Aug 022025
 


Samuel Colman The Edge of Doom 1836-38

 

Trump ‘Prepared’ For Nuclear War With Russia (RT)
Trump Moves Two Nuclear Subs Closer To Russia After Medvedev Tweets (NYP)
White House Makes Trump Nobel Peace Prize Claim (RT)
The Artificial Demon (James Howard Kunstler)
The BRICS Hit Back: Trump’s Old Tricks Meet New World (Sibal)
Chuck Grassley Releases Declassified John Durham Annex (CTH)
Durham Annex Bombshell Exposes New Twist in Russian Collusion Hoax (Margolis)
Sitting US Senator Now Implicated in Russia Hoax Cover-Up (Margolis)
Orban Hammers ‘Weak and Ridiculous’ EU (RT)
The Art of the Defeat: Kamala ‘Writes’ Memoir About 2024 Campaign (Margolis)
Marco Rubio Discusses Current Geopolitical Events and Russia Hoax (CTH)
Why Western Education Is Doomed (Marsden)
Ghislaine Maxwell Is Quietly Moved To Cushy New ‘Club Fed’ Prison (NYP)
Rule by Quacks (Paul Craig Roberts)
Pediatricians Organization Says Eliminate Vaccine Exemptions for Children (Dick)
CDC Recommended Vaccine Schedule 1986 vs. 2019 (CHD)
‘Dead zone’ In Gulf of America Shrank Sharply In 2025 (JTN)

 

 

Sachs

Ritter

Tuberville

CBDC
https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1951190664194171030

MAGA

Brennan

 

 

The next time you dislike your life, remember it’s all about perspective. I have a friend who reads 2-3 books a week, works out twice a day, has no financial worries, and has people who want to have sex with him all the time. And yet he constantly complains about how much he hates prison.

 

 

 

 

“Well, you just have to read what he said. He was talking about nuclear. When you talk about nuclear, we have to be prepared. And we’re totally prepared..”

Why does Trump react to tweets? He can just as easily ignore them.

Trump ‘Prepared’ For Nuclear War With Russia (RT)

President Donald Trump has said he cannot treat any talk of nuclear weapons lightly and that the US must always be “totally prepared” for any potential confrontation, responding to what he described as an inappropriate “threat” made by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump explained his alleged order to deploy two nuclear submarines closer to Russian waters, saying the move was necessary to ensure national security. “Well, we had to do that. We just have to be careful. A threat was made, and we didn’t think it was appropriate,” Trump said. “So I do that on the basis of safety for our people. A threat was made by a former president of Russia, and we’re going to protect our people.”

Earlier on Friday, Trump announced in a post on Truth Social that he had ordered the deployment of two US nuclear submarines to what he called “the appropriate regions,” in reaction to remarks made by Medvedev on social media. Trump condemned the former Russian leader’s rhetoric as “foolish and inflammatory,” warning that “words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences.” The dispute escalated after Trump referred to Medvedev as a “failed” leader and warned him to “watch his words.” Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, responded with a scathing message warning against provoking Moscow too far, referencing the legendary ‘Perimetr’ automatic nuclear retaliation system, which dates back to the Soviet era and is presumed to still exist in Russia.

“And about India’s and Russia’s ‘dead economies’ and ‘entering very dangerous territory’ – well, let him remember his favorite movies about ‘the walking dead,’ as well as how dangerous the fabled ‘Dead Hand’ can be,” Medvedev wrote. Though Russia has never officially confirmed the existence of the system, it is widely believed by Western analysts to serve as a last-resort deterrent in the event of a decapitating strike on the Russian leadership. The White House and the Pentagon have not provided any further comments, and Trump’s claim about the submarine redeployment remains impossible to verify, since the exact locations and patrol areas of US nuclear submarines are among the military’s most closely guarded secrets.

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“Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care..”

Trump Moves Two Nuclear Subs Closer To Russia After Medvedev Tweets (NYP)

President Trump said Friday he had ordered two nuclear submarines moved closer to Russia in response to “highly provocative statements” by a top Kremlin official. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, had taunted Trump directly in a recent post on X, saying “each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war.” “I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, without revealing the location of the vessels. “Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances,” he added. The Pentagon referred requests for additional information to the White House, which declined to comment on the record.

Medvedev, a close ally of Putin and deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, taunted Trump in a series of posts on X. Trump had threatened Russia with secondary sanctions if Moscow does not stop its ongoing war on Ukraine by Aug. 8. Medvedev wrote in his post that Trump “should remember two things” as he issues his threats on Moscow — that “Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran” and that “each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.” “Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!” Medvedev mocked. The former Russian president often makes aggressive remarks on social media and is less diplomatic toward the US than Putin in his public comments. Medvedev served as president from 2008 to 2012 and was widely seen as a puppet of Putin, who at the time was only allowed to serve two terms in a row.

While the Russian president has held off on commenting on Trump’s upcoming sanctions, Medvedev has taken to X numerous times to directly condemn the threat. “Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care,” Medvedev wrote on July 15. Medvedev, 59, was even more belligerent under former President Joe Biden, arguing in November of 2024 that if the US were to send nuclear weapons to Ukraine, then Russia would have grounds to respond with an atomic attack. He also raged against Trump directing the US military to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities, writing on June 22, “at this rate, Trump can forget about the Nobel Peace Prize — not even with how rigged it has become. What a way to kick things off, Mr. President. Congratulations!”

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As the kids are dying in Gaza. Can the Nobel really sink any lower?

White House Makes Trump Nobel Peace Prize Claim (RT)

US President Donald Trump should have received a Nobel Peace Prize years ago, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has claimed, citing his role in multiple international peace agreements. Despite several nominations during his first presidency, Trump has not won the award. At a briefing in Washington on Thursday, Leavitt said Trump had intervened in conflicts such as the Thailand-Cambodia dispute by threatening to withhold US trade deals, which she claimed had led to a swift ceasefire. “We had about one peace deal every month,” Leavitt stated. Trump has repeatedly argued he deserves the award, saying in June that he has been overlooked because “they only give it to liberals.”

Several foreign leaders have recently nominated the US president for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu handed Trump a nomination letter earlier this month, crediting his role in mediating a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Before any ceasefire talks began, however, the US launched a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in June, aiming to cripple Tehran’s capabilities. Trump later said he didn’t want to cite Hiroshima or Nagasaki as examples, but claimed that just as those bombings had ended World War II, the 2025 strike had ended the Iran conflict. The comment drew sharp criticism from Japanese officials, who called it morally reckless and offensive.

Cambodia’s deputy prime minister also nominated Trump for his role in calming a border dispute with Thailand earlier this year. The Pakistani government publicly backed his nomination, highlighting his involvement in the India-Pakistan ceasefire talks. India, however, has firmly rejected claims of US involvement in the ceasefire, dismissing the notion of any third-party mediation. Trump had vowed to end the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours if re-elected – a promise he later walked back, suggesting a 100-day timeline instead and calling the original claim “a little bit sarcastic.” In July, his administration approved advanced arms deliveries to Ukraine, including Patriot missiles funded by EU NATO allies. Russia condemned the move as a provocation and accused the US of escalating the conflict under the guise of support.

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“With apologies for bluntness, the mainstream press fucked around, now the mainstream press is finding out.” —Matt Taibbi

The Artificial Demon (James Howard Kunstler)

By now, it must be kind of obvious that Mr. Putin of Russia was staged-up into a demon for the convenience of Hillary Clinton — resulting in a decade of deformed US foreign relations that has dragged us to the edge of a third world war. Nice work, Democratic Party! I will proffer a harsh truth to you: the best outcome in Ukraine would be for Russia to win the war as expeditiously as possible, neutralize and disarm the place, change-out its illegitimate government, and let it revert to being the frontier backwater it was for eight decades previous, when it was not a problem for the other nations of the region. Mr. Putin has put up with our country’s psychotic nonsense with remarkable patience. The idea that he seeks to conquer western Europe was a preposterous confection of the neocon crazies in our State Department and Intel “community.”

The long game for the neocon crazies has been to use NATO as the instrument to break up Russia and gain control of its resources. This was after Secretary of State James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, in discussions over German reunification, that “not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” Starting in 1999 with the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, sixteen additional nations were induced to join NATO, encroaching on Russia’s borders, with new military bases and missiles. It was a stupid game.

And it failed. Ukraine was the final gambit. The US destabilized it on purpose in 2014, installed a series of governments we could control, made it a ward of US taxpayers, sprinkled it with bio-weapons labs and money laundries, and gave Mr. Zelenskyy the go-ahead to start shelling the Donbas provinces adjacent to Russia. After years of that, Mr. Putin moved to stop it in 2022. The development of drone weapons, along with US-based satellite targeting tech, has prolonged the war. But, of course, the Russians, too, have modernized their own weapons arsenal to match that. The current state of things is a slow Russian grind to defeat a Ukraine that has run out of available fighting men and is apparently short of all weapons besides its drones.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump promised to end the Ukraine war in a New York minute. That proved more difficult and complicated than he realized. He said lately in so many words that he has “lost patience” with Mr. Putin for failing to join a ceasefire as a prelude to peace talks. Accordingly, Mr. Trump set a fifty-day deadline and then shortened it to twelve-days, running out on August 8-9 (accounting for time zones). Failure to comply will cause Russia to suffer a new round of sanctions. Mr. Putin has shrugged off that threat, saying that time has proven Russia to be sanction-proofed.

Some kind of game is afoot in all this. Neither Trump nor Putin could possibly want to turn this fiasco in Ukraine into a greater war that will destroy what’s left of Western Civilization. You might find this startling, but for all our efforts to anathemize Russia, it is still a part of Western Civ. After its soviet experiment failed, Russia wanted above all to reintegrate economically with Europe, but the neocons here and the globalists of Europe would not allow that. They became determined instead to wreck Russia — a vicious ethos likely to have emanated from the UK, with its lingering imperial delusions. (For Germany, it has brought only economic suicide.)

You might suspect that Mr. Trump has to pretend to be tough with Russia to counter the still-lingering suspicion — germinated by the Hillary Clinton campaign a decade ago — that he is “Putin’s puppet.” By coincidence, strange or not, that trope is now unraveling with the release of the RussiaGate intel archive that the rogue DOJ and FBI squirreled away since the Trump 1.0 term in office. Mr. Patel found a trove of documentary evidence in a burn-bag in a back room at FBI headquarters. DNI Tulsi Gabbard retrieves more previously-hidden evidence by the day from the vast NSA data base. It ought to be clear now that the initial Hillary Clinton campaign prank metastasized into the worst perversion of abusive government power in our country’s history, and is yet on-going.

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“Trump positions himself as a peacemaker and openly aspires to win a Nobel Peace Prize, while at the same time bombing Iran and assisting Israel in perpetuating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

The BRICS Hit Back: Trump’s Old Tricks Meet New World (Sibal)

US President Trump has rattled Washington’s ties with New Delhi to an unexpected degree. Countries, including, India were prepared for rough diplomatic weather after Trump won his second term, but did not anticipate the kind of onslaught he has unleashed on the global system and diplomatic norms. Trump’s latest attack on India and the BRICS countries explains this underlying dynamic. The BRICS aspire to play a greater political, economic and financial role in global affairs. This aspiration is based on shifts of economic and concomitant political and financial power towards the so-called emerging powers or middle-income countries. BRICS countries have already begun to use their national currencies in trading with each other as much as possible. The use of draconian financial sanctions on Russia by the West has accelerated this process.

Today, almost all trade operations between Russia and China are conducted in rubles and yuan. India too is encouraging the use of its national currency in payment transactions with select countries. A significant portion of the trade between India and Russia is now settled using a rupee-ruble mechanism. Washington cannot use secondary sanctions to prevent countries, including India, from using the US dollar to trade with Russia and then oppose de-dollarization if these countries are compelled to use alternative payment mechanisms. If the US continues to weaponize the dollar, it will inevitably lead to the very “de-dollarization” that Trump is concerned about. India has officially disowned any de-dollarization agenda – not the least because the US is its biggest trade partner in goods and services. India seeks more investments and technology transfers from the US. In many ways, New Delhi’s ties with Washington are the most important for achieving its growth and developmental goals.

But that does not preclude India from establishing other partnerships to reduce over-dependence on one country, balance its external relations and hedge against the excesses of US foreign policy. Trump has exacerbated the disruptions caused by Washington’s frequent use of sanctions as a political weapon by also weaponizing tariffs. He is convinced that by imposing arbitrarily determined tariffs on imports from other countries he will compel them to enter into negotiations with the US to obtain relief by lowering their high tariffs on American products. But India on Wednesday sent a clear message: it is determined to protect the interests of its own businesses, farmers and people. Trump’s use of tariffs as lever, like in the case of Brazil, where he has cited President Lula’s treatment of his predecessor Bolsanaro as reason for imposing 50% levies, is being closely monitored by the world’s governments.

Trump has repeatedly targeted BRICS since his return to the Oval Office. He had threatened the countries with tariffs if they contonie to pledge to create a new common currency or support any alternative to the US dollar. Trump appeared to harbor the illusion that BRICS was ”dead” following his threats – which have now materialized into action. In reality, the BRICS summit held in Brazil this July showed no visible signs of intimidation. On the contrary, such overt displays of American economic coercion may well drive more countries toward alliances that seek to challenge the dominance of any single global power. The administration in Washington appears to lack realism in its assessment of global trends. Trump positions himself as a peacemaker and openly aspires to win a Nobel Peace Prize, while at the same time bombing Iran and assisting Israel in perpetuating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

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“Obviously, the DNC and the people running the Open Societies Foundation (Soros) knew what the Clinton campaign was doing; they also knew the FBI was assisting the Clinton campaign.”

Chuck Grassley Releases Declassified John Durham Annex (CTH)

The FBI, CIA, ODNI and DOJ declassified the annex to the John Durham investigation of the origin of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. The declassified annex was released today by Senator Chuck Grassley. First, the basic outline. The John Durham Annex outlines how the CIA received information in mid-2016 from a “credible foreign source,” talking about Hillary Clinton’s campaign working with the FBI to manufacture a Trump-Russia conspiracy, as an October surprise. Beginning in 2014 and continuing through 2016, Russian hackers gained access to the email accounts and main accounts of the Soros Foundation/Open Societies Foundation who was working with the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign. What the hackers discovered was a trove of information showing how the Clinton Campaign was constructing a smear job against Donald Trump with the manufacturing of a fraudulent Trump-Russia conspiracy.

The emails and communication showed the Clinton Campaign was directly working with the FBI to create the smear. A CIA source gained custody of the Russian analysis of the information. The information was then shared with the CIA, who evaluated the Russian framework as “authentic” and “valid.” The CIA then shared that information with the FBI, who said the information was “unreliable.” Obviously, the FBI held a conflict of interest because the information received outlined their misconduct. So, the FBI claimed the information gained from the hack was false and likely Russian propaganda. However, the CIA deemed it credible because it was clearly happening in real time. Additionally, this information was then used in the summer of 2016 by CIA Director John Brennan to brief President Obama on what the Russians knew about the Clinton Campaign working with the FBI to create this false political narrative.

Part of what the Russians knew from their intercepts was that President Obama would not support the Clinton campaign directly, but Obama had instructed Attorney General Loretta Lynch to assist Hillary Clinton’s efforts. Lynch would work with FBI officials to exonerate Hillary Clinton from her email server scandal and then greenlight the FBI to assist with the Trump-Russia smear. The 29-page annex then goes into details about who was communicating with whom and what the joint Clinton-FBI agenda was. The information inside the Durham Annex is remarkable in that it shows the planning of the Clinton Campaign to use Fusion GPS and the FBI to smear Donald Trump with the false Trump-Russia narrative.

The declassified Annex has two central components. First, it walks through the evidence against Clinton and the FBI organizing the operation. Second, it then takes a rather remarkable look at how the FBI manipulated the information around Carter Page to support the Clinton/FBI operation. All of the information contained within the declassified annex is not entirely new; however, the clear and compelling evidence it provides highlights the operation as it unfolded. Obviously, the DNC and the people running the Open Societies Foundation (Soros) knew what the Clinton campaign was doing; they also knew the FBI was assisting the Clinton campaign.

The term “special services” in this context is the FBI.

Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect would then push the Trump-Russia narrative into the media. That’s exactly what happened.

I strongly suggest everyone to take the time to read carefully the 29-page declassified Annex. The entire outline of the operation to discredit candidate Donald Trump is within it. CIA Director John Brennan then briefs President Obama to tell him the Russians’ are aware of the op. The Obama administration then begins making moves to target Russia, as both an enhancement to the Clinton operation and as a defensive move to protect themselves from discovery as the operation continues.

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“..explosive allegations that the FBI may have been doing George Soros’ bidding during Operation Crossfire Hurricane.”

Durham Annex Bombshell Exposes New Twist in Russian Collusion Hoax (Margolis)

In a bombshell development that should rattle every American, newly declassified documents confirm what conservatives have said all along: the Trump-Russia collusion narrative wasn’t just baseless; it was a deliberate political hit job that the highest levels of the Obama administration orchestrated, with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign at the helm and the FBI eagerly playing along. But it gets worse. Buried in a classified annex to John Durham’s report, which is finally seeing the light of day after the Biden administration kept it under wraps, are explosive allegations that the FBI may have been doing George Soros’ bidding during Operation Crossfire Hurricane.

This intel, which Durham acquired and shared with a Senate committee, was reportedly so sensitive that whistleblowers say it never saw daylight until now. The hoax wasn’t just a smear campaign. It was a weaponized operation, and the American people were the targets. After Tulsi Gabbard declassified the annex, Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley released it to the public this morning. And buckle up because if the testimony witnesses provided to Durham is accurate, the Soros Foundation wasn’t just tangentially involved in this political hit job; it was knee-deep in it. We’re talking elbows-in, fingerprints-all-over level involvement in what now looks like one of the most brazen abuses of power in modern political history. Just the News has the details:

“Newly-declassified so-called Clinton Plan intelligence included intercepted communications from a George Soros ally which suggested that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump was plotting a “long-term affair to demonize” Trump by linking him to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and that the Clinton campaign expected that “the FBI will put more oil into the fire.” The revelations, including intercepted purported communications from Leonard Benardo, a top official at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and communications by Clinton foreign policy adviser Julianne Smith, provide new insight into information that the U.S. intelligence community received in July 2016 – just before the FBI launched its politicized Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The bombshell allegations about a plot to falsely link Trump to Putin in an effort to distract from Clinton’s classified emails scandal are found within a formerly classified but now largely-unredacted appendix from special counsel John Durham’s 2023 report on the origins and conduct of the Russiagate investigation.”

According to the newly declassified annex, U.S. intelligence, including the FBI, received information suggesting that Clinton personally approved a scheme to link Donald Trump to Russian hackers in order to distract from her own email scandal. And it was a Hillary-approved plan. “HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] approved [Campaign adviser Julie’s] idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections,” the email read. “That should distract people from her own missing emails.” The plot outlined how a Clinton adviser pushed a long-term plan to “demonize Putin and Trump,” using media outlets, CrowdStrike, and ThreatConnect to launder the narrative under the guise of cybersecurity analysis. Durham concluded that there’s credible evidence that the Clinton campaign’s plan to tie Trump to Russian hackers was real and that the campaign followed through with it.

“The office’s review of certain communications involving Smith provided possible additional support … to the notion that the Clinton campaign was engaged in an effort or plan in late July 2016 to encourage scrutiny of Trump’s purported ties to Russia, and that the [Clinton] campaign might have wanted or expected the FBI or other agencies to aid that effort (‘put more oil into the fire’) by commencing a formal investigation of the DNC hack,” Durham’s classified annex reads.These are not wild conspiracy theories. The documents have shattered the illusions of even the most stubborn deniers.

“Based on the Durham annex, the Obama FBI failed to adequately review and investigate intelligence reports showing the Clinton campaign may have been ginning up the fake Trump-Russia narrative for Clinton’s political gain, which was ultimately done through the Steele Dossier and other means,” Sen. Grassley said in a statement. “History will show that the Obama and Biden administration’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies were weaponized against President Trump. This political weaponization has caused critical damage to our institutions and is one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history.”

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“..Sen. Warner’s involvement marks a turning point. This scandal no longer stops with the intelligence agencies; it now reaches deep into Congress..”

Sitting US Senator Now Implicated in Russia Hoax Cover-Up (Margolis)

In recent weeks, a scandal of epic proportions has come to light, confirming that the Obama administration rigged intelligence to concoct the Russia collusion narrative against Donald Trump, and the conspiracy went all the way to the top: Barack Obama himself. This is no longer hearsay, thanks to two explosive document releases from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. They reveal a conspiracy coordinated between the highest levels of America’s intelligence community and the White House — an open assault on the presidency in retaliation for Trump winning the election. Barack Obama personally ordered the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment to rely on the notorious, unverified Steele Dossier, an opposition research hit job that even career analysts derided for its lack of credibility.

The dossier’s only real value was its utility: fueling Democratic cries of collusion and giving the legacy media a weapon to batter the new administration. Inside the agencies, voices of dissent were crushed. Analysts warned the dossier was junk, but their objections were overruled. The process became not about facts but about constructing a narrative at any cost. Amid this corruption, a senior analyst tried to do the right thing. He witnessed former CIA Director John Brennan warping intelligence and sought to raise the alarm. But speaking the truth in a rigged game is a recipe for punishment. When the analyst tried to report his concerns, he was promptly silenced by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), then the Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose interest in oversight seemed to depend on political expedience.

Then, intimidation from the very top set in. According to notes obtained by The Federalist, then-DNI James Clapper’s right-hand man threatened the analyst’s career, making it clear that professional advancement hinged on parroting the party line. “The notes made public for the first time today recount a conversation the top analyst in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) had with an unnamed superior who worked closely with the then-Director James Clapper, according to sources familiar with the document,” explain Margot Cleveland and Mollie Hemingway. According to a person familiar with the notes, the analyst documented his recollection of the conversation on March 31, 2023 — more than six years after the conversation occurred.

The delay, The Federalist’s source explained, occurred because the analyst’s efforts to share his concerns, first with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (IC), and then later with Special Counsel John Durham and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, proved unsuccessful. Only later did the analyst receive an inquiry for more information about his claims, leading to the drafting of the summary of his recollections. Those notes capture the analyst claiming in early January that his supervisor told him, “There is reporting you are not allowed to see,” adding that “if you saw it, you would agree” with the ICA. After noting he concurred “with varying confidence with most of the 2017 ICA’s Key Judgements,” the analyst explained that he “would need to review any reporting myself in order to consider it.”

“You need to TRUST ME on this,” Clapper’s crony countered, stating to the analyst he “would need to demonstrate [his] ability to ‘outgrow’” his refusal to sign off on assessments he did not share, in order to be recommended for a promotion. The analyst remained firm, according to the notes, which led his exasperated superior to reply, “I need you to say you agree with these judgements, so that DIA will go along with them!” Unlike the left’s celebrated whistleblowers, this analyst was ignored, stonewalled, and silenced for daring to expose the truth. Despite him raising concerns with the IC Inspector General, John Durham, and even Sen. Warner, no one listened — because his story threatened the power structure in Washington. For over six years, the same institutions that claim to protect democracy worked to bury his warnings. Now, the documents show something far worse than mere misconduct: a deliberate scheme to weaponize U.S. intelligence against a sitting president and subvert the will of the voters.

The Russia hoax wasn’t a mistake; it was a slow-motion coup dressed up as national security. And unless the people behind it face real consequences, there can be no restoring trust in the intelligence community. The evidence is now overwhelming that senior Obama officials didn’t just manufacture the Russia collusion hoax, but they actively worked to suppress anyone who challenged it. With the help of a sitting U.S. senator, they silenced a whistleblower to keep their deception buried. Sen. Warner’s involvement marks a turning point. This scandal no longer stops with the intelligence agencies; it now reaches deep into Congress. Lawmakers weren’t merely complicit; they played an active role in a coordinated plot to mislead the American people and undermine a duly elected president.

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“We are what we are. Weak, ridiculous, loud-mouthed. We educate others, but we have no strength when it comes to negotiating. We show neither talent nor ability. So it’s the worst combination.”

Orban Hammers ‘Weak and Ridiculous’ EU (RT)

The European Union’s recent dealings with the US have reinforced Brussels’ image as a weak yet overconfident partner prone to lecturing others, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Speaking on Friday during his regular interview on Kossuth Radio, Orban took aim at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for her handling of trade negotiations with US President Donald Trump. He claimed she had failed to secure a balanced agreement and made side commitments – such as pledging to purchase US arms, presumably for Ukraine – that she had neither the authority to offer nor the capacity to fulfill.

Orban described the resulting trade arrangement as “an economic own goal,” and suggested the EU had lost ground in a trade dispute that remains unresolved. The Hungarian leader, a frequent critic of Brussels, said the bloc’s foreign policy approach was incoherent and ineffective, painting a picture of dysfunction at the top. “We are what we are. Weak, ridiculous, loud-mouthed. We educate others, but we have no strength when it comes to negotiating. We show neither talent nor ability. So it’s the worst combination.”

He likened EU diplomacy to “a little hamster huddling in the corner, hissing at everyone, arguing with everyone, humiliating ourselves, and then still thinking we are in a position to lecture others about human rights, democracy, and behavior.” Orban was commenting on a perceived diplomatic slight toward top EU officials during their visit to Beijing earlier this week. Members of the delegation, led by von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, were seen exiting shuttle buses at the airport upon arrival before eventually being offered individual transportation. The footage shown by Chinese media prompted speculation that the reception was not in line with the dignitaries’ rank.

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“There are currently no details about what kind of advance she got for the book, which probably means it was really small.”

The Art of the Defeat: Kamala ‘Writes’ Memoir About 2024 Campaign (Margolis)

It looks like Kamala Harris isn’t fading away into the sunset just yet. Brace yourselves; she’s writing a book. After tanking so spectacularly in the 2024 election that her future in public office is all but shot, she’s chosen the classic liberal consolation prize: the post-defeat memoir. Harris has announced a memoir about her failed presidential campaign, titled “107 Days.” The video announcement, which she delivered with all the forced earnestness we’ve come to expect from the former vice president, attempts to reframe her presidential campaign as something noble, inspirational, and worth commemorating. You can already tell this book will be 300-plus pages of agonizing prose, blaming everything and everyone for her defeat, except Harris herself.

Even the title, “107 Days,” feels like a not-so-subtle attempt to plant the idea that she never really had a fair shot. It’s not her fault she burned through over a billion dollars and lost every swing state; it was just “the circumstances” that made victory impossible. The whole thing reads like a preemptive excuse masquerading as a reflection. “Just over a year ago, I launched my campaign for President of the United States,” she said. “107 days traveling the country fighting for our future, the shortest presidential campaign in modern history.” Apparently, Harris has spent her post-office time reminiscing about those three and a half months of political mediocrity, cobbling together what she calls a “journal” into a book. “Since leaving office, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on those days,” she said, explaining she was “pulling my thoughts together… in essence writing a journal that is this book.”

Of course, she insists the book offers more than just an extended therapy session. She promises a “behind-the-scenes account” and insists it’s filled with “candor and reflection,” which in Harris-speak likely means recycled talking points and plenty of passive voice. “I believe there’s value in sharing what I saw, what I learned, and what I know it will take to move forward,” Harris added, though she neglected to explain how losing to Donald Trump by a landslide in 2024 qualifies her to lecture anyone on how to “move forward.”In other words, it’s the spiritual sequel to Hillary Clinton’s “What Happened?” She goes on to claim that one “truth” kept coming back to her while supposedly writing this book. That truth? “Sometimes the fight takes a while.” A poetic way of saying: I lost, but I’m still pretending it mattered.

Finally, Harris assured her dwindling fan base, “I will never stop fighting to make our country reflect the very best of its ideals, always on behalf of the people.” Translation: I’m not done chasing relevance. In what feels like the latest stop on Kamala Harris’s never-ending farewell tour minus the applause, “107 Days” is shaping up to be yet another entry in her growing library of hollow slogans and forced gravitas. “I cannot wait for you to read this,” she declares, which is ironic, because most Americans won’t. Simon & Schuster is publishing the book, which comes out in September. There are currently no details about what kind of advance she got for the book, which probably means it was really small.

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“..an evaluation of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the frustration of the Trump administration to find a way to settle the issues..”

Marco Rubio Discusses Current Geopolitical Events and Russia Hoax (CTH)

Secretary of State/National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, appears for an interview with Brian Kilmeade to discuss recent events in the world of geopolitics in addition to the events now surfacing with the declassification of the Trump-Russia hoax documents. The beginning of the conversation starts with an evaluation of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the frustration of the Trump administration to find a way to settle the issues. The second subject is the status of U.S-India relations now that trade negotiations have stalled. The conversation then moves to the ongoing declassification of information. At 07:30 of the interview Rubio is asked about his previous SSCI investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Rubio talks about his prior role as Chairman of the SSCI and the efforts of the Intelligence Community to manipulate public opinion.

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Try woke spelling.

“Shur, whi not rite a sentins like this won, wear awl the wurdz sound rite but luk lyke they flunked owtta speling skool?”

Why Western Education Is Doomed (Marsden)

In France, the attempt to institute a similar post-knowledge educational system has seen middling results. High school math classes were ditched entirely in 2019 under President Emmanuel Macron. But the outcome was such a disaster that it was reversed for the 2023/24 school year. This year’s French final standardized exams for high schoolers and middle schoolers, which have just taken place, saw the French media publish a bunch of instructions that were given to the test graders to dummy things down for France’s future Nobel Prize hopefuls. “The first is to not deduct points for spelling or grammar mistakes. What matters is not compliance with the spelling code, but intelligibility,” said France’s RTL.

Oh, so something like this, you mean? “Shur, whi not rite a sentins like this won, wear awl the wurdz sound rite but luk lyke they flunked owtta speling skool?” Because that fits the stated criteria. Imagine an email from that colleague when he or she gets into your workplace.mnnApparently, graders were also told not to remove all points when a student is asked to conjugate a verb – and then gets the root of the same verb that was just listed wrong. Maybe the verb they replaced whatever was right in front of their eyes with doesn’t even exist, but the ending is right. Only half the points are taken away for that.

The final philosophy exam had to explain the meaning of the word “preponderant,” because it was apparently considered too hard for kids about to head off to university, RTL reports. The media outlet also pointed out that graders of the oral exam, read from a text that the student has 20 minutes to prepare, were only to focus on the student’s performance at the end of the session, to account for nerves. This may or may not have been read off a student’s page:

“Hai, my naym is Sam. I hav two bruthurs and wun sistur. We lyk to play soker togethur. My mum cuks gud fud and my dad lukes to wach mooviz wif us. I lyk drawin and playin vidyo gayms. Thansk for lisnin! Do I pas high skool now?” Oui, oui! A+. Every day seems to bring a new revelation about how the West’s Wokémon Academy is doing. In a world where feelings outrank facts and spelling is optional, it’s anyone’s guess what our ‘graduates’ will actually know and be equipped with for real life. But hey, at least their safe spaces are well-furnished.

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This is after talking to Deputy AG Todd Blanche for 9 hours this week.

”Maxwell is supposed to be locked up until 2037. Yet inmates “typically only go to a camp if you have just a couple years left,”

Ghislaine Maxwell Is Quietly Moved To Cushy New ‘Club Fed’ Prison (NYP)

Notorious sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has quietly been moved to a cushy Texas prison camp known as Club Fed as she tries to hash out a deal to divulge her sordid secrets about late pedophile ex Jeffrey Epstein. The 63-year-old convicted child sex trafficker was transferred from a lockup in Florida to the minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) confirmed to The Post on Friday. No reason was given for the move, but it comes days after she met Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche twice while trying to seek immunity and a deal to spill her secrets about Epstein. The notorious madam — who is serving 20 years for helping Epstein groom and abuse underage girls — will now be neighbors with white-collar criminals, including Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced fraudster convicted of ripping off investors in her now-defunct blood-testing company Theranos.

“It’s one of the best prisons for anyone to go to,” Josh Lepird, regional vice president for the prison officers’ union that includes Maxwell’s new camp, told the Houston Chronicle on Friday. “When you hear people say ‘Club Fed,’ they’re talking about places like FPC Bryan. ”Maxwell is supposed to be locked up until 2037. Yet inmates “typically only go to a camp if you have just a couple years left,” Lepird told the outlet. “But if someone is a cooperating witness, they can request a lower security level.”

Her unexpected move from Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee was handled directly by BOP officials, rather than US Marshals, according to the New York Sun, which said it included a “brief stopover” in FCI Oakdale in Louisiana. No reason was given for the unexpected move. Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Marcus, also declined to elaborate, saying, “We can confirm that she was moved but we have no comment.” However, the sudden transfer comes a week after Blanche — the DOJ’s second-in-command and formerly President Trump’s defense lawyer — huddled with the disgraced British socialite and her lawyer at the US Attorney’s Office in Tallahassee.

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“Sit down with a double martini to help keep you calm, and try to think of even one American institution that serves a public interest..”

Rule by Quacks (Paul Craig Roberts)

Adam Dick of the Ron Paul Institute reports that the American Academy of Pediatrics last Monday called for mandated vaccinations of children for the full plethora of vaccines and the elimination of all exceptions. The irresponsible American Academy of Pediatrics served as despicable shills for Big Pharma’s murder for profit of children by insisting that every child be infected with the spike protein from the Covid vax. The academy’s support for mandatory vaccination of children with the 54 shots, many known to be toxic and dangerous and the cause of the extraordinary increase in childhood illnesses since the mass vaccination, fortunately for me after my generation, was imposed on naive parents, is proof that the American Academy of Pediatric is a collection of incompetent quacks on the take from profit-driven Big Pharma.

In my opinion, every member of the academy should be arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced for conspiracy to commit murder. American doctors are so indoctrinated by Big Pharma’s control over medical education and research that Americans can no longer trust their doctors. Americans can’t trust their hospitals either. Reports are emerging of hospitals harvesting for profit the organs of patients before they are dead. The value of money has replaced the value of life in American health care. We see it everywhere. For example, cancer cures such as Ivermectin and Fenbendzole are being suppressed in order to save the high profit chemotherapy and radiation treatment. It seems the entire purpose of medical research, 70% of which is funded by Big Pharma grants, is to protect Big Pharma’s control of health care practice.

Sit down with a double martini to help keep you calm, and try to think of even one American institution that serves a public interest. The health system serves profit. The educational system serves left-wing ideology by teaching white kids that they are racists and born into the wrong body and by replacing a merit-based society with DEI ideology. The military serves the power and profit of the military/security complex. Take it from here and extend the list. Is there any way short of massive violence for Americans to regain control over their lives?

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“Shots mandates for children are already widespread in America. But, that is not good enough for AAP. It appears determined to eliminate the ability of almost all parents to opt their children out of the mandates.”

Pediatricians Organization Says Eliminate Vaccine Exemptions for Children (Dick)

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) distinguished itself as an obsessive shots pusher and freedom theatener during the coronavirus crackdown. It was admonishing that children — who were at very minimal risk from coronavirus — be subjected to the quack practices of masking and social distancing to protect them until they became “fully vaccinated” with experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots. The AAP was also calling on pediatricians to evangelize for giving these dangerous and ineffective shots to nearly all children in the age groups for which the United States government had approved the shots. Luckily for many American children, their parents resisted the AAP supported effort. But, many other parents, placing confidence in pediatricians that peddled the AAP line, went along.

While the coronavirus crackdown has receded into the past, the AAP, an organization claiming 67,000 members, is still pushing shots and threatening freedom on a grand scale. The latest example is the policy statement the AAP issued on Monday titled Medical vs Nonmedical Immunization Exemptions for Child Care and School Attendance. In the policy statement, the AAP endorses the presence of laws and regulations requiring children to receive “immunizations” as a prerequisite for attending school or daycare. Further, the AAP supports eliminating philosophical and religious based exemptions from such mandates — the means by which the vast majority of parents who have opted out across America have been able to protect their children from receiving some or all of the plethora of shots listed in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) childhood vaccination schedule.

The only exemption basis, declares the AAP in its policy statement, should be “medically indicated exemptions to specific immunizations as determined for each individual student.” As this phrasing from the policy statement indicates, this medical exemption route turns out to deny exemption for most children and can even limit the applicability of medical exemptions that may be granted to just one or some of the mandated shots. Showing a child has already been hurt by shots is part of one of the limited routes to maybe obtain a medical exemption. Such an exemption will, by definition, be too late. As I wrote in April of 2023, the medical exemption for vaccines “could more accurately be called the mirage exemption” given that it is unavailable to almost all children.

The AAP policy statement further says that, even once granted, medical exemptions should have hanging over them the possibility of being revoked at any time. The policy statement directs that “all pediatric health care providers” should “recertify the need for these exemptions on a regular basis.” Here today, gone tomorrow. The AAP also appears to want to shut the door on any doctors who try to grant medical exemptions in any but the most stingy manner. The policy statement declares that “states and territories should develop policies to ensure that any medical exemptions are appropriate and evidence based.” It is not the doctor’s determination after all. Big Brother will be there to crack down on any doctor who swims against the current. Shots mandates for children are already widespread in America. But, that is not good enough for AAP. It appears determined to eliminate the ability of almost all parents to opt their children out of the mandates.

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Who finds this a good thing?

CDC Recommended Vaccine Schedule 1986 vs. 2019 (CHD)

In the early 1980s, children received three vaccines for seven illnesses—two combination vaccines (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella) and a polio vaccine—totaling two dozen doses by age 18. In the decade following 1989 (beginning soon after the NCVIA’s implementation), the CDC packed multiple doses of several more vaccines into the childhood schedule, including those for Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), hepatitis B (on the day of birth) and varicella (chickenpox), as well as a rotavirus vaccine (withdrawn a year after its introduction)

Next, in the first decade of the 2000s, the CDC recommended an even larger batch of new vaccines, going after not just children but also adolescents and adults: hepatitis A, HPV, meningococcal conjugate, pneumococcal conjugate, rotavirus (again) and zoster (shingles), along with an adult tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis booster (Tdap) and a massive expansion of influenza vaccine recommendations for all ages . At present, the childhood vaccine schedule requires almost six dozen doses through age 18 for sixteen diseases.

