-governmental social and business organisations are best suited to solve the world’s problems than governments and multilateral institutions.
Even though the WEF has increasingly focused its agenda on fashionable topics such as environmental protection and social entrepreneurship, there is little doubt as to which interests Schwab’s brainchild is actually promoting and empowering: the WEF is itself mostly funded by around 1,000 member companies — typically global enterprises with multi-billion dollar turnovers, which include some of the world’s biggest corporations in oil (Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron, BP), food (Unilever, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé), technology (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) and pharmaceuticals (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna). The composition of the WEF’s board is also very revealing, including Laurence D. Fink, CEO of Blackrock, David M. Rubenstein, co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, and Mark Schneider, CEO of Nestlé. There’s no need to resort to conspiracy theories to posit that the WEF’s agenda is much more likely to be tailored to suit the interests of its funders and board members — the world’s ultra-wealthy and corporate elites — rather than to “improving the state of the world”, as the organisation claims.
The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland has kicked off on Monday with a number of top-tier leaders absent. US President Joe Biden is skipping this year’s gathering, along with French President Emmanuel Macron, and new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also passing on the event, along with the entire Russian business elite, which has been forced off the guest list by Ukraine-related sanctions. Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Chinese businessmen will also miss the forum following the aftershocks of a recent spike in Covid-19 cases and troubles on the domestic stock market, which saw some $224 billion erased last year from the fortunes of China’s wealthiest people.
Of the Group of Seven (G7) leaders, only German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to attend Davos this year, along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Despite the shrinking number of political leaders, this year’s attendance list is rich in top managers. Among 2,700 participants in the official WEF sessions, “we’re likely to surpass the old record from 2020 with 600 global CEOs – including 1,500 C-suite level overall,” according to WEF head of digital and marketing, George Schmitt. According to Bloomberg, a total of 116 billionaires are attending the WEF this year, a 40% rise from ten years ago. Representatives from the US will form the largest group with 33 delegates. Some 18 more billionaires are coming from Europe, and 13 from India, including industrialist Gautam Adani, the world’s fourth-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Cynics of all persuasions may be excused for lamenting Mr. Zircon – currently on oceanic patrol encompassing the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and of course “Mare Nostrum” Mediterranean – won’t be presenting his business card at Davos. Analyst Peter Koenig has developed a convincing thesis that the WEF, the WHO and NATO may be running some sort of sophisticated death cult. The Great Reset does mingle merrily with NATO’s agenda as agent provocateur, financer and weaponizer of the proxy Empire vs. Russia war in black hole Ukraine. NAKO – an acronym for North Atlantic Killing Organization – would be more appropriate in this case. As Koenig summarizes it, “NATO enters any territory where the ‘conventional’ media lie-machine, and social engineering are failing or not completing their people-ordaining goals fast enough.”
In parallel, very few people are aware that on June 13, 2019 in New York, a secret deal was clinched between the UN, the WEF, an array of oligarch-weaponized NGOs – with the WHO in the front line – and last but not least, the world’s top corporations, which are all owned by an interlinked maze with Vanguard and BlackRock at the center. The practical result of the deal is the UN Agenda 2030. Virtually every government in the NATOstan area and the “Western Hemisphere” (US establishment definition) has been hijacked by Agenda 2030 – which translates, essentially, as hoarding, privatizing and financializing all the earth’s assets, under the pretext of “protecting” them. Translation: the marketization and monetization of the entire natural world.
Davos superstar shills such as insufferable bore Niall Ferguson are just well rewarded vassals: western intellectuals of the Harvard, Yale and Princeton mould that would never dare bite the hand that feeds them. Ferguson just wrote a column on Bloomberg titled “All is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front” – basically to peddle the risk of WWIII, on behalf of his masters, blaming of course “China as the arsenal of autocracy”. Among serial high-handed inanities, this one stands out. Ferguson writes, “There are two obvious problems with US strategy (…) The first is that if algorithmic weapons systems are the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons, Putin may eventually be driven to using the latter, as he clearly lacks the former.” Cluelessness here is a euphemism. Ferguson clearly has no idea “algorithmic weapons” mean; if he’s referring to electronic warfare, the US may have been able to maintain superiority for a while in Ukraine, but that’s over.
[..] Nobody with an IQ over room temperature will expect Davos next week to discuss any aspect of the NATO vs. Eurasia existential war seriously – not to mention propose diplomacy. So I’ll leave you with yet another typical tawdry story about how the Empire – who rules over Davos – deals in practice with its vassals. While in Sicily earlier this year I learned that an ultra high-value Pentagon asset had landed in Rome, in haste, as part of an unscheduled visit. A few days later the reason for the visit was printed in La Repubblica, one of the papers of the toxic Agnelli clan. That was a Mafia scam: a face-to-face “suggestion” for the Meloni government to imperatively provide Kiev, as soon as possible, with the costly anti-Samp-T missile system, developed by an European consortium, Eurosam, uniting MBDA Italy, MBDA France and Thales.
Kiev’s adopted policy of hatred and intransigence towards Russia is inevitably driving it into poverty, a former Ukrainian opposition-party leader, who was forced from his home nation, has concluded. Now Kiev is teaching Europe the same approach, leading to the same outcome and to possible nuclear war, he added. Viktor Medvedchuk’s political party had the biggest opposition faction in the current Ukrainian parliament. The government of President Vladimir Zelensky launched a crackdown on the group and on its leader personally. A proponent of reconciliation with Russia, he has written a keynote article published on Monday in Russian newspaper Izvestia, explaining the roots of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Both Zelensky and his predecessor Pyotr Poroshenko had been elected after the 2014 coup in Kiev on a platform of peace, and each made a U-turn after getting into office, Medvedchuk pointed out.
He argued that this shows a pattern of betrayal of the Ukrainian people by its leadership and by what he termed a “party of war.” Being enemies with Russia is against Ukraine’s economic interest, Medvedchuk asserted. Not only is Russia a major market and source of raw materials from which Ukraine can benefit, the country’s industrial sector was mostly in the east and people there, who for historic reasons have emotional ties to Russia, were antagonized by Kiev. Economic ruination is an inevitable consequence of the conflict, the politician wrote. “It is no longer Europe that teaches Ukraine politics, but Ukraine that teaches Europe how to achieve economic decline and poverty with the help of a policy of hatred and intransigence. And if Europe continues to support this policy, it will be dragged into a war, possibly a nuclear one,” he warned.
He accused Western nations of giving the incumbent Ukrainian government “triumph after triumph, while no military breakthrough is observed,” referring to the parades that generals in Ancient Rome were given after major victories. Meanwhile, the “party of peace” gets no voice either at home or in Western nations, Medvedchuk lamented. “Those who stood for peace were slandered, intimidated and repressed on incitement from the West. The Ukrainian party of peace simply did not fit into Western democracy.” “This eloquently suggests that most US and European politicians do not want any peace for Ukraine. But this does not mean at all that Ukrainians do not want peace, and Zelensky’s military triumph is more important to them than their lives and destroyed homes.” he reasoned. Only when pro-peace politicians are allowed to make their case freely can there be hope to resolve the situation, Medvedchuk believes.