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We’re not all used to ‘Gulf of America’ yet.

‘Dead Zone’ In Gulf of America Shrank Sharply In 2025 (JTN)

The Gulf of America’s “dead zone” has shrunk significantly this summer, with scientists measuring a hypoxic area of just over 4,400 square miles — roughly a third smaller than last year and far less than the long-term average, federal officials announced Wednesday. The dead zone, a stretch of oxygen-depleted water that forms annually off the Louisiana and Texas coasts, is caused primarily by excess nutrients washing into the Gulf from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin. This year’s zone, measured during a July 20–25 survey aboard the research vessel Pelican, was 4,402 square miles — 21% smaller than NOAA’s early-season estimate and the 15th smallest on record, according to NOAA-supported scientists from LSU and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

“This year’s significant reduction in the Gulf of America’s ‘dead zone’ is an encouraging sign for the future of this area,” said Laura Grimm, acting NOAA administrator. “It highlights the dedication and impactful work of NOAA-supported scientists and partners, and serves as a testament to the effectiveness of collaborative efforts in supporting our U.S. fishermen, coastal communities, and vital marine ecosystems.” The measured area is equivalent to roughly 2.8 million acres of bottom habitat temporarily made unavailable to marine life such as fish and shrimp due to low oxygen levels. That marks a 30% drop from 2024, when the zone spanned a massive 6,703 square miles — more than 1.3 times the long-term average and nearly 3.5 times larger than the target goal of 1,930 square miles set by the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force.

Despite this year’s improvement, the five-year running average remains high at 4,755 square miles—still more than double the federal benchmark. Dead zones emerge when excess nutrients — mostly nitrogen and phosphorus from upstream agriculture and wastewater — fuel algae blooms. As algae die and sink, their decomposition consumes oxygen in bottom waters. Without sufficient oxygen, marine species must flee or perish.= In 2024, the area west of the Mississippi River experienced heavy hypoxia with extremely low oxygen readings and little water mixing, according to NOAA. “The stratification of warmer surface water over cooler, saltier bottom water was strong enough to prevent oxygen replenishment,” researchers wrote in a followup report.

Some bottom waters saw oxygen drop across the lower five meters of the water column. Even with relatively low chlorophyll readings — indicating modest live algae near the surface — researchers noted high concentrations of degraded algae and organic detritus near the seafloor, still enough to drive significant bacterial oxygen consumption. The Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, a coalition of federal and state agencies, has worked for over two decades to reduce nutrient pollution flowing into the Gulf. The EPA established a dedicated Gulf Hypoxia Program in 2022 to accelerate these efforts.

“The Gulf of America is a national treasure that supports energy dominance, commercial fishing, American industry, and the recreation economy,” said Peggy Browne, acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Water. “I look forward to co-leading the work of the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force to assess evolving science and address nutrient loads from all sources.” So far, nitrogen loading from the Mississippi River has not declined since the 2001 adoption of the Hypoxia Action Plan, scientists noted. NOAA’s June 2025 forecast, which had predicted a dead zone of 5,574 square miles, was based on U.S. Geological Survey nutrient data from spring river flows and fell within model uncertainty ranges.

NOAA’s Coastal Hypoxia Research, Ocean Technology Transition, and Uncrewed Systems programs are working to improve monitoring and prediction tools. This year, several autonomous surface vehicles were deployed alongside ship-based crews to compare mapping methods. Researchers said ASVs may provide a more cost-effective way to track dead zones in the future. NOAA also partners with the Northern Gulf Institute and Gulf of Mexico Alliance to expand observational capabilities and state-level technical support.

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DOGE: regulations

IVM
https://twitter.com/newstart_2024/status/1951236472314450127

Pelosi
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1950982971533439364

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Aug 012025
 


Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Portrait of Vincent van Gogh 1887

 

US Could Offer Russia Enormous Economic Deal – Politico (RT)
Medvedev Mocks Trump’s ‘Nervous Reaction’ (RT)
Trump Says Medvedev ‘Entering Very Dangerous Territory’ (RT)
Trump and Medvedev’s Dangerous Exchange of Words (Scott Ritter)
Trump Raises Tariff On Dozens Of Countries, With Minimum Rate Of 10% (ZH)
‘Damage Has Been Done’: Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Czar Slams Zelensky (RT)
Whistleblower On Russia Collusion Hoax Threatened Over Reporting: ODNI (JTN)
Brennan, Clapper Downplay Steele Dossier’s Impact In Russiagate Investigation (JTN)
Declassified Durham Annex Confirms Hillary Clinton Plan To Smear Trump (ZH)
Declassified Document Links Russiagate Hoax To Soros (RT)
Zelensky Calls For ‘Regime Change’ In Russia (RT)
Germany and Rest of EU Transforming Into Fourth Reich – Lavrov (RT)
The EU Can’t Make Peace – Only Enemies (Bordachev)
Even If Obama Has Immunity, He Could Face Prosecution (Margolis)
MTG introduces Clean Skies Act Banning Weather Modification, Geoengineering (AmG)
RFK Jr. Drops Stunning New Vaccine Announcement (VF)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1950526910305292748

hillary

pelosi act
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1950615656803480020

flynn

tulsi
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1950966222641639721

 

 

 

 

Kalo mina. Let’s start today in left field. If Politico is even half right here, that would shift the earth. It’s just that Russia’s principles are not for sale. Still, how much of Trump knows his current course leads to something he absolutely doesn’t want, war with Russia?!

US Could Offer Russia Enormous Economic Deal – Politico (RT)

Diplomats in Eastern Europe have been raising concerns that US President Donald Trump could offer Moscow sweeping concessions and “enormous economic deals” to settle the Ukraine conflict, Politico has reported. In an article published on Thursday, citing Eastern European officials, US experts, and industry insiders, the outlet suggests that a Trump-led peace initiative might involve lifting sanctions on Russian energy – a move described as a “sledgehammer that could smash” Western efforts to isolate Moscow. “Of course, we are concerned about the talk of a return to Russian energy, and the lack of clarity about the US’ position,” an Eastern European official said.

Since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia – with a heavy focus on energy – in a bid to cripple its economy and isolate it politically. The EU, once heavily reliant on Russian supplies, has sought to cut ties. However, Russia still accounts for 17.5% of its LNG imports, second only to the US, which holds a 45.3% share. In May, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed phasing out all remaining Russian gas imports by the end of 2027. The plan drew strong criticism from several member states. The EU has invested heavily in LNG infrastructure, linking terminals to Central and Eastern Europe, with countries such as Lithuania prepared to pay a premium for American gas over the cheaper Russian alternative.

However, Politico noted that Brussels’ latest $750 billion energy deal with Washington would require the bloc to slash purchases from other suppliers, including cheaper sources, and more than triple its US imports. Still, the economic pull of Russian gas remains strong. In Germany, some politicians have signaled an openness to resuming imports to revive the country’s struggling industry. Russian energy, the sources noted, remains more affordable than US supplies, once shipping and processing costs are factored in. Russia maintains it is a reliable energy supplier and has denounced Western restrictions as illegal under international law. Moscow has redirected most exports to ‘friendly’ markets, mostly in Asia.

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“If some words from the former president of Russia trigger such a nervous reaction from the high-and-mighty president of the United States, then Russia is doing everything right..”

Medvedev Mocks Trump’s ‘Nervous Reaction’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump’s angry comments toward Russian officials were a “nervous reaction” and are evidence that Moscow is pursuing the right path, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said. Medvedev was responding to a post by Trump on Truth Social hours earlier, in which the US president described him as a “failed” former leader and warned him to “watch his words,” adding that Medvedev was “entering very dangerous territory.” “If some words from the former president of Russia trigger such a nervous reaction from the high-and-mighty president of the United States, then Russia is doing everything right and will continue to proceed along its own path,” Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on social media.

He also ridiculed Trump’s claim that the Russian and Indian economies were “dead” and going “down together” due to lack of cooperation with the US. Medvedev had earlier dismissed Trump’s demands for Moscow to swiftly end its military campaign against Ukraine, calling the threats of secondary sanctions against Russian energy customers “theatrical” and ineffective. Medvedev insisted that such ultimatums will not prevent Russia from pursuing its national security goals and merely make Trump appear similar to his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Trump previously criticized the BRICS group of nations, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and several other states pursuing a new multipolar world order. The US president claimed proposed tariffs on countries doing business with BRICS members could cripple the organization. Trump’s statement regarding India and Medvedev followed New Delhi’s refusal to accommodate US demands on trade.

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I have no idea why Trump all of a sudden wants to address Medvedev.

Trump Says Medvedev ‘Entering Very Dangerous Territory’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump has issued a warning to former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, calling him a “failed” leader and cautioning him against combative rhetoric. Medvedev, now serving as deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, had earlier dismissed the notion that Trump, or any other US official, could dictate Moscow’s stance on the Ukraine conflict. His comments came in response to American calls for Russia to negotiate peace or face tougher sanctions. Trump fired back on Wednesday in a post on Truth Social, in which he vented frustration over resistance from Russia and India to his international trade agenda. He claimed both countries had “dead economies,” before singling out Medvedev.

“Tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!” Trump wrote. Medvedev responded, saying the “nervous” reaction by the American leader simply proved that Russia was right in its policy choices and should maintain its course. Earlier this week, Medvedev responded to remarks by US Senator Lindsey Graham, who warned Russia to comply with Trump’s demands for swift peace talks with Ukraine or face consequences. Medvedev retorted that “it’s not for you or Trump to dictate when to ‘get at the peace table.’”

Medvedev has criticized what he described as Trump’s “theatrical” ultimatums, warning that such pressure tactics only increase the risk of a direct conflict between the two nuclear powers. “Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!” he said, referencing Trump’s mocking nickname for former President Joe Biden. Russia continues to assert that it will meet all of its military objectives in the Ukraine conflict, whether by force or diplomacy. Officials in Moscow say a negotiated resolution is preferable but currently unfeasible due to what they describe as Kiev’s unreasonable positions and unwillingness to engage in good-faith talks.

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X post.

“..These missiles would be launched, broadcasting launch codes that would send all strategic nuclear force weapons to their targets, even if Moscow was taken out..”

Trump and Medvedev’s Dangerous Exchange of Words (Scott Ritter)

As the rhetoric heats up, we must remain cognizant of the consequences. The sharp exchange of words between President Trump and former President Medvedev underscores just how dangerous the deteriorating relations between the US and Russia have become. The threats being promulgated are not idle ones. President Trump has become enthralled with the Israeli “Nasrallah” solution—leadership decapitation and middle management disruption designed to bring about the rapid collapse of a government/system. It was tried—and failed—in Iran. But Trump is being advised by Russophobes who believe that the US can successfully implement such a plan against Russia. This plan begins with sanctions, as all such plans do. It ends with a decapitation strike on Moscow.

Trump’s imagined conversation with Putin, where he threatened to “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow”, is indicative of the President’s thinking in this regard. The preferred decapitation strike is done using B-52 bombers launching cruise missiles, accompanied by Trident missiles launched from Ohio-class submarines operating off the coast of Russia, allowing for a flatter trajectory flight and shorter flight time. Medvedev’s comment about the “Dead Hand” indicates that Russia is well aware of Trump’s plans. The “Dead Hand”, or Perimeter system, is a long-standing fail-safe mechanism/plan which guarantees a full-scale nuclear retaliation in case any nation is foolish enough to try a decapitation strike. It dates back to Soviet times, when a special regiment of SS-20 missiles was equipped with radio transmission devices instead of warheads.

These missiles would be launched, broadcasting launch codes that would send all strategic nuclear force weapons to their targets, even if Moscow was taken out. This wasn’t theoretical—in my book Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, I write about how the Soviets transitioned this capability to the SS-25 system once the SS-20 was eliminated under the INF treaty. Today this mission is being handled by special regiment of SS-27 missiles. There are other components of the “Dead Hand”. Medvedev’s mentioning of it is a not-to-gentle reminder to Trump and his planners that it is suicide to think of a preemptive decapitation strike against Russia. Hopefully this message gets through. Otherwise, the “Walking Dead” allusion made by Medvedev will be the future of the United States and the world.

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Too many changes, too fast?! Who can keep up?

Trump Raises Tariff On Dozens Of Countries, With Minimum Rate Of 10% (ZH)

Almost 4 months after Liberation Day sparked a global market crash, moments ago T-Day finally arrived… and barely anyone noticed. Late on Thursday, just ahead of the August 1 deadline for tariff renegotiation, President Trump announced a slew of new tariffs, including a 10% global minimum and 15% or higher duties for countries with trade surpluses with the US, forging ahead with his unprecedented effort to reshape international commerce. First, the silver lining: baseline rates for many trading partners remain unchanged from the duties Trump imposed in April, which may ease investors’ worst fears – although with the S&P sitting at record highs it is difficult to claim anyone had any fears about anything – after the president had previously said they could even double. Yet Trump’s decision to raise tariffs on Canadian goods to 35% threatens to inject fresh tensions into an already strained relationship.

Trump signed the new tariff directive just hours before his prior Aug. 1 deadline for higher tariffs to kick in on scores of trading partners. As Bloomberg reports, most tariffs will take effect after midnight on Aug 7, to allow time for US Customs and Border Protection to make necessary changes to collect the levies. Taken together, the result will be significantly higher tariffs on goods from almost all US trading partners. The average US tariff rate will rise to 15.2% if rates are implemented as announced, according to Bloomberg Economics, an increase from 13.3%, and significantly higher than the 2.3% it was in 2024, before Trump took office. Major industrialized economies, including the European Union, Japan and South Korea, accepted 15% duties on their products, while charges on items from Mexico, Canada and China are even bigger.

Today’s announcement notwithstanding, Trump is expected to unveil separate tariffs on imports of pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, critical minerals and other key industrial products in the coming weeks. Other details are also forthcoming, including so-called “rules of origin” to decide which products are transshipped, or routed through another country, and thus would face at least a 40% rate, a senior US official told Bloomberg, adding that a decision will be made in the coming weeks. The senior US official said there is no date yet when revised auto tariff rates would be implemented. Thursday’s order was signed behind closed doors without the fanfare of Trump’s April tariff rollout, during which he brandished placards with rates during a Rose Garden event. Since then Trump has faced criticism for overpromising on trade deals after he and aides vowed to broker numerous agreements, with at least one pledging “90 deals in 90 days.”

In the end, imports from about 40 countries will face the new 15% rate and roughly a dozen economies’ products will be hit with higher duties, either because they reached a deal or Trump sent them a letter unilaterally setting import taxes. The latter group has the highest goods-trade surpluses with the US. Some of those were expected, such as a 25% levy on Indian exports that Trump announced this week on social media. Others included charges of 20% on Taiwanese products and 30% on South African goods. Thailand and Cambodia, two countries that were said to have struck a last-minute deal, received a 19% duty, matching rates imposed on regional neighbors including Indonesia and the Philippines. Vietnam’s goods will be tariffed at 20%, according to the WSJ. Trump’s deals with the EU, Japan and South Korea would lower duties on their vehicle exports to 15% from the general rate of 25%.

In a separate order, Trump followed through on his threat to hike tariffs on exports from Canada, one of the US’s largest trading partners, from 25% to 35% for goods that do not comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That change excludes goods that are covered under the North American trade pact he negotiated in his first term. That stood in contrast to the 90-day extension Mexico received to negotiate a better agreement. Earlier in the day, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he agreed to extend for 90 days the existing tariffs on Mexican goods. He said a 25% fentanyl tariff, a 25% tariff on cars and a 50% tariff on steel, aluminum and copper would remain in place. Still other nations are set to be hit with even higher tariffs. Trump has pledged to hike tariffs to 50% on Brazil over its digital policies and legal action against former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally.

The lower 10% and 15% rates are expected to apply to a wide range of mostly smaller- and medium-sized economies that Trump showed little interest in bargaining with one-on-one. He had signaled in recent days there were simply too many countries to cut individualized deals with all of them. Some smaller states, however, were hit with the highest rates, including Syria at 41%, as well as Laos and Myanmar and 40% each, both preferred hubs of Chinese transshipments. [..] One big exception from this week’s deadline is China, which faces an Aug. 12 deadline for its tariff truce with the US to expire. The Trump administration has signaled that is likely to be extended. No final decision has been made but the recent US-China talks in Stockholm were positive, the official said.

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If you give in to street protests, you’re found out.

‘Damage Has Been Done’: Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Czar Slams Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine’s top anti-corruption prosecutor has accused Vladimir Zelensky of severely undermining the country’s independent anti-graft institutions, warning that his U-turn – under pressure from protesters and Western backers – will not remedy the damage done. The remarks come following a wave of protests and widespread international criticism over Zelensky’s attempt to bring the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) under the authority of the executive branch, which he controls. Despite Zelenksy announcing a U-turn following threats of funding cuts from Brussels, the head of SAPO, Aleksandr Klimenko, has insisted that serious damage has already been done.

“Our work has been effectively stopped,” Klimenko said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday, explaining that the takeover triggered a collapse in cooperation from whistleblowers and raised fears of persecution among investigators. “Almost all of our whistleblowers stopped co-operating with us,” Klimenko stated. “The NABU team is currently confused and frightened because they understand they can be detained without sufficient evidence.” The move to place SAPO and NABU under presidential control – which parliament passed on July 22 and Zelensky signed the same evening – immediately sparked protests in Kiev, Lviv, Dnepr, Odessa, and other cities. Demonstrators demanded full restoration of the agencies’ independence, shouting slogans such as ”Corruption kills,” ”Treason,” and “Zelya is the devil.”

The public backlash and criticism from Kiev’s Western sponsors prompted Zelensky to submit a new bill, promising to reinstate full autonomy for the anti-corruption bodies. A parliamentary vote on the legislation is expected to take place on Thursday, but its passage remains uncertain due to wavering support within his own party. Klimenko revealed that ahead of the raid, SAPO and NABU were investigating corruption allegations involving 31 sitting lawmakers and 40 former MPs, including members of Zelensky’s ruling party. He suggested the attacks on the anti-graft bodies were likely motivated by attempts to derail these investigations. The SAPO chief explained that the anti-graft agencies managed to maintain their independence over the years “largely thanks to international partners – especially the Americans,” but once “interest and pressure waned, that’s part of why this attack was possible.”

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“..statements from a direct supervisor pressuring intelligence officials to endorse the ICA to receive a promotion..”

Whistleblower On Russia Collusion Hoax Threatened Over Reporting: ODNI (JTN)

A senior intelligence official, who was a whistleblower in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, was threatened over reporting wrongdoing, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released new documents that give a firsthand account of what the office say is the whistleblower’s “relentless efforts to expose the egregious manipulation and manufacturing of intelligence.” The documents include the whistleblower’s work done in the months leading up to the November 2016 election, their concerns about using “discredited information as then-DNI Clapper and Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan worked to craft the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) at President Obama’s request,” and how a direct supervisor attempted to pressure them to endorse the key findings of the ICA about the Russian government’s alleged support for Donald Trump at the time, according to the office.

“Thank you to the brave Intelligence Community Whistleblower who courageously came forward to expose the truth about one of the biggest and most impactful scandals in our nation’s history,” Gabbard said in a statement. The documents include what the whistleblower alleges are statements from a direct supervisor pressuring intelligence officials to endorse the ICA to receive a promotion and concerns over flawed intelligence practices, such as choosing to use open-source references to Russian media as “evidence” for the Russian government’s support for Trump, but ignoring foreign media from other countries, including NATO allies, that supported Hillary Clinton and denigrated Trump.

According to the whistleblower’s records, then-DNI James Clapper and other senior Obama administration officials denounced the Steele dossier privately, but also ensured that the January 2017 ICA included it. The dossier was political opposition research on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign compiled by British counterintelligence specialist Christopher Steele. The finding in the report that the campaign appeared to collude with Russia have now been debunked. The whistleblower reported their concerns to more than a dozen government offices including to the office of Justice Department special counsel John Durham, the intelligence community inspector general, a U.S. senator and other official whistleblower channels over the last six years.

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There are rumors circling that Brennan still today has intensive contacts inside the CIA.

Brennan, Clapper Downplay Steele Dossier’s Impact In Russiagate Investigation (JTN)

Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Wednesday hit back at the Trump administration over allegations they were involved in a treasonous scheme related to Russiagate. The Trump administration and Senate Republicans have recently declassified intelligence reports that allegedly reveal a plot by former President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to falsely link President Donald Trump to Russia to distract from Clinton’s own classified email server scandal in 2016. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this month also stated that her office had “revealed overwhelming evidence that demonstrates how, after President Donald Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

The report released by Gabbard also alleges the December 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment glossed over evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have favored (or at least fully expected) a Hillary Clinton victory nine years ago. Brennan and Clapper on Wednesday defended their investigation in an opinion piece for the New York Times, and claimed that the assessment was focused on Russia’s actions, not whether the country colluded with someone in the U.S. “The assessment made no judgment about the impact of Russian information operations on the outcome of the election,” the former intelligence officials wrote. “While some state and local electoral boards and voter information and registration systems were accessed by Russian intelligence, the assessment made clear that none of those types of systems were involved in counting votes.

“Russian influence operations might have shaped the views of Americans before they entered the voting booth, but we found no evidence that the Russians changed any actual votes,” they added. They also pushed back on the use of the now-discredited Steele Dossier in their investigation, stating that the dossier was “not a source or taken into account for any of its analysis or conclusions.” “We have testified under oath, and the reviews of the assessment have confirmed, that the dossier was not used as a source or taken into account for any of its analysis or conclusions,” the pair said. “At the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s insistence, a short summary of the dossier was added as a separate annex only to the most highly classified version of the document that contained the assessment. That annex also explained why the dossier was not used in the assessment.”

The duo additionally defended the validity of the 2016 intelligence assessment, arguing that even the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence validated the assessment’s findings. The select committee included now Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “While some external critiques have noted that parts of the Russia investigation could have been handled better, multiple, thorough, yearslong reviews of the assessment have validated its findings and the rigor of its analysis,” the pair said. “The special counsel John Durham, who was appointed during Trump’s first term to investigate how the Russia probe was conducted, similarly found no evidence of an Obama administration conspiracy against Trump,” they continued. “But he affirmed the findings of the special counsel Robert Mueller, who conducted a separate investigation into the allegations, which found ample evidence of Russian interference in the election.”

The pair concluded by defending their efforts to keep the intelligence review under wraps, declaring that they knew any leaks about Russia’s meddling in the election would become “political dynamite.” “Despite claims by Trump administration officials of a nefarious political conspiracy, we did everything we could at the time to prevent leaks of intelligence reports, including Russia’s preference for Mr. Trump, a requirement that President Obama regularly emphasized,” they wrote. “We knew such reports would be political dynamite. And despite substantial reporting on the matter, we succeeded in preventing such leaks before the election.”

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The Durham Annex is a treasure trove.. Much more to come. Does make one wonder why so much was buried in an annex.

Declassified Durham Annex Confirms Hillary Clinton Plan To Smear Trump (ZH)

On Thursday, newly declassified documents reveal that not only did the CIA believe a Russian intelligence assessment that the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign planned to smear Donald Trump by linking him to the Kremlin, it’s clear that the FBI helped the Clinton campaign orchestrate the Russia hoax to distract from its investigation into her emails.

To review:
• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this month declassified several documents – including a 2020 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) report and other intelligence communications revealing that the Obama administration “manufactured and politicized intelligence” to create a false narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
• Gabbard’s releases highlight the inclusion of the Steele dossier – an unverified report funded by the Clinton campaign alleging ties between Trump and Russia – in the 2017 ICA as an annex. The hoax dossier was used to bolster the Russian interference narrative, despite CIA objections and its discredited status. The HPSCI report states that Brennan insisted on referencing the dossier, even though senior CIA officers warned it was flawed, with Brennan allegedly saying, “doesn’t it ring true?
• Gabbard has called these actions a “treasonous conspiracy” led by Obama, Brennan, Clapper, James Comey, Susan Rice, and others, aimed at undermining Trump’s presidency. She has referred the documents to the Justice Department and FBI for investigation into potential criminal implications.

And now we have the Durham annex… which includes a 2016 memorandum alleging that Russian intelligence knew of a Clinton campaign plan to tie Trump to Russian hackers. This memo claims the plan was designed to “distract the [American] public from the Clinton email server scandal.” Gabbard’s HPSCI report similarly references Russian intelligence claiming Clinton’s campaign discussed linking Putin to Trump.

• Clinton’s Approval of Smear Campaign: Pages 4 and 5 of the annex, highlighted in X posts, contain a 2016 memorandum alleging that Clinton personally approved a plan on July 26, 2016, to frame Trump with Russian hacking claims. • The memo suggests this was to distract from her email scandal, with coordination involving DNC leadership and outside groups.
Russian Intelligence Awareness: The annex confirms that Russian intelligence was aware of this plan, which aligns with Gabbard’s claim that the FBI and CIA had access to this information but pursued the Trump-Russia narrative anyway.
• No New Criminal Charges: Despite these allegations, Durham’s broader investigation (2019–2023) found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy among Obama officials to fabricate intelligence. He criticized the FBI’s handling of the Steele dossier and Crossfire Hurricane but did not charge Brennan, Clapper, or others named by Gabbard.

As ZH regular TechnoFog notes;

To briefly summarize, the Classified Appendix provided further information about the matters covered in parts of Durham’s report – specifically, those relating to Hillary Clinton’s plan to link Trump and Russia; the threat of foreign influence by a foreign government; and the Carter Page FISA application renewals. But the most material information covers the Clinton Plan, and provides further details on how that plan started, efforts by Clinton and her team to influence officials within the Obama Administration, and how the Clinton Campaign would use Crowdstrike to further their theory that the Russians hacked and leaked information from the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The Smoking Gun(s)…

And as Michael Shellenberger notes, the CIA believed Russian memos mentioning a Clinton plan to smear Trump as a Russian asset: “The CIA prepared a written assessment of the authenticity and veracity of the above-mentioned intelligence. The CIA stated that it did not assess that the above [redacted] memoranda or [redacted] hacked U.S. communications, to be the product of Russian fabrications.” What’s more, other memos reveal that the plan was to have Crowdstrike and ‘ThreatConnect’ spin narratives to the media in the absence of actual evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Stay tuned, things are getting spicier…

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“..Clinton’s foreign policy adviser Julianne Smith, who said the future Russiagate “will be a long term affair to demonize [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Trump.”

Declassified Document Links Russiagate Hoax To Soros (RT)

A newly unclassified document suggests George Soros’ Open Society Foundation was involved in the effort by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 to falsely accuse then-candidate Donald Trump of ties to Russia. The document, a 29-page annex to John Durham’s 2023 Special Counsel report, was released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday shortly after it was declassified. It sheds more light on what Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) described as “one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history.” “Based on the Durham annex, the Obama FBI failed to adequately review and investigate intelligence reports showing the Clinton campaign may have been ginning up the fake Trump-Russia narrative for Clinton’s political gain… These intelligence reports and related records, whether true or false, were buried for years,” Grassley said in a statement.

The annex cites several emails allegedly sent by Leonard Benardo, senior vice president of Open Society Foundations, throughout July 2016, which provide details on the Clinton campaign’s plans to falsely accuse Trump of Russia links and tie him to the alleged Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack. Analysis by the Durham team concluded the Benardo emails “were likely authentic,” the annex states.“During the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated ‘attic-based’ technical structures… in particular, the Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect companies, from where the information would then be disseminated through leading US publications,” one of the emails reads.

Another email purportedly sent by Benardo states that the “media analysis on the DNC hacking appears solid” and suggests that “later the FBI will put more oil into fire,” apparently predicting the probe by the agency. It also cites an individual named “Julie,” identified in the annex as Clinton’s foreign policy adviser Julianne Smith, who said the future Russiagate “will be a long term affair to demonize [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Trump.”

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“It’s time to confiscate Russian assets, not just freeze them..,”

Zelensky Calls For ‘Regime Change’ In Russia (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has called on Kiev’s Western backers to push for regime change in Moscow in order to “defend” themselves from alleged “Russian aggression.” The Ukrainian leader delivered his remarks during a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords, which emphasized equal and indivisible security for all. In an article published for the same occasion, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that the West’s betrayal of those core principles was a key factor that led to the ongoing conflict. “I believe Russia can be pushed to stop this war… But if the world doesn’t aim to change the regime in Russia, that means even after the war ends, Moscow will still try to destabilize neighboring countries,” Zelensky said in his virtual address.

“It’s time to confiscate Russian assets, not just freeze them,” he added, urging Kiev’s sponsors to “put every frozen Russian asset… to work defending against Russian aggression.” Moscow has repeatedly dismissed speculation that Russia plans to attack the EU and NATO as “nonsense.” Lavrov said the EU is sliding into what he described as a “Fourth Reich,” marked by a surge in Russophobia and aggressive militarization, while President Vladimir Putin has accused Western states of deceiving their populations to justify inflated military budgets and cover up economic failures.

Russia has stated that it is ready to negotiate peace with Ukraine and has held several rounds of direct talks with Kiev in recent months. At the same time, it has accused Ukraine and its Western backers of lacking interest in reaching a long-term solution that addresses the root causes of the conflict and the territorial reality on the ground. Moscow has also raised concerns about Zelensky’s legal authority. His five-year presidential term expired in May 2024, but he has refused to call new elections, citing martial law. Russian officials have suggested that any documents signed under his name could later be challenged, insisting that the true power now lies with the Ukrainian parliament.

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“If they want to be part of the process, they must learn proper manners, abandon diktat and colonial instincts, and get used to equality and teamwork.”

Germany and Rest of EU Transforming Into Fourth Reich – Lavrov (RT)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused Germany and the wider European Union of sliding into what he described as a “Fourth Reich,” marked by a surge in Russophobia and aggressive militarization. The stark warning was delivered in an article published on Friday in the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act on European security. Lavrov criticized the EU and NATO for betraying the core principles of the Helsinki process, which emphasized equal and indivisible security for all. Instead, he claimed that Western powers have pursued unilateral dominance, NATO expansion, and political interference in sovereign states under the guise of promoting democracy and human rights.

“Today’s Europe has completely plunged into a Russophobic frenzy, and its militarization is becoming, in fact, uncontrolled,” Lavrov wrote, citing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s calls to build Europe’s strongest army and reintroduce conscription as evidence. He also pointed to recent remarks by Germany’s defense minister about the need to be prepared to kill Russian soldiers as further proof of a hostile and dehumanizing agenda. This brings historical events to mind. With their current leaders, modern Germany and the rest of Europe are transforming into a Fourth Reich. He argued that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has failed in its mission and has instead become a vehicle for Western propaganda and selective enforcement. He said the West ignored Russian calls for equitable security guarantees, and that NATO’s continued encroachment on Russia’s borders left Moscow no choice but to launch its 2022 military operation in Ukraine.

To defuse tensions, Lavrov called for “an honest dialogue” aimed at stabilizing the situation on the Eurasian continent through a new security framework based on sovereign equality and the principles of the UN Charter. “There will be a place for European countries within this architecture,” he wrote, “but they certainly will not be the ones calling the tune. If they want to be part of the process, they must learn proper manners, abandon diktat and colonial instincts, and get used to equality and teamwork.” Lavrov concluded by warning that if NATO and the EU continue to hollow out the OSCE’s core principles, the organization may collapse altogether, and history will remember those who “buried” the last chance for peaceful coexistence in Europe.

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“Europe is leaving the world stage in disgrace..”

The EU Can’t Make Peace – Only Enemies (Bordachev)

The most dangerous thing about Western Europe today is not just its decline, but its refusal to recognize it. The half-continent continues to posture, continues to lecture, and continues to imagine itself as a pillar of global order. But it has lost the internal resources that once sustained that illusion. What remains is a hollow echo of power, wrapped in a language of values that even those same Western Europeans no longer seem to believe. The region’s failure is most visible in its inability to make peace. Time and again, it chooses confrontation – with Russia, with China, with reality itself. Devoid of meaningful autonomy, it now functions as a permanent appendage of the US. It is no longer an actor on the world stage, but a supporting cast member, often unwelcome and increasingly irrelevant.

Western Europe’s descent has been rapid. Just 10 or 15 years ago, it projected global importance and confidence. Today, the cracks are impossible to ignore. The reasons are many: Elite degradation, political inertia, a population gripped by apathy. But above all, it is the bloc’s unrelenting selfishness – its refusal to give, only to demand – that lies at the heart of this collapse. Nowhere was this clearer than in last week’s failed EU-China summit. Eurocrats went to Beijing with nothing to offer, only with a desire to extract. China, which has no historical affection for Western Europe, responded accordingly. There was simply nothing to discuss.

And then, as if to underscore its strategic drift, the bloc offered a humiliating concession to the US. Faced with the threat of new tariffs, Brussels agreed to purchase American energy and weapons in vast quantities. So much for ‘strategic autonomy’. These are not signs of a serious power. These are the actions of a civilization on the back foot, stumbling blindly into dependence. Anyone still speaking of a sovereign EU industrial or defense policy is either a fantasist or a liar. What then does Western Europe have to offer the world? One might say historical symphonic music. But beyond that, its legacy is one of oppression and self-justifying tyranny. Its technical achievements were built to subjugate others. Its political philosophy was designed to defend conquest and exploitation.

Fifteen years ago, I sat in a closed meeting organized by Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief at the time. The topic: Western Europe’s new role in the world. The one suggestion they could not accept was that the bloc should offer something to the world without expecting a reward. Their worldview simply doesn’t allow for that. Even in climate change – a cause that should unite the planet – the EU has turned the issue into a cynical trade weapon, using green regulations to punish developing countries. The result? Western Europe stands alone. It has lost its power, and with it, its relevance. Worse, it doesn’t even seem to understand what it’s lost.

Can the region still pose a threat? Possibly. But not because it has the strength. Rather, because it has the recklessness. Its politicians lack vision, competence, or restraint. They cannot imagine peace. And so they default to confrontation – especially with Russia. The danger is not that Western Europe is ready to fight. Its people enjoy lives too comfortable to risk. Its defense industry is in disrepair. But wars can begin through stupidity as well as strength. EU elites, betting on regime change in Moscow, continue to pour weapons into Ukraine. Some dream of extending the conflict into the Baltics. Others talk of arming mercenaries to fight Russia directly.

The Americans won’t die for Europe. That much is clear. But the EU may yet drag the world into catastrophe, simply by being incapable of restraint. If by some miracle a wider war is avoided, what then? What is Western Europe’s future? A museum of irrelevance? A vassal of Washington? Already it is falling behind in science, in technology, in global influence. It doesn’t know where it belongs, and is incapable of adjusting. It will become a permanent satellite of the US – militarily, politically, and economically. Key industries will be handed over. National elites will lose the power to govern. The Collective West as we know it will vanish. In its place: America, and a few adjacent territories managed by obedient proxies. Perhaps this is what Western Europe deserves. It is certainly the path it has chosen.

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“Because of that immunity, he loses the ability to invoke the Fifth Amendment if he’s called before a grand jury..”

Even If Obama Has Immunity, He Could Face Prosecution (Margolis)

Barack Obama may soon be facing the consequences of a trap he helped set. As we previously reported, investigative journalist John Solomon told Steve Bannon last week that Obama likely won’t be indicted for his role in the Russiagate scandal despite the mounting declassified evidence tying him directly to the scheme. However, he may be wrong. As I’ve pointed out, Obama could indeed face indictment because the Supreme Court did not give presidents blanket immunity. The court ruled that “The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.” Still, Solomon believes that while Obama may avoid formal charges, he’s far from out of legal jeopardy and could be facing serious trouble ahead.

Appearing on Real America’s Voice, Solomon laid out the real legal problems facing the former president. He echoed the widespread belief that the Supreme Court’s ruling shields Obama from prosecution for official acts performed as president. Solomon didn’t stop there. Even he knows that’s not the full story, and this time, neither immunity nor the careful spin of “official acts” will shield Obama from scrutiny. “However, Barack Obama can now be summoned before a grand jury. He cannot take the Fifth Amendment because he has immunity from prosecution. He’ll have to tell the truth. If he lies as a private citizen about what he did as president, he’ll no longer have that immunity.”

It’s an irony that hangs heavy, given Obama’s own tactics as president. “The irony of that is significant, because on Jan. 5, 2017, he presided over a meeting in the White House where the FBI had just cleared Mike Flynn of any wrongdoing. And they schemed in that meeting how they might be able to jam up Mike Flynn. They came up with the idea: ‘We’ll lure him into an interview, catch him in a lie, and then prosecute him that way.’ Barack Obama is now about to face a potentially similar situation—one he unfairly created for Mike Flynn.”

If we accept Solomon’s assessment that Obama has immunity that may keep him safe in the technical sense for official acts, it’s now a double-edged sword. Because of that immunity, he loses the ability to invoke the Fifth Amendment if he’s called before a grand jury to testify about what actually transpired in his White House during those fraught days—especially regarding the plotting against General Flynn. He’ll be compelled to answer directly, under oath. And if he lies, he is in legal jeopardy—the exact “trap” his own administration foisted on Flynn. I still think Obama isn’t protected because the Supreme Court indicated that not all acts by the president are official. Actions motivated by politics or personal vendetta don’t get the same constitutional shelter as legitimate actions. Nobody gets to walk free simply because they once held power. The Supreme Court’s ruling was a test, and Obama is about to find out just how limited immunity can be once he steps outside those constitutional boundaries. One way or another, justice may come for Barack Obama.

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Good on her. Got to start somewhere.

MTG introduces Clean Skies Act Banning Weather Modification, Geoengineering (AmG)

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has introduced the Clear Skies Act of 2025 calling for an end to what she calls the “dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering.” The bill, designated H.R. 4403, would prohibit weather modification through the use of geoengineering, cloud seeding, and solar radiation management through the release of chemicals into the atmosphere to change the weather, temperature, climate or to block out sunlight. If enacted, the law would punish weather modification violations as a felony with offenders facing up to $100,000 in fines and/or five years in prison for each violation.

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1949890795982496004?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1949890795982496004%7Ctwgr%5Ec12e17fa6e6532683cb2d5ac343102f5339b1e3d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Famgreatness.com%2F2025%2F07%2F29%2Frep-greene-introduces-clean-skies-act-banning-weather-modification-geoengineering%2F

Greene says her bill is similar to Florida’s S.B. 56 which repeals the state’s ability to issue permits for geoengineering and weather modification and prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. Under the Clear Skies Act, all existing federal authority and executive orders permitting weather modification would be repealed and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) would be directed to investigate and prosecute violations.

H.B. 4403 would also create a public reporting system that would allow Americans to report suspicious activity and which the EPA would be required to investigate. In announcing the Clear Skies Act Greene spoke of the need to protect the nation’s skies, waters and people from weather modification, saying, “It’s time to end this dangerous and unregulated practice.”

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“Over 39 years, the VICP has awarded just $5.4 billion to 12,000 victims. That comes out to about “1.2 awards per million doses administered.”

RFK Jr. Drops Stunning New Vaccine Announcement (VF)

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just took aim at a system that has failed Americans for nearly 40 years, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). This program was created under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which shielded vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits over injury claims. Before becoming HHS Secretary, Kennedy exposed how vaccine manufacturers were being hammered with lawsuits due to injuries. One of the largest manufacturers at the time, Wyeth (now part of Pfizer), reportedly told President Reagan: give us legal protection or we’ll stop making vaccines. Reagan’s response? Why not just make safer vaccines? Wyeth’s answer: Vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.”

That phrase—“unavoidably unsafe”—would later appear in a Supreme Court decision and reflects the legal premise that some vaccine injuries are inevitable. “And so, anybody who tells you vaccines are safe and effective, the industry itself got immunity from liability by convincing the President and Congress that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe,” Kennedy previously stated. Senator Edward Kennedy, a key sponsor of the law, wrote at the time: “When … children are the victims of an appropriate and rational national policy, a compassionate government will assist them in their hour of need.” That compassionate government never showed up. Over 39 years, the VICP has awarded just $5.4 billion to 12,000 victims. That comes out to about “1.2 awards per million doses administered.”

In a brand-new statement on X, Secretary Kennedy said he intends to FIX the broken system. He explained that the court was meant to resolve claims “quickly and fairly,” with “doubts about causation resolved in favor of the victim.” But that hasn’t happened. “The structure itself hobbles claimants,” Kennedy wrote. “The defendant is HHS, not the vaccine makers; and claimants are therefore facing the monumental power and bottomless pockets of the U.S. government represented by the Department of Justice.” He explained how Special Masters, who decide the cases, often come from government or political backgrounds and typically show a strong pro-government bias. “There is no discovery, and the rules of evidence do not apply,” Kennedy lamented.

He added that petitioners’ attorneys report retaliation, fee suppression, and even denied access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a taxpayer-funded CDC database containing the best data on vaccine injuries. Worse, expert witnesses for injured children have reported intimidation and threats to their careers, including the loss of NIH funding if they testify. But Kennedy says that era is over. “The VICP is broken, and I intend to fix it,” he wrote on X. “I will not allow the VICP to continue to ignore its mandate and fail its mission of quickly and fairly compensating vaccine-injured individuals.” Kennedy added that he is working closely with AG Pam Bondi and HHS staff to restore the court’s original mission and pledges to “steer the Vaccine Court back to its original Congressional intent.”

https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1950866812683407360

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https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1950715548259459211

werner
https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1950885611147002295

lagarde

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 182025
 


Paul Gauguin Tahitians at rest (unfinished) 1891

 

Trump’s Ultimatum Isn’t An Ultimatum – and Moscow Knows It (Ryumshin)
Trump Has Backed Himself Into A Corner On Ukraine (Proud)
It’s Time, Ukraine: Kiev Braces For A Final Reckoning (Poletaev)
The Emotional Alliance Between Ukrainians and the Russian Federation (Dionísio)
US Hubris-Driven Blunders Transform The Wider War (Alastair Crooke)
Three Rational Calculations By Trump’s Men (Helmer)
‘Obvious Similarity’ Between Ukraine and Nazi Germany – Medvedev (RT)
Kiev Setting Stage For Chemical Disaster – Moscow (RT)
Trump Orders Release Of Epstein ‘Transcripts’ (RT)
Trump Threatens To Sue WSJ Over ‘Bawdy Letter To Epstein’ (RT)
Trump Convinces Coca-Cola To Return To Cane Sugar In The US (JTN)
James Comey’s Daughter Fired From Top US Attorney’s Office Job (NYP)
I Can’t Believe The NYTimes Thought It Would Get Away With This (Margolis)
Von der Leyen’s Final Plan: A False Democracy For A False Europe (Pacini)

 

 

Bernal

Lutnick

What do we make of these Yellowstone videos?
https://twitter.com/777katemt/status/1945531246571835631

Rhys

 

 

 

 

“Trump’s famed “art of the deal” may amount to little more than selling junk with a smile. But if so, he’s done it masterfully.”

Trump’s Ultimatum Isn’t An Ultimatum – and Moscow Knows It (Ryumshin)

US President Donald Trump has finally issued his much-anticipated “important statement” on Russia. For days, speculation swirled, particularly among pro-Ukrainian circles, that the long-awaited U-turn was coming. Trump, they hoped, would finally get tough – perhaps inspired by the increasingly hawkish rhetoric of Senator Lindsey Graham (who, incidentally, is designated a terrorist and extremist in Russia). Even skeptics began to believe that Trump was gearing up to show Moscow “Kuzka’s mother,” a famous idiomatic expression of aggression used by Nikita Khrushchev during the Cold War. But in classic Trump fashion, expectations were dashed. The supposedly “extremely tough ultimatum” turned out to be something else entirely. Trump threatened tariff sanctions against Russia and its trading partners – but scrapped Graham’s extreme proposal of 500% duties.

Instead, he floated the idea of 100% tariffs that would only take effect after 50 days, if he chooses to enforce them, and if Russia fails to strike a deal. Trump also announced new arms deliveries to Ukraine. But these aren’t gifts – they’ll be sold, not given, and passed through European intermediaries. Supposedly, Ukraine will receive 17 Patriot systems. Yet we soon learned the first of these deliveries won’t arrive for at least two months – again, 50 days. And even now, basic questions remain unanswered. What exactly did Trump mean by “17 Patriots”? Seventeen batteries? Launchers? Missiles? If he meant 17 batteries, that’s simply not plausible. The US itself only operates around 30 active batteries. Germany and Israel combined don’t have anywhere near that many available systems. Such a figure would significantly boost Ukraine’s air defenses – but it’s almost certainly exaggerated.

Seventeen missiles? That would be laughable – but not unthinkable. Washington recently sent just 10 Patriot missiles in a “military aid” package so modest it wouldn’t suffice for a single battle. Seventeen launchers? That seems more realistic. A typical battery consists of six to eight launchers, so this would amount to two or three batteries – more than what Germany and Norway have promised to purchase for Ukraine. Yet even the Pentagon can’t confirm the details. And one suspects Trump himself may be fuzzy on the specifics. His role, after all, is to make the pronouncements; others are left to clean up the mess. The so-called “14 July ultimatum” has already become a textbook example of Trump’s diplomatic approach. In fact, a new phrase has emerged in American political slang: “Trump Always Chickens Out” or TACO.

The acronym speaks for itself. It refers to the president’s habit in trade and security talks of making grandiose threats, only to backtrack or delay implementation.This appears to be another case in point. The negotiations are at an impasse. Trump still craves a Nobel Peace Prize. And he’s reluctant to become too entangled in the Ukrainian conflict. So he’s reached for the oldest trick in his playbook: the non-ultimatum ultimatum. This allows him to sound tough while giving Moscow space – and perhaps even time – to act. It also offers cover with his MAGA base, many of whom are frustrated by distractions like Iran or the Epstein scandal and aren’t eager to see America dragged further into Ukraine. The genius of it, from Trump’s perspective, is that it promises everything and nothing at once.

No clear strategy. No detailed demands. Just an open-ended threat backed by ambiguous timelines. It’s pressure without posture. Leverage without leadership. What’s striking is that the White House didn’t even ask Russia to de-escalate. There were no appeals to halt the almost daily strikes on Ukraine or curb battlefield activity. In effect, Russia has been handed a 50-day window – intentionally or not – to do as it sees fit. A quiet concession to the Kremlin? Perhaps. A careless side effect? Possibly. Either way, Moscow gains. America, too, comes out ahead – at least financially. Under the new arrangement, Western Europe picks up the tab for Ukraine’s defense, while US companies get paid to offload ageing equipment.

Trump’s famed “art of the deal” may amount to little more than selling junk with a smile. But if so, he’s done it masterfully. Still, as a political maneuver, the outcome is more uncertain. Trump may believe he’s found the sweet spot between hawks and doves, between NATO allies and nationalist critics. But trying to be all things to all people rarely ends well. Appeasement disguised as firmness satisfies no one for long. And while Trump plays for time, Russia holds the initiative. That’s the real story here.

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Trump is trying to resist the fast growing pressure, in the US and Europe, to declare outright war on Russia.

Trump Has Backed Himself Into A Corner On Ukraine (Proud)

One year after he undertook to end the Ukraine war in one day, and just past six months into his Presidency, Donald Trump has kicked the peace can down the road by fifty days. The ultimatum to President Putin to make peace or face sanctions has practically no chance to changing Russian aims in Ukraine. Backed into a corner, Trump may finally be forced to address Russia’s underlying concerns. In televised remarks on 14 July during his meeting with NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, President Trump said, ‘if we don’t have a [peace] deal in fifty days, we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs, tariffs at about a hundred percent, you’d call them secondary tariffs.’ As he was in 2017, Trump also now finds himself hemmed in by beltway politics and unable to deliver a reset in U.S.-Russia relations that he instinctively seems to want.

The Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 would put in place so-called secondary sanctions on Russia by imposing stiff tariffs of up to 500% against countries such as China and India that inter alia import Russian energy. U.S. lawmakers want to strong arm Trump into forcing President Putin to back down in Ukraine via the back door. But there is a yawn-inducing sense of déjà vu here. The 2017 Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, signed into law on 2 August 2017, had no impact on Russian policy towards Ukraine, but led to a huge collapse in U.S.-Russia relations. This was illustrated most clearly by the decision to cut U.S. diplomatic staffing in Russia by 755 personnel, meaning among other things, that today it is practically impossible for a Russian citizen to apply for a U.S. visa inside of Russia itself; the U.S. Embassy simply doesn’t have enough staff.

To avoid a repeat of 2017, Trump now appears to be buying himself fifty days in DC to reach peace in Ukraine before he is forced by the Senate to impose secondary sanctions on Russia. The 14 July announcement was therefore about domestic U.S. politics more than about foreign policy. But what Trump has in fact done is to set a clear ultimatum on Russia to reach a peace deal with Ukraine, with no clear commitment to meeting Russia’s specific demands, the key demand being Ukraine’s neutrality and revocation of its NATO aspiration. As an ultimatum, this won’t work, because the additional military support that the U.S. is now offering to Ukraine, paid for by European NATO allies, won’t be sufficient to tip the military balance in Ukraine’s favour.

Additional Patriot missiles and interceptors may well reduce the overall impact of Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities. But the military facts on the ground are that Russia continues to gain ground. At several points along the front line, around Pokrovsk, and Kupiansk, towards Konstiantynivka and Siversk, there have been significant recent Russian gains, by the slow attritional standards of this war. As reported by the Guardian in the UK, even some Ukrainian politicians and bloggers have come out to say that fifty days will simply allow Russia to occupy further Ukrainian land. The most interesting point about that report is the revelation that a British mainstream media outlet is reporting oppositionist views from Ukraine, rather than the narrative from Zelensky’s propaganda machine. So, fifty days favours Russia more than Ukraine, militarily.

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“In just the first half of this year, Ukraine recorded over 107,000 criminal cases for desertion – 20% more than in all of 2024, and nearly half of the total since the war began.”

It’s Time, Ukraine: Kiev Braces For A Final Reckoning (Poletaev)

In our previous pieces, we examined Donald Trump’s half-hearted attempts to cast himself as a deus ex machina, descending to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Peace did not follow. Trump, boxed in by political inertia, continued Biden’s policy of disengagement while trying to dump the Ukrainian problem on Western Europe – just as we predicted back in January. Its leaders weren’t prepared. While Macron and Starmer formed coalitions of the willing and delivered lofty speeches, Germany quietly picked up the tab. Berlin, under its new chancellor, has shown more flexibility, but the broader Western European strategy remains unchanged: keep Washington bankrolling Ukraine at all costs. That plan is now crumbling. Trump is slipping away, and without a dramatic turn of events, no new major aid packages should be expected from the US.

This is not hard to understand. Other global crises are emerging, and the depleted American arsenal cannot serve everyone at once. In both Ukraine and across Western Europe, people are adjusting to what once seemed unthinkable: a slow but steady US withdrawal. These European leaders must now decide whether to carry the burden alone or accept a settlement on Moscow’s terms – conceding Ukraine from their sphere of influence. But neither Kiev nor its immediate sponsors is ready for serious negotiations. Why would they be? Ukraine believes it can hold without American backing. Russian oil revenues have dipped, the ruble is under pressure, and Moscow has taken hits in the Middle East and Caucasus. Perhaps, they reason, Putin will come begging in another year or two. Let’s fight, then.

Amid this political theater, the war itself has faded into the background. For many observers, the front lines seem frozen in time – village names flicker in and out of headlines, lines shift, but the broader picture holds. It’s a difficult situation for military analysts. They are forced to generate drama from attritional warfare. One day, headlines declare the Lugansk Peoples Republic fully liberated (a few villages remain contested). The next, we hear of Russian forces entering the Dnepropetrovsk region (true in a narrow sense – they crossed a small corner in a broader encirclement maneuver around Pokrovsk). None of this, however, alters the core dynamic. Both sides are largely following the same strategies as a year ago. For Russia, the aim remains clear: exhaust Ukrainian forces until they can no longer defend. The goal isn’t to seize a specific line, but to break the enemy’s army.

Russia has pursued this with steady, grinding pressure. Last winter, Moscow shifted from large mechanized thrusts to small, flexible assault groups. Instead of smashing through defenses, these units infiltrate after prolonged bombardment from artillery, drones, and air power. The results aren’t flashy, but the goal is cumulative. The summer campaign began in May; we’ll see its full effect by late summer or even winter. This mirrors the pattern of 2024, when Russian forces made their biggest gains in October and November, capturing several cities in Donetsk with minimal resistance – Novogrodovka, Ugledar, Selidovo, Kurakhovo. The key question now is scale: can Russia turn these tactical wins into a full collapse of Ukrainian lines?

The answer depends in part on the weakened state of Ukraine’s forces. By spring, Kiev had fewer armored vehicles, fewer Western shipments, and fewer elite units. The best troops were spent in the failed Kursk push and are now stuck holding Sumy. But the gravest issue is manpower. The supply of volunteers has dried up. Ukraine’s army now relies on forced conscription – the so-called “busified.” And the results are telling. In just the first half of this year, Ukraine recorded over 107,000 criminal cases for desertion – 20% more than in all of 2024, and nearly half of the total since the war began. That’s only the official count; the real number is undoubtedly higher. Desertion is now the Ukrainian army’s leading cause of losses. Draft officers are hated, and civilians fear being dragged into vans and thrown to the front. Power outages have lessened, and life behind the lines is almost normal. But the threat of forced mobilization looms. In a telling detail, real soldiers now mark their cars with “not TCR” to avoid attacks from angry civilians.

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“..the abundance of cases–desperate mothers, women committing suicide, daughters protesting–began to suggest that, deep down, the Ukrainian soul may still belong to a peaceful people who never wanted any of this..”

The Emotional Alliance Between Ukrainians and the Russian Federation (Dionísio)

For a regime that presents itself to Western nations as “the shield of democracies,” it is ironic, if not tragic, that its own people do not feel aligned with such a “noble” mission. Indeed, there are signs that Ukrainians neither consider it noble nor desire such a mission, despite the enthusiasm of Western journalists and politicians. When we watch news about the war in Ukraine and encounter journalists who, forgetting their role as informants, immediately shift to “counterarguments“–which is not their function–to challenge any more independent commentator, we are far from understanding the levels of suffering, despair, and immorality to which the Ukrainian people have been subjected over these hellish three years. During this time, the US, EU, NATO, and G7 decided to assign them an impossible mission: “to defend Western democracies against Putin’s autocracy.”

One might expect Ukrainians to feel flattered, even praised, for being chosen for such a lofty mission, especially when the assigners were none other than the self-proclaimed champions of transparency, civility, democracy, and respect for human rights. Over the three years of war, there was no shortage of street interviews in which carefully selected passersby declared their readiness for anything; nor was there a shortage of so-called journalists who praised the courage, fervor, and antagonism toward Russia, and especially toward Putin. Everything was shown to make it seem as though everyone was happy and committed. Europeans and Americans funded the war, other people’s children fought it, and the children of those aspiring to join the Western garden were sent to the front under the auspices of von der Leyen’s victory, the infantile Trumpist Mark Rutte, Baerbock, now Kallas, and formerly Borrell.

Until the news of forced conscription could no longer be contained, even outlets like The New York Times or The Guardian could not suppress it. After all, some were not so enchanted with the mission of defending others’ freedom at the cost of their own tyranny. Images began to emerge of fathers, sons, brothers, young men, and adults resisting–heroically, madly, desperately–being sent to their deaths. The images could no longer lie: men running over recruitment officers–at the risk of arrest and worse–others screaming while clinging to trees, traffic signs, or anything they could hold onto, desperate workers running through the streets shouting… In the end, one of two things must be true: either the promise of eternal freedom is not so thrilling, or the promise of eternal tyranny in case of military defeat is not so credible.

The truth is that the abundance of cases–desperate mothers, women committing suicide, daughters protesting–began to suggest that, deep down, the Ukrainian soul may still belong to a peaceful people who never wanted any of this. For Western media, nothing had changed, except that they stopped contradicting those who openly declared that Ukrainian men were no longer masters of their own lives. Not a single word, report, or statement. After all, what is happening to the Ukrainian people is not so different from what is happening elsewhere in the world.

If in Gaza and the West Bank a people is martyred, eliminated, in the name of defending Israel at the hands of a Zionist minority; in Ukraine, a people is martyred, forced to fight those they considered their brothers, with whom they lived and prospered (Soviet Ukraine was once the 10th-largest economy in the world), tyrannized by a Nazi-fascist minority, used and nurtured to defend “the democratic West.” It all comes down to pure optics, to those who consider themselves superior and, by that superiority, believe they can instrumentalize the worst evils to achieve a supreme good that only a select few enjoy. Just as Zionists consider themselves superior to all other peoples, so too do Western globalists, imperialists, Atlanticists, and liberal-fascists consider themselves superior to the peoples of the Global South, Russians included.

The one who did not fail to identify this profound contradiction was the Russian Federation and its highest military ranks. And then the unexpected happened. After all that was said about the Russian Federation, after the charges brought against Vladimir Putin for genocide and crimes against humanity, after accusations of “imperialist” ambitions, the Ukrainian people began to look at the Russian Federation not as an invader, not as a destroyer, but as an ally–if not a savior, as in the case of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The decision to bomb “recruitment” centers–read “detention” centers–thus became a form of soft power in itself. With each destroyed center, Ukrainian voices rose in jubilation, as if turning despair into courage to say to their ally, “Yes, it is in you that I must place my hope.” Social media was flooded with messages of gratitude to Russian forces, of sympathy for this unexpected “solidarity.” It was as if, with each destroyed center, Ukrainians gained days of life, extending the hope that the war would truly end, and with it would come peace and the condemnation of the real culprits.

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“The entire complexion of this war to retain America’s dollar primacy has been irreversibly altered.”

US Hubris-Driven Blunders Transform The Wider War (Alastair Crooke)

The big issue emerging from the U.S.’ 22 June strike on Iran – second only to ‘wither Iran?’ – is whether in Trump’s calculus he can ‘rhetorically impose’ the having “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme claim long enough to both restrain Israel from hitting Iran again, yet still allow Trump to pursue his show-stopper headline, ‘WE WON: I’m in charge now and everybody is going to do what I tell them’. These were the key conflicting issues that were to be hammered out with Netanyahu during his White House visit this week. Netanyahu’s interests essentially are for ‘more hot war’, and thus differ from the Trump ceasefire general stratagem.

Implicit in his ‘In-Boom-Out & Ceasefire’ Iran approach is that Trump may imagine he has created the space to resume his primary objective – that of instituting a broader Israeli-centric order across the Middle East, devolving upon trade deals, economic ties, investment and connectivity, to create a business-led West Asia, centred on Tel Aviv (with Trump as its de facto ‘President’). And, via this ‘Business Super Highway’, to strike further beyond – with the Gulf States penetrating into BRICS’ south Asian heartland to disrupt BRICS connectivity and corridors. The sine qua non for any jumpstart to a putative ‘Abraham Accords 2.0 of course – as Trump clearly understands – is an end to the Gaza War; the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza; and the Strip’s re-construction (none of which seems to be in realistic reach).

What emerges rather, is that Trump continues to be seized by the delusional view that his Israeli-centred vision could all be accomplished merely by ending the genocide in Gaza, but with the world watching aghast as Israel continues on a hegemonic military rampage across the region. The most obvious flaw to the Trump premise is that a chastened Iran somehow has been achieved by Israeli and American strikes. It is the opposite. Iran has arisen more unified, resolute and defiant. Far from being relegated to watching passively from the sidelines, Iran now – in the wake of recent events – resumes its place as a leading regional power. One that is readying a possibly game-changing military riposte to any further strikes by either Israel or the U.S.

What is ignored in all these western claims of Israeli success, is that Israel chose to bet all on a surprise ‘shock and awe’ strike. One that would overturn the Islamic Republic at a stroke. It didn’t work: the strategic objective failed, and it produced the opposite outcome. But the more fundamental point is that the techniques used by Israel – that required months, if not years of preparation – cannot just be repeated again now that their stratagems have been fully exposed. This White House misreading of the Iran reality signals that the Trump Team allowed themselves to be deceived by Israeli hubris in insisting that Iran was a house-of-cards, primed to collapse completely into paralysis upon the first taste of the Israeli sneak decapitation ‘muscle’ on 13 June.

This was a fundamental error – in a pattern of similar errors: That China would capitulate to the threat of imposed tariffs; that Russia could be coerced into a ceasefire against its interests; and that Iran would be ready to sign an unconditional surrender document in the face of Trump’s threats post-22 June. What these U.S. blunders speak to – apart from a consistent divorce from geo-political realities – is western weakness masked behind hubris and bluster. The U.S. Establishment clings to its fading primacy; but in doing it so ineffectually, it has instead accelerated the formation of a potent geo-strategic alliance intent on defying the U.S.

The consequence has been the wake up call to other States occasioned by the western slide towards stratagems of outright lies and deceit: The ‘Spider Web’ operation against the Russian strategic bomber fleet on the eve of the Istanbul talks and the U.S.-Israeli sneak attack on Iran two days before the expected next round of U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks, have increased the will-to-resist by China, Russian and Iran particularly, but more generally it is felt across the Global South. The entire complexion of this war to retain America’s dollar primacy has been irreversibly altered.

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I -used to- like John Helmer. But he’s lost me now. If you want to claim that Trump is too demented to tie his shoe laces, you need more than a few quotes from a niece who hates his guts.

Three Rational Calculations By Trump’s Men (Helmer)

About President Donald Trump, certifiable maniac isn’t an expletive – it’s a clinical diagnosis. In the neurological and psychiatric evidence that has been accumulating about Trump over many years, there is the medical history of Alzheimer’s Disease which runs in his family: his father was first diagnosed at age 86 and died at 93; his older sister died of it, aged 86; and at least one cousin died of the same, aged 84. Since the President has just turned 79, there is reason to anticipate similar onset of symptoms and cause of death for him. Trump thinks this himself, according to Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and the President’s niece. She has published a case history of the President in 2020 which Trump’s lawyers failed to suppress in court.

Last week, she published a new symptom of what she calls the acceleration in Trump’s cognitive decline: he cannot tie his own shoe laces. This claim has already been pursued by online investigators who have been reporting Trump’s lace-ups which appear from the photographs to be tied permanently and a mysterious right shoe several sizes too large. The evidence of Trump’s incapacity to understand the Russian end-of-war terms, as he expressed himself in the July 14 press session with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, was reported here. [..] When Trump and Rutte accuse President Vladimir Putin of failing to negotiate seriously, the record reveals the opposite. Negotiating on the Ukraine war with Trump is proving to be impossible because Trump isn’t serious. That’s not his political decision; it’s his neuro-psychiatric handicap.

“You really gave him [Putin] a chance to be serious to get to the table to start negotiations,” Rutte said to Trump on Monday. “Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio, we all try to help you. But you’ve now come to a point where you say, well, hey, you know, you have to — you have to get serious.” Trump agreed, replying: “We actually thought we had probably four times [agreed] the deal.” Five times over, Rutte repeated that the Russians aren’t serious. Trump repeated himself: “We’re going to go for a period of time. Maybe he’ll start negotiating. I think we felt, I felt, I don’t know about you Mark, but I felt that we had a deal about four times and here we are still talking about making a deal.”

Trump’s recall was that the terms of his deal had been accepted by Putin; he didn’t recall what Putin’s terms were. He is revealing he cannot comprehend the difference between the US and Russian negotiating positions; he hasn’t so much rejected the “new idea, new concept” from the Kremlin as not to have understood it. This isn’t Trump’s negotiating tactic – it’s cognitive incapacity camouflaged by the threat of force to compel Putin’s capitulation. The first test of Trump’s rationality is the Mary Trump test – an Oval Office press conference in which Trump demonstrates how he ties his shoe laces. The second test requires Russian counter force. This is the Oreshnik decision-making point for Putin, when there is no longer any point to negotiating because the US side aims at escalating its arms supplies to the Ukraine battlefield and encouraging the Germans to join in long-range missile attacks on the Russian hinterland, including Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In the Russian decision-making now under way, there is an attempt to find the rational calculations in what Trump is meaning; that is to say, what Trump’s advisors, constituents, and officials are calculating when he himself is incapacitated. The first of these, Russian sources believe, is that the Trump escalation is a pitch to prevent Trump’s domestic voter base, the MAGA enthusiasts in the battleground states which won the presidency for Trump last November, from deserting him.

The second calculation is that Russia is militarily and economically vulnerable to a combination of escalation of attacks inside Russia and sanctions on the oil trade outside. This is the strategy of the “bigger bear”, announced on CNN this week by former Trump and Biden Administration warfighter, Brett McGurk: “the Russians approach diplomacy as a bear approaches a dance. The bear knows it will determine when and how the dance ends, unless the other dance partner proves itself to be a bigger bear. Sometimes, it helps to be the bigger bear. In the context of Ukraine, like Syria, while the United States is a far more powerful country than Russia, Putin believes that he has the upper hand in such localized conflicts due to Moscow’s determination and consistency contrasted with Washington’s perceived lack of focus, stamina and shifting politics through election cycles. Correcting that perception is a first principle for effective diplomacy with Moscow, and the approach outlined by Trump yesterday offers the chance to do exactly that.”

The third rational calculation, Russian sources believe — as do some US analysts — is that by supplying the Ukraine battlefield through Germany, the UK and Norway with a combination of Patriot anti-aircraft defence batteries and long-range offence missile systems like the Typhon, the Trump Administration will escape having to face a US taxpayer revolt in Congress over the multi-billion dollar cost of direct US arms supplies to Kiev regime. According to this scheme too, Trump would have an alibi if the Oreshnik decision is taken by Putin, and if the US weapons are defeated in the collapse of the Zelensky regime. Trump would blame the Germans, repeating his line: “don’t forget, I’ve just really been involved in this for not very long and it wasn’t initial focus. Again, this is a Biden war. This is a Democrat war, not a Republican or Trump war. This is a war that would have never happened.”

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“..the 80th anniversary of the Potsdam Conference, which began on July 17, 1945. The conference was the last wartime meeting between leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It laid the groundwork for postwar Europe..”

‘Obvious Similarity’ Between Ukraine and Nazi Germany – Medvedev (RT)

Ukraine bears similarities to the Nazi state at the end of World War II and should undergo “demilitarization,” “denazification,” and “democratization” in a manner similar to postwar Germany, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has told TASS. He spoke to the Russian news agency on Thursday, the 80th anniversary of the Potsdam Conference, which began on July 17, 1945. The conference was the last wartime meeting between leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It laid the groundwork for postwar Europe, including plans for Germany’s demilitarization and denazification. Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, explained that the concept of the “three D’s” had originally been formulated for Nazi Germany, which he described as an aggressor state that had disrupted the international order, according to TASS.

“The 1945 Reich and modern Ukraine are, of course, very different – in scale, global role, and even (formally) in state ideology. But there is also obvious similarity.” Medvedev said Ukraine shares its “crisis of identity” with Hitler’s Germany and engages in the “open use of Nazi symbols,” while showing signs of dictatorship and economic degradation. “All this makes the idea of applying the three D’s relevant,” he stated. He added that demilitarization for Ukraine should not be seen as punishment, but rather as “a chance to stop being a pawn in someone else’s bloody geopolitical games.”

He described denazification or “debanderization” as a long-term effort involving public consciousness and historical memory. Democratization, he said, involved not only elections but also the restoration of legal institutions, free media, political competition, and the separation of powers. Many historic ultranationalist leaders, including Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) Stepan Bandera, a notorious Nazi collaborator, are widely revered by Ukrainians today. Russia has repeatedly condemned Kiev’s elevation of these collaborators to national hero status and has demanded the “denazification” of the country as part of a negotiated peace agreement. Russia has accused Western governments of deliberately ignoring continued neo-Nazi activity in Ukrainian ranks.

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“..placing toxic chemicals in the areas where Russian troops operate and their subsequent detonation.”

Kiev Setting Stage For Chemical Disaster – Moscow (RT)

The Ukrainian military is trying to provoke a major ecological disaster close to the front line and blame it on Russia, the Defense Ministry in Moscow warned on Thursday. The accusation came from Maj. Gen. Aleksey Rtishchev, the commander of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, who briefed the public about alleged Ukrainian violations of an international treaty prohibiting the use of chemical weapons. Rtishchev disclosed a document obtained by the Russian military, in which the deputy director of Ukrainian state-owned company Ukrkhimtransammiak informed a regional official appointed by Kiev that in late June Ukrainian troops had illegally accessed a site operated by the firm.

The Ukrkhimtransammiak executive stressed his concern that the location could be damaged due to the military’s involvement, potentially causing the release of up to 566 tons of highly toxic liquified ammonia. The site, an above-ground element of a Soviet-built underground ammonia pipeline operated by Ukrkhimtransammiak, is located roughly 2.5 km north of the village of Novotroitskoye, in the Kiev-controlled portion of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic. Rtishchev claimed the Ukrainian military had placed communication equipment at the location as part of “barbaric tactics used by the Kiev regime” which involves “placing toxic chemicals in the areas where Russian troops operate and their subsequent detonation.”

“The intention is to accuse our nation of intentionally causing a technological disaster and damage its reputation,” the general stated. “The use of hazardous objects for military purposes violates the international humanitarian law.” Rtishchev also reiterated Russian accusations against the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Moscow says the international watchdog ignores Russian reports about Ukrainian violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) while taking Kiev’s allegations against Russia at face value.

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It won’t go away by itself. Might as well feed the frenzy.

Trump Orders Release Of Epstein ‘Transcripts’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump has promised to release more information after criticism of his administration’s handling of the sex trafficking case involving the late financier Jeffrey Epstein reached a tipping point. After months of pledges to disclose the full case files, the Department of Justice said in a memo last week that no further documents would be made public – triggering a backlash even among some of Trump’s closest supporters. “Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony, subject to court approval,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.

Bondi confirmed that her office is “ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts,” though it remains unclear which documents would be released or when. Epstein was arrested in 2019 and charged with trafficking minors for sex. He allegedly hanged himself in his New York jail cell before he could stand trial. His longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, was later convicted of conspiring to sexually abuse underage girls and is now serving a 20-year sentence. Although Epstein’s death was officially ruled a suicide, it has long fueled public skepticism. The DOJ’s controversial review concluded that no “client list” of Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring ever existed and found no evidence of blackmail. There were no grounds to investigate uncharged third parties, the memo stated.

These findings appeared to contradict Bondi’s earlier comments that the client list was “sitting on [her] desk,” and that the FBI had turned over a “truckload” of materials that would “make you sick.” Bondi appeared to walk back those remarks, clarifying on Tuesday that she was referring to case files on her desk in general. She also dismissed concerns about a one-minute gap in the 11-hour surveillance video recorded near Epstein’s jail cell. Earlier this week, Trump claimed only “stupid people” believe the sex offender’s alleged “client list” wasn’t yet another Democrat hoax. Trump ordered the release of additional documents after the Wall Street Journal accused him of sending a lewd birthday greeting to Epstein in 2003. The president has threatened to sue Rupert Murdoch and his “third-rate newspaper” for defamation.

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“The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch, personally, were warned directly by President Donald J. Trump that the supposed letter… was a FAKE and, if they print it, they will be sued,..

Trump Threatens To Sue WSJ Over ‘Bawdy Letter To Epstein’ (RT)

President Donald Trump has threatened legal action against the Wall Street Journal, its parent company News Corp., and media mogul Rupert Murdoch after the newspaper claimed that he authored a lewd letter to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday. The alleged letter was reportedly part of a leather-bound album compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 and included a crude drawing of a nude woman, according to the Journal’s exclusive report on Thursday. “A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly Donald below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” the report described, without explaining how the outlet obtained what it claimed was a previously unreleased Department of Justice file.

The paper acknowledged that Trump strongly denied the allegation, but went ahead with publication. “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women… It’s not my language. It’s not my words,” the Journal quoted Trump as saying. Several hours after the story broke, Trump accused Murdoch and WSJ Editor Emma Tucker of deliberately spreading “defamatory lies.” “The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch, personally, were warned directly by President Donald J. Trump that the supposed letter… was a FAKE and, if they print it, they will be sued,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. He described the “once great” paper as a “disgusting and filthy rag” that was desperately trying to “stay relevant.” Trump vowed to sue the WSJ, News Corp., and Murdoch “shortly,” citing his history of successful lawsuits against major media outlets.

Epstein was arrested in 2019 and charged with trafficking minors for sex. He allegedly hanged himself in his New York jail cell before standing trial. His longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, was later convicted of conspiring to sexually abuse underage girls and is now serving a 20-year sentence. Although Epstein’s death was officially ruled a suicide, it has long been the subject of public skepticism. Earlier this week, Trump responded to growing criticism over his administration’s handling of the Epstein case, claiming that only “stupid people” still demand access to the sex offender’s alleged “client list.”

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“Mexican coke” uses natural cane sugar as a sweetener while American coke has relied on high-fructose corn syrup since the 1980s.”

Trump Convinces Coca-Cola To Return To Cane Sugar In The US (JTN)

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he had convinced Coca-Cola to use authentic cane sugar in their American products, marking a subtle cultural victory over Mexico. “I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!” Trump announced on Truth Social.

“Mexican coke” uses natural cane sugar as a sweetener while American coke has relied on high-fructose corn syrup since the 1980s. The cane sugar coke often appears in stores contained within glass bottles. Trump did not speak to any planned changes in the American containers. The announcement came somewhat out of left field as Trump has spent much of the week fending off criticisms over his handling of the Epstein case and there was little coverage of any talks with the iconic soda company.

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Well, she does seem to have let the Diddy case slip through her fingers. And she and her hubby are Trump haters. Why keep them on?

James Comey’s Daughter Fired From Top US Attorney’s Office Job (NYP)

Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was fired Wednesday from the powerful Manhattan US Attorney’s Office — where she prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and, most recently, Sean “Diddy” Combs, sources told The Post. The reason for Comey’s firing, which law enforcement and Department of Justice sources confirmed, was not immediately clear. She was informed that she was being axed under Article II of the Constitution, which describes the powers of the president, the sources added. President Trump has a long history of conflicts with the elder Comey and fired him as FBI director in 2017 during Trump’s first term.

Maurene Comey, who served as an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York since 2015, worked on the prosecutions of disgraced financier pedophile Epstein and Maxwell, who was found guilty of multiple sex crimes at trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Comey most recently worked on the high-profile sex-trafficking case against Combs. The nearly month-long trial ended with the jury acquitting the disgraced hip-hop mogul of the most serious charges against him — racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking — that could have landed him life in prison. He was only found guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.

[..] “This firing is an effort by the DOJ to distract from its failures on Epstein, the J6 pipe bomb, Butler assassination plot and ongoing whistleblower retaliation,” former FBI agent-turned-whistleblower Steve Friend said. “Removing Maureen Comey six months into the administration is like a fire department hiring an arsonist and expecting applause when they fire him after he’s already burned down a city block. Too little, too late. “They are desperate for a win and distraction. The Comey-Brennan case is a distraction. They’ll never get charged. It’s a way for congressmen to have hearings,” Friend added, referring to the FBI investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan and James Comey for potential criminal conduct related to the 2016 Trump-Russia collusion probe.