“Western nations must recognize that Russia has legitimate interests in Ukraine. Otherwise, it will “grow further, spilling over to Europe and other countries..”
The West’s insistence that it won the Cold War and was entitled to the spoils at the expense of Russian interests is at the root of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, the country’s exiled opposition leader has said. Viktor Medvedchuk was forced to leave his home nation under the threat of prosecution for alleged treason. His Opposition Bloc – For Life party had the biggest faction in the Ukrainian parliament and advocated reconciliation with Russia. However, the government of President Vladimir Zelensky cracked down on it and ultimately forced many of its members into exile or silence. In an article published by Russian newspaper Izvestia on Monday, Medvedchuk analyzed the causes of the current crisis, arguing that the origin of the conflict lies in the way that the end of the Cold War is perceived by Washington and Moscow.
“The West definitely considers itself as a winner and Russia as a defeated party,” he said. Consequently, it considers ex-Soviet territories as “legitimate prey for the US and NATO” under the “woe to the conquered” principle. From Moscow’s standpoint, it simply relinquished confrontation when it decided against pursuing communism. Since the 1990s, it had sought friendly relations with Western nations, as well as economic and political integration into the EU, Medvedchuk wrote. The US plan, as evidenced by the expansion of NATO in Europe despite the objections of Moscow, was at odds with opening the door to its Cold War opponent. Ultimately, it derailed EU-Russian engagement, he argued. Conflicts like the Balkan wars are further evidence that the West had moved to gobble up the former Eastern Bloc, he continued, since they helped to “make it easier for the winner to take it over.”
The West targeted Ukraine for absorption and saw the country as part of its rightful prize, but a lot of resistance had to be overcome in order to split it from Russia, considering Kiev’s historical ties with Moscow, and the economic interest in maintaining good relations, Medvedchuk explained. Kiev antagonized the eastern part of the country, which was both economically stronger and more pro-Russian than the nationalist lands in the east, he suggested. And even then, both Zelensky and his predecessor, Pyotr Poroshenko, had been elected on a peace platform only to become “war party” politicians after taking office. The current conflict can be resolved only if pro-peace politicians are allowed to make their case, and Western nations must recognize that Russia has legitimate interests in Ukraine. Otherwise, it will “grow further, spilling over to Europe and other countries,” and has the potential to escalate into a nuclear war, he warned.
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic has claimed NATO, a military bloc of which Zagreb is a member, is waging a “proxy war” against Moscow in Ukraine. He also dismissed sanctions against Moscow as “nonsense,” adding that he does not want to be an “American slave.” Speaking to Croatian reporters in the city of Vukovar on Sunday, Milanovic said, among other things: “Washington and NATO are waging a proxy war against Russia through Ukraine,” as quoted by media outlet Istra24. He went on to argue that “The plan cannot be to remove Putin. The plan cannot be sanctions,” adding that such punitive measures are “nonsense and we will not achieve anything with them.” “They go from war to war. And what should I be? An American slave?” Croatia’s president asked rhetorically.
Milanovic voiced his frustration with the US-led military bloc’s policies in the same interview in which he tore into Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, over his latest Ukraine-related remark. Speaking to news channel France 24 on Saturday, Plenkovic said the Balkan nation’s lawmakers, who in mid-December didn’t support the EU’s program to train Ukrainian military personnel in member states, have “failed to be on the right side of history.” Commenting on the remark, Milanovic, in turn, slammed the premier for bringing “disgrace” to his country “and to its democratic representatives in front of others.” The Croatian president argued that this kind of behavior reaches a low that is “the bottom of the bottom.”
As for the EU’s mission, the Croatian president warned that it effectively means that “for the first time in its history, the EU is participating in a war.” This, according to Milanovic, is “against the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.” In December 2022, Milanovic argued that having Ukrainian service members train on Croatian soil would “bring war” to the Balkan nation. He also insisted at the time that “Ukraine is not an ally,” criticizing Brussels’ decision last June to grant Kiev candidate status as “cynical.”
“Using private counsel allows Biden to raise attorney-client privilege. [..] While that attorney-client privilege can be overcome under a “crime/fraud exception,” it adds a level of initial protection.”
The discovery of a fourth set of classified documents, at the Biden residence in Delaware, has further undermined the White House’s virtual mantra that the president “takes classified documents very seriously.” Putting aside the repeated movement of highly classified documents over six years, one curious element has emerged in this scandal: the use of private counsel. Not only did President Joe Biden enlist lawyers to clear out his private Washington office; he then used them — rather than security officers or the FBI — to search for additional classified documents. The initial use of lawyers is notable. While it seems a fairly pricey moving crew, Biden could argue a trove of documents might require a judgment on where they should be sent and whether they belong to Biden, the Penn Biden Center or the government.
But why was a legal team sent in six years after Biden took the documents on leaving as vice president? Were the lawyers specifically selected because they had clearances, an acknowledgment there might be classified material unlawfully housed in the office? After the fourth batch of documents was discovered this week (the third found in Delaware), Richard Sauber, referred to as the “special counsel to the president,” stressed that he has a clearance. Sauber admits the lawyers who found the first batch at the residence didn’t have clearances but says he found the later documents. It remains unclear which lawyers were involved in which discoveries, whether they had clearances and (if so) at what level. In fact, it seems to suggest Biden continued to use uncleared lawyers after his team found highly classified documents Nov. 2 in the Penn Biden office closet in Washington. That itself could be viewed as gross mishandling of classified information.
It’s strange Biden did not use security officers or the FBI to conduct further searches. The president has a host of people who regularly handle classified material. So why use the lawyers? The answer appears the same as in the case of Hillary Clinton’s emails: control. Using private counsel allows Biden to raise attorney-client privilege. Trump also used counsel, but eventually the FBI raided his home to search and remove not just classified material but documents found in boxes with that material. While that attorney-client privilege can be overcome under a “crime/fraud exception,” it adds a level of initial protection. It also allowed Biden to control the discovery and initial record of the discovery of classified information. The key to any investigation will be the chain of custody extending back to the documents’ removal in 2017 when Biden left office.
How these documents appeared in their discovered locations is known only to his lawyers. It’s a link in the chain of custody that Biden effectively controls. With Mar-a-Lago, the FBI was criticized for staging documents to be shown in the storage room. The photos were then leaked to an eager media. There will be no staged photos of documents alongside Time magazine covers for Biden. Nor were documents he housed with classified documents removed. Indeed, it’s not clear if the FBI will know what documents were stored in the same boxes. What was potentially lost is significant. Classified documents are generally supposed to be in folders with a thick, colored border and large printed classification warnings. Were some of those folders observable before they were moved? If so, anyone could tell a pile contained classified material, including the president and passersby.