The Epstein firestorm was revived last week after the Justice Department and FBI concluded in a memo that the convicted pedophile, 66, killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 — and did not keep a list of wealthy and powerful “clients” to whom he trafficked underage teens. That conclusion sparked a storm of backlash from top MAGA personalities, who suspected that the Trump administration wasn’t being fully upfront about Epstein, despite the 47th president’s promise on the campaign trail to release the files on the convicted pedophile. Comey’s ouster also follows renewed attacks from Trump’s base, including conservative firebrand Laura Loomer, who publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to fire Comey and her husband, SDNY Assistant US Attorney Lucas Issacharoff, back in May.

“Today, the DOJ fired Maurene Comey from the United States Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York,” Loomer posted on X after the news broke. “This comes 2 months after my pressure campaign on Pam Bondi to fire Comey’s daughter and Comey’s son in law from the DOJ.” Loomer has claimed that Issacharoff, who has worked in the SDNY’s Civil Division since 2019, has “a long history of being a Trump hater.” “No word yet on whether or not he was also fired today, but he should be. +1 for Blondi today!” Loomer cheered. Trump has since spent days dismissing Epstein’s case as a “big hoax” concocted by the Democrats for political gain — and blasting suspicious GOP members for being “duped” by their colleagues on the other side of the political aisle. The prez has also lashed out, pressing the country and news reporters to stop focusing on the notorious predator.

“They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years,” Trump railed on Truth Social Wednesday. “I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.” The Trump administration is investigating James Comey for potential criminal conduct during the FBI’s Trump-Russia collusion probe in 2016. The Secret Service also interviewed the ex-bureau director in May for a cryptic “86 47” Instagram post that led to accusations from Trump that Comey was calling for another assassination attempt against him.

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Focus on Trump’s words, memory-hole Biden’s.

That video is priceless. The first minute is Oscar material. Which director lets the head of the president disappear on his way to the podium?

I Can’t Believe The NYTimes Thought It Would Get Away With This (Margolis)

The irony is thick enough to choke on. The New York Times, that bastion of so-called journalistic integrity, churned out yet another hit piece on President Donald Trump, painting him as some vengeful tyrant hell-bent on crushing his political foes. According to the paper, Trump supposedly views his opponents as downright evil, promising a campaign of retribution that sends shivers down the spines of the elite media class. Last week, he denounced a reporter as a “very evil person” for asking a question he did not like. This week, he declared that Democrats are “an evil group of people.”“Evil” is a word getting a lot of airtime in the second Trump term. It is not enough anymore to dislike a journalistic inquiry or disagree with an opposing philosophy.

Anyone viewed as critical of the president or insufficiently deferential is wicked. The Trump administration’s efforts to achieve its policy goals are not just an exercise in governance but a holy mission against forces of darkness. The characterization seeds the ground to justify all sorts of actions that would normally be considered extreme or out of bounds. If Mr. Trump’s adversaries are not just rivals but villains, then he can rationalize going further than any president has in modern times. This isn’t journalism; it’s selective outrage at its finest. The Times acts like Trump’s tough talk is some unprecedented assault on democracy, conveniently forgetting or willfully ignoring the years of venomous rhetoric that the left spewed against Trump and conservatives everywhere.

It has the gall to portray Trump as the villain while pretending that its side hasn’t been fanning the flames of division for nearly a decade. If the Times is so concerned about demonizing political enemies, maybe it should look in the mirror, or better yet, revisit one of the most egregious examples from its own camp: from Barack Obama’s spying on Trump to frame him for colluding with Russia to Joe Biden’s lawfare campaign that literally tried to put Trump in prison. Actions may speak louder than words, but Joe Biden spoke rather loudly during his infamous speech at Independence Hall back in 2022, where he didn’t even hide the fact that he saw his political allies as evil. Remember that spectacle? There was Biden, standing in front of the birthplace of American liberty, bathed in dramatic red lighting that appropriately gave off a fascistic vibe. He wasn’t there to unite the nation; he was there to declare war on half of it.

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” he thundered, as if conservatives were some invading horde rather than fellow Americans exercising their right to disagree. He didn’t stop there. He literally called Trump and his supporters a “clear and present danger” to the country. Biden’s words weren’t just heated; they were incendiary. It was pure demagoguery, designed to otherize and vilify millions of Americans who simply wanted secure borders, economic strength, and a government that puts America first. And where was The New York Times during all this? Cheering it on, of course. The paper didn’t call out Biden for his divisive rant; it amplified it, framing it as a noble defense of democracy against the supposed fascist threat of Trump.

“Biden Warns That American Values Are Under Assault by Trump-Led Extremism,” read the headline of one article reacting to the speech. Another article detailing four takeaways from the speech lacked any outrage at all at Biden’s rhetoric. Fast-forward to today, and leftists are clutching their pearls over Trump’s promises to hold corrupt officials accountable, like the ones who weaponized the DOJ against him. Trump’s talk of retribution isn’t about personal vendettas; it’s about restoring justice after years of witch hunts, from the Mueller probe to the sham impeachments. Yet the Times ignores how the left’s rhetoric has real-world consequences. We’ve seen assassination attempts on Trump, violent protests egged on by Democrat leaders, and a media ecosystem that normalizes calling conservatives Nazis or threats to humanity.

And the Times is crying over Trump for saying mean things about his political adversaries? This double standard is the real threat to our republic. The Times’ piece reeks of desperation, a last gasp from a dying media empire that’s lost all credibility. Leftists whine about sources going silent, as if that’s proof of some authoritarian chill, but maybe those experts are just tired of being props in the left’s endless anti-Trump crusade. If the paper truly cared about toning down the rhetoric, it should start by acknowledging its own role in escalating it. Biden’s speech wasn’t a one-off; it was the blueprint for the left’s strategy — demonize, divide, and conquer.

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“..an estimated 215 million doses, worth close to €4 billion, subsequently being discarded..”

“Many of the key decisions are no longer taken by elected governments or national parliaments, but by EU bodies often guided by a technocratic logic and by interests dominant within the EU system.”

Von der Leyen’s Final Plan: A False Democracy For A False Europe (Pacini)

The perception of the European Union is changing in some sections of public opinion: from a project of cooperation between sovereign states, the EU is increasingly seen as a centralized bureaucratic machine, which is what it really represents, and this view is fueled by the growing control exercised over information spaces, political dynamics, and the very interpretation of democratic principles. If the failure of the euro as a common currency was already telling, even more so were the isolationist policies of sanctions against the Russian Federation, followed by those against China and, in general, against any political entity that was not in the good graces of the UK-US axis. In this context, the role of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is worrying.

While proclaiming herself a champion of democratic values, she is contributing to the construction of a system in which truth, dissent, and public debate are suppressed or marginalized. There is no doubt that no one has ever pursued policies as totally anti-democratic, liberticidal, and homicidal as hers (as in the cases of Ukraine and Palestine).These concerns have been fueled by discussions on a motion of no confidence against von der Leyen. In June 2025, Romanian MEP George Piperea proposed a vote to question her leadership. The necessary signatures were collected from various MEPs to put the issue to a vote in the plenary. The main reason given is the alleged violation of transparency rules during the management of contracts for COVID-19 vaccines in 2020-2021.

Following those agreements, the EU purchased huge quantities of doses, many of which proved to be surplus to requirements, with an estimated 215 million doses, worth close to €4 billion, subsequently being discarded. When citizens and the media asked for clarity on those contracts, the European Commission refused to make the communications public, a decision that the Court of Justice of the European Union later ruled contrary to the rules. According to the Court, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the Commission is obliged to prove that such communications do not exist or are not in its possession. Despite this, the Commission has never provided a clear explanation as to why the messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer’s CEO were not disclosed.

It has not been clarified whether the messages were deleted voluntarily or whether they were lost, for example, due to a change of device by the president. Finally, on July 10, during a plenary session in Strasbourg, the European Parliament rejected the motion of no confidence against Ursula von der Leyen. To pass, it would have required a qualified majority of two-thirds, supported by an absolute majority of MEPs. The result was 360 votes against, 175 in favor, and 18 abstentions. The motion was supported by right-wing groups such as Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations, numerous members of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, and some members of the radical left. Von der Leyen was not present at the time of the vote.

Despite the criticism, the main centrist groups – the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Renew Europe and the Greens – rejected the motion, ensuring the political survival of the president. However, if the no-confidence motion had passed, the entire European Commission would have fallen, opening a complicated process for the appointment of 27 new commissioners. This decision is perhaps more strategic than tactical: keeping a president who has already lost confidence and is therefore politically manageable and has limited room for maneuver is more convenient than having a new president who may be worse than the previous one and has the full confidence of the European Parliament.

Elections in the European Union, as in many other democratic contexts, should express the will of the people. They should, I emphasize. In practice, however, they are increasingly seen as an institutional ritual with no real impact on fundamental political choices and, above all, they are not an expression of the real will of the people, as they lack representation. Many of the key decisions are no longer taken by elected governments or national parliaments, but by EU bodies often guided by a technocratic logic and by interests dominant within the EU system. The 2024 European elections represented a turning point: conservative, sovereignist, and nationalist parties significantly expanded their representation, establishing themselves in countries such as Italy, Austria, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.

These parties have strongly opposed the EU’s migration policies, environmental measures deemed excessive, and its confrontational foreign policy towards Russia. However, instead of encouraging constructive debate and giving space to critical voices – as the European Parliament claims to want to do – these forces have been systematically branded as “anti-democratic” and publicly discredited. A central role in this strategy has been played by Ursula von der Leyen, in office since 2019, who has repeatedly portrayed right-wing parties as a “threat to European unity,” without ever providing concrete evidence to support this claim, but often referring to alleged Russian interference or generic “threats to sovereignty.”

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Jun 232025
 


Rembrandt van Rijn The three trees 1643

 

Medvedev: Countries Now Ready To Supply Iran With Nuclear Warheads (ZH)
US Intervened Because Israel Was on Brink of Defeat – Iranian Ex-Ambassador (Sp.)
Top Iranian Diplomat Expects ‘Critical’ Talks With Putin (RT)
US Strikes on Iran Reckless Breach of Sovereignty – Russian FM (Sp.)
Moscow Blasts US Redo Of ‘Iraqi Weapons Of Mass Destruction’ Stunt (RT)
America Again Crawls on Its Belly for Israel (Paul Craig Roberts)
Democrats Denounce Iranian Attack as Unconstitutional (Turley)
Vance, Rubio Call For Peace With Iran, Say Regime Change Is Not The Goal (ZH)
The EU’s Favorite War: The One Israel Starts (Marsden)
What Russian Experts And Politicians Are Saying About The US Strikes (RT)
Major US Cities on Alert After US Airstrikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities (ET)
Zelensky Makes New Threats Against Russia (RT)
The European Garden On The Brink Of Ruin (SCF)
Western Use of Interest From Russia’s Frozen Assets Is Theft – Top Banker (RT)

 

 

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https://twitter.com/imetatronink/status/1936799415148347406

bannon

hormuz
https://twitter.com/DI313_/status/1936695758691950752
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1936787865704276247

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Yesterday, I said: “If the situation pans out the way it’s presented today, much of the criticism [..] will subside..” Well, it hasn’t and it won’t. Scott Ritter’s must-see talk with Judge Nap makes that very clear. He claims the US bombs only literally pounded sand, and reality differs greatly from the narrative. If Trump can say today that there’s no Iranian nuclear threat, that’s because there wasn’t one before. They bombed two abandoned desert sites, and one-Fordow- that they couldn’t hit. Q: what’s the next move?

 

 

 

 

Great example of the role Medvedev plays: he gets to say what Putin can’t, for reasons of statesmanship and diplomacy.

Medvedev: Countries Now Ready To Supply Iran With Nuclear Warheads (ZH)

On Sunday morning Russia’s former president and current deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev issued his reaction to the major US overnight strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, giving what’s essentially the view of where things stand from the Kremlin. Medvedev in a ten-point list of reactions characterized the attacks as ultimately ineffective, and that it will blow back on America and Israel in a way opposite than intended, especially as Tehran will now only push harder for a nuke, and allied countries might now simply be willing to supply them to the Iranians, he described.

Interestingly, Medvedev has also echoed Moscow’s stance on nuclear warheads in the Middle East, and has written over the weekend on his VKontakte page, “Does Iran have nuclear weapons? We don’t know, but we know that Israel has a secret nuclear program. Well, let them both renounce such programs under the supervision of the UN Security Council and the IAEA.” As for the ten-point critique of the brazen US heavy bombing of the Islamic Republic, Medvedev wrote on X as follows… “What have the Americans accomplished with their nighttime strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran?” he first posed, before listing:

1. Critical infrastructure of the nuclear fuel cycle appears to have been unaffected or sustained only minor damage.
2. The enrichment of nuclear material — and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons — will continue.
3. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.
4. Israel is under attack, explosions are rocking the country, and people are panicking.
5. The US is now entangled in a new conflict, with prospects of a ground operation looming on the horizon.
6. Iran’s political regime has survived — and in all likelihood, has come out even stronger.
7. The people are rallying around the country’s spiritual leadership, including those who were previously indifferent or opposed to it.
8. Donald Trump, once hailed as ‘president of peace,’ has now pushed the US into another war.
9. The vast majority of countries around the world oppose the actions of Israel and the United States.
10. At this rate, Trump can forget about the Nobel Peace Prize — not even with how rigged it has become.

Medvedev actually finished his point #10 with a sarcastic dig at the US leader, writing “What a way to kick things off, Mr. President. Congratulations!” This certainly complicates things in terms of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Moscow has long received its major supply of Shahed ‘Kamikaze’ drones from Iran, and has ongoing defense contracts and agreements, including possibly to receive mid-range missiles. Washington is ‘flexing’ in Moscow’s direction with this major long-range B-2 bomber military operation on the other side of the world.

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Interesting viewpoint.

“..Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray told RIA Novosti that Iran had shown incredible patience and peacefulness over the past few years..”

US Intervened Because Israel Was on Brink of Defeat – Iranian Ex-Ambassador (Sp.)

The United States would not have intervened in the Middle East conflict if Israel had not been on the brink of defeat, former Iranian Ambassador to Germany Seyed Hossein Mousavian told RIA Novosti. “Israel not only failed in its ten-day military operation against Iran but was on the verge of defeat. Had Israel not been in a crisis, the U.S. would not have intervened,” Mousavian said. He pointed out that while Iran has suffered irreparable damage, the negative consequences of the US attack against it will also harm the United States and jeopardize regional peace and security. “US President Donald Trump’s national security team either failed to properly assess the consequences of a U.S. military attack on Iran, or they were unable to dissuade the President—or perhaps the majority of them actually supported the decision. In any case, this event has further revealed the extent of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s influence over the White House,” he added.

The United States struck three Iranian nuclear sites in Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan on Sunday night. US President Donald Trump said that the strike aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear capabilities. He said Tehran must agree to “end this war” or face far more serious consequences. Iran denies the military component of its nuclear project. As IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said on June 18, the agency’s inspectors have not seen concrete evidence that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The US intelligence community, contrary to statements by President Donald Trump and Israel, believed that Iran was not seeking to create nuclear weapons, as reported by CNN. Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray told RIA Novosti that Iran had shown incredible patience and peacefulness over the past few years, despite Israel’s actions.

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“..drastically increased the likelihood of a larger conflict in the Middle East.”

Top Iranian Diplomat Expects ‘Critical’ Talks With Putin (RT)

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expecting to hold a “crucial” meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his pre-arranged visit to Moscow, which coincided with US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend. Israel launched an attack on Iran last week, claiming Tehran was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon. Iranian officials rejected the accusation and responded with retaliatory strikes. On Sunday, the United States followed with what it described as “massive precision strikes” on nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. The attacks were widely condemned as violations of international law. International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said the strikes caused “a sharp degradation in nuclear safety and security.”

Speaking to reporters after arriving in Moscow early Monday, Araghchi said the situation demanded urgent coordination. “Given the current exceptional circumstances in the region, it is essential that Iran and Russia engage in closer, more precise, and more serious consultations,” he stated. Naturally, our talks this time will be more serious and cover broader dimensions. We will have important and serious discussions with President Putin, and I am confident that the outcomes will benefit both countries. The Kremlin has yet to confirm a meeting between Putin and Araghchi. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Iran has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In media appearances during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) last week, he emphasized that resolving the conflict should include mutual security guarantees – protecting both Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear development and Israel’s right to security.

Araghchi described Russia as a strategic ally and said the two countries have maintained regular dialogue on regional issues. He also noted that during recent nuclear negotiations with the US, Tehran “continuously consulted with our Russian friends, sharing every step of the progress with them.” Russia has strongly condemned the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, calling them a flagrant breach of international law. In a statement on Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the attacks as “a reckless decision” and “a blatant violation of the UN Charter and relevant Security Council resolutions.” It warned that the strikes – carried out by a permanent member of the Security Council – could have caused a nuclear disaster and had “drastically increased the likelihood of a larger conflict in the Middle East.”

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“..runs counter to international law, the UN Charter, the UN Security Council Resolution..”

US Strikes on Iran Reckless Breach of Sovereignty – Russian FM (Sp.)

The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites as a reckless move that violates the Islamic Republic’s sovereignty, international law and the UN Charter. “The reckless decision to bomb the territory of a sovereign state, whatever the arguments, runs counter to international law, the UN Charter, the UN Security Council Resolution,” the ministry said. It is of particular concern that the attack was carried out by a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the ministry said, adding that the UN’s core body had to interfere.

“The UN Security Council should naturally take action. Confrontational behavior of the US and Israel has to be rejected collectively,” the statement read. “We call for an end of aggression and urge efforts that will create conditions for a return to a political and diplomatic path,” the statement said. The ministry also called on Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report impartially on the Iran attacks at the UN atomic agency’s board of governors’ meeting on Monday.

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“Many today feel a strong sense of déjà vu,” he said. “The current situation is essentially no different: we are once again being urged to believe in fairy tales in order to once again bring suffering to millions of people living in the Middle East.”

Moscow Blasts US Redo Of ‘Iraqi Weapons Of Mass Destruction’ Stunt (RT)

Russia has sharply condemned the United States for its airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, calling the attacks “irresponsible, provocative and dangerous,” and warning they risk pushing the Middle East toward a large-scale war with potentially catastrophic nuclear consequences. Speaking at an emergency session of the UN Security Council on Sunday, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Washington of violating the UN Charter, international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). “The United States has opened a Pandora’s box, and no one knows what consequences may follow,” Nebenzia said, noting that by targeting IAEA-supervised nuclear sites, Washington has “once again demonstrated total disregard for the position of the international community.”

Nebenzia drew a pointed comparison to the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, when then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented false evidence to “justify the invasion of another sovereign state, only to plunge its people into chaos for decades and not find any weapons of mass destruction.” “Many today feel a strong sense of déjà vu,” he said. “The current situation is essentially no different: we are once again being urged to believe in fairy tales in order to once again bring suffering to millions of people living in the Middle East.” Russia argued that Tehran has not been proven to be pursuing a nuclear weapon, echoing earlier assessments by US intelligence that were dismissed by President Donald Trump as “wrong.” Nebenzia accused Washington of fabricating a narrative to justify the use of force and of undermining the decades-long diplomatic framework built around Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

The Russian envoy also criticized what he described as the hypocrisy of Western nations that had for days called for “restraint” in the same Security Council chamber, yet failed to condemn Washington for joining Israeli strikes – and even blamed Iran for the escalation. “We are witnessing an astonishing example of double standards,” he said. “Iran has been and remains one of the most thoroughly inspected states under the NPT, but instead of encouraging such an attitude, it receives bombardments of its territory and civilians by a state that refuses, in principle, to sign the NPT.” Nebenzia warned that the US strikes undermine the authority of the IAEA and the global non-proliferation regime, and that continued escalation could return the world to an era of uncontrolled nuclear risk.

“This is an outrageous and cynical situation, and it is very strange that the Director General of the IAEA did not say a word about it. Neither has he ever called on Israel to join the NPT,” Nebenzia added. Calling for urgent action, Russia – joined by China and Pakistan – submitted a draft Security Council resolution demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and a return to diplomatic talks on Iran’s nuclear program.

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“The Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

America Again Crawls on Its Belly for Israel (Paul Craig Roberts)

The recklessness increases. President Trump committed an act of war for Israel. This comes on top of some fool green-lighting an attack on the Russian strategic triad, an attack that was played down even by Putin himself. What will Washington’s next reckless act be? Why did Putin green-light the attack on Iran by conveniently announcing that Russia’s treaty with Iran did not include military support, a claim that John Helmer says is disproved by secret provisions in the treaty? Russia and China could have prevented the attack, but did nothing. Peace in the Middle East could have been established with a Russian-Iranian-Chinese mutual security treaty. Why do Russia and China prefer war to peace in the Middle East? Where was Iran’s air defense? Why is Iran always a sitting duck devoid of initiative? Why are Muslims happy fighting one another instead of their real enemies?

Israel and Israel’s Western puppets have turned war into an ongoing activity that does not need declaration. For Israel’s reasons, not for America’s, President trump has militarily attacked a regional military power without Congress’ declaration of war as required by the US Constitution. Clearly, war has prevailed over the Constitution. This began with Bill Clinton’s presidency, and expanded with subsequent presidents. Israel has obtained the power where Israel can send America to war and we hapless Americans can do nothing about it.

Israel has undeclared nuclear weapons but can have Trump attack Iran’s peaceful use of atomic power. Israel can exterminate Palestinians and obliterate Gaza, without effective protest from any country. But Iran is evil and against America if Iran stands up for itself. Thanks to the US media and Israel’s bought-and-paid-for US Congress, many years of Israeli propaganda against Iran has been driven into the heads of the American public, which will simply accept another of their country’s acts of aggression against “Muslim terrorists” and “weapons of mass destruction.”

Perhaps the saddest part of this is it demonstrates once again that elections cannot change anything. America cannot be made great again without a new political party led by people independent of Israel and the corrupt American Establishment. These people would have to avoid being assassinated or arrested and prosecuted by the American Establishment. This would require militant supporters willing and able to use violence. Who is there to lead such a movement? The American Establishment will not permit any such force to appear. The American Establishment would not even permit Americans to protest a stolen presidential election.

Conspiracy theorists will see in Russia and China’s inaction their involvement in a globalist plot against any form of independence. How do we know they are not right? What else explains the world sitting on its butt while Israel commits genocide of Palestine, and Washington, without a declaration of war, overthrows 5 countries, and is now working on a sixth, for Israel. The seventh on the list is Saudi Arabia, and Netanyahu recently added Pakistan as the eighth. Turkey will be the ninth. The extraordinary aggression that Washington and Israel have unleashed on the world seems never ending. Putin and Xi seem to think that Russia and China can sit them out, but Russia and China are the two main targets. While Russia and China sit on their butts, they are being isolated from allies such as Iran and from one another.

Trump had just given Iran two weeks to come to terms with his demands, and then launched a surprise attack in advance of the two weeks. After such treachery, how can Putin possibly return to “peace negotiations?” As Putin is so averse to acknowledging reality that he dismisses Washington’s attack on Russia’s nuclear triad as “an act of terrorism, not of war,” what will Washington’s next attack on Russia be? What is Xi going to do when he finds he cannot wait out his adversary?

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword, and with hunger” — Revelation 6:8

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“..the calls for impeachment are absurd given the prior actions of presidents in using this very authority. Once again, some Democrats appear intent on applying a different set of rules for impeaching Trump than any of his predecessors.”

Democrats Denounce Iranian Attack as Unconstitutional (Turley)

Yesterday, I wrote a column in the Hill discussing how Trump is unlikely to go to Congress in launching an attack on Iran and how he has history on his side in acting unilaterally. The column noted that many Democratic politicians and pundits who were supportive of such unilateral actions by Democratic presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are suddenly opposed to Trump using the same power. It is the Claude Rains School of Constitutional Law where politicians are “shocked, shocked” that Trump is using the authority that they accepted in Democratic predecessors. Democratic members are calling for impeachment, while others are declaring the attacks unconstitutional. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is particularly shocked that Trump took the action and is calling for a vote under the War Powers Act.

Schumer insisted that “no president should be allowed to unilaterally march this nation into something as consequential as war with erratic threats and no strategy.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has issued a similar statement. Schumer is the same politician who was silent or supportive in earlier unilateral attacks by Democratic presidents. In 2011, Obama approved a massive military campaign against Libya. I represented a bipartisan group of members of Congress challenging that action. We were unsuccessful, as were such prior challenges. I have long criticized the abandonment of the clear language of the Constitution on the declaration of wars. Only eleven such declarations have been made in our history. That has not happened since World War II in 1942. Over 125 military campaigns have spanned from Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is not a rule honored solely in the breach.

Democrats were supportive when Clinton launched cruise missile attacks under Operation Infinite Reach on two continents on August 20, 1998. He ordered attacks in locations in Khartoum, Sudan, and Khost Province, Afghanistan. The War Powers Act has always been controversial and largely ineffectual. Presidents have long asserted the inherent powers to conduct such attacks under their Article II authority as the designated Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The WPA requires the President to inform Congress within 48 hours in a written notice to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate of the action.

The WPA further bars the use of armed forces in such a conflict for more than 60 days without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. There is a further 30-day withdrawal period. President Trump reportedly did immediately notify Congress after the attack under the WPA . Presidents have routinely ignored the WPA when it limited their ability to conduct foreign military operations. In 1999, Clinton ignored the 60-day deadline and continued to bomb forces in Kosovo. His actions were also challenged, but the court in Campbell v. Clinton just shrugged off the violation and said it was a non-justiciable political question.

In responding to the current demands, Trump could look to a curious ally: Hillary Clinton. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed for unilateral attacks during the Obama Administration. She dismissed the need to consult, let alone secure authorization, from Congress. In March 2011, Clinton testified that there was no need for such consultation and declared that the Administration would ignore a 60-day limit on unauthorized military actions. Obama also defied the War Powers resolution on Syria. He actually did ask for congressional authorization to take military action in that country in 2013, but Congress refused to approve it. He did it anyway. Despite Congress expressly denying”authorization for the introduction of United States Armed Forces,” both Obama and Trump did precisely that.

Trump was wise to notify Congress. However, what occurs after that is anyone’s guess. The WPA and the AUMF have been paper tigers for decades and most in Congress wanted it that way. Politicians long ago abandoned their responsibilities to declare war. What remains has been little more than political theater. Even under the WPA, Trump would have 60 days to prosecute this war and another 30 days to draw down forces without congressional approval. The court, in Campbell v. Clinton, noted that even if Clinton violated the WPA by continuing operations after the 60-day period, he was technically in compliance by withdrawing forces before the end of the 90-day period. Trump could likely prosecute this campaign in 90 days. Indeed, if it goes beyond 90 days, we will likely be facing a potential global war with retaliatory strikes on both sides. In such an environment, it is very unlikely that Congress would withhold support for our ongoing operations.

In the meantime, the calls for impeachment are absurd given the prior actions of presidents in using this very authority. Once again, some Democrats appear intent on applying a different set of rules for impeaching Trump than any of his predecessors. Trump can cite both history and case law in allowing presidents to take such actions. At most, the line over war powers is murky. The Framers wanted impeachments to be based on bright-line rules in establishing high crimes and misdemeanors. This is all part of the Claude Rains School of Constitutional Law. Members will once again express their shock and disgust in the use of the same authority that they once accepted in prior presidents. Trump has a great number of a risks in this action from global military and economic consequences. The War Powers Act is not one of them if history is any measure.

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They all own it.

Vance, Rubio Call For Peace With Iran, Say Regime Change Is Not The Goal (ZH)

Update (11:37ET): Following President Trump’s new foreign entanglement – bombing Iranian nuclear facilities (which may or may not have taken them out while causing a deep divide amongst MAGA), Vice President JD Vance says he believes their nuclear program has been set back “many years,” and that he feels “very confident that we’ve substantially delayed [Iran’s] development of a nuclear weapon,” adding that it was US intelligence, not Israeli intelligence assessments, that led to Trump’s decision. When asked if the United States is at war with Iran, he claimed “No, Kristen, we’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” and called on Iranians to “give peace a chance”. “They can go down the path of peace, or they can go down the path of this ridiculous brinksmanship of funding terrorism, of trying to build a nuclear weapon – and that’s just not something the United States can accept.”

When asked if the US would support an Israeli assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Vance said that it would be “up to the Israelis,” and that the US position is “we don’t want a regime change.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile insisted to Fox News that “This is not a war against Iran,” adding “Not a shot was fired against us. They didn’t even know what had happened. By the time we left, the planes were out of their airspace before they finally started realizing they’d been hit. So it would be a terrible mistake if Iran retaliates. So but that’s not our goal.” He also warned against Iranian retaliation, saying: “If Iran retaliates, it will be the WORST mistake they’ve ever made.” Rubio then warned Iran not to close the strait of Hormuz after Iran’s parliament backed its closure, saying “If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, it will be another terrible mistake. It’s economic suicide for them if they do it and we retain options to deal with that.”

Everyone got the script? Iran, meanwhile in a statement through spox Esmail Baghaei, accused the Trump administration of sabotaging diplomatic efforts – saying “They cannot talk about diplomacy, they betrayed diplomacy,” adding that “diplomacy never ends.” Regarding the escalating conflict, Baghaei warned “No one knows what will happen next, but what is sure is that the responsibility of the consequences of this war must be borne by the United States and Israel.” The Iranian foreign ministry declined to elaborate on Tehran’s likely response to the attacks, or to detail the extent of the damage – only saying in a statement to CNN that Iran “is entitled … to exercise its right of self-defense,” adding “And we will do that for sure.”

* * *
In a Sunday morning press briefing, Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared that “Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated” – but also asserted that the attack did not target the Iranian people or civilians. He hailed the “incredible and overwhelming success” – following President Trump last night saying the same thing. “It’s worth noting the operation did not target Iranian troops or the Iranian people.” Hegseth said this is part of the commitment of this administration’s vision of “peace through strength”. He continued, “Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the final blow to Iran’s nuclear program, and none could, until President Trump.”

For the “bold and brilliant” operation, there was weeks of preparation and precision logistics and “misdirection” at the highest level, involving B-2 bombers going to hit, Hegseth described. “No other country on planet earth” could have conducted this operation. He also underscored that the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) was used for the first time in US combat history – also that it was the longest bomber mission of its kind since 2001. “Just like [IRGC Quds Force General Qasem] Solemani found out in the first term, Iran found out when POTUS says ’60 days’ – that when he seeks peace and negotiation – he means 60 days of peace and negotiation, otherwise that nuclear program will not exist. He meant it.” Hegseth then read aloud Trump’s post to Truth Social last night, soon after the three nuclear sites were struck:

“Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight.” That’s when the US Defense Secretary then warned, “Iran would be smart to heed those words. He said it before and he means it.” He tried to stress the ‘limited’ scope of the attack and urged the Iranians to come back to the negotiating table: There are both public and private messages being delivered to the Iranians in multiple channels, giving them every opportunity to come to the negotiation table, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says at a Pentagon press briefing. Scope of operation on Iran was “intentionally limited” Hegseth says he believes the US attack will have a clear psychological impact on how Iran views the future US strikes against Iran’s nuclear enrichment site at Fordow are believed to have destroyed capabilities there…

To review the details of what happened last night, the US deployed six B-2 bombers to drop 12 GBU-57 “bunker-buster” bombs on Iran’s heavily fortified Fordow nuclear site, marking the first time these massive 30,000-pound bombs were used in combat. The enrichment sites at Natanz and Isfahan were also attacked. The mission lasted about 37 hours with multiple refueling missions. While the White House is now claiming Iran’s nuclear facilities were “completely and totally obliterated,” officials say it’s too early to confirm the full extent of the damage. Iran, along with international nuclear agencies, reported no radiation leaks, prompting skepticism about the strike’s effectiveness—particularly at Fordow, which is buried deep underground. Iranian officials said damage was minimal and mostly above ground. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization vowed to continue its nuclear program, referring to assassinated nuclear scientists as “martyrs.”

Some degree of political backlash has quickly emerged over the lack of Congressional approval for the strikes. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, despite previously mocking Trump’s diplomatic efforts with Iran, called for a War Powers vote, criticizing the president’s unilateral military action without a clear strategy.

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“So after Israel unilaterally launched its hundred-target missile tantrum across Tehran – complete with residential hits and assassinations – maybe some strong words against that kind of thing are in order?”

The EU’s Favorite War: The One Israel Starts (Marsden)

Israel flew over to Iran with fighter jets and has since gone totally ballistic — literally and figuratively. So what does the European Union’s insane clown posse have to say about it? Get yourself some popcorn. The Eurojokers are doing their best stand-up comedy again without even realizing it. First up: French President Emmanuel Macron, who took to social media to declare that “peace and security for all in the region must remain our guiding principle.” Aww, how sweet. Calling for peace while holding your buddy’s coat as he storms into the bar to punch someone on the face. So after Israel unilaterally launched its hundred-target missile tantrum across Tehran – complete with residential hits and assassinations – maybe some strong words against that kind of thing are in order?

“France has repeatedly condemned Iran’s ongoing nuclear program and has taken all appropriate diplomatic measures in response. In this context, France reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself and ensure its security,” Macron posted as the conflict kicked off. Classic French parenting: ignore the kid setting the house on fire and scold the one who looked at him funny. Next up, Germany. Surely the new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, can inject some sober logic into the conversation about who just broke the fragile regional peace everyone’s pretending to care about. “Iran has subsequently threatened to accelerate uranium enrichment again. This nuclear programme violates the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and poses a serious threat to the entire region, especially to the State of Israel. We reaffirm that Israel has the right to defend its existence and the security of its citizens. We call on both sides to refrain from steps that could lead to further escalation and destabilise the entire region,” wrote Merz.

Oh, so now that Israel has attacked Iran, it’s time for restraint? Not before. Not during. After. Like a guy who throws the first punch in a bar fight and then shouts, “Hey! Let’s all calm down!” Both Macron and Merz say that Iran brought this on itself by enriching uranium. That’s like this: you’ve got a neighbor who lifts weights in his home gym. You see him through the window with a squat rack, bench press, treadmill – getting jacked. And you’re like, “Wow, he’s getting so ripped I’m afraid he might beat me up someday. So I better go over there now and beat him up while I still can.” That’s basically what Israel did with its “preemptive” strike. And Macron and Merz are cheering it on like, “Totally! That guy was getting too buff. Definitely deserved a missile to the face.”

Then Merz added from the G7 summit in Canada: “This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this regime.” Oh, sorry – didn’t realize the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had hired Israel as a global bouncer. And remind us, Friedrich: where exactly did Iran touch Germany on the map? Because Europe is far more likely to be “victimized” by waves of immigration facilitated by its own lax policies, and sparked by its own support for regime change wars – like this one is shaping up to be – than by any distant centrifuge. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s de facto queen, is now cosplaying as global playground monitor, sending all the boys to their corners. “Europe urges all parties to exercise maximum restraint, de-escalate immediately and refrain from retaliation. A diplomatic resolution is now more urgent than ever, for the sake of the region’s stability and global security,” she wrote.

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“This is more than hypocrisy; it’s a catastrophic failure of US policy. Trump’s administration has made a colossal mistake.”

What Russian Experts And Politicians Are Saying About The US Strikes (RT)

Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs: The trap awaiting Trump is simple – but highly effective. If Iran responds by targeting American assets, the US will be pulled deeper into a military confrontation almost by default. If on the other hand, Tehran holds back or offers only a token response, Israel’s leadership – backed by its neoconservative allies in Washington – will seize the moment to pressure the White House: now is the time to finish off a weakened regime and force a convenient replacement. Until that happens, they’ll argue the job isn’t done. Whether Trump is willing – or even able – to resist that pressure remains uncertain.

Most likely, Iran will avoid hitting US targets directly in an effort to prevent a point-of-no-return escalation with American forces. Instead, it will likely intensify its strikes on Israel. Netanyahu, in turn, will double down on his efforts to convince Washington that regime change in Tehran is the only viable path forward – something Trump, at least for now, remains instinctively opposed to. Still, the momentum of military entanglement has a logic of its own, and it’s rarely easy to resist.

Tigran Meloyan, analyst at the Center for Strategic Research, Higher School of Economics: If Iran does nothing, it risks appearing weak – both at home and abroad. That makes a carefully calibrated response almost inevitable: one designed not to escalate the conflict, but to preserve domestic legitimacy and project resolve. Tehran is unlikely to go much further than that. Meanwhile, by continuing to build up its military presence, Washington sends a clear deterrent message – signaling both readiness and resolve in case Tehran miscalculates.

Another option for Iran could be a dramatic symbolic move: withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Such a step would be Tehran’s way of declaring that Trump, by striking nuclear infrastructure, has effectively dismantled the global nonproliferation regime. The NPT was supposed to guarantee Iran’s security; instead, it has delivered the opposite. Still, if Iran goes down that path, it risks damaging ties with Moscow and Beijing – neither of which wants to see a challenge to the existing nuclear order.

The bigger question now is whether Iran will even consider returning to talks with Washington after this attack. Why negotiate when American promises no longer mean anything? Tehran urgently needs a mediator who can restrain Trump from further escalation – and right now, the only credible candidate is Moscow. Iran’s foreign minister, [Abbas] Araghchi, is set to meet with President Putin on June 23. It’s hard to imagine that a potential NPT withdrawal won’t be on the table. If in the past an Iranian bomb was considered an existential threat to Israel, the calculus has now reversed: for Iran, nuclear capability is quickly becoming a question of survival.

Konstantin Kosachev, vice speaker of the Federation Council: Let’s state the obvious: Iraq, Libya – and now Iran – were bombed because they couldn’t hit back. They either didn’t have weapons of mass destruction or hadn’t yet developed them. In some cases, they never even intended to. Meanwhile, the West doesn’t touch the four countries that remain outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. Why? Because unlike Iraq, Libya, and Iran, these states actually possess nuclear weapons. The message to so-called ‘threshold’ nations couldn’t be clearer: if you don’t want to be bombed by the West, arm yourself. Build deterrence. Go all the way – even to the point of developing weapons of mass destruction.

That’s the grim conclusion many countries will draw. It’s a dangerous lesson, and one that flies in the face of global security and the very idea of a rules-based international order. Yet it’s the West that keeps driving this logic. Iraq was invaded over a vial of powder. Libya gave up its nuclear program and was torn apart. Iran joined the NPT, worked with the IAEA, and didn’t attack Israel – unlike Israel, which just struck Iran while staying outside the NPT and refusing to cooperate with nuclear watchdogs. This is more than hypocrisy; it’s a catastrophic failure of US policy. Trump’s administration has made a colossal mistake. The pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize has taken on grotesque and dangerous proportions.

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Iran will not target LA. Why on earth should they?

Major US Cities on Alert After US Airstrikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities (ET)

Three major U.S. cities indicated that they’re on heightened alert following U.S. military airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities on June 21. In an announcement on the night of June 21, President Donald Trump confirmed that the U.S. military carried out bombing missions targeting three facilities, prompting threats from Iranian officials. “We’re tracking the situation unfolding in Iran,” the New York City Police Department stated in a post on X on the evening of June 21. “Out of an abundance of caution, we’re deploying additional resources to religious, cultural, and diplomatic sites across NYC [New York City] and coordinating with our federal partners. We’ll continue to monitor for any potential impact to NYC.”

Soon after that, the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington issued a similar statement about the Iran–U.S. situation and stated that it would increase police presence at religious institutions. The law enforcement agency noted that there are no known threats to the nation’s capital city. Also on June 22, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wrote on X that her city is “monitoring any threats to public safety” that may arise. “There are no known credible threats at this time and out of an abundance of caution, LAPD is stepping up patrols near places of worship, community gathering spaces and other sensitive sites,” Bass wrote in a June 21 statement, referring to the Los Angeles Police Department. “We will remain vigilant in protecting our communities.”

Outside the United States, the State Department has ordered nonessential personnel and the families of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon to leave as concerns mount about Iranian retaliation. In a notice issued on June 22, the department stated that it had taken the step “due to the volatile and unpredictable security situation in the region.” The notice makes no mention of any potential evacuation flights or other assistance for private Americans wanting to leave Lebanon but states that they should try to use existing commercial services to depart. The United States has already organized several evacuations of American citizens from Israel and is advising American citizens in Iran on how to leave the country. After the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, Iran launched multiple barrages of missiles at U.S. bases in the Middle East, doing minor damage and causing minor injuries to American troops.

Hours after the June 21 bombing, Trump administration officials signaled a willingness to renew talks with Iran and avoid a prolonged war in the Middle East. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters late on June 21 that the United States isn’t seeking regime change in Iran, while Vice President JD Vance said during a June 22 interview that the Trump administration doesn’t want “boots on the ground” in Iran. Before the U.S. bombing mission, Iran and Israel had engaged in a weeklong aerial conflict, with both sides firing missiles at one another, after Israel struck a host of military and strategic sites in Iran a day after a 60-day negotiating period set in April by Trump expired. Israel has stated that it is seeking to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, which both U.S. and Israeli officials say was intended to produce nuclear weapons.

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”The equipment in question… was not destroyed, but damaged. It will be restored,”

Zelensky Makes New Threats Against Russia (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has suggested that Kiev’s forces will conduct more long-range strikes targeting facilities deep inside Russian territory. Ukraine has significantly escalated drone attacks deep into Russia in recent weeks, despite ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the actions as an attempt to derail the peace process. In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Zelensky wrote that he had held a meeting with the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, claiming that Kiev was keeping tabs on Russia’s “main pain points.” He pledged to “strike appropriate blows” with a view to “significantly reducing” Moscow’s military potential.

Zelensky also stated that Kiev was sharing its intelligence on Russia with its Western backers, with which it is “preparing joint defense solutions.” Speaking to reporters also on Sunday, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Aleksandr Syrsky, similarly said that Kiev “will increase the scale and depth” of its strikes on Russian military facilities deep inside the country. On June 1, Ukrainian intelligence conducted a coordinated attack on several Russian airbases across five regions, from Murmansk in the Arctic, to Irkutsk in Siberia. Ukrainian media later reported that the operation codenamed ‘Spiderweb’ involved dozens of first-person view (PFV) kamikaze drones. At least some of them were reportedly launched in close proximity to the targets, from commercial trucks that had been covertly brought into Russia.

The strikes were said to have been prepared for more than a year and a half and focused on Russia’s “strategic aviation.” The Defense Ministry in Moscow said that a number of aircraft in Murmansk and Irkutsk regions had caught fire as a result of the attack. Kiev claimed that the strikes had damaged or destroyed approximately 40 Russian military aircraft, including Tu-95 and Tu-22 long-range bombers. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov later dismissed these estimates as incorrect. ”The equipment in question… was not destroyed, but damaged. It will be restored,” the diplomat told TASS in early June. Around the same time, Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, cautioned that “when you attack an opponent’s part of their national survival system, which is their nuclear triad… that means your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side’s going to do.”

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The garden becomes the jungle.

The European Garden On The Brink Of Ruin (SCF)

The war in Ukraine is entering a critical stage—not only for Kiev, but also for a Europe that, deluded by meaningless slogans and unrealistic promises, finds itself standing at a geopolitical precipice. Ignoring the clear signs of Ukraine’s military and societal exhaustion, European leaders persist in a suicidal escalation of militarization that, far from preventing Ukraine’s collapse, is dragging the continent into an economic, political, and strategic spiral of decline. The impasse worsened once the U.S. began to show signs of fatigue and a desire to end the conflict. Washington now pushes for a negotiated solution, while Brussels insists on keeping Zelensky afloat, offering not real solutions but false hope in the form of temporary ceasefires and new arms shipments. The goal is obvious: to buy time in hopes of rekindling Washington’s old appetite for war. It’s a dangerous—and fundamentally unrealistic—calculation.

The truth is that Ukraine has no strategic breath left. Since the failed counteroffensive of 2023, the country has plunged into a deep crisis of morale, cohesion, and combat capacity. The situation now resembles that of the Spanish Second Republic after its defeat at the Ebro in 1938: the end is in sight, and the continuation of war serves only to prolong suffering. Zelensky himself, now a deeply unpopular leader, would be politically defeated in any free election—consistently trailing behind military figures like Valeriy Zaluzhniy in every poll. An abrupt internal collapse, whether due to political rifts, military mutinies, or civil unrest, is a very plausible outcome. Such a scenario would not only seal Ukraine’s defeat but also trigger a catastrophic shift in the European balance of power.

Moscow could advance to Odessa, annex vast areas of Ukrainian territory, and reach the European Union’s borders. The consequences would be devastating: NATO demoralized, Brussels’ strategic credibility shattered, and the region permanently destabilized. Even so, the European continent seems unable to acknowledge its military impotence. Leaders like Macron, Starmer, and Kallas continue proposing unworkable peace plans based on illusions of European power—ignoring the fact that France and the UK can barely maintain even minimal operational forces. While Russia mobilizes thousands of tanks, Britain has only a few dozens. Germany, mired in political crisis, can’t even produce enough ammunition at scale. European rhetoric speaks of rearmament, but national budgets tell another story: ballooning deficits, public debt over 100% of GDP, and increasingly hostile populations unwilling to accept social cuts in the name of a war with no future.

The militarization of Europe, sold as a solution, is in fact a symptom of collapse. Lacking an industrial base, political capital, or social support, any attempt to rebuild a significant military force will result either in prolonged recession or the dismantling of the welfare state—two paths that will lead the so-called “European garden” to ruin. In this context, the war in Ukraine is not only the grave of the Atlanticist project, but the tombstone of a Europe that traded its stability for fantasies of power.

Ukraine’s collapse, therefore, will not be an isolated event. It will mirror Europe’s strategic collapse. The refusal to face reality – that a negotiated solution with concessions to Russia is better than total destruction—not only threatens the existence of the Ukrainian state but also drags Europe into an existential crisis. The continent that once saw itself as guardian of the liberal international order is transforming, before our very eyes, into a graveyard of its own illusions.

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“In the West, they say, let’s pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine from the reserves. And they will draw up such a bill that even the reserves will not be enough,”

Western Use of Interest From Russia’s Frozen Assets Is Theft – Top Banker (RT)

The use of the interest generated by Russian assets frozen in the West amounts to theft, Andrey Kostin, the CEO of major Russian lender VTB, told RT on Saturday on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Kostin condemned the actions of the West, the EU in particular, in regard to Russian assets as “dangerous” games that could eventually be used by others against them. Western countries froze an estimated $300 billion worth of Russian sovereign funds following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Some $213 billion of the assets are held by the Belgium-based settlement house Euroclear. “It is a very dangerous thing to play such games. You start against one – tomorrow someone will use it against you,” Kostin warned.

The use of proceeds from the assets, which have been repeatedly funneled for procurement of military aid for Ukraine, is grossly illegal and amounts to theft, Kostin noted. While various parties in the West have repeatedly mulled the possibility of seizing the assets themselves, they have failed to find a legal mechanism to do so because there is none, he added. “This is theft. They are using interest now, but interest is the same money of the owner as the principal debt,” he stressed. Moscow has repeatedly condemned the freezing of its assets and has hinted at possible retaliatory measures against Western investments and property in Russia.

Last October, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned that Moscow would retaliate in kind and start using the interest generated by the assets of “unfriendly” countries and organizations held in Russia for its own needs. Kostin has long been skeptical about the prospects of Russia ever seeing its frozen assets again. Late last year, he suggested that the funds will never be returned under the pretext of Ukraine’s purported “reconstruction.” “In the West, they say, let’s pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine from the reserves. And they will draw up such a bill that even the reserves will not be enough,” Kostin said at the time.

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urso

1925
https://twitter.com/calvinfroedge/status/1936521743696535656

solar
https://twitter.com/onionweigher/status/1936630237208469898

goats

bob

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 302025
 


Piet Mondriaan Self portrait 1918

 

Trump Says Ukraine ‘Will Be Crushed Very Shortly’ Without Peace Deal (ZH)
‘Real de-Nazification’ Would Include All Europe – Medvedev (RT)
Western Europe Waging ‘Quiet War’ Against Trump – Medvedev (RT)
West ‘Delirious With Nuclear Apocalypse Scenarios’ – Patrushev (RT)
Russia Focused on Bringing Peace to Ukraine – Kremlin (Sp.)
Zelensky: Putin’s Victory Day Truce Proposal An ‘Attempt At Manipulation’ (ZH)
Lavrov Outlines Why Kiev Is Pushing For Indefinite Ceasefire (RT)
Ukraine One Of The World’s Most Corrupt Countries – Trump Adviser Waltz (RT)
Ukraine Could Lose Land To Get More Western Weapons – Finnish President (RT)
Lutnick Rolls Out Auto Tariff Relief As US Pushes To Reshore Supply Chains (ZH)
Thanks, Amazon — Tariff Transparency Might Backfire Bigly (Green)
What the MSM Doesn’t Want You to Know About Trump’s Approval Ratings (Margolis)
Trump’s First 100 Days Have Exposed the Left (Bossie)
TDS on Steroids: Canada Elects a Prime Minister to Spite Trump (Spencer)
Covering Up Ukrainian Nazis Is Nothing New For Canada (Proud)
America’s Golden Dome May Be Powerless vs Russia’s Doomsday Missile (Kornev)
Oliver Stone Warns Russia and US Were Close To World War III (RT)
EU Engaging In ‘Perversion Of History’ – Oliver Stone (RT)
Trump Allies: Mossad Agents And Warmongers Try To Derail Iran Talks (MEE)
Elon Musk’s Lawyer Thinks He Is Allowed to Continue Running DOGE (DS)

 

 

 

 

Rand

CAF

Vote Red

 

 

Pelosi act

Zakharova
https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1916962219386179619

 

 

Russia has officially declared its conditions for ending the war, according to MFA Lavrov in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper:

1. Demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine;
2. Ukraine must not join NATO;
3. International recognition of the annexation of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia;
4. Lifting of sanctions against Russia and the return of frozen assets;
5. Rejection by Russia of the U.S. proposal to transfer control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to Washington and Ukraine;
6. Cancellation of language laws in Ukraine, especially those that “restrict” the use of the “Russian language, culture, and church”.

 

 

 

 

“I think I’m saving that nation. I think I’m doing a great service to Ukraine. I believe that..”

Trump Says Ukraine ‘Will Be Crushed Very Shortly’ Without Peace Deal (ZH)

US President Donald Trump in a recent interview with conservative show host Glenn Beck expressed doubt whether the White House can actually achieve a comprehensive peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Trump has made Ukraine peace the top foreign policy priority of the early part of his administration, and on the campaign trail and within his first hundred days expressed continual confidence that the US can successfully mediate, but this confidence appears to be fading with each passing week. In the interview he noted his belief – not for the first time – that Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to making a deal on Ukraine, and is actually easier to deal with than Zelensky. “When Zelenskyy was in the Oval Office. I was talking about getting it done, and he starts screaming, ‘but we need security’, meaning security, after the fact, I said, ‘security’? I don’t even know if we can get this deal done,” Trump told Beck.

That’s when he expressed rare doubt, saying he’s not sure “if we can get this deal done.” Referencing Zelensky, Trump continued: “He’s asking for more, just more and more and more. And he doesn’t have the cards. He doesn’t have the cards, so hopefully he’s going to get it done,” Trump said. And in reference to Putin, Trump explained, “I think he had the idea of going all the way through” if Trump were not in the Oval Office. “I think he’s [Putin] willing to make a deal. And I would say thus far, he’s been easier to deal with than Zelensky,” Trump added. Another interesting section of the interview came as follows: Glenn Beck: Yeah, is he the problem? Is Putin the problem? Or is Europe the problem? DT: So, look: Russia is a very big military force, and Ukraine isn’t. Without Ukraine — and I’m the one that supplied the Javelins [anti-tank missiles] to them, so, you know, I did a lot for them, because the tanks got stuck in the mud, and then they got Javelined, right? And they always say, “Trump gave the Javelins,” and it was, in that case, “Obama gave sheets.” He gave sheets! They said nothing.

But Biden gave money like nobody’s ever seen — $350 billion! He gave military equipment, gave storage. We had massive storage bins full of ammunition — buildings as long as the eye could see. And in a separate ‘100-day’ interview published in The Atlantic on Monday, Trump said that without a peace deal Ukraine will soon be crushed: “U.S. President Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine will be “crushed very shortly,” as it is up against Russia’s “big war machine” that it cannot defeat. “I think I’m saving that nation. I think I’m doing a great service to Ukraine. I believe that,” he said in an interview with The Atlantic published April 28. Trump admin officials have called this week “very critical” for determining whether lasting peace in Ukraine can be forged: Rubio said that the coming week will be “very critical” for the White House as it makes a “determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in.”

“There are reasons to be optimistic, but there are reasons to be realistic,” Rubio said, adding: “We’re close, but we’re not close enough.” “Throughout this process, it’s about determining, do both sides really want peace and how close are they or how far apart they are after 90 days of effort here … that’s what we’re trying to determine this week,” Rubio said of negotiations. Will the US stop arming Ukraine if no peace deal is reached? Will more sanctions simply be piled onto Moscow? Or perhaps Washington will simply step aside and let Europe lead the way in fueling the proxy war. Already NATO is said to be making plans to fill the sizeable gap of US leadership in the Western military alliance, anticipating the a US drawdown of support.

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” Ukrainian statehood may survive the current clash, Medvedev said, noting that he personally is skeptical based on what he views as its lack of utility to Western nations.”

‘Real de-Nazification’ Would Include All Europe – Medvedev (RT)

The rebirth of Nazism cannot be allowed in any nation, and Europe may need an international de-Nazification effort, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said. The senior official, currently serving as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, addressed the threat of Nazi ideology during a public lecture in Moscow on Tuesday, in which he outlined Moscow’s foreign policy priorities. He characterized the destruction of the “Kiev neo-Nazi regime” as a necessary outcome of the Ukraine conflict, before arguing for broader “decisive action by multiple states.”

”All measures need to be taken to ensure that such regimes never arise in any other nation. The price is too high,” Medvedev emphasized. A real de-Nazification is required. Nazism needs to be rooted out not only in Ukraine, but in all of Europe. Medvedev stressed the distinction between the current Ukrainian government, whom he branded “bloody freaks” and the Ukrainian state, stating that its future was uncertain. Officials in Kiev are “cutthroats who are sending peaceful citizens of their own nation to the slaughter without a second thought,” and are not thus qualified to govern Ukraine, Medvedev stated.

He stressed that “a regime founded on neo-Nazi ideology… has no right to exist.” Ukrainian statehood may survive the current clash, Medvedev said, noting that he personally is skeptical based on what he views as its lack of utility to Western nations. If the country persists, it must not be allowed to join any military bloc hostile towards Russia, he stressed. Russia’s victory in the conflict, which Medvedev considers inevitable, will serve “as the first step towards a sustainable peace in Europe and the creation” of a fairer multipolar world.

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“.. in the US, other forces have taken the reins. These are conservative, more traditionalist forces that want to calm the situation and, in a certain sense, achieve reconciliation with Russia..”

Western Europe Waging ‘Quiet War’ Against Trump – Medvedev (RT)

Western European leaders are waging a “quiet war” against US President Donald Trump, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed.Washington’s current tariffs standoff and disagreements on NATO spending with the EU and UK is not only an economic but also an ideological conflict, Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on Tuesday. “I have no doubt that [Western] Europe will be put in its place [by the US], but at the same time the Europeans will continue their quiet war against Trump. They will try to wage a war against him on all possible fronts, observing the rules of decency on the outside. What will come of it – we will see,” he stated.

The tensions between Washington on one side and the EU and UK on the other are explained by the fact that “in [Western] Europe, neo-globalist forces are still in power, trying to pursue the previous course, including the course against our country… But in the US, other forces have taken the reins. These are conservative, more traditionalist forces that want to calm the situation and, in a certain sense, achieve reconciliation with Russia,” the former president said at the ‘Knowledge. First’ educational event in Moscow.

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“..described the world as teetering on the brink, facing either a “new bloodbath” reminiscent of World War II or the emergence of “a fair world order where every nation enjoys sovereignty and security.”

West ‘Delirious With Nuclear Apocalypse Scenarios’ – Patrushev (RT)

European NATO members are risking nuclear war by escalating military tensions with Russia, according to Nikolay Patrushev, national security adviser to President Vladimir Putin. Patrushev accused Western powers of “deploying their military machine against Russia and becoming delirious with nuclear apocalypse scenarios.” The destabilization is originating from Brussels, Berlin, Paris and London, the senior official told TASS in an interview published on Tuesday. ”For a second consecutive year, NATO is conducting exercises at our borders at a scale unseen in decades,” Patrushev said. “They are training for conducting a broad offensive from Vilnius to Odessa, seizing [the Russian exclave] Kaliningrad Region, imposing a naval blockade in the Baltic and the Black Seas, and executing preventive strikes on the staging locations of Russian nuclear deterrence forces.”

Patrushev, who formerly served as secretary of Russia’s Security Council, described the world as teetering on the brink, facing either a “new bloodbath” reminiscent of World War II or the emergence of “a fair world order where every nation enjoys sovereignty and security.” He attributed the actions of Western politicians to their refusal to accept the decline of a system centered around their nations. The EU intends to borrow hundreds of billions of euros to fund a substantial militarization of its member states, justifying the move with claims of impending Russian aggression within the coming years. Moscow has denied having any aggressive intentions towards the US-led military bloc, and has accused it of encroaching on Russian borders in violation of promises made to the USSR. Russian officials view the Ukraine conflict as a NATO proxy war aimed at undermining their nation’s development.

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“Macron said that Western pressure on Russia to make a ceasefire deal with Ukraine will increase in the coming eight to 10 days. “It seems that in France, they do not bother to listen to the statements of President Putin..”

Russia Focused on Bringing Peace to Ukraine – Kremlin (Sp.)

Russia is focused on bringing the Ukrainian conflict towards a peaceful settlement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. “We are still focused on ongoing efforts to move the process towards a peaceful settlement,” Peskov told reporters. Ukraine has not reacted to the proposal of Russian President Vladimir Putin for a three-day truce to coincide with Victory Day celebrations, Peskov added. On Monday, the Kremlin said that Putin had declared a ceasefire from midnight on May 8 until midnight on May 11 during the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. “President Putin showed a gesture of goodwill and announced yesterday that a temporary truce would be declared to celebrate the victory. We have not heard any reaction from the Kiev regime so far either. It is still very difficult to understand whether the Kiev regime is going to join or not,” Peskov told reporters, adding that a lack of response is a manipulation.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposal to stop the conflict for 30 days is impossible without resolving all the nuances, the spokesman said. “We have seen, but if we talk about such a long-term cessation, then the nuances that President Putin spoke about in the Kremlin are important. This is also important, but it is difficult to reach such a long-term truce without answering these questions. President Putin spoke about this, we need to remember these words every time,” Peskov said, adding that entering into peace talks is a primary interest. Moscow expects that Putin’s initiative on the truce will receive an assessment in Europe and Kiev, Peskov added. It cannot be ruled out that Putin will award North Korean soldiers who excelled in the operation to clear the Kursk region from Ukrainian soldiers, Peskov said on Tuesday.

On Saturday, Chief of Russia’s General Staff Valery Gerasimov announced that the Kursk region was fully liberated, as the last of the settlements had been cleared of Ukrainian military presence. North Korea has officially announced sending troops to Russia under the Russian-North Korean Strategic Partnership Treaty. “I am not aware of these plans yet, but this cannot be ruled out, of course,” Peskov replied to a question from reporters about whether Putin would reward the North Korean soldiers. The question of the possibility of the continued participation of North Korean fighters in combat operations should be addressed to the Russian Defense Ministry, the spokesman added.

It seems like France does not bother to listen to Putin’s statements, Peskov also said, commenting on the words of French President Emmanuel Macron about pressure on Russia. On Monday, Macron said that Western pressure on Russia to make a ceasefire deal with Ukraine will increase in the coming eight to 10 days. “It seems that in France, they do not bother to listen to the statements of President Putin, to our regret. It was President Putin who repeated many times that Russia is ready to begin the negotiation process without any preconditions. We have not heard a response from the Kiev regime yet,” Peskov told reporters. Macron’s statement confirms that Europe still prefers to focus on continuing the war, which is regrettable, the official added.

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Yeah, honoring your dead really stinks.

Zelensky: Putin’s Victory Day Truce Proposal An ‘Attempt At Manipulation’ (ZH)

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has blasted President Putin’s unilaterally declared three-day ceasefire set for May 8-10, which correspondents with Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, as an “attempt at manipulation.” “Now there’s a new attempt at manipulation: for some reason, everyone has to wait until May 8,” Zelensky said in his daily address Monday evening. This will mark the 80th anniversary for Moscow’s World War 2 commemorations, a major national civic holiday. Ukraine has instead offered an immediate truce with Russia for “at least 30 days.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha previously questioned, “If Russia truly wants peace, it must cease fire immediately. Why wait until May 8?”

Moscow has rejected any premature longer term truce ahead of lasting settlement and territorial concessions from the Ukrainian side, fearing that it would just be used to regroup and rearm along the front lines. Russia has further rejected this new call for a 30-day truce instead of the three day ceasefire. “It’s difficult to agree to such a long-term truce without answers to the questions raised by Putin,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We haven’t heard the Kyiv regime’s reaction, and it’s unclear whether they plan to join the truce,” Peskov said. “Nevertheless, we hope the Russian president’s peace initiative will be appreciated,” he added. “The first step is to start the negotiation process — everything else is secondary.” Kiev did appear to observe the prior Easter truce, though each side accused the other of some violations.

But it set a precedent which Moscow is hoping to follow on with in pushing the V-Day ceasefire; however, skeptics have said this is really to ensure no disruptions happen at national public commemoration events (such as inbound drones in the Moscow region). Trump admin officials have called this week “critical” for determining whether lasting peace in Ukraine can be forged: Rubio said that the coming week will be “very critical” for the White House as it makes a “determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in.” “There are reasons to be optimistic, but there are reasons to be realistic,” Rubio said, adding: “We’re close, but we’re not close enough.”

“Throughout this process, it’s about determining, do both sides really want peace and how close are they or how far apart they are after 90 days of effort here … that’s what we’re trying to determine this week,” Rubio said of negotiations. But it’s unclear what this ultimatum of sorts (given to both sides?) really means. Will the US stop arming Ukraine if no peace deal is reached? Will more sanctions simply be piled onto Moscow? Trump is increasingly frustrated with leaders of both Russia and Ukraine: White House.

https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1916847354486853678

President Trump has warned the Russians that his patience will soon run thin, amid accusations from hawks that Moscow is simply stalling for the sake of battlefield gains. Putin this month declared the full liberation of Kursk region, leaving Zelensky with no cards to play at all. Trump himself has acknowledged that Zelensky has no real leverage at this point.

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“Kiev is demanding an unconditional ceasefire because its forces are being routed on the battlefield..”

Lavrov Outlines Why Kiev Is Pushing For Indefinite Ceasefire (RT)

Kiev is demanding an unconditional ceasefire because its forces are being routed on the battlefield, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered Kiev a 72-hour truce from May 8 to 10 to coincide with this year’s Victory Day anniversary. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky criticized the offer as an attempt at “manipulation” and called for an immediate and unconditional full ceasefire instead. Speaking at a press conference on following a BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Brazil on Tuesday, Lavrov noted a sharp departure in Kiev’s intransigence. “Against the backdrop of what is happening on the ground, on the line of combat contact, where the Ukrainian regime is increasingly retreating again and again,” he said.

“They reversed their position 180 degrees and began to demand an immediate truce without preconditions,” the top diplomat added. Whereas a month or two ago, “Kiev spouted dire warnings that they would not accept any truce,” Lavrov said. European “radicals” were inciting Ukraine to continue the conflict, pumping it full of weapons and insisting that talks could only begin when Ukrainian authorities could negotiate from a position of power, “when Russia is weakened,” the top diplomat said.

Western Europe seems to be interested in continuing the conflict in Ukraine, as well as undermining any US peace efforts to end it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week. Moscow has repeatedly criticized European arms supplies to Kiev, and condemned its plans to deploy troops in Ukraine as escalatory. Russia has insisted that it has always been ready for peace talks, provided they are aimed at a permanent solution that addresses the core causes of the conflict. Any temporary ceasefire would instead be used by Kiev’s Western backers as a chance to rearm Ukraine, Moscow has said.

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I thought we forgot that.

Ukraine One Of The World’s Most Corrupt Countries – Trump Adviser Waltz (RT)

US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz has called for proper oversight of the financial assistance Washington provides to Kiev. In a Monday interview with Fox News, the top state official called Ukraine one of the most corrupt nations in the world. The US Congress has authorized roughly $175 billion for Ukraine since 2022, although a significant portion of that funding has gone to American industries and government activities related to the conflict. Waltz’s comment comes days after US President Donald Trump held a face-to-face conversation with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral at the Vatican. “I will say Ukraine was one of, and is one of, the most corrupt countries in the world,” Waltz said, highlighting that Washington has to “always guard the taxpayer dollars.”

The official also rebuked the administration of Trump’s predecessor for its failure to provide proper oversight of the way Kiev was spending the financial aid provided by the White House at the time. “We have to keep a hard eye on that, […] but secondly we have to find opportunities to end the war,” he said. Waltz, who had previously said that Washington must be reimbursed by Kiev for the “investments” it has made in the conflict, also accused the Ukrainian leader of intractability. He recalled the shouting match which took place at the White House earlier this year. “Rather than trying to correct the President of the US and the Vice President in the Oval Office when he was invited there for the first meeting, he could have sat side by side with the president, signing a minerals deal that bound our economies,” the adviser said.

Washington and Kiev have been discussing a deal for weeks that would grant the US access to Ukraine’s deposits of rare-earth minerals. The Trump administration insists that the agreement should be used to compensate the US for past aid to Ukraine. Kiev, however, has maintained that the assistance was provided unconditionally. According to Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, as of October 2024, the US had provided Ukraine with approximately $92 billion in financial and military assistance. Meanwhile, the US-based Council on Foreign Relations estimated that Washington’s financial assistance to Kiev amounted to $195 billion as of April 2024, with $128 billion worth of the aid having gone straight to the government of Ukraine. Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch reported last November that “corruption continues to complicate Ukraine’s efforts to achieve its EU and NATO aspirations,” particularly due to multiple scandals in the Defense Ministry.

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For Russia, Finland is a former Nazi-collaborator.

Ukraine Could Lose Land To Get More Western Weapons – Finnish President (RT)

Finnish President Alexander Stubb has argued that Ukraine has to make certain concessions to Russia in order to ensure its survival and continue receiving Western military support. Moscow has dismissed any resolution of the conflict that allows Ukraine to remain a threat. On Sunday, Stubb shared his thoughts with The New York Times on how to align US President Donald Trump more closely with the positions held by Kiev and Washington’s European NATO allies, as the White House seeks to mediate a compromise in the ongoing Ukraine conflict. He drew a historical parallel between Ukraine and Finland, which participated in Nazi Germany’s 1941 invasion of the USSR to reclaim territory it had lost in the Winter War earlier.

As a result of being on the losing side, Finland faced military restrictions and observed neutrality during the Cold War. It formally joined NATO only in 2023, after years of military cooperation with the US-led alliance. Stubb reflected on the essence of statehood, comprising land, sovereignty, and independence. He noted that Finland lost two of these three elements in the 1940s, adding, “If we get at least two out of the three for Ukraine, I think it’s great.” Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky publicly rejected American proposals reported in the media. Subsequently, Kiev and its European backers crafted a counteroffer for Trump’s consideration.

Stubb suggested that the two plans should be “repackaged” into a viable proposal through “a little bit of creative writing.” If a ceasefire with Russia is achieved, Ukraine could be armed “to the teeth” by European NATO members, with a “backstop from the US,” he asserted. The current objective is to “maximize the pressure” on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Stubb added. Russia perceives the Ukraine conflict as a NATO proxy war led by a Western-backed “neo-Nazi regime” in Kiev. Moscow has repeatedly criticized the EU’s continued flow of armaments to Ukraine, arguing that Western European nations appear more interested in prolonging the fighting rather than resolving the conflict diplomatically.

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He’s not failing and he’s not walking back. When you start, you have to go big. And then move on down. You can’t go up after you’ve started low.

Lutnick Rolls Out Auto Tariff Relief As US Pushes To Reshore Supply Chains (ZH)

On Tuesday morning, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick provided clarity on the highly anticipated auto tariff relief, confirming it will apply to all U.S.-built vehicles. Lutnick said tariffs will apply to those produced by foreign automakers with plants in the US. He added that the relief would be phased in over three years, giving manufacturers time to shift their supply chains back to the U.S.

* * *
Global stocks were steady overnight, with U.S. equity futures marginally higher, as sentiment improved following reports that President Trump plans to ease tariffs on foreign auto parts used in U.S.-made vehicles. The news comes as Trump marks his first 100 days in office, ahead of a rally in Michigan scheduled for this evening. The Wall Street Journal, citing multiple sources familiar with the plans, reported that the proposed tariff rollback would offer major relief to automakers producing vehicles within the U.S. borders. These companies have been battered by the trade war due to their deeply entrenched supply chains spanning Asia and Europe. Sources added more color to what the tariff reprieve looks like:

“• The decision will mean that automakers paying Trump’s automotive tariffs won’t also be charged for other duties, such as those on steel and aluminum, according to people familiar with the policy.
• The move would be retroactive, the people said, meaning that automakers could be reimbursed for such tariffs already paid. The 25% tariff on finished foreign-made cars went into effect early this month.
• The administration will also modify its tariffs on foreign auto parts—slated to be 25% and effective May 3—allowing automakers to be reimbursed for those tariffs up to an amount equal to 3.75% of the value of a U.S.-made car for one year. The reimbursement would fall to 2.5% of the car’s value in a second year, and then be phased out altogether.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told WSJ in a statement about Trump’s move to ease the pain for automakers:
• President Trump is building an important partnership with both the domestic automakers and our great American workers.
• This deal will be a major victory for the president’s trade policy by rewarding companies who are already manufacturing domestically, while providing a runway to manufacturers who have expressed their commitment in investing in America and expanding domestic manufacturing.

In a separate statement to Bloomberg, Lutnick said: • This deal is a major victory for the president’s trade policy by rewarding companies who manufacture domestically while providing runway to manufacturers who have expressed their commitment to invest in America and expand their domestic manufacturing.

Trump’s trade war is an urgent move to shift critical supply chains out of China, either by relocating them to a friendlier shore or reshoring them. Ford CEO Jim Farley commented on the WSJ report: “Ford welcomes and appreciates these decisions by President Trump, which will help mitigate the impact of tariffs on automakers, suppliers and consumers. We will continue to work closely with the administration in support of the president’s vision for a healthy and growing auto industry in America. Ford sees policies that encourage exports and ensure affordable supply chains to promote more domestic growth as essential.

This news comes ahead of Trump’s trip to Michigan to celebrate the first 100 days of his second term in office. The president will speak at Macomb Community College in Warren, about 20 miles north of Detroit, around 6:00 p.m. local time. Ahead of Trump’s first 100 days, crazed Michigan Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar filed articles of impeachment against the president, stating: “I have introduced articles of impeachment against President Trump. When Trump ignores the Constitution, Congress, and the courts, he is not ‘fighting for America.’ He is tearing it down and endangering our democracy.” Trump’s pivot on auto tariffs represents the latest development in his ever-changing trade strategy to friend-shore or re-shore critical supply chains.

Bessent
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1917200702448771394

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“Goods made in Communist China — possibly by slave labor — will show a 145% tariff, making them easy to identify. “Thank you, no.” Taiwan and a 10% tariff? “Maybe, maybe not.” U.S.-made and with zero tariff? “Man, I wish they’d bring back that One Click button!”

Thanks, Amazon — Tariff Transparency Might Backfire Bigly (Green)

The White House on Tuesday called it “a hostile and political act by Amazon,” but it might just wind up being the biggest self-own since Bud Light decided to go all-in on Dylan Mulvaney. Speaking with reporters today in the White House briefing room, Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said to reporters, “I will not speak to the president’s relationships with Jeff Bezos, but I will tell you that this is certainly a hostile and political act by Amazon.” Leavitt accused Amazon of being a “China-aligned company,” in what I would call one of her rare missteps since taking on PressSec duties earlier this year. The White House would have been better advised to follow Napoleon’s advice to his generals at the Battle of Austerlitz, when the opposing Austrian and Russian forces began falling into his trap: “Gentlemen, let us wait a little; when your enemy is executing a false movement, never interrupt him.”

Today would have been a good day for the White House to watch quietly — and say nothing. And what is Amazon’s false movement? Amazon said today that the company plans to break out tariffs as part of the prices displayed on its website. Call it truth in labeling for foreign-made goods, although neither the administration nor Amazon seems to see it that way. “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” Leavitt asked. But we all know the answer to that one. Or maybe the White House is playing Br’er Rabbit and begging Amazon to please not throw it into that tariff patch — who knows? So instead of questions we don’t know the answers to, let’s look at the Streisand Effect Amazon is about to create.

Twenty years ago, Barbra Streisand — a talented singer and actress, but not terribly bright about the internet — sued a photographer who took an aerial photo of her Malibu mansion, and the website hosting it, for a whopping $50 million. She cited an invasion of her privacy. Not only did she lose, but the little-seen photo became a global phenomenon. Before the lawsuit, the photo (that had been taken for an environmental study) had been downloaded six times. Two of those times by Streisand’s legal team. When the lawsuit became public, the pic was downloaded over 400,000 times almost immediately. Streisand made famous the very thing she wanted hidden. If Amazon thinks displaying tariffs will hurt Trump politically, NewsMax’s Rob Schmitt has a different idea:


Indeed.

Not only that, but displaying the import tax — that’s what a tariff is — will achieve something I’ve been demanding for years that Amazon would do: be upfront about where their goods come from. Goods made in Communist China — possibly by slave labor — will show a 145% tariff, making them easy to identify. “Thank you, no.” Taiwan and a 10% tariff? “Maybe, maybe not.” U.S.-made and with zero tariff? “Man, I wish they’d bring back that One Click button!” Let’s take things a bit further, shall we? I’d like to see everyone from Amazon to my corner sports bar break out all the taxes on everything from cheeseburgers to one-ton hydraulic lifts. How much money does the government at every level skim from the sale of everything we buy? They show us the state and local sales tax, soon maybe they’ll show us the tariff — why not show us all the tax costs imposed for our own good? Let’s go just one step further. Maybe each receipt should include a “regulatory impact fee” broken out of the total price. A small-government man can dream, can’t he?

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“..Rasmussen’s polling tightened from Trump +5 down to about Trump +2. That’s where they stuck, but “everybody else just kept going.”