Likewise, the initial discovery could show the context of surrounding material. The FBI at Mar-a-Lago carefully photographed that context and its search. Here, we’re relying on counsel to have kept such a record when most lawyers would be reluctant to do so given the risk to their client. The key is that unlike FBI agents, these lawyers are not acting on behalf of the public interest but for the president’s personal interests. If there are criminal charges, the key witnesses will be lawyers representing the president as an individual. They are more likely to minimize incriminating or embarrassing elements.
Turley’s comment on this: “Biden counsel continues to make statements seemingly against their client’s interests. Sauber said that the lawyers who discovered the documents on Wednesday night did not have clearances…”
Lawyers for President Biden found more documents marked as classified at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, than previously known, the White House acknowledged in a statement Saturday. White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement that a total of six pages of documents marked as classified were found during a search of Mr. Biden’s private library. The White House had said previously that only a single page was found there. The latest disclosure is in addition to the discovery of documents found in December in Mr. Biden’s garage and in November at his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, from his time as vice president. The apparent mishandling of classified documents and official records from the Obama administration are under investigation by a former U.S. attorney, Robert Hur, who was appointed as a special counsel on Thursday by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Sauber said in a statement Saturday that Mr. Biden’s personal lawyers, who did not have security clearances, stopped their search after finding the first page on Wednesday evening. Sauber found the remaining material Thursday, as he was facilitating their retrieval by the Department of Justice. “While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages,” Sauber said. “The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.” The Justice Department declined to comment to CBS News on the newly discovered documents. Sauber has previously said that the White House was “confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”
Sauber’s statement did not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting of the number of records with classified markings. The White House is already facing scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of the initial group of documents at the Biden office. On Thursday, asked whether Mr. Biden could guarantee that additional classified documents would not turn up in a further search, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “You should assume that it’s been completed, yes.” Sauber reiterated Saturday that the White House would cooperate with Hur’s investigation. Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, said his legal team has “attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”
Marco Polo
Chuck Todd: "Do you have a crime that you think Hunter Biden committed?"
Sen. Ron Johnson: "You should read the @MarcoPolo501c3 report."
In what is a stunning admission, California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff has admitted that President Joe Biden may have endangered national security by mishandling classified documents. He spoke to ABC “This Week” host Jonathan Karl on Sunday when the topic of the classified document scandal and Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing a special counsel was talked about. “Congressman Schiff, you were on this show just after Attorney General Garland appointed a special counsel in the case of the Trump documents. You said it was the right move. Do you feel the same way about this special counsel?” the host said. “I do think it’s the right move. The attorney general has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, but the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public.
And here, I don’t think he had any choice but to appoint a special counsel. And I think that special counsel will do the proper assessment,” the Congressman said. “I still would like to see Congress do its own assessment of — and receive an assessment from the intelligence community of whether there was an exposure to others of these documents, whether there was harm to national security, on the case of either set of documents with either president. But, yes, I think the special counsel was appropriately appointed,” he said. “Jonathan, if I could also, though, because my state is still trying to dig out from these terrible storms, I want to thank the president for making an emergency declaration and let Californians know that in the three most affected counties they can now apply for help in terms of rebuilding their homes and their businesses and that other counties need to report their damage as soon as possible so they can qualify for relief as well,” he said as the host brought the conversation back to the documents.
“You raise the possibility of those national security assessment. Is it possible that national security was jeopardized here as – as many, including you, raised that possibility with the Mar-a-Lago documents?” the host said. “I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts. We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents. I think we ought to get that same assessment of the documents found in the – in the think tank, as well as the home of President Biden. I’d like to know what these documents were. I’d like to know what the IC’s assessment is, whether there was any risk of exposure and what the harm would be and whether any mitigation needs to be done. I think that would be appropriate and consistent with what we requested in the case of Mar-a-Lago,” the Congressman said.
In spite of his manifest unpopularity and refusal even to campaign, Biden was installed as president in 2020. Having rarely met an actual Biden supporter, Trump voters were skeptical and angry. The extended recounts, unceremonious dismissal of legal challenges, and videos of disappearing ballots, along with strident denunciations of “election deniers,” did not reassure anyone. Later revelations showed the coordinated way government officials, the media, NGOs, billionaires, and others conspired to “fortify” the 2020 election. Biden governed as he ran: mostly hidden from the public, beholden to donors and party elders, doing as little as possible. This seemed acceptable for a while, since it allowed the various constituent parts of the government to do what they wanted with little interference.
Everyone knows Biden’s never been that sharp and seems more decrepit than ever, that his vice president is even dumber than he is, and that he’s not really running anything. But this is all a feature, not a bug, for the cabal that brought him to office. For them, the more independence they have from oversight, the better. Lately, it seems there’s a disturbance in force. Biden and his allies have continued their vendetta against Trump, exposing his tax returns and raiding his home for possessing documents he supposedly owed the National Archives. This did not go over as well as Attorney General (and all-around hack) Merrick Garland anticipated, and it seems Garland and the January 6 Committee have each decided to scale back their demands. This is why the recent exposure of top secret documents in Biden’s old office, his garage, and a mysterious third location suggests something is afoot.
We went from a Monday disclosure to a special counsel being appointed on Thursday. Nothing like this happens this quickly unless it is by design. There are, of course, ways to deal with this situation that do not involve public exposure. Couldn’t Biden or his staff order some FBI agents or White House people to pick them up and take them to wherever they’re supposed to be stored? It’s in the news because somehow his lawyers found the documents and reported them before the story could go through White House channels. And, lawyers being lawyers, they followed the street-lawyer rule that if someone has to go to jail, make sure it’s your client and not you. Concerned about individual culpability for obstruction or mishandling documents, they made this hot potato someone else’s problem as fast as possible.
Amid the generalized media crack-up that surrounded the 2016 presidential election, the bogeyman of “Russian bots” quickly became a load-bearing concept. A Russia-based social media campaign, or so it was said, had saturated sites like Twitter with fake accounts and, in doing so, helped to swing the election for Donald Trump. Becoming axiomatic in liberal circles, this story soon took on a life of its own. It’s since played a prominent role in mainstream media narratives of the 2016 election, been the subject of highly publicized congressional hearings, and also loomed large in the wider global discourse about “fake news.” That the Russian government preferred Trump to Hillary Clinton and that Russia-connected actors engaged in digital skulduggery related to the election are not really in dispute.
Much of the mainstream discussion around Russian bots, however, has been premised on unexamined assumptions about the scale and effectiveness of these efforts. Powerful states including the United States, after all, regularly engage in the likes of online propaganda and sock-puppeting campaigns. Whether they have a more than negligible impact on real world events, electoral and otherwise, is another question. It’s notable, then, that a new analysis published by the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University finds no evidence whatsoever that Russia-based Twitter disinformation had any meaningful impact on voter behavior in 2016. In place of the terrifying bot army menace that’s periodically been invoked, the researchers instead detail an enterprise with minimal reach or influence, and one overwhelmingly concentrated among partisan Republicans already inclined to vote for Trump.