What the MSM Doesn’t Want You to Know About Trump’s Approval Ratings (Margolis)

The liberal media keeps pushing its narrative about Donald Trump’s unpopularity, but the numbers tell a different story. Trump’s base is more passionate and committed than Obama’s ever was, and we’ve got the data to prove it. Mark Mitchell from Rasmussen Reports dropped a truth bomb on X today, sharing a chart that liberals won’t want you to see. The data shows Trump’s Approval Index — the difference between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove — consistently beating Barack Obama’s numbers. Let that sink in.

https://twitter.com/honestpollster/status/1916906998978826618?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1916906998978826618%7Ctwgr%5E58d728472f60ad6b7d952cfabab460b9f7660039%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fmatt-margolis%2F2025%2F04%2F28%2Fheres-what-the-msm-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-trumps-approval-ratings-n4939313

I should point out that Rasmussen was one of the most accurate pollsters of the 2024 presidential election. Naturally, the mainstream media won’t tell you about this. It’s too busy manufacturing crises and pushing its anti-Trump agenda. But here’s what it doesn’t want you to understand: while Obama’s supporters were lukewarm at best, Trump’s base remains fiercely loyal despite years of relentless attacks from the left. Speaking with Benny Johnson on “The Benny Show,” Mitchell said the current situation feels eerily similar to the 2024 campaign. “It feels like August and September,” Mitchell explained. “It feels exactly what happened. It’s like, ‘Oh, we got a new entrant into the race, Kamala Harris. Let’s see how the polling’s gonna do,’ and my numbers had tightened a little bit.” Mitchell explained that Rasmussen’s polling tightened from Trump +5 down to about Trump +2. That’s where they stuck, but “everybody else just kept going.”

“And so that’s exactly what’s happening here,” he added. Mitchell pointed out that his internal polling has shown Trump’s approval fluctuating within a reasonable range. “We had Trump underwater at five points. We had him above water last week. It’s gonna fluctuate, and I think around, you know, plus or minus two,” he said, noting that others in the polling industry had been reporting similar numbers until a sudden, sharp shift. “They were with me two or three months ago saying that Donald Trump came in in the low to mid-50s,” Mitchell said. “And this is exactly what they’re doing. My numbers stopped and theirs are gonna keep on going left.” Mitchell accused legacy polling firms and the mainstream media of working together to paint a misleading picture. “The mainstream media on top of that is gonna be this information gatekeeping layer,” he said, citing Quinnipiac’s poll from a month ago showing Trump at negative 12 points — a number that was heavily promoted in the media despite being completely ridiculous.

“Well, their numbers haven’t moved, and so now it’s, um, they’re gonna use Reuters. They’re gonna use ABC Washington, you know, negative 13, negative 12, negative 14,” Mitchell added. “Those are all new. They all dropped over the weekend.” He even joked that the pollsters might be congratulating each other behind the scenes. “I wonder if they’re, like, slapping each other on the butts and saying, ‘Good game,’ after this coordinated, like, dump of polling,” he said. “I think that’s probably what it is.” Mitchell pointed to Google search trends as further evidence that something suspicious is going on. Using data going back to 2004, Mitchell observed there wasn’t nearly as much interest in the approval ratings of George W. Bush, Obama, or Joe Biden as there is currently with Trump.

“I think what happened is, like, there was this binary gut check decision where everybody in America was like, ‘Oh, like, Joe Biden sucks.’ So they don’t really need to, like, Google it anymore,” he said. He argued that media outlets, after Biden’s disastrous handling of Afghanistan, simply “gave up” on trying to prop up his approval numbers. Even when Biden was sworn in, Mitchell said, there was never the same organic interest in his approval that Trump generated. “It really no point were people more interested in Biden approval than they were in Trump approval during Trump one,” he said. “And so all of a sudden, Trump gets into office. All of a sudden, all the levers of power are threatened again, and everybody’s searching for Trump approval. And it’s because they’re seeing scummy headlines and they’re trying to, like, check the mainstream media information that’s getting pushed down their throats.”

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“When only four Democrats in the House of Representatives out of 212 vote in favor of a simple bill making sure that only U.S. citizens can vote in our elections, there might just be an existential crisis brewing on the Left..”

Trump’s First 100 Days Have Exposed the Left (Bossie)

The first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House are historic in many ways: From restoring American exceptionalism and strong leadership in the Oval Office to securing the border in record time to deconstructing the administrative state with the Department of Government Efficiency, there’s no issue too large, complex, or politically unpleasant for Trump, the ultimate steel-spined change agent, to tackle head-on. In addition to consequential policy wins like banning men from participating in women’s sports, ending destructive DEI programs in government, slashing wasteful grants to foreign nations, and supercharging military recruitment, by simply taking the oath of office and declaring a return to the basics, Trump has positioned the GOP as the party of common sense, focused on delivering hope, growth, opportunity, and security for all.

For tens of millions of patriotic Americans from all backgrounds, the return of American prestige, normalcy, and unparalleled transparency after four years of Joe Biden-caused disasters is cause for optimism. Simultaneously, Trump Derangement Syndrome has caused rudderless Democrats to double down on the failures of the previous administration and take up the mantle of unpopular socialist policies and radicalism. For example, as Trump has moved to swiftly seal our southern border and deport criminal illegal immigrants, something he was elected by 77 million voters to do, the Left has decided to defend open borders and go to bat for individuals who should have never been in our country in the first place. Radical Democrats would rather continue the reckless Biden-era policy of dishing out billions upon billions in taxpayer dollars for illegals rather than spend our national treasure on the betterment of American citizens.

That’s the opposite of common sense. But Democrats’ stampede to the outer limits of left-wing craziness doesn’t stop with just supporting illegal immigration and everything that comes along with it—such as crime and the strain it causes in health care, education, and other government services. Trump-deranged socialists have also decided to essentially advocate for continued waste, fraud, and abuse in our horribly bloated government and ignore the unsustainable $36 trillion national debt crisis. For the first time ever, Trump empowered Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to conduct an “audit with teeth” of the federal government that the vast majority of the American people support. In doing so, DOGE is finding waste on a massive scale, modernizing systems, and making government more responsive to the American people.

Instead of working with Trump and Republicans in Congress on this reasonable effort, Democrats have decided to mercilessly attack Musk and DOGE in an attempt to thwart their effort to implement long-overdue reforms. Name any popular Trump-backed reform, and Democrats are sure to oppose it—because apparently their race to the bottom can’t come soon enough. Extend the Trump tax cuts so Americans can keep more of their hard-earned money in their pockets? Democrats are opposed. Put America first by negotiating fair trade deals to level the playing field and help working-class families? Democrats seem to like it when the United States is getting ripped off and jobs are shipped overseas instead. Reform our broken public education system with local control and school choice? Sadly, Democrats have chosen to get behind low test scores, failing schools, and critical race theory.

What’s unfolded in Trump’s first 100 days has truly been remarkable, due not only to the speed of his own accomplishments, but also the speed in which the Democratic Party is unraveling before our eyes. When only four Democrats in the House of Representatives out of 212 vote in favor of a simple bill making sure that only U.S. citizens can vote in our elections, there might just be an existential crisis brewing on the Left. In addition to Democrats’ incredibly irresponsible and unpopular policy decisions, there’s also an enormous leadership vacuum on the Left. When socialism-loving leftists such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., rise to the top of the Left’s conversation regarding its future leadership team, there should be cause for concern.

Look no further than the retirements of Democrat stalwarts such as Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Gary Peters of Michigan, and Tina Smith of Minnesota and Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois. These career politicians aren’t retiring because things are looking up for Democrats. They’re exiting stage left because they see rocky electoral terrain on the horizon due to the radicalized positions of their decomposing party. Trump was elected to take on tough challenges and solve problems. And after only 100 days in office, it’s obvious that our president is doing it the only way he knows how—full-speed ahead. The American people deserve a better future, and Trump is delivering.

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“Because of media-stoked rage at Donald Trump, Canadian voters have chosen the path of national suicide. Hey, congratulations, eh?”

By the by, Poilievre blew a massive lead in the polls in no time flat. How did he do that?

TDS on Steroids: Canada Elects a Prime Minister to Spite Trump (Spencer)

You think American leftists have Trump Derangement Syndrome? They’ve got nothing on Canadians, who just chose to remain on the path of national decline and self-destruction that they’ve been on for the last ten years, just to spite Donald Trump. In order to demonstrate their nationalism, Canada just chose a socialist internationalist as prime minister. Yes, it’s that crazy, and worse. The Liberal Party’s Mark Carney, who succeeded the disastrous eternal boy Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister on March 14, was elected in his own right in Canada’s Monday election. It was an outcome that would have seemed inconceivable as recently as December, when the Conservative Party held a comfortable lead in the polls.

A Conservative victory seemed so certain that numerous pundits were talking about not if, but when Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre became prime minister. After ten years of Trudeau’s far-left misrule, a Conservative victory seemed inevitable. Then, however, came the Nov. 29, 2024, meeting at Mar-a-Lago between Trump and Trudeau. Trump told Trudeau that “Canada has failed the U.S. border by allowing large amounts of drugs and people across the border, including illegal immigrants from over 70 different countries,” and warned him that “if Canada cannot fix the border issues and trade deficit, he will levy a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods on day one when he returns to office.”

In response, Trudeau complained that Trump couldn’t impose such a tariff “because it would kill the Canadian economy completely.” Trump responded by asking Trudeau, “So your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion?” Driving his point home, Trump “suggested to Trudeau that Canada become the 51st state, which caused the prime minister and others to laugh nervously.” After that, Trump delighted in calling the Canadian prime minister “Governor Trudeau” and repeated his declaration several times that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state. This led to a frenzy of outrage in Canada. After Trudeau finally departed from the scene, both Carney and Poilievre denounced Trump for his trolling and stood up stoutly for Canada’s wounded national pride.

Paradoxically, however, because Poilievre is a Conservative whose program lines up more closely with Trump’s on most issues than does that of the Liberals, Carney was able to take better advantage of the anti-Trump outrage and erase the Conservative lead in the polls. And so Canadians have struck back against Trump by giving the Liberals a majority and ensuring that Carney will remain prime minister. Yet Poilievre is the actual Canadian nationalist, while Carney is yet another World Economic Forum-linked socialist internationalist who will continue the hollowing-out of Canada that Justin Trudeau pursued with almost as much vigor as he brought to Taylor Swift concerts. Trump even repudiated Poilievre and said he would prefer to work with Carney, whereupon Canadians, to spite Trump, voted for the Liberals and ensured that Trump would get to work with Carney. Got it?

After that, Trump delighted in calling the Canadian prime minister “Governor Trudeau” and repeated his declaration several times that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state. This led to a frenzy of outrage in Canada. After Trudeau finally departed from the scene, both Carney and Poilievre denounced Trump for his trolling and stood up stoutly for Canada’s wounded national pride. Paradoxically, however, because Poilievre is a Conservative whose program lines up more closely with Trump’s on most issues than does that of the Liberals, Carney was able to take better advantage of the anti-Trump outrage and erase the Conservative lead in the polls. And so Canadians have struck back against Trump by giving the Liberals a majority and ensuring that Carney will remain prime minister.

Yet Poilievre is the actual Canadian nationalist, while Carney is yet another World Economic Forum-linked socialist internationalist who will continue the hollowing-out of Canada that Justin Trudeau pursued with almost as much vigor as he brought to Taylor Swift concerts. Trump even repudiated Poilievre and said he would prefer to work with Carney, whereupon Canadians, to spite Trump, voted for the Liberals and ensured that Trump would get to work with Carney. Got it? Carney crowed, “The Americans want to break us so they can own us. Those aren’t just words. That’s what’s at risk.” Sure it is. And so now the Chinese will own you. Bravo. Canada’s election on Monday is the most vivid object lesson of all, at least up to now, of the dangers of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Because of media-stoked rage at Donald Trump, Canadian voters have chosen the path of national suicide. Hey, congratulations, eh?

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“Canada progressively relaxed its immigration policy between 1950 and 1962, steadily removing restrictions against the entry of German nazis and non-German members of German military units..”

Covering Up Ukrainian Nazis Is Nothing New For Canada (Proud)

A number of topics remain taboo in discussing the war in Ukraine. Busification, Zelensky’s democratic mandate, Ukraine’s casualty numbers and anything suggesting that Ukraine cannot win are all off limits. Likewise the problem of alleged neo-Nazis in Ukraine. One of the most embarrassing episodes since the Ukraine war started in 2022, was when Yaroslav Hunka, was given two standing ovations in the Canadian House of Commons public gallery by MPs during the visit of President Zelensky in 2023. Hunka has been accused by Russia of genocide, because of his alleged involvement in the Huta Pieniacka massacre of February 28 1944 in which more than 500 ethnic Poles were murdered in a village, in what is now western Ukraine. Hunka was a member of the SS Galicia Division, a mostly Ukrainian unit of the Waffen SS, which Commissions in Germany and Poland later found guilty of war crimes.

This was shocking because it opened the lid on a topic of conversation that has been largely silenced by the western mainstream media since the beginning of the war: Ukraine’s contemporary challenge of far-right ultranationalism. But the Hunka case also illustrates how western authorities airbrushed discussion of nazis in Ukraine after World War II too. On 13 July 1948 the British Commonwealth Relations Office, what is now part of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, sent a telegram to Commonwealth governments, proposing an end to Nazi war crimes trials in the British zone of Germany. “Punishment of war crimes is more a matter of discouraging future generations than of meting out retribution to every guilty individual… it is now necessary to dispose of the past as soon as possible.”

After the conclusion of the Nuremberg War Trials in 1946 the western world faced a new enemy in the Soviet Union. Limited security resources in cash-strapped Albion and its colonies were re-deployed to uncover suspected Soviet agents and Communists, rather than to identify and track down lower-order Nazi war criminals. Around this time, many Ukrainians fled the Soviet Union to settle in Canada. In the thirty-year period after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Ukrainian population in Canada almost doubled, from 300,000 to almost 600,000 people. While most of them, I am sure, would not have been Nazi collaborators, some, undoubtedly, were. They were joined by lesser numbers of Latvians, Hungarians, Slovaks and others.

Within that exodus would have been so-called “lesser” war criminals; persons who had organised the transportation of Jews, Slavs, gypsies and homosexuals to death camps, acted as informers, committed murders, or become involved in war crimes as other ranks and non-commissioned officers in death squads. They were the lower echelon collaborators, acting as the instruments of the genocide initiated by the Nazis. Yet, following the British instruction, Canada progressively relaxed its immigration policy between 1950 and 1962, steadily removing restrictions against the entry of German nazis and non-German members of German military units like the SS Galicia Division. However, in 1984 the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote a letter to the Canadian government claiming to have obtained evidence that the ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele had applied for a landed immigrant visa to Canada in 1962. Though this proved to be incorrect, it caused such outrage among Canada’s Jewish community that a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada was established in 1985.

Known as the Deschênes Commission, it uncovered a list of 774 persons who had allegedly entered Canada and who required further investigation. Of that list, only 28 underwent serious investigation and trial. Michael Pawlowski, accused of murdering 410 Jews and 80 non-Jewish Poles in Belarus in 1942, was acquitted as judges blocked the prosecution from gathering evidence in the Soviet Union. Stephen Reistetter of Slovakia was not tried for allegations that he kidnapped 3000 Jews to have them sent to Nazi death camps while serving in the Hlinka party, a far right clerical-fascist movement with Nazi leanings. His case fell apart because a witness died. Erich Tobias, was accused of involvement in the execution of Latvian Jews but died before his case went to court. By 1995, with no convictions for war crimes having been secured, the Canadian Justice Department cut the size of its war crimes unit from 24 to 11 people. In the absence of criminal prosecutions, the Canadian Government tried civil proceedings to revoke citizenship from alleged war criminals.

[..] I don’t think that Ukraine today is a Nazi society and, even at its high watermark, the Svoboda party only garnered 10% of the national vote. But ultranationalism is a major problem, particularly in the west of Ukraine, in that area known as Galicia during World War II. And the refusal of western governments to acknowledge the issue of ultranationalism in Ukraine or speak out means that we are turning a blind eye once more to activity that we would never tolerate in our own countries.

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I thought this was about the hypersonic weapons- which no dome would stop. But they have something new again: nuclear-powered, unlimited-range cruise missiles.

America’s Golden Dome May Be Powerless vs Russia’s Doomsday Missile (Kornev)

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump launched the ambitious “Golden Dome” initiative – a sweeping plan to build a national missile defense system capable of shielding America from modern threats: ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, and advanced cruise missiles. Designed as a next-generation shield, the Golden Dome aspires to close gaps in the nation’s defenses and guarantee security against a broad range of airborne dangers. But even the most sophisticated defense can face a threat it wasn’t designed to stop. As Washington doubles down on its plans for a new shield, Russia is preparing a weapon unlike anything currently in existence – a nuclear-powered cruise missile with unlimited range. And it’s a threat the Golden Dome may struggle to counter.

Russia is on the verge of deploying an entirely new class of cruise missile that could fundamentally alter air defense paradigms: nuclear-powered, unlimited-range cruise missiles. Chief among them is the Burevestnik. It’s only logical that US missile defense planners are thinking ahead to such unconventional threats. Open-source intelligence researchers like MT_Anderson have recently shared satellite imagery revealing suspected construction of Burevestnik launch facilities near Vologda. If verified, this would mark the next phase in the deployment of a weapon capable of shaking the foundations of global strategic stability.

https://twitter.com/MT_Anderson/status/1909366999169585390?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1909366999169585390%7Ctwgr%5Ed14bc72f398e855236da588e8350cfc07dade286%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Frussia%2F616492-golden-dome-vs-burevestnik%2F

Russia first revealed the Burevestnik missile during President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, 2018. Dubbed SSC-X-9 “Skyfall” in the West, the missile has been cloaked in secrecy ever since. The commonly used designation “9M730 Burevestnik” is actually a misnomer, as the 9M730 label originally referred to a version of the Iskander-M missile system – but that’s a minor detail in the larger picture. Reports suggest that Burevestnik testing has been ongoing for years at sites like Novaya Zemlya, the Nenoksa naval testing range near Severodvinsk, and the Kapustin Yar missile complex – the latter featuring specialized infrastructure operated by Rosatom. As recently as two years ago, it seemed Russia was still far from completing development. Now, however, signs point to a major shift: operational launch sites are reportedly under construction.

Visually, the Burevestnik resembles a traditional cruise missile, with folding wings for compact launch storage. It launches from a ground platform using a solid-fuel booster, then switches to an air-breathing nuclear-powered jet engine once it reaches cruising speed. In theory, this engine heats incoming air via a compact nuclear reactor, allowing the missile to stay airborne for weeks or even months without refueling. Sources estimate the missile’s operational range at 22,000km, though in practice it may be virtually unlimited. Such a missile could patrol potential conflict zones indefinitely, awaiting launch commands. Upon receiving orders, it could maneuver toward targets from unpredictable vectors, making interception extraordinarily difficult. Effectively, the Burevestnik is designed to serve as a “doomsday weapon” – a guaranteed retaliatory strike platform in the event of nuclear war.

A nuclear-powered cruise missile would be capable of striking anywhere on the globe from any direction. It could exploit satellite communications to update flight paths, evade interception, and even receive new target information mid-flight. Naturally, preventing accidents is critical, but it’s likely that specialized recovery systems – possibly involving parachutes – have been developed. The ability to safely operate a nuclear-powered engine stems from technological breakthroughs achieved in the 1990s and 2000s, when Russian scientists successfully built compact nuclear reactors. These advancements paved the way not only for the Burevestnik, but also for other projects like the Poseidon underwater drone. Notably, the US and the Soviet Union both explored nuclear-powered aircraft concepts during the Cold War. Despite extensive research on platforms like the B-36 and Tu-95, both nations ultimately abandoned the projects due to insurmountable engineering challenges, astronomical costs, and radiation safety concerns.

Today, with more advanced reactor technology, Russia seems poised to achieve what Cold War engineers only dreamed of: a practical, nuclear-powered, unlimited-range missile. Can the Burevestnik be considered operational? Full details remain classified, but tests in 2020–2021 at Kapustin Yar and Nenoksa strongly suggest significant progress. The completion of permanent launch sites points to an impending deployment phase. According to some reports, Russia could begin fielding Burevestnik missiles as early as 2025-26 – potentially in large numbers. Thanks to their nearly limitless range, these missiles could patrol vast areas, including the Arctic, Siberia, or the Pacific Ocean, remaining invisible to conventional defense systems. A major challenge for America’s Golden Dome initiative will be detecting and tracking such missiles – no easy task. It would likely require unprecedented coordination with the US Navy and the full use of space-based tracking systems.

Ultimately, defeating a weapon like the Burevestnik would demand a fully integrated space-based missile defense component. Satellite tracking, rapid identification of launch zones, and intercept capabilities far beyond current systems would be necessary. Even advanced naval assets like Aegis-equipped ships would face a monumental challenge. For now, there is no simple solution. And while Washington scrambles to prepare, Moscow holds a major advantage – especially when considering additional next-generation weapons like the Poseidon nuclear drone. In this high-stakes race, Russia may have already moved the strategic chessboard – and set up a checkmate that America’s Golden Dome might not be able to prevent.

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”Even at the height of the Cold War, we didn’t treat Russia like this..”

Oliver Stone Warns Russia and US Were Close To World War III (RT)

There was a point in the last three years of the Ukraine conflict where Russia and the US have teetered on the edge of a nuclear war, acclaimed filmmaker Oliver Stone has said. Speaking to Russian students at the ‘Knowledge.First’ event in Moscow on Tuesday, spoke out against the US role in the Ukraine conflict, as well as its coverage in Western media. The Hollywood legend suggested that over the past three years, Moscow and Washington have relived the Cold War spike in tensions that previously culminated in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and said he hoped a corresponding wind down would follow. The US and the Soviet Union almost came to a nuclear clash at the height of the Cold War, after the USSR retaliated by placing nuclear weapons in Cuba, following Washington’s deployment of nukes in Turkey.

”I want to emphasize to you students how very close we came to World War III because of this awful leadership,” he said. ”We bring a great waste of our resources and height of this futility was a war which [former US President Joe] Biden recently dedicated to weakening Russia,” Stone said. “It is a retrograde war.” Western media coverage of the conflict and Russia has shocked him during the past three years, the director admitted. ”Even at the height of the Cold War, we didn’t treat Russia like this,” he said. Whereas now, the media has trained people in the West to equate Russia with President Vladimir Putin, Stone added. This is a tragic substitution of hatred for intelligence.

“The propaganda state in the West is an incredible empire. Far further and stronger than I ever imagined. You are unable to see the inside of the matrix,” he said. Straight out of the works of George Orwell. While the anti-war filmmaker has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, he has criticized Biden and the US “neoconservative movement” for the Ukraine conflict. Stone produced the 2016 ‘Ukraine on Fire’ documentary showing the role Washington played in the 2014 Maidan coup that overthrew Kiev’s democratically-elected president Viktor Yanukovich.

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“Russia and the United States are a great partnership, as is China, by the way, and I think we could have a world that is much safer… if we all get together and realize that it’s a multilateral world.”

EU Engaging In ‘Perversion Of History’ – Oliver Stone (RT)

Attempts by EU elites to diminish the significance of the USSR’s contribution to the victory over Nazism are a “perversion of history,” Oscar-winning American movie director Oliver Stone has told RT ahead of World War II Victory Day celebrations in Russia. The bloc’s “elitist leadership” has distorted the message that World War II provides to humanity, the filmmaker has said. “I’m shocked by it, by [what] is happening,” he stated, calling it “a shame” and “a disgrace that we forgot or pretend to [have forgotten]” about the sacrifices the Soviet Union made during the war. Stone also said he did not believe people in Europe “buy this at all.” “I think the people don’t agree with the government,” Stone maintained, going on to say that “the futility of this campaign against Russia by the EU” is obvious to “anybody, who reads history [books] and is intelligent.”

The director of ‘Platoon’ and ‘JFK’ expressed his doubts that “fascism is popular” nowadays and stated instead that European elites had lost their way because of their “worship of the EU.” “We are not back to the times of Hitler, but what is happening is a loss of perspective and we need to get back to a sense of reason,” Stone told RT as he called on Western leaders to “listen to the Russians” instead of antagonizing them. He also expressed his hope that the US and Russia would manage to mend their relationship, opening the way to a better future for humanity. “Russia and the United States are a great partnership, as is China, by the way, and I think we could have a world that is much safer… if we all get together and realize that it’s a multilateral world.” US President Donald Trump’s administration has been engaged in efforts to restore bilateral ties with Russia and resolve the Ukraine conflict.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that America now has a “better” understanding of the Russian position on the crisis. Moscow’s key conditions for ending the conflict are Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of the new territorial reality on the ground. Last week, Trump also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was easier to deal with than Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. Russian officials maintain they have always been ready to engage in peace talks, provided the discussions aim for a permanent solution that addresses the root causes of the conflict. Moscow has rejected any temporary agreement, explaining that it could be used by Kiev and its backers to rearm the Ukrainian military.

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For now, the peace voices are winning.

Trump Allies: Mossad Agents And Warmongers Try To Derail Iran Talks (MEE)

“Mossad agents” and “warmongers” are pushing the US into a conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Those lines aren’t coming from state-run news agencies in Tehran, but some of US President Donald Trump’s closest media allies and supporters. Last week, conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson featured a senior Department of Defense official who he claimed was ousted because he was seen as an obstacle to the US bombing Iran. Dan Caldwell, a top advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, was removed from the Pentagon earlier this month on charges that he allegedly leaked classified information about Hegseth’s use of a Signal chat, according to several media outlets. Not so by Carlson’s telling, who has unparalleled access to Trump.

“You did make maybe one career mistake by giving on-the-record interviews describing your foreign policy views…that are out of the mainstream among warmongers in Washington,” Carlson said to Caldwell, adding, “Then I read all of a sudden that you are a traitor.” On Sunday, another conservative podcaster, Clayton Morris, a former Fox News anchor, said pro-Israel voices were “working overtime” to destroy the “anti-war team” that Trump has assembled at the Pentagon. “We’ve learned here at Redacted that former Israeli Mossad agents are working overtime on social media and behind the scenes trying to discredit Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth,” Morris said, referring to his show. He didn’t name the so-called former agents.

Trump’s administration is divided between more traditional Republicans like US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security advisor Mike Waltz, and “America First” isolationists like White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Some of Trump’s most vocal defenders in the media, who exercise unprecedented influence in communicating his worldview, are media figures like Carlson and former advisor Steve Bannon. The firing of Caldwell and two other senior Pentagon officials appears to have energized America First anti-interventionists. Their slamming of the pro-Israel voices and former Mossad agents is unprecedented within the Republican Party. It reflects just how far Trump has taken the party from its traditionally hawkish worldview.

Pro-Trump media personalities have singled out Merav Ceren, who was nominated to head Iran and Israel at the White House National Security Council, for criticism. Ceren was born in Haifa, Israel, and worked in the Israeli Ministry of Defense. On his show, Morris, who co-hosted a Fox morning news show with Hegseth, said that, “Neo-con Mike Waltz has now hired basically a dual citizen and former IDF official to work under him.” The coverage reflects a growing trend in the US to view Israel with skepticism, which has intensified since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel, which sparked the Israeli invasion of Gaza and a simmering Middle East war. According to a Pew Poll published in April, 53 percent of Americans now express an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 42 percent in March 2022. The shift in negative sentiment has been notable among young Republicans under 50, who are more likely to tune into podcasts like Morris’s Redacted and Carlson’s show.

The criticism comes as Trump tries to square his muscular foreign policy instincts with his pledge to refrain from starting new Middle East wars. On Iran, Trump’s closest envoys have been left contradicting themselves. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy who has emerged as his go-to global troubleshooter, suggested earlier this month that Washington would allow Iran to enrich uranium at low levels. After backlash from pro-Israel voices, he flipped, saying that Tehran “must stop and eliminate” its nuclear enrichment program fully. This week, Secretary Rubio said the US could re-enter a deal that sees Iran keep a civilian nuclear programme – so long as it halts enrichment, and instead ships it in from abroad. American and Iranian technical teams met in Oman on Saturday for their third round of talks. Trump told reporters on Monday that the talks are going “very well” and that “a deal is going to be made there”. “We’ll have something without having to start dropping bombs all over the place,” he said.

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A law firm for the right.

Elon Musk’s Lawyer Thinks He Is Allowed to Continue Running DOGE (DS)

After Elon Musk’s 130-day term as a special government employee ends on May 30, the billionaire entrepreneur’s attorney says he expects Musk to continue to play a “critical role” in the Trump administration. “Obviously, Elon’s played a critical role leading up to the 2024 election, just even preparing for the transition of this administration,” lawyer Chris Gober told The Daily Signal. “My expectation is he will continue to play a critical role moving forward.” Gober is a partner and CEO of Lex Politica, the law firm that represents Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and other key figures involved in the legal and political process of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency. Gober sat down with The Daily Signal for his first interview since revamping Lex Politica.

Musk has the legal authority to remain at DOGE after his term as a special government employee ends on May 30, said Nicole Kelly, Lex Politica senior counsel. “The question is not whether Elon Musk will stay at DOGE, but whether he has the legal authority to do so after May 30,” Kelly told The Daily Signal. “The answer is yes. But regardless of whether he stays involved or not, I believe his relentless drive to reform the federal government will endure, inspiring current and future administration employees to carry forward DOGE’s mission with unwavering dedication.” Musk has said he would spend “a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so, as long as it is useful.” Despite criticism from the Left, DOGE is constitutional because President Donald Trump has the authority to appoint staff to implement his agenda, said Lex Politica partner and political law co-chair Steve Roberts.

“Creating temporary entities and positions is a common practice for presidents,” Roberts told The Daily Signal. “President Trump’s historic win last November created a mandate, and DOGE was created in response to the American voters wanting to cut the regulatory state. The constant media attacks just show how successful of an ongoing effort it is.” The media have failed to report on the waste being exposed by DOGE because it doesn’t fit the narrative that the majority of Americans support creating efficiency, Gober said. “It is what the people want. It’s what the people are going to get,” he said. “And I think that even long after, even if Elon leaves, I think what you’re going to see is what we’ve changed—the spirit of our desire to create and a more efficient government to go detect the waste and actually just make some changes in Washington.”

Musk’s involvement with DOGE was critical to “set the tone,” Gober said. Stories have circulated about Musk sleeping on the floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “He leads by example, so long after he’s gone, I think that’s the tone that will continue to persist,” Gober said. “I think it’s absolutely critical we have that kind of urgency within our own federal government of the people working there. That is important that he did that, and I think it will prove important long after he is gone.” The left-wing media don’t recognize Musk’s desire “to fundamentally change the country and how important that is to him.” “I know there’s a lot of people who want to be detractors,” Gober said. “I want to challenge them because they don’t agree with what he’s doing. But I think the one thing you just have to recognize is the patriotism that he exhibits. And I think it’s something to be admired whether you agree with him or not, that he is doing this for the right reason, and that is the care of this country.”

Trump has changed politics, and the movement he created won’t end in 2028, Gober said. “There’s going to be effects of how we do business and how politics is run, and with that law firms, corporate America, all the industries, they need to also catch up to that and evolve,” he said. Lex Politica, which represents conservative political action committees, members of Congress, governors, and state attorneys general across the country, is a law firm “built for the moment,” according to Gober. He said traditional big law firms are becoming obsolete due to their efforts to silence conservative movements and voices. “They can hide behind conflicts in order to keep from offending the sensitivities of their own lawyers or their clients,” Gober said. “And I think that’s what we’re looking to build, is a law firm that’s unapologetic about who we represent, about what we do, and the victories we bring home for our clients.”

From thinking through the legal and strategic considerations of DOGE, to ensuring lobbying and legal compliance for campaigns, Lex Politica lawyers have been the go-to legal counsel on prominent issues, Roberts said. “While some firms dance around politics, we’re stepping in with a firm that says what it believes and can act in the best strategic and legal interests of our clients,” he said. “We’re here for clients who want to go on offense when needed, not just play defense.” As the Trump administration on Tuesday celebrates 100 days in office, the Lex Politica team is eager to continue serving its clients as they join the administration’s efforts to ensure America continues to thrive, said Jessica Furst Johnson, Lex Politica partner and political law co-chair. “Politicians are making bold moves to align with the current state of our country,” Johnson told The Daily Signal. “Lex Politica is equipped to walk alongside our clients and help them win, providing counsel to some of the most influential figures on matters big and small.”

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Slide

 

 

SPR

 

 

Robots

 

 

AI

 

 

RFK Elon
https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1917087700986781825

 

 

Dim sun
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1917031741979586959

 

 

Theo
https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1917248422614008118

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 142024
 


René Magritte Mysteries of the horizon (a.k.a. The Masterpiece) 1955

 

 

 

 

 

West Has Declared ‘War Without Rules’ On Russia – Medvedev (RT)
Medvedev Urges To Turn Life In West Into ‘Permanent Nightmare’ (TASS)
Use of F-16s On Russian Territory ‘Not Escalation’ – NATO Chief (RT)
Biden, Zelensky To Sign 10-Year ‘Arm & Train’ Defense Deal at G7 (ZH)
Biden Needs More Bloodshed In Europe To Stay In Power – Zakharova (TASS)
Do The New US Sanctions Mark Russia’s Final Divorce From The Dollar? (Johston)
Will Average Citizens Pay the Price for G7’s Theft of Russian Funds? (Miles)
EU Now at a Crossroads: Reform or Self-Destruction (Jay)
Macron’s Coalition Sees Him as Liability Ahead of Feared Snap Election (Sp.)
Fine, Penalty For Hungary: 1 Million A Day For Detaining Asylum Seekers (RTL)
Joe Biden Vows Not To Pardon Hunter (RT)
WaPo Makes Last Plea to Keep Laptop “Conspiracy Theory” Alive (Turley)
Musk Wants Ukrainian NGO Designated As Terrorist Group (RT)

 

 

 

 

Alex Tucker Elon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801444130796515593

 

 

 

 

AOC SCOTUS

 

 

RFK Trump

 

 

Massie Bragg

 

 

Hoax

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

“Moscow should “obliterate their energy infrastructure, industry, transport, banking and social services. Instil fear over an imminent collapse of all critical infrastructure..”

West Has Declared ‘War Without Rules’ On Russia – Medvedev (RT)

Moscow should use every opportunity to inflict “maximum damage” on Western nations that have declared a “war without rules” on Russia, former president Dmitry Medvedev has argued.Every weakness of the US and its allies should be exploited to undermine them and obstruct life for their citizens, the Russian official said on Thursday, reacting to the latest round of sanctions announced by Washington earlier this week. ”Are they afraid that we would transfer our arms to the enemies of the Western world? We should send every kind of weapon, except nuclear (for now)!” Medvedev wrote on social media. “Are they afraid of anarchy and crime waves in large cities? We should help disrupt their municipal authorities!”

Russia could trigger a war in space, wage a psychological warfare campaign against Western citizens so that they “tremble under blankets in their cozy homes” and unleash a tsunami of fake news “to turn their life into a never-ending nightmare, in which they cannot distinguish reality from the wildest fiction.” Moscow should “obliterate their energy infrastructure, industry, transport, banking and social services. Instil fear over an imminent collapse of all critical infrastructure,” according to Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council.

The latest round of American restrictions against Russian entities targets energy, metals and mining as well as the financial sector. Among other things, it has forced the Moscow Stock Exchange to suspend all trade in the US dollar and the euro. The package is one of the biggest since the Ukraine conflict escalated into open hostilities in February 2022, impacting over $100 million in trade between Russia and its foreign partners, according to estimate from the US Department of the Treasury. Medvedev claimed that a campaign of “maximum damage” as outlined in his post was preferable to simply ignoring the Western pressure, and urged Russian citizens to act accordingly.

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“We should try every day to do as much damage as possible to those countries that have imposed these restrictions..“

Medvedev Urges To Turn Life In West Into ‘Permanent Nightmare’ (TASS)

Russia should get biblical with its response to Western sanctions by turning life in the West into a “permanent nightmare” and inflicting maximum damage on unfriendly countries, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said. “We should try every day to do as much damage as possible to those countries that have imposed these restrictions on our country and all our citizens. Hit them where it hurts,” the official wrote on his Telegram channel. “Do damage everywhere, paralyze the operation of their companies and government agencies. Find vulnerabilities in their critical technologies and attack them mercilessly. Literally destroy their energy, industry, transportation, banking and social services,” he said. “Let’s turn their lives into an ongoing permanent nightmare,” Medvedev concluded, referencing the Old Testament principle of “an eye for an eye.”

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Says who?

Use of F-16s On Russian Territory ‘Not Escalation’ – NATO Chief (RT)

Ukrainian strikes anywhere inside Russia using Western-donated F-16 aircraft would not be an escalation of the conflict and would not make NATO member states parties to it, according to the military bloc’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. He was asked on Thursday whether restrictions should be imposed on how Kiev can use the US-designed fighter jets. Several European nations intend to provide dozens of the warplanes once Ukraine has pilots and ground infrastructure to fly them. Speaking ahead of a NATO defense ministers’ gathering in Brussels, Stoltenberg said “different allies have different types of restrictions on the use of their weapons,” and welcomed the recent relaxation of these rules by some member states.

Washington reportedly gave Kiev the green light to fire American weapons at targets outside of what the two nations consider Ukrainian territory, allowing strikes inside Russia’s Belgorod Region as part of the fight for the neighboring Kharkov Region. Some other Western nations have also said their weapons can be used in similar ways. Ukraine has the right to defend itself, and this includes “striking legitimate military targets” on the territory of Russia, Stoltenberg declared. “Self-defense is not escalation,” he added. “And we have the right to help Ukraine,” he continued. “By doing that, NATO allies don’t become party to the conflict.” Moscow perceives the entire conflict as part of a US-initiated proxy war against Russia. It considers NATO’s increasing military presence in Ukraine and its intention to eventually bring the nation into the fold as major national security risks.

NATO member states arming Ukraine, providing “mercenaries” to bolster its troops, and helping Kiev to plan and deliver attacks against Russia are de facto participants in the hostilities, senior Russian officials have claimed. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that any attacks using Western weapons deep inside Russia will be retaliated against. Moscow could supply long-range weapons from its own arsenal to third parties, who would then use them against Western military assets, he suggested. Such tit-for-tat escalation could lead to a major disaster for all parties involved, Putin has warned.Andrey Kartapolov, the chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, said last week that Moscow would consider any bases used by Kiev to fly donated F-16s as legitimate military targets regardless of what country they are located in.

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“..given the pledge is an “executive agreement” and not a formal treaty, it can be undone by future American administrations..”

Biden, Zelensky To Sign 10-Year ‘Arm & Train’ Defense Deal at G7 (ZH)

As they meet on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Italy, President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are planning to sign a deal for long-term US military assistance for Ukraine. The deal commits Washington to ten years of arming and training the Ukrainian military, and which bolsters the military-industrial complex toward producing more of its own needs for the nation’s armed forces. However, given the pledge is an “executive agreement” and not a formal treaty, it can be undone by future American administrations. CNN previewed of the expected soon to be announced deal, “The US-Ukraine agreement does not make a specific monetary pledge to support Ukraine’s defense, two of the sources familiar with the agreement said.”

“An annex in the agreement will lay out how the Biden administration plans to work with Congress on the implementation of the security commitments, one of the sources said, specifically the long-term funding that will be needed to support Ukraine’s defense,” the report added. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had further previewed Tuesday that the US “will continue to be right up front and clear” at the G7, and that Washington “will take bold steps to show Mr. Putin that time is not on his side and that he cannot outlast us, as we support Ukraine fight for freedom.”

While the big decade-long security pact will provide “consultations” for Kiev in the event of another future Russian attack on Ukraine, there’s nothing in it that legally binds the United States to direct intervention in its behalf in the future. Despite the continued talk out of Brussels of future Ukrainian membership in NATO, European powers continue to line up their own separate defense pacts with Ukraine. NATO still wants to “Trump-proof” its future commitments to Ukraine… “The pledge the US and Ukraine are expected to sign will be similar to the 14 other bilateral agreements Ukraine has already reached with other allies, including the UK, France and Germany,” CNN writes. “The US-Ukraine agreement will be the 15th such deal signed, one of the sources said, and 17 other countries have committed to negotiating similar bilateral security pacts with Ukraine,” the report underscores.

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“..arms supplies to Kiev will become obligatory for all NATO member states and will be coordinated by US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli..”

Biden Needs More Bloodshed In Europe To Stay In Power – Zakharova (TASS)

The administration of US President Joe Biden needs “to make Europe bleed even harder” to remain in power, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, wrote on her Telegram channel.”Do European Union countries realize that Washington is embroiling them into a direct confrontation with Russia under the NATO flag?” she wrote, commenting on NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s plans to make arms supplies to Kiev obligatory for all NATO members. “The West is hysterically feeding its public with claims of Russia’s alleged imminent aggression against Western countries, and it means only one thing – the Biden administration needs to make Europe bleed even harder to prevent the collapse of its own government and of the US economy.” Earlier, Stoltenberg said that arms supplies to Kiev will become obligatory for all NATO member states and will be coordinated by US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

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“..once a Russian entity falls under US sanctions it is seen as radioactive elsewhere and other institutions steer clear..”

Do The New US Sanctions Mark Russia’s Final Divorce From The Dollar? (Johston)

The endless parade of Western sanctions on Russia barely makes the news anymore. But this week the US Treasury did manage to conjure up something that has generated attention. In what may be the most ambitious package since the initial wave back in February 2022, the American authorities greatly increased the scope for applying secondary penalties on foreign financial institutions found working with restricted Russian entities, and placed the Moscow Exchange and its clearing house under blocking sanctions, among other measures. The exchange subsequently announced that it was suspending all settlements in dollars and euros. It’s the latter that is the most interesting and has elicited the most chatter. But, before pursuing this train of thought, let’s dig into the nitty-gritty a little bit and sort out what is actually going to happen to currency trading in Russia.

To trade currencies on the Moscow Exchange, banks and other players send ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ bids to the exchange throughout the day. These buyers and sellers do not trade with each other directly but rather though the exchange’s clearing house, the National Settlement Center (NSC). In the evening, these trades would be settled by the clearing center, which had correspondent accounts in foreign banks for each currency. In other words, currency trading on the exchange involved the participation of foreign banks. It was not an enclosed system such as trading in Russian stocks (where the shares of Russian companies are bought and sold in rubles by investors without the involvement of any foreign entity). It is exactly this ability to clear currency trades that has been taken away by the new sanctions. American correspondent banks will now be barred from carrying out settlements with the NSC. From a technical standpoint, it is actually the sanctions against the NSC – rather than the exchange itself – that are most sensitive.

The Russian central bank has stated that currency trading will henceforth take place over-the-counter (OTC), meaning in decentralized fashion. But what is important to understand is that this is hardly a radical move – currency markets across the globe are conducted OTC, so this will in a sense merely bring Russia in line with standard practice. Russia was unusual in that currency trading primarily took place on a centralized exchange, whereas generally currencies are traded through a decentralized network of banks, a system much more flexible than relying on an exchange. The New York Stock Exchange, for example, does not host currency trading. Moving to OTC doesn’t mean that currency trading in Russia is going to resemble every other currency market. But it does provide a bit of a context to understand that this shift itself isn’t particularly radical. In fact, Russia is already essentially halfway there. According to the latest report from the Bank of Russia, 58% of currency trading in the country takes place off-exchange.

The central bank will use as its official rate some sort of average based on information obtained each day from banks. The new arrangement will almost certainly be a bit messy, especially at first: spreads will be wider, liquidity lower, transparency reduced, and price discovery in general harder. Transactional costs will be higher, a sensitive point for importers, for example. The market will be more prone to manipulation, and some analysts have posited that different exchange rates could emerge: an official central bank rate, the rates offered by various banks and a black-market, ‘street’ rate. However, on Thursday the Bank of Russia provided assurances that the exchange rate would remain market-driven and unified.

What exactly will happen to the ruble exchange rate remains to be seen, but there are strong grounds to believe that it will not move significantly from current levels. After all, the fundamental supply-demand structure of the market will not change in any dramatic way. The ruble’s exchange rate is determined by supply and demand from foreign trade and not on which platform trading takes place. Early indications are the market will largely shrug off the closure of dollar and euro exchange trading. There is another important angle to consider here. Formally, only American correspondent banks have been barred from working with the NSC. But experience has shown that once a Russian entity falls under US sanctions it is seen as radioactive elsewhere and other institutions steer clear. The increasingly bellicose rhetoric about secondary sanctions emanating from Washington will surely only exacerbate this tendency.

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“[Dedollarization] means the demise of American power, because American power is based on the ability to pay bills by printing money..”

Will Average Citizens Pay the Price for G7’s Theft of Russian Funds? (Miles)

News of the development emerged Thursday, although the group of Western economies has yet to formally approve the action. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni confirmed the reports, drawing a distinction between the expropriation of earned interest and the outright seizure of Russian savings held in European banks. “We are certainly not talking about confiscating these assets,” Meloni claimed at the G7 meeting in Fasano. But the move is nonetheless highly controversial in the precedent it sets, claims analyst Dr. George Szamuely, and may be seen as a prelude to the wholesale theft of the funds. The analyst at the London-based Global Policy Institute joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program on Thursday to discuss how the development will harm financially strained Western citizens. “It doesn’t in any way conform to international law,” said Szamuely of the G7’s plan, “and let’s keep in mind this has never been done before.”

“It is customary to freeze accounts of your adversaries during wartime,” the author continued. “It is not customary to then help yourself to that money and put it to whatever uses you want and, in this case, the uses it’s being put to are for Ukraine to buy weapons in order to kill Russians. So Russian money is being used to kill Russians. That is just so beyond outrageous.” The majority of frozen Russian assets at play are held in European banks, noted Szamuely. Leaders across the continent have urged restraint as plans involving Russian funds have been discussed in recent months, fearing repercussions and reputational damage to European financial institutions. Yet, in a striking demonstration of the United States’ power over its NATO allies, Washington eventually prevailed and forced through the plan. The move carries significant risks in its weaponization of the Western financial system, with observers claiming the confiscation will likely convince global financial interests to further decouple out of fear of the safety of their own assets.

“China has a lot of American assets and European assets, and assets around the world,” noted host Angie Wong. “That could be seized at any moment. And the same treatment could be made of them if they don’t play the way the G7 wants them to play.” “Isn’t this going to backfire on the US and some of the G7 leaders?” Wong asked. “Because ultimately that just means you’re not going to get the foreign investments from Russia or China, maybe Saudi Arabia, whoever their next target is going to be.” “I would’ve thought so and I would’ve thought that it would elevate pressure on China, Russia, India, and other countries to set up their own alternative financial systems,” said Szamuely, referring to efforts that are already under way within the BRICS economic bloc.

But the consequences of the loss of dollar hegemony could prove even more disastrous. Observers point out that the trend is already well underway with Russia, China, India and other countries increasingly inking deals to pursue trade denominated in their own currencies. The BRICS bloc has also investigated the possibility of creating its own currency. The dollar’s role as the de facto global reserve currency is so crucial that it has helped drive US foreign policy, with analysts claiming Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s plans to create a gold-backed African currency provided impetus for his Western-backed overthrow.

“[Dedollarization] means the demise of American power, because American power is based on the ability to pay bills by printing money,” noted US economist Paul Craig Roberts. “That would mean a massive US inflation. It’d be a kind of inflation that results from currency collapse. There’s nothing monetary authorities can do about that. Those kinds of inflations are the real inflations, the real deadly ones.”

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“..Ursula von der Leyen represents the old guard and everything which is wrong with the EU: deluded, outdated views run by elitists who believe the only solution to the EU’s power problem is to take more..”

EU Now at a Crossroads: Reform or Self-Destruction (Jay)

Ursula von der Leyen represents the old guard and everything which is wrong with the EU: deluded, outdated views run by elitists who believe the only solution to the EU’s power problem is to take more

The EU has just experienced a monumental change, following years of failed immigration policies, which has ushered in a massive number of far-right MEPs in the more powerful EU member states. It’s too early to say whether this will make too much of a change to policy decisions at the highest echelons of the European Union but certainly the European Parliament itself is, possibly for the first time ever, going to be an interesting place with now a quarter of all of the 720 MEPs coming from far-right groups. Traditionally most people who voted in EU elections were stalwart supporters of the project and the ethos of one Europe united by a policy of free movement of goods, services and people and, for many, a single currency. The few who voted against the mainstream parties – the main bloc made up of Christian democrats and socialists – were those who wanted to use their vote as a throw-away gesture to send a signal to their own elites that they want change. That protest vote in the past was always very small as the EU elite in Brussels always benefited from a voting system which was tilted in their favour. But no more.

The European Parliament, which most sceptics considered to be a fake assembly whose only real role is to rubber stamp draft legislation from either the powerful European Commission or member states (via the European Council), could now become suddenly relevant to the whole project. For the last five years, there has only been two Irish MEPs to take the floor and tackle the European Commission head on, on its genocide in Gaza or its phoney war in Ukraine. But now something like 180 MEPs will use their two minutes speaking time to tackle the commission on its failed foreign policy, immigration and trade deals with China, for example. The Ukraine war could be a central theme which will probably be a thorn in the side of the European Commission and its chief – whoever that might be as, despite supporting statements from the Christian Democratic group in the European parliament, it is not a certainty that Ursula von der Leyen will return as Commission chief.

If she succeeds and stays on as EU Commission president, she will have a tough time in parliamentary plenary sessions as Europe’s biggest countries – who pay the most into the EU budget – have picked up the most far-right seats. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National scored the most decisive victory, winning 30 of the country’s 81 seats, and more than double the votes of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renew party. That political slaughter pushed Macron to call a snap election. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy won 24 seats and increased her share of the national vote, and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second in Germany and snapped up 15 seats. Presently the AfD doesn’t have a pan-European group to align itself to and, under EU rules, benefit from huge amounts of cash from the EU parliament as it was kicked out of one of the two ‘groups’, prompting fears that it will create one itself and invite others to join it.

In the European parliament both France’s and Italy’s far-right MEPs are in different groups, but in reality, when it comes to voting, for sure there will be a unified policy on most issues which will give them leverage with the European Commission that we have never seen in the short history of the EU. It’s important to note that far-right parties topped the polls in Austria and Hungary, too, with important gains in Spain and Cyprus. All of these countries have one thing in common: real immigration problems which neither the mainstream political groups nor the EU has addressed. But the real issue is the identity and survival of the European Union itself as this shake-up is certainly going to threaten the traditional power structure.. Unlike President Macron who wisely stated to the press that the far-right votes were a message which he is listening to, von der Leyen’s statements were more about fighting the new threat.

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“You won’t see Macron’s face on my campaign posters, I can tell you that..”

Macron’s Coalition Sees Him as Liability Ahead of Feared Snap Election (Sp.)

French President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition fears that he could drag it down in the polls ahead of the snap legislative election that is itself seen as a disaster in the making, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing lawmakers and party staffers. Macron’s five-party Besoin d’Europe coalition was dealt a staggering blow in the European Parliament elections last week where it won 14.6% of the vote, against the far-right National Rally’s 31.37%. Macron called a snap parliamentary vote in the hope of wresting the initiative back from the right, but his party and coalition members now fear they will be the ones to pay for this mistake. “We are being thrown under the bus for a mistake that belongs to him,” an adviser in Macron’s own Renaissance party told the Politico online newspaper on condition of anonymity. “The more he talks, the more we lose points,” another adviser to a member of the French parliament from Macron’s party said.

Heavyweights in Macron’s coalition have been reportedly urging the president to take a step away from the campaign trail to give them a fighting chance of winning. Francois Bayrou, Macron’s key ally and leader of the Renaissance-allied Modem party, came to the presidential palace on Monday to tell Macron that he “mustn’t get too involved in the campaign,” the news site quoted a centrist lawmaker as saying. Other coalition lawmakers have been reportedly distancing themselves from Macron as they gear up for the first round of the legislative polls, due June 30 “You won’t see Macron’s face on my campaign posters, I can tell you that,” a member of parliament from the president’s coalition told Politico. An official with Macron’s Renaissance parliamentary group accused the 46-year-old of being oblivious to France’s “anti-president” mood.

The news outlet said that polls show that Macron is being perceived as aloof and out of touch. An Elysee staffer was quoted as saying that Macron was so “intoxicated by his own presence” during D-Day celebrations last week that the results of the European elections “hit him hard.” Despite calls from his friends and allies, Macron plans to get heavily involved in the campaign, which his coalition partners reportedly see as a huge risk. He is said to be planning to saturate the media with three appearances per week, starting with a major speech on Wednesday.

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Google translate from Dutch.

Fine, Penalty For Hungary: 1 Million A Day For Detaining Asylum Seekers (RTL)

Hungary must pay a high fine and a penalty because the EU country continues to lock up asylum seekers, in violation of European rules. The country is ‘deliberately’ evading the right to asylum and that is an ‘unprecedented and extremely serious violation’ of European legislation, the European Court of Justice ruled. The court ruled three and a half years ago that Hungary, which has been pursuing a very strict migration policy for years, is not adhering to the rules. For example, the country does not give rejected asylum seekers the time to await an appeal against their rejection in Hungary. The government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has not adjusted that policy, the highest European court confirmed after a complaint from the European Commission.

Hungary must therefore pay a fine of 200 million euros. For every day that the government in Budapest continues with the contested policy, it must pay an additional penalty of 1 million. Such a high penalty is rarely imposed by the European Court of Justice. Poland was punished with a penalty of half a million euros three years ago. When that country refused to pay, the European Commission withheld the amount from EU subsidies for Poland.

Hungary is shifting its responsibility to the other EU member states, the court in Luxembourg ruled. “Including its financial responsibility.” The country is ‘seriously undermining the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility.’ Hungary has improved its life on one point after the 2020 verdict. The detention camps on the border with Serbia where the country locked up asylum seekers have been dismantled. Orbán finds the fine and penalty payment ‘scandalous and unacceptable’. Hungary is only defending the borders of the European Union, he says on X. “It seems that illegal migrants are more important to Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens.”

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Sacrificing Hunter to claim the system works for Trump, too?!

Joe Biden Vows Not To Pardon Hunter (RT)

US President Joe Biden has promised not to pardon his troubled son Hunter Biden, who was recently found guilty of violating federal gun laws. A Delaware jury announced their verdict on Tuesday, several months before the 2024 presidential election where Joe Biden will face former President Donald Trump. “I am satisfied that I’m not going to do anything – I said I’d abide by the jury’s decision. I will do that. And I will not pardon him,” Biden said at a news conference during a G7 meeting in southern Italy. Asked by reporters whether he would commute his son’s sentence, he replied, “No.” The president reaffirmed his support for his son. “I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is one of the brightest, the most decent men I know,” he said.

According to the prosecution, Hunter Biden violated gun laws by failing to disclose his addiction to crack cocaine when he bought a revolver in 2018. Hunter Biden has admitted to struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. His defense team, however, argued that he did not consider himself an addict at the time of purchasing the weapon. Hunter Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000, according to CNN. The sentencing date has not been set yet. Last year, the prosecution attempted to reach a plea deal with the younger Biden. The potential deal fell apart, however, after it was criticized by the judge. Republicans and conservative figures have accused Hunter Biden of corruption and influence peddling on his father’s behalf. The Bidens have denied any wrongdoing.

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“We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”

WaPo Makes Last Plea to Keep Laptop “Conspiracy Theory” Alive (Turley)

Across the media, journalists have recognized that the Hunter Biden laptop is authentic and, as established early by American intelligence agencies, not “Russian disinformation.” With the authentication of the laptop in the Delaware trial as “real” and untampered, most media has chosen to walk away with a slightly embarrassed shrug. Not the Washington Post. Its columnist, Philip Bump, was one of the most prominent purveyors of what the U.S. government now calls a “conspiracy theory.” This week, Bump ran another column to assure liberals that they were right all along about the laptop story.In 2021, when media organizations were finally admitting that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bump continued to suggest that “the laptop was seeded by Russian intelligence.”

After Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims, I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, including the laptop conspiracy theory. The Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including the laptop conspiracy theory. That was in August 2023. Well, Bump is back. In his column, Bump takes after various people calling the media to account for burying this story before and after the election, including myself. In hitting Sean Hannity for a recent segment, Bump makes a common evasion among laptop deniers: “One is that he is conflating the laptop presented as evidence at the trial, the one obtained by the FBI in 2019, with the ‘laptop’ that was the source of the New York Post story.” For those of us who have covered the laptop since the story ran at the New York Post, it is as maddening as it is mendacious.

At the time of the story, some of us noted that the contents of the laptop could be confirmed since these emails and messages involved third parties. Some quickly confirmed the contents as authentic. The Bidens had long been accused of influence peddling and special dealing off of Joe Biden’s positions as senator, vice president, and president. Moreover, as the media was referencing the debunked letter of former intelligence officials on this possible likely Russian disinformation, American intelligence quickly confirmed that there was no such evidence to support that claim.The media ignored the actual intelligence agencies in favor of former intelligence officials who were organized by Biden campaign operatives to release the letter. Biden then cited the letter to refuse to answer questions about his son’s influence peddling and unlawful conduct.

Bump and others used the question over whether the laptop was an authentic copy or a tampered copy to avoid any serious investigation into the underlying emails. Many simply threw up their hands and said “oh well, what can we do.” To this day, the media has shown little interest in the influence peddling operation. Few people seriously argue that the media would have shown the same limited response if these emails tied Trump children to millions in foreign influence peddling schemes. But Bump was not done: “After Hannity lamented the media’s silence on the so-called “critical development,” Turley offered a theory for why that silence had ensued.‘If the laptop is authentic, if those files are real,’ he said, “then you have these detailed accounts of a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling operation run by the Biden family. Those would also be authentic. But the media just simply doesn’t want to go there.’ Except that we already know that many of those files were real, because we got access to them and verified them.

The reason the media ‘doesn’t want to go there’ on breathless claims about a ‘Biden family’ influence-peddling operation is that the material doesn’t prove any such operation. It shows — as has by now been exhaustively explained — work done by Hunter Biden and his Uncle James that involved lots of money but did not demonstrably involve President Biden. The entire point of the House Republican impeachment effort has been to prove Joe Biden’s involvement; they have been unable to do so.” Once again, Bump makes it sound like the Post vigorously and quickly verified the laptop. The belated acknowledgement did not come much later. It was not until March 2022 that the Post finally admitted that the laptop was real, but then did comparably little to pursue the corruption and other unlawful conduct detailed on the laptop.Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid probably was the most honest when he wrote the quiet part out loud by telling the media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”

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“..a supposed “ecosystem” of citizens and organizations in the US, whose narratives “echo key messages of Russian propaganda..”

Musk Wants Ukrainian NGO Designated As Terrorist Group (RT)

A Ukrainian NGO has compiled a database of influential American citizens, who it claims hold positions that ‘mirror’ those of Moscow. One of the blacklisted individuals is billionaire Elon Musk, who has called for the organization to be designated as a terrorist group. The NGO, Texty.org.ua, produced a lengthy report last week, which detailed a supposed “ecosystem” of citizens and organizations in the US, whose narratives “echo key messages of Russian propaganda” regarding the Ukraine conflict. On Wednesday, Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee added a provision to the markup of the State Department’s 2025 budget that bans Texty from receiving US funding. “It’s a good first step. They should be added to the list of sanctioned terrorist organizations,” Musk said on X (formerly Twitter) in reaction to the news.

The prohibition was championed by Representative Jim Banks, who was also targeted by the Ukrainian NGO. He told fellow Republicans that “federal bureaucrats should not support or partner with foreign groups that attempt to intimidate and silence US citizens and lawmakers.” His message alluded to a link between the department and Anatoly Bondarenko, a co-founder of Texty. He is also an instructor for the ‘TechCamp’ program, which provides training to foreign journalists, NGOs, and activists, according to the Conservative Thinker. The group has said its report was a piece of “data journalism,” and described itself as the victim of “an attack on freedom of speech and a display of chauvinism against the citizens of Ukraine. “Our critics believe that we do not have the right to investigate the streams of false information they produce about our country and us, simply because they are US citizens and we are not,” it claimed.

The original report described people on its list as “forces in the US impeding aid to Ukraine,” ranging “from Trumpists to Communists.” Highlighted in the report was the renowned anti-war group CODEPINK, organizations funded by billionaire Charles Koch, popular conservative speaker Jordan Peterson, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Texty targeted Musk for supposedly allowing “Russian propaganda” on X, which he owns, and sharing with his followers a “highly skeptical view of the United States’ financial support for Ukraine.” Meanwhile, businessman Peter Thiel was accused of investing in Rumble, a free speech video sharing website. Unlike major platforms operated by US tech giants, it allows RT content. The report acknowledged that both entrepreneurs had contributed to Kiev’s war effort against Russia via Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system and Thiel’s Palantir big-data analysis platform, but placed them on its blacklist nevertheless.

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Bhakdi

 

 

Hancock

 

 

Duckcat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801293466665947209

 

 

Ice puppy

 

 

Dog touch

 

 

Tooth
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801305532407353827

 

 

 

 

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May 112024
 


Vincent van Gogh Daubigny’s garden 1890

 

Scott Ritter Predicts How Ukraine Will End (Sp.)
Biden Weaponizing FBI and DOJ Against Americans – Tara Reade (RT)
Missouri AG Accuses Biden DOJ Of Coordinating With Trump Prosecutors (ZH)
Boxing Promoter Don King Endorses Trump for President (ET)
Hillary Clinton Denounces Trump for Doing What She Did in 2016 (Turley)
Ukraine A ‘Corrupt S**Thole’ – Ex-Boris Johnson Adviser (RT)
Tucker Carlson Interviews Catherine Englebrecht About Illegal Alien Voting (CTH)
Biden Faces Impeachment Over Israel Weapons Suspension (RT)
Russia Fighting ‘Reincarnation Of Fascism’ – Medvedev (RT)
Carnival Rides (Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

tesla frens

 

 

Lambo vs Cyber

 

 

Rob Roos

 

 

Mass

 

 

 

 

“..and they can’t become directly involved because that is a suicide pill.”

Scott Ritter Predicts How Ukraine Will End (Sp.)

On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Russia liberated Novokalinovo in the Donetsk People’s Republic and Kiselevka and Kotlyarovka in the Kharkov region, the latest in a string of villages to fall, this rapid deterioration of the frontline was the result of the consistent work of Russian forces to grind the Ukrainians down until they had no reserves to stabilize the front line. “As we speak, the attritional warfare model has Ukraine losing around 1,500 troops a day. This number is going up now because Russia’s expanded its operations into the Kharkov region. So, you can expect this number [to] easily top 2,000 a day,” Ritter told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Friday.

“What the Ukrainians have had to do is pull in reserves and take forces out from other fronts, including the Kharkov front and the Odessa front, to come into the battlefield where they’ve been eliminated, or they’ve been worn down and there are no replacements…what’s going to happen is Ukraine will be compelled to withdraw reserves from the Kiev region and from Odessa, to go to Kharkov to fill that gap. While they do that, the Russians will then launch a second major attack somewhere in the Zaporozhye area, and Ukrainians are going to be put to the classic horns of a dilemma where if they go north they lose, they go south they lose, if they stay in the middle they lose – there’s no good option for them,” Ritter explained, adding that we will then see “the total collapse of the Ukrainian army” and the “rapid withdrawal beyond the Dnepr River” to set up a new defense line, something he does not think the Ukrainians will be able to accomplish.

Eventually, Ritter predicts, “Ukrainian generals faced with the inevitable slaughter of the totality of their force will sue for peace.” Noting that he was told by his sources back in January to expect “dramatic alterations” to the battlefield map in May, Ritter predicts that Russia will capture significant territory in Kharkov and the Donbass this month, with Ukraine’s eventual capitulation a few months later. “They say that the Ukrainian capacity to continue cohesive resistance will collapse this summer – that’s the Russian assessment and I agree with it,” Ritter said, noting that Russia’s operations aren’t driven by “calendars” and have already allocated the resources to continue the conflict until 2027 if necessary. The decision of what happens to Ukraine now rests solely in the hands of Russia, Ritter argued, noting that they had “very favorable terms on the table” in March and April 2022.

“Nobody has a say in this but Russia, and Russia has made that very clear… this is a decisive defeat of NATO, the European Union and the United States. It’s as decisive as you can get without them being directly involved and they can’t become directly involved because that is a suicide pill.” Ritter added that the military aid package recently signed into law by US President Joe Biden has had “zero impact” on the battlefield. “What we’ve seen, for instance, the desperately needed 155-millimeter artillery shells were brought in from Romania on a ship, offloaded in Odessa into a warehouse and struck by two Iskander missiles. Boom, there goes a couple of billion dollars right there.”

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“..the Capitol riot participants were persecuted in a similar way, with the Biden administration “using intelligence to go after Americans.”

Biden Weaponizing FBI and DOJ Against Americans – Tara Reade (RT)

The run-up to the US election is exposing President Joe Biden’s scandals to the public eye, including his family’s alleged money laundering schemes in Ukraine, RT contributor and former US Senate aide Tara Reade has said. She accused the Biden administration of weaponizing government institutions to silence Americans like her and the 2021 Capitol riot participants. In the wake of her 23-minute interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, which aired on Thursday, Reade told RT she hopes her example will motivate others to come forward and tell their stories. “I’ve been contacted a couple of times in the past by women who wanted to come forward, but because of what happened to me, were too frightened,” she said.

Although Reade’s claim that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 did not surface until the 2020 election campaign, she said she had logged a report with the Senate right after the purported incident, and was still trying to get the report files unsealed. “The election year is just bringing it to light, because I think there’s other corruption that needs to come to light about Biden, particularly the misconduct he’s done around Ukraine, and the money laundering and the other activities that he and his family had been enriched by, in this proxy war that the US and NATO are fighting against Russia via Ukraine,” Reade explained. She added that while “people in America and other NATO countries are seeing the corruption,” the leaders of those states are “unfortunately still benefiting.”

After sharing details of the alleged assault, Reade described “weaponization of the government coming after me, that was quite frightening, and coming after my family.” She suggested that the Carlson interview shows the public is becoming more aware of this. “People are seeing the political weaponization of the DOJ (Department of Justice) and FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) against American citizens and other citizens,” she claimed, arguing that the Capitol riot participants were persecuted in a similar way, with the Biden administration “using intelligence to go after Americans.”

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It’s a campaign run from the White House.

Missouri AG Accuses Biden DOJ Of Coordinating With Trump Prosecutors (ZH)

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Thursday as part of a probe into whether the Biden DOJ coordinated with Trump prosecutors. “The investigations and subsequent prosecutions of former President Donald J. Trump appear to have been conducted in coordination with the United States Department of Justice,” Baily posted in a lengthy thread on X. “This is demonstrated by the move of the third-highest ranking member of the Department of Justice, Matthew Colangelo, to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in order to prosecute President Trump in December 2022,” Baily continues. What’s more, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg worked hand-in-hand with NY Attorney General Letitia James in pursuing civil litigation against Trump, which he used to campaign on.

As Fox News reports further; Bailey argues that Bragg’s decision to bring the prosecution “despite its transparent weakness has nonetheless had the effect of keeping former President Trump off the campaign trail, which President Biden has bragged about.” He cites a post on X from the official Biden-Harris campaign on April 24, which says, “While Trump is stuck in court, President Biden is keeping a very robust schedule of campaign events. He’s been to Pennsylvania to talk about the economy, Virginia to talk about clean energy, and Florida to talk about abortion.” Baily is seeking all communications, including documents, calendar appointments, meeting minutes and agendas related to Colangelo’s move to work in Bragg’s office – as well as similar communications between Bragg and NY AG Leticia James and Fulton County DA Fani Willis.

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“..the most resilient human being I’ve ever met.” “They’re trying to attack him. They’re trying to ruin him—unfazed,” the UFC president said. “He will walk through fire.”

Boxing Promoter Don King Endorses Trump for President (ET)

Iconic boxing promoter Don King has endorsed former President Donald Trump for president in the 2024 election. The 92-year-old made the remarks on May 8 on the sidelines of an event after being asked if he has a message for President Trump, who’s facing a bevy of court cases that threaten to derail his presidential campaign. “Get reelected,” Mr. King said. “And we must reelect him to save ourselves. You know, a vote for Trump is a vote for yourself. Because we’ve got to fight the system of lies and the creation of wrong being right and right being wrong. That’s got to be eliminated. He called President Trump “the only man who’s got the intestinal fortitude to be able to stand up and fight the system like it should be fought,” Mr. King said the former president “underestimated the power of this strong system of corruption and hypocrisy.”

While Mr. King didn’t elaborate on the “system of corruption and hypocrisy” that he had in mind, it could be a reference to the numerous legal battles that the former president is fighting that he and his supporters argue are thinly veiled attempts to use lawfare to derail his comeback bid. “I want to say to him, let’s [save] America, let’s save ourselves, and then we can help others to be safe,” Mr. King added. President Trump shared the video on his social media platform, Truth Social, thanking Mr. King for his endorsement and message of encouragement. Mr. King’s sympathies for the former president are well-established, with the boxing promoter being one of few celebrities who endorsed then-candidate Trump in the 2016 election.

Introducing then-candidate Trump at a church event in Ohio in 2016, Mr. King called him “courageous and brave” and said he believed the future president would fix the “corrupt” and “rigged” system and bring the country “back to inclusiveness.” In mid-2017, after President Trump had spent several months in office, Mr. King told Politico Magazine in an exclusive interview that he believed he was doing an “excellent job” while lamenting the fact that his presidency was being overshadowed by the so-called “Russian collusion” scandal, which later turned out to be a hoax. At the time, Mr. King told Politico that he believed President Trump was constantly in the crosshairs of the Washington establishment, saying that they would try to “keep him down” at almost any cost—even saying that he warned the president to be on guard for assassination attempts.

“If Trump were a boxer, who would he be?” the interviewer asked the legendary boxing promoter. “He’d be Muhammad Ali…because he’s going to win,” Mr. King replied. “He’s going to run his mouth, he’s going to talk a lot and he’s going to win.” Mr. White gave his endorsement in an appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast in April, calling President Trump “the most resilient human being I’ve ever met.” “They’re trying to attack him. They’re trying to ruin him—unfazed,” the UFC president said. “He will walk through fire.”

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“I gave up shame years ago.”

Hillary Clinton Denounces Trump for Doing What She Did in 2016 (Turley)

“I gave up shame years ago.” Those words from actor John Lithgow appear to have been taken to heart by Hillary Clinton who has severed any sense of self-awareness or shame in her public comments. Lithgow, who played Bill Clinton in Broadway production of Hillary and Clinton, appears to have inspired the subject of his play. In a recent interview, Hillary Clinton heralded the prosecution of former president Donald Trump in Manhattan as “election interference” by keeping “relevant information” from voters before an election. For those of us who criticized Clinton for the funding of the infamous Steele dossier, it was a perfectly otherworldly moment. In the interview, Clinton went after the Supreme Court for delaying a trial of Trump despite the push by Special Counsel Jack Smith for a verdict before the election. She then left many in disbelief with the following statement:

“And the one going on now currently in New York is really about election interference. It is about trying to prevent the people of our country from having relevant information that may have influenced how they could have voted in 2016 or whether they would have voted.” In the same election, it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that lied about funding the Steele dossier and then hiding the funding as a legal expense through then Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias. The Clinton campaign staff has never been known for transparency. Buried in the detailed account is a footnote stating that Elias “declined to be voluntarily interviewed by the Office.” Likewise, Durham noted that “no one at Fusion GPS … would agree to voluntarily speak with the Office” while both the DNC and Clinton campaign invoked privileges to refuse to answer certain questions.

Elias, his former partner Michael Sussmann, and the campaign were later found involved in not just spreading the false claims from the Steele dossier but other false stories like the Alfa Bank conspiracy claim. It was Elias who managed the legal budget for the campaign. We now know that the campaign hid the funding of the Steele dossier as a legal expense. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Elias was also seated next to John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, when he was asked about the role of the campaign, he denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Even assuming that Podesta was kept in the dark, the Durham Report clearly shows that Elias knew and played an active role in pushing this effort.

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“The lesson we’ve taught Putin is that we’re a bunch of total f**king jokers..”

Ukraine A ‘Corrupt S**Thole’ – Ex-Boris Johnson Adviser (RT)

The UK and its allies got tricked into backing a “corrupt mafia state” in Ukraine and getting into a war of attrition against a Moscow-Beijing partnership, Dominic Cummings has said in an interview. The longtime Tory political strategist led the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit and was one of the key aides to then-PM Boris Johnson until resigning in November 2020. “We should have never got into the whole stupid situation,” Cummings told the outlet I News in an interview published on Wednesday, commenting on London’s full-throated support for Kiev. He also described Ukraine as a “corrupt s**thole that doesn’t matter at all.” “This is not a replay of 1940 with the pumpkin [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky as the Churchillian underdog,” he added. “This whole Ukrainian corrupt mafia state has basically conned us all and we’re all going to get f**ked as a consequence.”

Western sanctions have been “more of a disaster” for the EU than for Russia, driving up the cost of living while pushing Moscow and Beijing closer together, according to Cummings. All the West managed to do is get into a war of attrition with Russia, “who we pushed into an alliance with the world’s biggest manufacturing power.” Cummings also addressed the argument that Russian President Vladimir Putin needed to be “taught a lesson” about invading neighbors. “The lesson we’ve taught Putin is that we’re a bunch of total f**king jokers,” he said. “I mean, Putin already knew that before the war. But this has emphasized it and broadcast it to the entire world, what a bunch of clowns we are,” he added. Between the sanctions regime and the US trying to seize frozen Russian assets, the West is encouraging the emergence of alternative global financial systems, he explained. That’s not teaching Putin any lesson, only that we’re idiots.

Cummings slammed Johnson – with whom he is no longer on speaking terms – for using the Ukraine conflict for “acting out his Churchillian fantasies,” as well as the Parliament, which “swallowed all of his total bulls**t on Ukraine and actually took it seriously.” Johnson was the key figure in getting Kiev to reject a peace deal with Russia in April 2022, according to the top Ukrainian negotiator, as well as Ukrainian media. The former PM denied his role in scuttling the talks, calling the account “total nonsense and Russian propaganda.” However, he confirmed that he told Zelensky the UK would back him “a thousand percent” and that any deal with Moscow would be bad.

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“The illegal alien doesn’t even need to complete the ballot, they only need to exist to generate one. Once the ballot is created, it can be filled out by anyone..”

Tucker Carlson Interviews Catherine Englebrecht About Illegal Alien Voting (CTH)

Catherine Englebrecht from True The Vote (TTV) has been working diligently in the sphere of trying to clean up voter registration rolls and ensure voter integrity for decades now. Englebrecht has faced constant targeting from agencies of the federal government and politicians who benefit from voter fraud, ballot fraud and illegal voting overall.In this interview with Tucker Carlson, Catherine Englebrecht explains the federal loophole that assists in permitting illegal alien votes. If the illegal alien believes they are lawfully permitted to vote, they are not prosecuted. As with everything else, the key to understanding how illegal aliens vote is to understand the process created by democrats. The main goal in the modern era is to generate ballots. In order to generate ballots, the secretaries of state need a name and identifier for the ballot creation. Registering their existence is where illegal alien voting starts.

Getting state IDs or a Driver’s License, links the identity to the Secretary of State office. That identity then creates a potential ballot. The ballot is the vehicle for the unlawful vote. The illegal alien doesn’t even need to complete the ballot, they only need to exist to generate one. Once the ballot is created, it can be filled out by anyone. Ballot harvesters are those who collect the ballots and then fill them out. Organizations like Black Lives Matter and various leftist political activist groups are the ballot harvesters. The harvesters are paid by organizations funded by large donors and leftist corporations.