They estimate that as many as thirty-two million US Twitter users may have been “exposed” to tweets from Russia-aligned accounts over the eight-month period preceding the 2016 election.” In numerical terms that may sound like a lot, but it actually isn’t when you factor in the sheer volume of posts and information encountered by social media users on a daily basis. As the report puts it: While, on average, respondents were exposed to roughly 4 posts from Russian foreign influence accounts per day in the last month of the election campaign, they were exposed to an average of 106 posts on average per day from national news media and 35 posts per day from US politicians. In other words, respondents were exposed to 25 times more posts from national news media and 9 times as many posts from politicians than those from Russian foreign influence accounts.
Sheer exposure, of course, doesn’t even necessarily amount to influence. Like advertising, politically motivated content can functionally be background noise if it fails to reach particular audiences or in turn doesn’t have an impact on those that it does. In both respects, the study is quite unequivocal: not only were Russian Twitter efforts dwarfed by posts from media and politicians, but actual exposure to them was highly concentrated within a subset of partisan conservatives: Results . . . show that the amount of exposure depends substantially on users’ self-identified partisanship: those who identify as “Strong Republicans” were exposed to roughly nine times as many posts from Russian foreign influence accounts than were those who identify as Democrats or Independents.
Today’s Twitter Files drop contains several notable pieces of evidence. First, that lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry launched a ‘massive lobbying blitz to crush any effort to share patents/IP for new covid-related medicine,” according to The Intercept’s Lee Fang. As part of this effort, lobbying group BIO “wrote to the newly elected Biden admin, demanding the U.S. gov sanction any country attempting to violate patent rights and create generic low cost covid medicine or vaccines.” Of note, Pfizer and BioNTech raked in $37 billion in revenue in 2021 alone from the COVID-19 vaccine, while Moderna made $17.7 billion the same year (and has recently announced a plan to hike the price of the Covid-19 vaccine by approximately 400%). BioNTech, which developed the Pfizer vaccine, “reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic low cost vaccines.”
According to Fang, “Twitter’s reps responded quickly to the pharma request,” while “A lobbyist in Europe asked the content moderation team to monitor the accounts of Pfizer, AstraZeneca & of activist hashtags like #peoplesvaccine.” Meanwhile, the “fake accounts” flagged by the pharmaceutical companies for action were real people – one of whom Fang spoke with on the phone. “For more than two years, a global movement has been speaking out against pharmaceutical greed and demanding that everyone, everywhere has the tools to combat pandemics,” said Maaza Seyoum, a campaigner for the People’s Vaccine Alliance. “Whatever nasty tricks companies and governments pull,” she continued, “we cannot and will not be silenced.” Second, ‘Pfizer & Moderna’s lobbying group, BIO, fully funded a special content moderation campaign designed by a contractor called Public Good Projects (PGP), which worked w/Twitter to set content moderation rules around covid “misinformation.”‘ according to Fang.
BIO funded the PGP campaign, “Stronger,” to the tune of $1.275 million. Its focus? Helping Twitter ‘create content moderation bots,’ selecting which public health accounts would be verified, and helping to crowdsource content takedowns. Of note, the Moderna/Pfizer-funded campaign included regular emails to Twitter officals with takedown and verification requests. “Here’s an example of those types of emails that went straight to Twitter’s lobbyists and content moderators. Many focused on @zerohedge, which was suspended.” Fang includes a screencap of an email with two excel spreadsheets containing said requests.
The population declined in 2022 to 1.411 billion, down some 850,000 people from the previous year, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced during a Tuesday briefing on annual data. Analysts said the decline was the first since 1961 during the great famine triggered by former leader Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. “The population will likely trend down from here in coming years. This is very important, with implications for potential growth and domestic demand,” said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. The birth rate also fell to a record low of 6.77 births per 1,000, down from 7.52 a year earlier and the lowest level since the founding of Communist China in 1949. Some 9.56 million babies were born, compared with 10.62 million in 2021 – despite a push from the government to encourage more married couples to have children.
The new data came alongside the announcement of one of China’s worst annual economic performances in nearly half a century, with the economy expanding by just 3% for the year, far below the government’s target, underscoring the steep economic challenges the country faces as its labor force shrinks and its retired demographic grows. The demographic crisis, which is expected to have an increasing impact on Chinese growth in the years to come, has been a key concern for policymakers. Beijing scrapped its decades-long and highly controversial “one child” policy in 2015, after realizing the restrictive policy had contributed to a rapidly aging population and shrinking workforce that could severely distress the country’s economic and social stability. To arrest the falling birth rate, the Chinese government announced in 2015 that it would allow married couples to have two children. But after a brief uptick in 2016, the national birth rate has continued to fall.
Later I bought the book, Helter Skelter, written by the man who prosecuted Charlie. But as an adult and a true crime reporter it was a story I steered clear of, never once accepting a production role in any of the many retellings. Like Didion, I remained skittish about it. I couldn’t make sense of Sharon Tate’s astonishing beauty being annihilated and the peace and love ethos of rich Hollywood hippies reduced to feral human remains – for nothing. The True Detective-type photos from Cielo Drive are images that still haunt. So, why am I so gripped by the revelations that Big Tech, legacy media and for sure the government actually silenced the voices of experts honestly trying to stop the unfolding disaster of lockdowns? Why does this feel like a moment as significant as those era-ending murders in the pretty house on a quiet SoCal Drive?
A team of independent journos is uncovering irrefutable proof that our well being was not paramount in the minds of those who peddled a fake consensus to invoke lockdowns — in my view — the most ruinous public health mistake in modern history. Government, its public health officials, legacy media, and even the medical journals were more into narrative stitching than truth and actually saving lives. The stories of governmental and scientific fraud and perfidy are all over Substack and Twitter and Elon is being hailed as a hero — as he should be, despite what my friend CJ Hopkins said on the podcast last week. But corporate media are running their usual smear-games — abdicating their responsibility to their audience — in order to hide their own complicity in a policy scandal that dwarfs all others.
In the meantime, we are on our own, facing an ugly truth about the people who govern us and the agencies they exploit to stay in power. Everything we thought was true about this power dynamic is a lie. At least the Manson Murders were covered by corporate media. We all shared a similar experience.
As a miner for 40 years I have worked in various mines around the world. Gold, platinum, copper, coal, lead, zinc, oil and salt. I’m going to tell you something, and here it is. We will destroy the earth in the name of “Green Energy” Follow along and I will explain. MiningWatch Canada is estimating that “[Three] billion tons of mined metals and minerals will be needed to power the energy transition” – a “massive” increase especially for six critical minerals: lithium, graphite, copper, cobalt, nickel and rare earth minerals Over the next 30 years 7.5 billion of us, we will consume more minerals than the last 70,000 years or the past 500 generations, which is more than all of the 108 billion humans who have ever walked the Earth.
Mining requires the extraction of solid ores, often after removing vast amounts of overlying rock. Then the ore must be processed, creating an enormous quantity of waste – about 100 billion tonnes a year, more than any other human-made waste stream. Purifying a single tonne of rare earths requires using at least 200 cubic meters of water, which then becomes polluted with acids and heavy metals. On top of that, imagine the destruction and energy required to obtain these essential metals:
18,740 pounds of purified rock to produce 2.2 pounds of vanadium
35,275 pounds of ore for 2.2 pounds of cerium
110,230 pounds of rock for 2.2 pounds of gallium
2,645,550 pounds of ore to get 2.2 pounds of lutecium
Also staggering amounts of ore are needed for other metals. By 2035, demand is expected to double for germanium; quadruple for tantalum; and quintuple for palladium. The scandium market could increase nine-fold, and the cobalt market by a factor of 24. (Marscheider-Wiedemann 2016 ‘raw materials for emerging technologies’. The potential demand for rare metals is exponential. We are already consuming over two billion tonnes of metals every year — the equivalent of more than 500 Eiffel Towers a day. There is nothing refined about mining. It involves crushing rock, and then using a concoction of chemical reagents such as sulphuric and nitric acid, a long and highly repetitive process using many different procedures to obtain a rare-earth concentrate close to 100% purity.
With 8 billion people alive on Earth, it may be reasonable to believe that the planet is becoming a little crowded. Nevertheless, we should not neglect the opposite opinion: that we have resources and technologies sufficient to keep 8 billion people alive and reasonably happy, and perhaps even more. Neither position can be proven, nor disproven. The future will tell us who was right but, in the meantime, it is perfectly legitimate to propose that population growth should be slowed down by birth planning. The problem is that we don’t have a discussion on population: we have a clash of absolutes. The position that sees overpopulation as a problem has been thoroughly demonized over the past decades and, still today, you cannot even mention the subject without being immediately branded as a would-be exterminator.
It happened to Bill Gates, to the Club of Rome, and to many others who dared suggest that the world would be a better place if the human population were to stabilize at levels lower than the present one. The demonization trend is, of course, a knee-jerk reaction: the people who propose population planning would be simply horrified at being accused of supporting mass exterminations. But note also that demonization starts from a real problem. Exterminations DID happen in the recent past, and they were carried out largely on the basis of a wrong evaluation of the overpopulation problem. During the Nazi era in Germany, the idea that Europe was overpopulated was common and it was widely believed that the “Lebensraum, “living space” available was insufficient for the German people. The result was a series of exterminations correctly considered the most heinous crimes in human history.
How was that possible? The Germans of that time were the grandfathers of the Germans of today, who are horrified at thinking of what their grandparents did or at least did not oppose. But, for the Germans of those times, killing the Untermenschen, the inferior races, seemed to be the right thing to do, given the vision of the world that was proposed to them and that they had accepted. The Germans fell into a trap called “utilitarianism.” It is one of those principles that are so embedded in our way of thinking that we don’t even realize that it exists. But it does, and it causes enormous damage. In principle, utilitarianism wouldn’t seem to be such a bad idea. It is a rational calculation of the consequences of taking or not taking a certain action based on the principle of generating the maximum good for the maximum number of people. So defined, it looks both sensible and harmless. But that’s the theory. What we have is a good illustration of the age-old principle that “in theory, theory and practice are the same thing. In practice, they are not.”
Think about what’s being done to your dopamine levels on a daily basis and then watch this. In 1958, Aldous Huxley predicted a form of dictatorship that would rely not on force, but propaganda—and addiction. pic.twitter.com/0Rs6ESUCR1
Cleaner Shrimps and Moray Eels have a mutualistic relationship
These shrimp clean parasites, dead skin and algae around the moray eel’s eyes, gills, and teeth, they get a free meal, and the eel is cleared of its parasitic load pic.twitter.com/2FbjxJTIhK
Think about it
https://twitter.com/i/status/1515001676389883912
CNN Poll
Who was in greater pain during this amazing 1:02 of television? The thousands of employees who work at CNN or the hundreds of people in the audience watching? pic.twitter.com/Mrqr8VU7np
“Instead of supporting the Ukrainian leader’s peace mandate, Democrats in Congress were impeaching Trump for briefly impeding the flow of weapons that fueled the fight.”
On a warm October day in 2019, the eminent Russia studies professor Stephen F. Cohen and I sat down in Manhattan for what would be our last in-person interview (Cohen passed away in September 2020 at the age of 81). The House was gearing up to impeach Donald Trump for freezing weapons shipments to Ukraine while pressuring its government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The Beltway media was consumed with frenzy of a presidency in peril. But Professor Cohen, one of the leading Russia scholars in the United States, was concerned with what the impeachment spectacle in Washington meant for the long-running war between the US-backed Ukrainian government and Russian-backed rebels in the Donbas.
At that point, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky was just months into an upstart presidency that he had won on a pledge to end the Donbas conflict. Instead of supporting the Ukrainian leader’s peace mandate, Democrats in Congress were impeaching Trump for briefly impeding the flow of weapons that fueled the fight. As his Democratic allies now like to forget, President Obama refused to send these same weapons out of fear of prolonging the war and arming Nazis. By abandoning Obama’s policy, the Democrats, Cohen warned, threaten to sabotage peace and strengthen Ukraine’s far-right. “Zelensky ran as a peace candidate,” Cohen explained. “He won an enormous mandate to make peace. So, that means he has to negotiate with Vladimir Putin.”
But there was a major obstacle. Ukrainian fascists “have said that they will remove and kill Zelensky if he continues along this line of negotiating with Putin… His life is being threatened literally by a quasi-fascist movement in Ukraine.” Peace could only come, Cohen stressed, on one condition. “[Zelensky] can’t go forward with full peace negotiations with Russia, with Putin, unless America has his back,” he said. “Maybe that won’t be enough, but unless the White House encourages this diplomacy, Zelensky has no chance of negotiating an end to the war. So the stakes are enormously high.”
The subsequent impeachment trial, and bipartisan US policy since, has made clear that Washington has had no interest in having Zelensky’s back, and every interest in fueling the Donbas war that he had been elected to end. The overwhelming message from Congress, fervently amplified across the US media (including progressive outlets) with next to no dissent, was that when it comes to Ukraine’s civil war, the US saw Ukraine’s far-right as allies, and its civilians as cannon fodder.
Russia has sent a formal letter to the U.S. warning that shipments of sensitive weapons from the United States and NATO were exacerbating tensions in Ukraine and could lead to “unpredictable consequences,” The Washington Post reported. The letter, which was viewed by the Post, added that the U.S. has flouted the rules governing the transfer of weapons to conflict zones. According to the letter dated Tuesday, Russia accused NATO of impeding early peace negotiation with Ukraine “in order to continue the bloodshed.” The State Department declined to confirm any private diplomatic correspondence. However, a spokesperson added that it can confirm that along with allies and partners, “we are providing Ukraine with billions of dollars worth of security assistance, which our Ukrainian partners are using to extraordinary effect to defend their country against Russia’s unprovoked aggression and horrific acts of violence.”
The news of the diplomatic letter comes as President Biden announced an additional $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine this week, which for the first time included advanced munitions that the war-torn country has requested. “The Ukrainian military has used the weapons we are providing to devastating effect. As Russia prepares to intensify its attack in the Donbas region, the United States will continue to provide Ukraine with the capabilities to defend itself,” Biden said. The most recent round of U.S. security assistance includes a mixture of arms and other supplies that Washington has already provided Kyiv, as well as new capabilities that had not previously been sent over.
According to the Pentagon, the aid package includes 11 Mi-17 helicopters, 300 Switchblade drones, 200 M113 armored personnel carriers, 18 howitzers and 40,000 artillery rounds, 10 counter-artillery radars, 500 Javelin missiles, unmanned coastal defense vessels and protective equipment in the event of a chemical or biological weapons attack.
The United States and its NATO allies have ramped up the delivery of tanks, helicopters, and heavy weapons to Ukraine as the country’s forces prepare for large-scale battles against Russian troops in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The new arms deliveries represent a stark shift from Western support for Ukraine in the earliest days of the war, when U.S. and European officials, unsure of how long Ukraine could hold out against a massive Russian invasion, were wary of delivering heavy weapons that could in turn fall into Russian hands. The deliveries also reflect a shift away from defensive systems like anti-tank rockets to more offensive weapons that Ukraine needs at a critical stage of the war.
The Czech Republic opened the floodgates earlier this month by shipping tanks to Ukraine, becoming the first NATO country to do so since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24. The Czech Republic has also sent Ukraine infantry fighting vehicles and artillery systems. Other NATO countries have followed suit with their own shipments of high-end military hardware across NATO borders into Ukraine. Slovakia sent Ukraine an advanced S-300 air defense system, and the United States on Wednesday announced it would supply Ukraine with an additional $800 million worth of military hardware. That shipment includes 11 MI-17 helicopters, 200 M113 armored personnel carriers, 100 Humvees, 300 Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, heavy howitzers, thousands of shells, and other munitions.
During the first phase of the war, many Western officials believed Kyiv could quickly fall to Russian forces in a matter of days, prompting them to balk on sending heavy weapons to a government they were unsure could survive. That all changed after Russia’s massive offensive in northern Ukraine ran aground, thanks to stiff Ukrainian resistance backed by Western supplies of anti-tank weapons and other small arms, as well as clumsy tactical missteps by the poorly equipped Russian forces. The transfer of heavy weapons to Ukraine is far from simple. In addition to the heavy vehicles and weapons themselves, any such transfers to Ukraine require a potentially long logistical tail to back up, including training, spare parts, and mechanics to keep the vehicles operating in the war zone. (Russia has threatened to attack U.S. and NATO weapons deliveries headed into Ukraine.)
“The tank is not just a rental car,” said Ben Hodges, former commanding general of the U.S. Army in Europe. “Whenever you’re talking about transferring any sort of mechanized or armored vehicles, you have to also think about spare parts, maintenance packages, training, fuel, ammunition … to make sure they can keep things running.”
“The scale of missile strikes by the Russian Armed Forces on objects in Kyiv will be increased in response to any attacks or sabotage on Russian territory..”
Russia on Friday vowed to ramp up attacks on Ukraine capital city Kyiv in response any Ukrainian military strike on targets within Russia’s borders. “The scale of missile strikes by the Russian Armed Forces on objects in Kyiv will be increased in response to any attacks or sabotage on Russian territory,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said, according to Russian state-owned outlet RIA News. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The Ukrainian military has since begun launching raids on Russian soil. In early April, Ukrainian attack helicopters entered Russian airspace and struck an oil depot in Belgorod, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Sirens blared across Ukraine Thursday night as Moscow attacked targets in every oblast, even in the Ukraine’s western edges, far from the battle lines. Several explosions rocked Kyiv. Ukraine government official Lesia Vasylenko speculated the attacks were the result of Russian leader Vladimir Putin being “livid” about Ukraine earlier this week sinking the Russian warship Moskva in the Black Sea. Russia says the ship sank in a storm following the explosion of its ammunition supply.
“The new economic system united various strata of their societies around the goal of increasing common wellbeing in a way that is substantially stronger than the Anglo-Saxon and European alternatives.”
The Cradle: You are at the forefront of a game-changing geo-economic development: the design of a new monetary/financial system via an association between the EAEU and China, bypassing the US dollar, with a draft soon to be concluded. Could you possibly advance some of the features of this system – which is certainly not a Bretton Woods III – but seems to be a clear alternative to the Washington consensus and very close to the necessities of the Global South? Glazyev: In a bout of Russophobic hysteria, the ruling elite of the United States played its last “trump ace” in the hybrid war against Russia. Having “frozen” Russian foreign exchange reserves in custody accounts of western central banks, financial regulators of the US, EU, and the UK undermined the status of the dollar, euro, and pound as global reserve currencies. This step sharply accelerated the ongoing dismantling of the dollar-based economic world order.
Over a decade ago, my colleagues at the Astana Economic Forum and I proposed to transition to a new global economic system based on a new synthetic trading currency based on an index of currencies of participating countries. Later, we proposed to expand the underlying currency basket by adding around twenty exchange-traded commodities. A monetary unit based on such an expanded basket was mathematically modeled and demonstrated a high degree of resilience and stability. At around the same time, we proposed to create a wide international coalition of resistance in the hybrid war for global dominance that the financial and power elite of the US unleashed on the countries that remained outside of its control. My book The Last World War: the USA to Move and Lose, published in 2016, scientifically explained the nature of this coming war and argued for its inevitability – a conclusion based on objective laws of long-term economic development. Based on the same objective laws, the book argued the inevitability of the defeat of the old dominant power.
Currently, the US is fighting to maintain its dominance, but just as Britain previously, which provoked two world wars but was unable to keep its empire and its central position in the world due to the obsolescence of its colonial economic system, it is destined to fail. The British colonial economic system based on slave labor was overtaken by structurally more efficient economic systems of the US and the USSR. Both the US and the USSR were more efficient at managing human capital in vertically integrated systems, which split the world into their zones of influence. A transition to a new world economic order started after the disintegration of the USSR. This transition is now reaching its conclusion with the imminent disintegration of the dollar-based global economic system, which provided the foundation of the United States global dominance.
The new convergent economic system that emerged in the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and India is the next inevitable stage of development, combining the benefits of both centralized strategic planning and market economy, and of both state control of the monetary and physical infrastructure and entrepreneurship. The new economic system united various strata of their societies around the goal of increasing common wellbeing in a way that is substantially stronger than the Anglo-Saxon and European alternatives. This is the main reason why Washington will not be able to win the global hybrid war that it started. This is also the main reason why the current dollar-centric global financial system will be superseded by a new one, based on a consensus of the countries who join the new world economic order.
Russia said Friday some of its foreign energy customers have agreed to begin making payments in rubles amid ongoing sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak did not disclose which customers have made the switch but said officials “expect the decision from other importers,” according to the Epoch Times. Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded in early April that countries Moscow deems “unfriendly” pay for energy products in rubles, the news agency also reports. The value of the ruble, Russia’s base currency, plummeted on international markets after the start of the invasion and Western sanctions started impacting the country’s economy.
However, the ruble has since recovered most of its value. Putin this week touted the ruble’s recovery as an indicator of the Russian economy’s resistance to sanctions, saying: “It is also obvious that the Russian economy is working quite stably and efficiently. I won’t repeat everything. You can see it well yourself: The dollar exchange rate has returned to the parameters before the start of the operation, and so on.” On Feb. 23, 1 USD was equal to 79 rubles. On March 8, the exchange rate reached one dollar to 141 rubles. As of Friday, 80.75 rubles equaled 1 USD.
“..having silenced a major surrender of the Ukrainian military in the Ukrainian information field, Zelensky on April 12 demonstrated to the whole world the disgraced oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk..”
April 12 was a black day for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In Mariupol, more than 1,000 marines surrendered in a day – the remnants of an abandoned and defeated marine brigade. Even Zelensky’s entourage, who did not react particularly painfully to the loss of life during the special operation of the Russian troops, became well aware that the prisoners needed to be pulled out. However, the Ukrainian president has one trump card up his sleeve, but whether he will be able to play it. Recall, having silenced a major surrender of the Ukrainian military in the Ukrainian information field, Zelensky on April 12 demonstrated to the whole world the disgraced oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, captured by the SBU, who had escaped from house arrest at the beginning of the military campaign in Ukraine.
Medvedchuk, a major businessman, leader of Ukraine’s largest opposition party “For Life“, now banned by the Ukrainian authorities. Like other politicians who advocated dialogue with Moscow and opposed the war, he was charged with treason back in 2020. However, the point here is not only in the political views of a politician. Medvedchuk is considered a close friend of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, with which the Kremlin wanted to democratize Ukraine and free it from fascism. Just imagine someone arresting the leader of the second strongest party in Germany, France or some other European country? It is on this basis that we can see what kind of state Ukraine is and that Ukraine needs denazification. According to the statements of the Ukrainian security forces, Medvedchuk, captured in army-style clothes, tried to get into Russia, allegedly while trying to cross the front line.
However, Medvedchuk was probably arrested, held and tortured a long time ago, and only now has it been made public in order to divert the attention of the Ukrainian public from the defeat of the Ukrainian army in Mariupol and to show to the Ukrainian public that Ukraine has someone to exchange for Ukrainian military prisoners in Mariupol. But Vladimir Zelensky, at the wrong time, remembered his acting past and obviously played too much.
“Anyone who suggested that lockdowns, masking, remdesivir protocols, and vaccine mandates violated common decency was tossed out of the arena, often with added punishment of losing a career, a professional license, a livelihood, and having to endure the betrayal of colleagues cowed into silence.”
Medicine has succeeded completely in disgracing and destroying itself by lying about everything connected to Covid-19, from its origins, to the insanely outlawed treatments for it, to the harmful actions of the vaccines, to the hidden data that might tell us the results of all that lying. Twitter set the tone for that with its censorship policies. Anyone who suggested that lockdowns, masking, remdesivir protocols, and vaccine mandates violated common decency was tossed out of the arena, often with added punishment of losing a career, a professional license, a livelihood, and having to endure the betrayal of colleagues cowed into silence.
Twitter also enabled the suicide of higher education, which has succumbed to a plague of Jacobin craziness that would embarrass the inmates of an old-time locked ward. The failure of authority on campus is cosmic. Can you name a single college president who has raised a voice against such manifest idiocy as men competing in women’s sports, the invention of ersatz fields of study, the re-segregation of dormitories and graduation ceremonies, the shouting down of invited lecturers, the persecution of free-thinking faculty, the kangaroo courts for sex disputes, and a hundred other violations of intellect and decency? All this coerced insanity has been nurtured by social media’s sly mechanisms for bending narrative into propaganda: their beloved algorithms, all fine-tuned to destroy anything that touches on truth.
The result is a country so marinated in falsehood that it can’t construct a coherent consensus of reality, and can’t take coherent actions to avert its own collapse. Mighty forces are marshalling to prevent Elon Musk from buying up Twitter stock and taking the company private. BlackRock, Vanguard, the prince regent of Saudi Arabia are all principal stockholders in Twitter, with gazillions in capital to theoretically match and overcome Mr. Musk’s moves. Meanwhile, the Tesla boss maintains a prankish self-confidence in this exploit, offering cryptically comic gibes to a news media that is openly vested in opposing him. You have to suppose that he’s gamed out the gamble. He’s looking like someone who has dealt out a hand of cards aiming to shoot-the-moon.
Twitter is putting up a fight against Elon Musk’s hostile takeover bid by offering its shareholders the opportunity to buy more company stock at a discounted rate — a defensive tactic known to investors as a “poison pill.” The move was done to make it more difficult for Musk, who currently owns 9.2% of Twitter, from upping his stake in the company to acquire more than 15% of shares. Musk made a $41 billion all-cash bid for Twitter, saying he wanted to own the firm and take it private in order to restore its commitment to free speech. The social media platform’s board of directors announced Friday that it has “unanimously” approved a “limited duration shareholder rights plan” that would remain in effect until a year from today.
The plan “will reduce the likelihood that any entity … gains control of Twitter through open market accumulation without paying all shareholders an appropriate control premium …,” according to the company. Details of the plan will be specified in a special filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the San Francisco-based company. It’s a move that Wedbush Securities tech watcher and Managing Director Dan Ives said is likely to be challenged in court. He called it a “defensive measure” for the board that would likely not be viewed positively by shareholders, since it could dilute their shares and would be seen as unfriendly to an acquisition move. “We believe Musk and his team expected this poker move which will be perceived as a sign of weakness not strength by the Street,” Ives told The Post.
The news also comes the day after The Post reported that private equity firm Thoma Bravo was exploring a bid to buy Twitter — setting up a potential competition with Musk. Musk suggested on Thursday that he was aware it would not be easy buying Twitter and taking it private. “I’m not actually sure I will be able to acquire” Twitter, Musk told a large audience at a TED conference in Vancouver, Canada, on Thursday. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that a “person familiar with the matter” said the company was planning a “poison pill” that would dissuade the Tesla boss from completing his takeover bid.
Elon Musk is speaking to investors who could partner with him on a bid for Twitter, sources close to the matter told The Post. A new plan that includes partners could be announced within days, those sources said. One possibility, the sources said: teaming with private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners, which was planning to co-invest with him in 2018 when he was considering taking Tesla private. Silver Lake’s Co-CEO Egon Durban is a Twitter board member and led Musk’s deal team during the 2018 failed effort to take Tesla private, sources said. Silver Lake declined to comment. Whether Musk would present Twitter with an entirely new offer — perhaps raising his current bid — or whether new partners would simply go in on a purchase with him isn’t clear.
For its part, Twitter on Friday adopted a so-called poison pill — a corporate move that prevents Musk from acquiring more than 15% of the company. But that pill may not stop other entities or people from acquiring their own shares of up to 15% of the company. Those owners could partner with Musk to force a sale, make changes in the executive ranks or push for other overhauls of the company. Twitter hasn’t yet filed its shareholder rights plan with the SEC, though it announced the poison pill in a statement. The SEC filing will give more details on whether it prevents like-minded investors from teaming to buy a greater than 15% stake. “This is not over,” a source close to the situation said. Musk has announced he presently owns 9.1% of Twitter. He offered Thursday to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share. Shares last traded at $45.08 each, as there is skepticism that he will succeed with his current take-it-or-leave-it proposal.
Twitter’s blue-check praetorian guard shrieked in agony at the announcement that billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk had offered to purchase the company for $43 billion on Thursday morning. All the worst humans imaginable spent the day venting their rage on the platform, predicting varying levels of apocalypse at the prospect of having the site’s notoriously biased censorship rolled back. Musk had previously made it clear in an interview that his motivation for purchasing the platform was not financial, but instead centered on concerns about free speech and the limitations on discourse the influential social media platform has been placing on America and the wider world.
The tech billionaire has been outspoken in his criticism of how the site conducts itself in relation to censorship. It’s not a secret that the social media giant has a long history of locking, shadow banning, or even outright removing accounts for expressing the wrong political opinions, or banning factual information that contradicts the popular political narratives surrounding issues like Covid or the ongoing debate on transgender ideology, and Musk has seemed particularly concerned about the way in which heavy-handed censorship impacts the democratic process. A position that is entirely justified, especially after the platform infamously locked the account of one of the largest newspapers in the country when it attempted to share shocking revelations about Hunter Biden just a few weeks before the election.
That story has since been reluctantly vindicated by other mainstream outlets, but Twitter (as well as Facebook) was happy to block the news at a crucial moment in what was a clear attempt to aid the Regime and manipulate the 2020 American election. They then proceeded to ban the sitting President of the United States, for good measure. Twitter is not just another social media platform, and both Musk and his opponents are fully aware of this. The micro-blogging site may have a relatively small user base compared to its closest competitors, but what it lacks in volume it more than makes up for in influence. Twitter is the preferred platform for our elites. Journalists and media pundits, i.e. the people responsible for weaving The Narrative that every American is forced to ingest (whether they realize it or not) all operate within the bird app.
The site serves as a networking tool and dopamine dispenser for the class charged with controlling what the average person sees, hears, and thinks. But that class has become increasingly terrible at their job, and the only way that Twitter has been able to defend its status is by banning anyone who becomes too effective at challenging the narrative or exposing how embarrassing those who craft it have become. The reason Elon Musk’s offer is so dangerous to the Regime is that it promises to pry an inept and decadent class of parasites out of their carefully crafted safe spaces and force them to once again face the public they so callously manipulate on a regular basis.
Mika
https://twitter.com/i/status/1515003682051530760
Furious Shanghai residents clashed with hazmat-suited police Thursday after they were ordered to give up their homes so COVID-19 patients in China’s most populous city can isolate amid draconian lockdowns. Officers were filmed wrestling residents to the ground and then leading some away to a van — as others said they were fearful that making their home a quarantine center amid an influx of cases would expose them to the illness, according to Agence France-Presse and footage of the incident. “It’s not that I don’t want to cooperate with the country, but how would you feel if you live in a building where the blocks are only 10 meters (30 feet) apart, everyone has tested negative, and these people are allowed in?” a woman who filmed Thursday’s ordeal could be heard saying in the video.
Residents also accused cops in the video of “hitting people” — and a sobbing woman could be heard asking, “Why are they taking an old person away?” The rare show of dissent in the Communist country comes amid growing frustration after millions in Shanghai were plunged into a strict lockdown last month when cases started to spike in the face of China’s zero-COVID policy. In an attempt to control the virus, everyone who tests positive in China must quarantine at designated sites — and neighbors are also forced to isolate in their homes for 14 days. Shanghai has doubled down on the policy by converting schools, newly constructed apartment blocks and exhibition halls into quarantine centers. The Thursday clash between residents and cops erupted after authorities forced out 39 tenants to make room for infected patients.
As many people know, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1st 1939 Britain and France immediately declared war on Germany. What followed afterwards was an 8 month period often referred to by historians as the “Phony War”. A period during which very little actual fighting took place. The Phony War ended with Germany’s invasion of France and the low countries of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in May of the following year. In late January of 2022, Ireland, surprisingly dropped most of its pandemic restrictions. Well, I was most surprised at any rate. Perhaps readers were not. What has followed from this date, in the interim three months, might well best be described as a phony war of sorts too. If not a phony war then at least an uneasy truce.
In response, many protest and freedom movements simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief while suspiciously wondering what the hell was going to come next. It was scarcely believable that after six months of constant government, state and media oppression not to mention the destruction of civil liberties that they would all give up – and all at once too. Additionally, it was hard to focus as these entities all stopped informing us of their long-term intentions. It has been my suspicion since early to mid February that the government and its EU partners were moving away from a focus on rapidly diminishing vaccination returns. And moving instead to a broader, EU-wide, public entrapment. To do this involves moving some pretty hefty pieces. One of them, which I will discuss today, involves coordinating Health policies and pandemic responses. The EU and WHO as partners.
The opening move in this proposed citizen encirclement is a legally binding WHO pandemic treaty with nation states. This treaty is breath-taking in its audacity and was the prime reason that a number of us in Galway asked Lawyers for Justice to come down to give us a detailed presentation on the topic two weeks ago. So as to formulate a better understanding of the nuances of this treaty but also the language of it too. [..] Today, Minister Stephen Donnelly officially confirmed our suspicions and announced that Ireland will indeed be signing up to the WHO pandemic treaty. As mentioned above, a legally binding treaty, that will allow the WHO to officially take the reins and direct our sovereign response to a pandemic. In other words, elected Irish politicians or our Health authorities will not be formulating the response.
The World Health Organisation will be the entity charged with that function. Undoubtedly we will have some representation at this new WHO level but it will no longer be a response driven by the needs or will of Irish people. It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that official Ireland, and Minister Donnelly in particular, don’t want the responsibility and seemingly can’t wait to give away that authority quickly enough. Our authority lest we forget.