The harvesters then turn the completed ballots over to the polling counters/workers. The polling counters/workers come from the African Methodist Episcopal church, the AME church network. Election and polling location work is the primary work of the AME church system. The members of the AME church then destroy ballots that are completed by people against their interests, while simultaneously scanning the fraudulent ballots multiple times. This is how the fraudulent ballot system works to overwhelm the accurate voting system.

It is not a complicated system; we are just not allowed to talk about it and we are supposed to pretend it is not happening. Catherine Englebrecht has been exposing this system for decades. However, in the era of Trump but both wings of the political uniparty apparatus have gone too far with the fraud to stop now. The popularity of President Trump forced the central ballot fraud operators to generate such a massive amount of fraudulent ballots that a BIG LIE cover -with major assistance from media- was needed to cover for it. Decades of intentionally built legal plausible deniability also stops the truth of the scale of fraud from surfacing.

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In theory.

Biden Faces Impeachment Over Israel Weapons Suspension (RT)

A Republican congressman has filed articles of impeachment against US President Joe Biden for withholding deliveries of weapons to Israel, making a point of using the exact same phrasing the Democrats had used to impeach President Donald Trump. Earlier this week, Biden told CNN that “we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells” to Israel if it proceeded with plans to attack Rafah City in south Gaza. Republicans quickly pointed out that Democrats had accused Trump of “abuse of power” for allegedly withholding congressionally approved military aid in 2019. “Joe Biden is pressuring Israel, our biggest ally in the Middle East, by pausing their funding that has already been approved in the House, if they don’t stop all operations with Hamas,” Representative Cory Mills of Florida told Fox News on Thursday, adding that it was a pretty clear case of “quid pro quo” and that he intended to impeach Biden for it.

On Friday, Mills made good on his threat, formally initiating the procedure in the US House of Representatives. “In violation of his oath to faithfully execute the office of the president and to uphold the Constitution, President Biden abused the powers of his office by soliciting a ‘quid pro quo’ with Israel while leveraging vital military aid for policy changes,” according to Mills. Democrats, who controlled the House of Representatives at the time, impeached Trump in a party-line vote after accusing him of abuse of power. They claimed Trump had threatened to delay a shipment of weapons to Ukraine unless Kiev investigated the firing of a prosecutor who was looking into a company that had hired Biden’s son Hunter. Biden had publicly boasted about getting the prosecutor fired, but as he was in the race for the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination, the party claimed this amounted to soliciting “election interference.”

The impeachment went nowhere because the Republican-majority Senate refused to convict Trump in February 2020. Republicans currently hold a slim majority in the House of Representatives, which has been largely ineffective at opposing the Democrats’ priorities. Even if Mills manages to get the House to impeach Biden, it is highly likely that he will be acquitted in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

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Is he wrong?

Russia Fighting ‘Reincarnation Of Fascism’ – Medvedev (RT)

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine is a step towards defeating fascism and Nazism once and for all, former president and head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has said. In an article marking the 79th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany, he wrote that fascism had been officially defeated in World War II but the West has allowed its ideological descendants to continue wreaking havoc by supporting the Kiev regime. “For many years, even the demonstration of Nazi symbols, not to mention other symbols and ideas of Hitlerism, was legally prohibited in most countries of the world,” he said. Now, however, he said Russia was being “forced to fight the reincarnation of fascism, its zombie spawn, which embodies the disgusting and cynical great-grandson of Hitlerism – the Nazi regime of Kiev.”

The US, EU and other Western states have firmly sided with Kiev in its conflict with Russia. Ukraine’s backers have spent billions on the war effort and have supplied it with ammunition and weaponry, while placing unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow. In the article, published on the official webpage of the Russian Security Council on Thursday, Medvedev slammed the “furious efforts to turn the world upside down, split and burn it in the conflagration of World War III.”Our former World War II allies enthusiastically feed, stuff with weapons and incite new Nazis, whose goal is to erase Russia from the map. According to Medvedev, Nazism won’t disappear on its own and therefore needs to be eradicated – this is what Russia sees as its “historical mission.” He noted, however, that Russia’s military operation and “the denazification” of Ukraine is only the first step towards building a new “architecture” of international relations, which would involve creating global instruments aiming to ensure the security and stable development of all states.

Together with our colleagues and partners, we are building a new, just and multipolar world order in which there can be no place for pressure and oppression, the rise of some nations at the expense of others, humiliation and exploitation of entire peoples, neocolonial habits and criminal business schemes. Medvedev said Russia’s victory over the Kiev regime would bring justice against both its nationalist leaders and their “owners, sponsors and ideological inspirers,” who are profiting from efforts to drag out the conflict. Similar sentiments had been voiced earlier on Thursday by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his address at the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, he accused the West of pursuing a colonial policy and inciting regional conflicts to restrain the development of non-Western nations. He vowed that Russia would do everything possible to prevent a global conflict, but warned that it would not allow anyone to threaten its own safety and sovereignty.

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“They plotted by the lights of the White House Christmas tree to go after the interloper with all they had..”

Carnival Rides (Kunstler)

The miasma of anxiety befogging so many brains in our troubled land begins to lift as every narrative served up by the US fascist intel blob goes annoyingly stale and impotent. The worst media meme — that a vicious officialdom is “defending our democracy” — gets laughed out of the room now when repeated incessantly by such shills as Jen Psaki and Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC. Everybody understands they want to “defend our democracy” by cancelling your freedom of speech, pounding you into bankruptcy, and stealing whatever remains of your stuff. Likewise, everything else, namely: that our doings in Ukraine are a “fight for freedom,” that “white supremacy” lurks just out of sight getting ready to pounce on the “marginized” (who are actually running things, and doing it very badly), that “Joe Biden” turned around the economy, that “voting rights” equals non-citizens getting to vote, that election fraud is a “big lie” (and that the J-6 riot over it was an “insurrection”), and that the Covid vaccines were “safe and effective.”

None of these dishonest persuasions work anymore, and all of the persuasion machinery stands in plain sight like so many nauseating carnival rides. One by one, the rides are flying apart, scattering debris and body parts of the poor slobs who were on the rides all over the fairgrounds. And so, the fear rises in the ones running the carnival. The county sheriff stands by looking to round up the sleazeball carnies with their missing teeth and needle tracks inside their elbows. Before long, they will find themselves in the courtroom. . . .The vicious officialdom put up the carnival and all of its rides to distract the public from the crimes they committed during and after the 2016 election. Donald Trump’s idle talk about putting Hillary Clinton in jail struck nerves throughout the federal bureaucracy, the halls of Congress, and the strongholds of the Clintons and the Obamas.

The Clintons had literally bought the Democratic Party apparatus under the DNC, using the money they grifted into the Clinton foundation from such operations as the Uranium One deal, the Skolkovo war-tech transfer deal, and the Haiti earthquake relief effort. They were sure that ownership of the DNC guaranteed the election for Hillary. It did guarantee that she would overcome Bernie Sanders’ primary election victories and the delegates that came with them, even after Julian Assange’s Wikileaks release informed the world just how the Clintons bought and paid for the DNC and the whole Philadelphia convention. Call this the birth of the “misinformation” cult, in which everything true was converted into a “big lie.”

The problem was, Hillary lost that election. What a surprise! Buying the convention was not enough, it turned out. Those “deplorables” did the unthinkable: cast enough of their stinky votes in just the right rust belt precincts to elect the Golden Golem of Greatness, who was as surprised as anybody, and really unprepared to cobble together an actual governing administration — in the process of which, Donald J. Trump was completely buffaloed by the outgoing Obama gang. They plotted by the lights of the White House Christmas tree to go after the interloper with all they had, starting with the surgical removal of a most dangerous appointee, National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, who knew all the secrets. . . and from there onto four years of Russia, Russia, Russia. . . .

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Bery best frens
https://twitter.com/i/status/1788903335351001384

 

 

Mommy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1788906678915575881

 

 

Chicken feed

 

 

Chicken wire

 

 

Lion cuddle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1789071704079102012

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 052024
 


Pablo Picasso The Rooster 1918

 

Supreme Court Rules 9-0 That Trump Cannot Be Kicked Off Any State Ballot (PM)
House Dems Implode Over Supreme Court Decision (ZH)
‘Uncommitted’ Voters Unite Against Biden Ahead of Super Tuesday (RT)
The Five FUBARs (Jim Kunstler)
‘Ukraine is Russia’ – Medvedev (RT)
Draft-Eligible Ukraine Men Flee ‘Certain Death’ (Sp.)
The Good Germans Are Blowing Smoke (Helmer)
The Brainwashing of Germany in Preparation for War (Bittner)
German Defense Ministry Uses ‘1234’ As Password (RT)
Zelensky and the West Have A New Scam – And Taxpayers Will Foot The Bill (RT)
Losing to Russia Shatters Western Leaders’ Belief in Their Exceptionalism (Sp.)
Is Tehran Winning the Middle East? (Juan Cole)
The EU’s American Queen (Lily Lynch)
Musk’s X Could Face New EU Restrictions (RT)
Ballot Drop Boxes Installed Along Border Wall (BBee)

 

 

 

 

2024 ad

 

 

New Yorker profile of Biden: “The former Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, urged him to embrace his age with swagger, like his fellow-octogenarians Mick Jagger and Harrison Ford.”

 

 

Free falling

 

 

 

 

Tucker Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1764850563940794481

 

 

Social media arrests
https://twitter.com/i/status/1764691399331754399

 

 

 

 

San Diego

 

 

2007

 

 

There’s a separate 5-4 decision hidden in this unanimous decision. Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh affirmatively rule that Congress has the sole power to enforce the “Insurrection” provision. Barrett objects for unelaborated reasons, Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson dissent

 

 

“We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency,” the Court ruled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BBC: “Donald Trump says today’s Supreme Court decision that he cannot be banned from Colorado’s presidential ballot, is “both unifying and inspirational”. Speaking to Fox News, Trump said: “A great win for America. Very, very important!” He went on to highlight another legal case that is set to fall to the Supreme Court: that of presidential immunity. “Equally important for our country will be the decision that they will soon make on immunity for a president – without which, the presidency would be relegated to nothing more than a ceremonial position, which is far from what the founders intended.

“No president would be able to properly and effectively function without complete and total immunity.” The Supreme Court will hear arguments in April on whether Trump is immune from being prosecuted on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election. Trump had claimed that he was immune from all criminal charges for acts that he said fell within his duties as president. A US Court of Appeals panel has already rejected Trump’s argument..”

Supreme Court Rules 9-0 That Trump Cannot Be Kicked Off Any State Ballot (PM)

In a stunning reversal on Monday morning, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously decided against the Supreme Court of Colorado in their decision to remove Donald Trump from the state’s ballot. They further said that this ruling applies to any state who wishes to make this move. Trump cannot be removed from the ballot in any state. Colorado had made the determination that Trump could not stand for office and justified their tactic through invoking the “insurrection” clause of the 14th Amendment, section 3. After their ruling, other states jumped on board, saying that Trump would not be permitted to stand for office in their states, either. The Court states that “if States were free to enforce Section 3 by barring candidates from running in the first place, Congress would be forced to exercise its disability removal power before voting begins if it wished for its decision to have any effect on the current election cycle. Perhaps a State may burden congressional authority in such a way when it exercises its ‘exclusive’ sovereign power over its own state offices.”

“But,” they continued, “it is implausible to suppose that the Constitution affirmatively delegated to the States the authority to impose such a burden on congressional power with respect to candidates for federal office.” The Court further stated that the petitioners on behalf of Colorado were unable to identify any “tradition of state enforcement of section 3 against federal officeholders or candidates in the years following ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The key aspect, however, is what they had to say about the implications of letting a ruling like that in Colorado stand. “Conflicting state outcomes concerning the same candidate could result not just from differing views of the merits, but from variations in state law governing the proceedings that are necessary to make Section 3 disqualification determinations. Some States might allow a Section 3 challenge to succeed based on a preponderance of the evidence, while others might require a heightened showing.”

“Certain evidence (like the congressional Report on which the lower courts relied here) might be admissible in some States but inadmissible hearsay in others. Disqualification might be possible only through criminal prosecution, as opposed to expedited civil proceedings, in particular States. “Indeed, in some States—unlike Colorado (or Maine, where the secretary of state recently issued an order excluding former President Trump from the primary ballot)—procedures for excluding an ineligible candidate from the ballot may not exist at all.” “The result could well be that a single candidate would be declared ineligible in some States, but not others, based on the same conduct (and perhaps even the same factual record).” “The ‘patchwork’ that would likely result from state enforcement would ‘sever the direct link that the Framers found so critical between the National Government and the people of the United States’ as a whole. U. S. Term Limits, 514 U. S., at 822.”

“But in a Presidential election ‘the impact of the votes cast in each State is affected by the votes cast’— or, in this case, the votes not allowed to be cast—’for the various candidates in other States.’ Anderson, 460 U. S., at 795. An evolving electoral map could dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and States across the country, in different ways and at different times. “The disruption would be all the more acute—and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result—if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the Nation has voted. Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos—arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration.” “For the reasons given, responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States,” the Court determined.

“The judgment of the Colorado13 Cite as: 601 U. S. ____ (2024) Per Curiam Supreme Court therefore cannot stand.” “All nine Members of the Court agree with that result,” they wrote. “The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court is reversed.” The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case earlier in February, taking on the case on an emergency basis. In their hearing of the case, they appeared to lean toward the conclusion that state’s do not have the right to unilaterally remove candidates, thereby denying their citizens the right to cote for the candidate of their choice. Illinois, Maine and other states that have attempted this tactic will now find that they are powerless to carry it out.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1764683741601944022

https://twitter.com/i/status/1764686616805908867

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“President Biden… Fight your fight yourself. Don’t use prosecutors and judges to go after your opponent… our country is much bigger than that..”

House Dems Implode Over Supreme Court Decision (ZH)

Update (1400ET): Not satisfied to let the Supreme Court-enforced Democratic process play out, House Democrats are now preparing legislation to try and keep Trump off the ballot. “Congress will have to try and act,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, in a comment to creepy deep state mouthpiece Axios (which swears the border is extra-secure!). Raskin, a former member of the Jan. 6 select committee, said he is already crafting the bill, telling Axios, “I’m working on it – today.” Raskin pointed to legislation he introduced with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) in 2022 creating a pathway for the Justice Department to sue to keep candidates off the ballot under the 14th Amendment. “We are going to revise it in light of the Supreme Court’s decision,” Raskin said. -Axios

“I don’t have a lot of hope that Speaker [Mike] Johnson will allow us to bring enforcement legislation to the floor, but we have to try and do it,” said Raskin, who said he’ll ‘beseech’ Republicans to join the bill. Very Democratic, Jamie. Update (1320ET): Former President Trump has responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling keeping him on the ballot in Colorado (and therefore, everywhere else). According to Trump, the decision was “very well crafted,” and “will go a long way toward bringing our country together.” Trump also slammed Biden for ‘weaponizing’ prosecutors against him. “President Biden… Fight your fight yourself. Don’t use prosecutors and judges to go after your opponent… our country is much bigger than that,” Trump said, speaking from Mar-a-Lago.

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“..Nikki Haley suffered an embarrassment when she became the first candidate to lose to ‘no-one’ in the Nevada GOP primary since the option was introduced in 1975..”

‘Uncommitted’ Voters Unite Against Biden Ahead of Super Tuesday (RT)

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest socialist organization in the US, has urged primary voters to cast their ballots for ‘uncommitted’ rather than President Joe Biden to show their opposition to his stance on the Israel-Hamas war. The announcement comes just two days before the primary elections on March 5 – known as Super Tuesday – when millions of Americans are expected to vote. In a series of X (formerly Twitter) posts on Sunday, the DSA, which has more than 92,000 members and chapters in all US states, demanded that the White House end the bloodshed in Gaza by revoking military assistance to Israel, saying Biden will be to blame if former President Donald Trump is reelected this year.

“Today, DSA endorses ‘Uncommitted’ in the remaining Democratic presidential primaries. Until this administration ends its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and delivers a permanent, lasting ceasefire, Joe Biden will bear the responsibility for another Trump presidency,” the organization said, adding that “defeat is certain” if Biden continues on the current course. “This week’s brutal ‘Flour Massacre’ has proven once again that Israel is a brutal, inhumane apartheid state which carries a legacy of 75 years of genocide and occupation. Over 30,000 Palestinians have already died; how many will be ENOUGH for Joe Biden to stop this war?” the DSA said in a follow-up post, referring to the tragedy on February 29 when at least 112 Palestinians were killed and more than 750 were injured while waiting for much-needed food aid in Gaza City.

The campaign calling on Democrats to vote ‘uncommitted’ was organized by local chapters of the DSA and the Colorado Palestine Coalitions last week and is gaining popularity amid protests against the Gaza war. The DSA noted that over 100,000 people voted ‘uncommitted’ in the Michigan primary last week. The movement was also endorsed by a major labor union, UFCW 3000, which represents more than 50,000 grocery workers in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Biden is not the only one feeling the heat from voters who are choosing ‘none of the above’. Last week, Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley suffered an embarrassment when she became the first candidate to lose to ‘no-one’ in the Nevada GOP primary since the option was introduced in 1975.

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“..DA’s and AG’s who make election promises to “go after” individuals without such niceties as probable cause..”

The Five FUBARs (Jim Kunstler)

You saw last year how the blob elite greeted the transfer of illegal immigrants to their happy little island of Martha’s Vineyard. (They were not amused by Governor DeSantis’s prank, and off-loaded the mutts post-haste.) But that same smug demographic doesn’t care if hundreds of thousands are distributed to the big cities, which are now fiscally destabilized by them to an extreme, probably to bankruptcy. Of course, that is not the main thing to worry about with what altogether amounts to millions of border-jumpers flooding our land. The main reason to worry is what the blob that invited them here intends for them to do, which, you may suspect, is to unleash mayhem in the streets, malls, stadiums, and upon our infrastructure just in time to derail the election — perhaps even to make war on us right in our homeland.

The US government is paying for this whole operation, you understand, funneling our tax money to international cut-out orgs who set up the transfer camps in Panama, and buy the plane tickets for the mutts to cross the ocean, and coordinate with the Mexican cartels to shuttle this horde of mystery people among us to work their juju for the Democratic Party. The pissed-off-ness of the public has passed the red line on this. A third FUBAR is the lawfare campaign of the Democratic Party and its regime in power against the citizens of this land. This folder includes overt and obvious political prosecutions by DA’s and AG’s who make election promises to “go after” individuals without such niceties as probable cause. It includes the gigantic new scaffold of inter-agency censorship and propaganda. It includes the psychopathic struggle sessions mandated by “diversity and inclusion” policy. It includes election-rigging directed by the likes of Marc Elias and Norm Eisen, getting states to fiddle laws on voter ID and mail-in ballots.

It includes the political protection of rogue groups ranging from looter flash-mobs to Antifa anarchists who bust up things and people and burn buildings down. It includes state officials who peremptorily kick candidates off the ballot. It includes a nakedly biased judiciary, and especially the use of the DC federal district court to punish people extralegally, unjustly, extravagantly, and cruelly. In short, lawfare is the complete perversion of law, and we-the -people are entreated by reprobate officials such as Merrick Garland and Letitia James to accept it. A fourth item on this list is the US economy which has been overwhelmed by maladministration of an overgrown monster bureaucracy, and the gross (perhaps fatal) mismanagement of the government’s money. The people of this land are not being allowed to do business, to find a livelihood, to transact fairly. “Joe Biden’s” shadow string-pullers are messing as badly with the oil and gas producers as they have messed with Ukraine. And they are doing it in pursuit of a laughable mirage: their “green new deal.”

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”The best fate they can expect [from the West] is to become slaves to the ailing European freak show..”

‘Ukraine is Russia’ – Medvedev (RT)

Ukraine lies within the sphere of Russian strategic interests and has no future in any other capacity, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, has stated. Russian people consider Ukraine to be part of the larger Russian civilization, the senior official said in a speech at a youth conference in Sochi on Monday. Moscow considers it to be the country’s “soft underbelly,” from which no threat to Russia should be allowed to be projected. ”The territories on both banks of the Dnieper River are an inalienable part of Russian strategic historic borders,” he said, using his preferred term for what is usually known as ‘sphere of influence’ in geopolitics. “All attempts to change them by force, to cut its living body, are doomed.”

He noted the title of a book by Leonid Kuchma, the second president of Ukraine following its independence from the USSR, which declared: ‘Ukraine is not Russia’. “This concept must vanish forever. Ukraine is without a doubt Russia,” Medvedev said. He blasted the current government in Kiev as the “main threat” to its own people, considering its anti-Russian policies. Ukrainians have “fallen into a stupid trap” set for it by the US and its allies, who have successfully turned the nation into a weapon against Russia, he said. ”The best fate they can expect [from the West] is to become slaves to the ailing European freak show,” Medvedev said, referring to the leaders of the EU and UK, who he described as incompetent and subservient to Washington.

”[The Ukrainians] will play the role of a deaf-mute servant who is raped every day in a European kitchen by a lord from overseas,” the former president added. Russia is not interested in territorial conquest, Medvedev said. Whatever natural riches Ukraine has, Russia also has in abundance, he claimed. ”The great treasure that we will not surrender to anyone for anything is the people,” he said. The Ukrainians have become “confused” by Western propaganda, but at their core they have the same values and way of life as the Russians, and need to be rescued, Medvedev said.

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“These individuals may be restricted from traveling abroad, have their driver’s license suspended, or their bank accounts seized if they fail to do so..”

“..two categories of citizens are currently not involved in the mobilization, namely “those who are behind bars and those who are not.”

Draft-Eligible Ukraine Men Flee ‘Certain Death’ (Sp.)

Ukraine’s lack of any clear mobilization strategy aimed at plugging the gaping holes in the ranks of its armed forces is fueling “deep divisions in Ukraine’s parliament and more broadly in Ukrainian society,” The Washington Post reported. Despite mounting losses, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been downplaying to wheedle more money from the West, there is still “no political consensus” on how to remedy the severe shortage of troops on the battlefront. There is a yawning split between Zelensky and his top military commanders on a plan to conscript the thousands of soldiers they need as Russia continues to advance after liberating the stronghold of Avdeyevka. As a result, Ukraine’s military has been “relying on a hodgepodge of recruiting efforts and sown panic among fighting-age men,” the publication stated. It referenced the package of aid to Kiev still stalled in the US Congress, adding that many of Ukraine’s men “have gone into hiding, worried that they will be drafted into an ill-equipped army and sent to certain death.”

Infighting over how many more troops Ukraine needs “factored” into Zelensky’s sacking of his top general in February, the outlet noted. The previous Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, was dismissed, with Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky taking over, amid an overall reshuffle of the military command by Zelensky. Zaluzhny’s ouster came after months of intrigue between himself and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who slammed the commander for revealing that Kiev’s summer 2023 counteroffensive had ended in failure. But, apparently, new Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky has so far failed to bring new clarity regarding Ukraine’s mobilization efforts. Syrsky has been tasked with auditing the armed forces to scrape up more combat-eligible troops, added the publication. This comes after President Zelensky’s office recently announced that only some 300,000 have fought at the frontline of the one million people who have been mobilized.

With Ukraine’s rapidly dwindling troop strength described as a “strategic crisis,” Oleksiy Bezhevets, an adviser to the Defense Ministry on recruitment, was cited as saying that civilians of fighting age must recognize the fact that “there’s no time for you left to sit home.” Volodymyr Zelensky said in December 2023 that the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces had stressed the need to recruit an additional 450,000-500,000 men for the army. Accordingly, the government submitted a draft law on mobilization to parliament on January 30. However, the result has been a drawn-out and heated debate. The bill, which would broaden the scope of the draft, lowering the eligibility age from 27 to 25 years, caused outrage in the country and was sent back for revision.

It also obligates people liable for military service to report to military commissariats to clarify their information within 60 days, Ukrainian media reported. These individuals may be restricted from traveling abroad, have their driver’s license suspended, or their bank accounts seized if they fail to do so. Amid the debate over such draconian measures in January, panicky account holders withdrew over $700 million in a single month, the WaPo added. In February, Ukrainian Justice Minister Denys Maliuska proposed giving prisoners weapons and shovels when they are mobilized for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He underscored that in Ukraine, two categories of citizens are currently not involved in the mobilization, namely “those who are behind bars and those who are not.” Maliuska previously said that at least 50,000 men of military age with criminal records are hiding from Ukrainian draft boards and are not registered with the military.

The Russian Defense Ministry earlier said that amid the disruption of mobilization plans and in order to conceal massive losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Kiev regime has intensified the recruitment of mercenaries. Fighters from the United States, Canada, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East have joined the ranks of the Ukrainian military. Furthermore, NATO soldiers under the guise of mercenaries are involved in combat operations in Ukraine, Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoy, head of the Russian General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, told Russian media.

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“What remains is for the Kremlin and General Staff to decide to teach the Germans the only lesson by the only method they understand..”

The Good Germans Are Blowing Smoke (Helmer)

The political comprehension of the Germans — to adapt Mao Zedong’s axiom that political power comes out of the barrel of a gun — only comes out of the barrel of a Russian gun. The good Germans define themselves publicly by wishing this weren’t true because they realise there’s nothing they can do to stop the rest of their countrymen from throwing themselves at Russian guns until there are no more of them, the good Germans among them. One of these wishfully good Germans is called Florian Roetzer, who founded the widely read internet publication Telepolis in 1996, and retired to write elsewhere in 2021. Roetzer has just published his analysis of the transcript of last month’s teleconference at which the chief of the German Air Force, Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, discussed with three subordinates a plan of attack on Russian civil and military targets with the German Taurus KEPD 350E cruise missile; conceal this German operation behind British, French, and Ukrainian forces and German commercial companies; accelerate the missile deliveries; and present the plan for approval by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Gerhartz is not only waging personal war against Russia, as he explained on the telephone two weeks ago, on February 19. Last November he declared personal war in alliance with the Israel Air Force in implementing the genocide of Gaza. In Roetzer’s new analysis, published on March 2 in Overton magazine, the problem is not (in Roetzer’s mind) that Gerhartz and the Bundeswehr are losing their war on the Ukrainian battlefield, or that they are aiming to provoke Russian counterattack against German targets outside that battlefield. “The fact that Russia was able to eavesdrop on the conversations of the German officers…is a major problem for the Bundeswehr, also in relation to its partners, who may no longer trust it.” “The bigger [sic] problem, however, has been Putin’s for quite some time, after one red line after another has been crossed by the NATO countries, without Russia really reacting to it, apart from warnings…But so far, Putin has accepted any military support for Ukraine.

“But if it is now becoming more and more public knowledge that NATO countries are directly supporting Ukraine with target data and in general in attacks with Western missiles and cruise missiles through the participation of soldiers in civilian and intelligence officers, and thus become parties to war, then Putin, who propagates that Russia is defending itself in Ukraine, has the problem of showing weakness and only bluffing, if no action is taken against it.” “It is obvious” – according to Roetzer – “that Russia cannot compete against a NATO weakened by the Ukraine war and therefore avoids a direct conflict. But if the attacks on Russia continue to increase and Western weapons are openly used, Putin will lose support in Russia if there is no military response…With the publication of the wiretapped conversation of the German officers, the Russian leadership may have harmed itself – if only because the Bundeswehr must now try to close the security gap. It is possible that [state media director Margarita] Simonyan has gone too far here. The question is whether the publication was coordinated with the Kremlin.”

That Germany is at war with Russia has been understood in Moscow for a long time. That there are good Germans like Roetzer who would like it to be otherwise for moral, legal, German national, or personal reasons is also well-known. Some of these good Germans have even served as German generals. What the Navalny Novichok episode of the autumn of 2020 revealed, followed by the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022; and now last month’s teleconference conducted by Gerhartz – what all three episodes reveal is not how the Germans are understood in Moscow, but rather how the good Germans react when confronted with the war they are powerless to deter or stop their countrymen from waging. The impotence of the German opposition to this war is also well understood in Moscow. What remains is for the Kremlin and General Staff to decide to teach the Germans the only lesson by the only method they understand. That is the lesson the Germans have been failing to learn for seventy-nine years next month — since April 30, 1945, when Adolf Hitler shot himself before he could be captured by the Red Army waiting outside his bunker in Berlin.

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“And then she added : “But Putin…”.

The Brainwashing of Germany in Preparation for War (Bittner)

Recently my friend G., with whom I still correspond occasionally, wrote to me saying that he had read my book “State of Emergency” and got the impression that I had fallen into a “filter bubble”. He comes from a wealthy family, his father was a senior teacher, his mother a doctor, and at a young age he was a professor of mathematics at a southern German university and also a guest lecturer in Japan, South Korea and the USA. He cannot understand the fact that I am of the opinion that it is not Russia but the USA and its allies that are to blame for most of the conflicts in the world, especially the war in Ukraine and the economic decline in Germany and Western Europe. G. would like to give me friendly advice to reconsider my political views and to please obtain information from the public media and “reputable” newspapers such as Frankfurter Allgemeine, Welt or Süddeutsche and not from so-called alternative media. If I see “evil” in the USA rather than in Putin, all he can say about himself is that he would rather live “under the evil of the Americans” than that of the Russians.

And if the NATO protective umbrella, under which the Europeans have set themselves up so well, were to become leaky, things would not look rosy for Western Europe compared to a country like Russia full of nuclear weapons. It is sad that so much money has to be spent on “defensive armament”, but it is good that Putin is getting older and older and that the end of his tyranny is imminent at some point in the near future for the good of humanity. Like other acquaintances and friends, G. is firmly convinced that he knows everything and is right. All we agree on is that wars are terrible and must be avoided. But at this point the dissent begins again, because G. considers “humanitarian interventions”, such as those carried out by the USA again and again, to be legitimate and even necessary to defend freedom and democracy. I can describe the views represented by G. as exemplary. German society is thoroughly rabble-roused, and it is divided between those who have retained an eye for the facts and the others, the far greater majority, who have succumbed to years of influence.

My hairdresser, with whom I discussed, is of the opinion that Germany needs the atomic bomb to protect itself from “the Russian” who will soon attack Poland and the Baltic countries. When I countered that Vladimir Putin had called for cooperation and a common economic zone from Vladivostok to Lisbon in a memorable speech to the German Bundestag in 2001, he replied: “This Putin is lying as soon as he opens his mouth.” The resulting dispute ended He asked me the completely serious question: “Why do you think you can judge the political situation better than me?” He told me that he reads the newspaper in the morning and watches the Tagesschau in the evening. He also speaks to customers every day who all have different opinions than me. Every now and then I gave lectures and discussed things publicly. Most of the time, listeners and discussants came who shared my views or at least kept an open mind. After one such event, a middle-aged woman who identified herself as a judge said to me: “Everything you said was logical and well-documented, although from an unusual perspective, but you largely convinced me.” And then she added : “But Putin…”.

Indoctrination has not stopped at the doors of universities either. There are still some contacts with colleagues there from the time when I was a visiting professor in Poland, but they have become fragile. My friend Tomasz, who unfortunately also succumbed to US-controlled propaganda against Russia and for Ukraine, wrote to me: “I cannot understand the people who prefer to look the other way after the Russian attack on Ukraine. Stop this policy that is killing thousands of innocent people. “Putin with his megalomania has destroyed a long and stable peace in Europe.” He really believes that and he continued: “For me, Putin resembles Hitler to a T.” It is not Ukraine, which wants to go its own sovereign way, that is to blame for the war, but Putin, for whom Ukraine is just an appetizer. He built gas pipelines behind the EU’s back and against Poland’s interests. This shows his true colors, leading and oppressing other countries like dogs on a leash.

At least I was able to have a somewhat civilized conversation with my German friend and with Tomasz, if only by holding back. The space for debate has become increasingly narrow, and the authorities are no longer relying on the previous psychological warfare. Rather, the pressure on those who think differently, their patronization and harassment, is increasing dramatically. Anyone who doesn’t step up and stand out must expect the destruction of their existence and worse.

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“..the Russians could have simply logged on to the unsecured WebEx call without the officers noticing..”

German Defense Ministry Uses ‘1234’ As Password (RT)

The German Defense Ministry has protected a press statement on leaked military communications behind the password “1234.” German media has mocked the ministry for the “extremely embarrassing” security detail. The statement, made by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius on Sunday, was posted in audio format on the ministry’s website on Monday. Under a link to a cloud storage service hosting the file, the ministry informed visitors that they could access the recording by entering the password “1234.” While the file is not classified and the password was likely chosen as a placeholder, its use was roundly mocked by German tabloid Bild. “After the wiretapping attack on the Bundeswehr [German military] by Russian spies, this is extremely embarrassing,” the paper wrote on Monday.

On Friday, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan published a transcript and audio recording of a conversation between four officers of the German Air Force, including its top general, Ingo Gerhartz, saying that she had obtained the file from Russian security officials. Over a WebEx video call, the officers discussed the potential use of German-made Taurus missiles against the Crimean Bridge, wondering how they could maintain plausible deniability of involvement in such an attack. The conversation also revealed that – according to the officers – Britain has already sent its own military specialists to Ukraine to operate Storm Shadow cruise missiles given to the Ukrainian armed forces.

It is unclear how Simonyan’s contacts obtained the audio. However, the deputy chairman of the German parliament’s oversight committee, Roderich Kiesewetter, said on Sunday that the Russians could have simply logged on to the unsecured WebEx call without the officers noticing. Berlin confirmed the recording’s authenticity on Saturday. In his statement on Sunday, Pistorius did not address the apparent security lapses that led to the leak. Instead, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of orchestrating the incident as part of an “information war” against the West.

For months, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been under pressure from Kiev and members of his own cabinet to approve shipments of Taurus missiles to Ukraine. However, he has thus far refused, and the Wall Street Journal noted on Saturday that the leaked conversation could make their eventual delivery less likely. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that the leak proves that “plans to launch strikes on Russian territory are being substantively and specifically discussed within the Bundeswehr.” A day earlier, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that “Germany is preparing for a war with Russia.”

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“..turning Ukraine into a giant factory showroom for Western weapons..”

Zelensky and the West Have A New Scam – And Taxpayers Will Foot The Bill (RT)

What do you do to boost GDP when your country is neck-deep in military conflict and your allies’ main interest is using you to wash taxpayer cash into their own military industrial complexes? Make that your whole national identity! And demand that the West help you transition. “Our country will become one of the world’s key producers of weapons and defense systems. And this is no longer just an ambition or a prospect, it is a potential that is already being realized,” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in September 2023. That plea has echoed all over the Western press. You’d think that it may have thought to “realize” that “potential” before it went live with the big “Ukrainian counteroffensive” show. But hey, making lemonade from lemons, there’s definitely a business opportunity in losing on the battlefield that wouldn’t exist if Ukraine had proven to be adequately stocked up and victorious. Any ambulance-chasing weapons salesman would be attracted by that.

And on top of that, Russia’s whole stated objective from the very outset has been “de-militarization.” Right now, Ukraine is to Western weapons producers what the Cheesecake Factory is to a fat kid. Those slightly less cynical might be tempted to view all this as the path to victory for Ukraine, but a recent incident strongly suggests otherwise. In a leaked audio recording obtained by Russian intelligence and authenticated by the German government, senior Luftwaffe officers, including the Air Force’s chief, are overheard talking about how even the delivery of the German Taurus missiles to Kiev wouldn’t change the course of the conflict in Ukraine’s favor. If even the gold standard German cruise missile that doubles the strike distance of its Western rivals isn’t considered a game changer in the overall conflict with Russia at this point, then odds don’t sound too good for much else.

And who’s going to pay for Ukraine’s identity change, anyway? Western Europe and the US will pay for the transition, of course. Just as they’re also paying to keep all of Ukrainian society afloat, funding salaries and pensions. It’s not like investors are flocking to Ukraine right now. Much of the weapons-making infrastructure from the Cold War has been decimated, and in a country that ranks near the top of the global corruption index, it probably won’t come as a surprise that the industry itself is rife with “mismanagement.” While it’s clear who’s going to pay, what’s less obvious is who will actually benefit from turning Ukraine into a giant factory showroom for Western weapons. Some Western arms manufacturers have rushed into Ukraine to set up shop, such as Germany’s Rheinmetall, which started operating an armored vehicle plant in the country last year. Guess it’s just good business to be cranking out tanks right on the battlefield where they can be blown up coming off the assembly line. May as well just set fire to that Western taxpayer cash funding this charade the moment that it pops out of the ATM.

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“..from [the perspective of] the people who run the United States, the blob, the deep state… this war was absolutely essential.”

Losing to Russia Shatters Western Leaders’ Belief in Their Exceptionalism (Sp.)

There is “sincere panic” among Western leaders who are forced to “face the inevitable fact” that they are losing to Russia, Mark Sleboda, a foreign relations and security analyst told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Monday. “It is shattering both their preconceptions of this conflict and also shattering their belief in their own exceptionalism and seniority,” he told co-hosts Melik Abdul and Jamarl Thomas. The comments came after discussing the leaked German plans to coordinate a strike on the Crimean bridge or an ammo depot in Krasnodar, which Sleboda said was “planning an act of war on the Russian Federation” noting that Russia would have “every right” to respond. “They were plotting an act of war and [the] Ukrainians in all of this, they weren’t doing the planning, they wouldn’t be doing the implementation, the programing of the missiles on the ground. They were talking about having it be done by German officials and the number [of] people with American accents and civilian clothes,” he said, adding “Their biggest concern, other than which was the more feasible target… was their plausible deniability.”

Sleboda noted that it is an open question if German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has been publicly against sending Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, was lying or if “he [was] unaware of what his own military was doing.” Recently, Scholz -seemingly on accident- revealed that British and American personnel are on the ground in Ukraine to help coordinate the long-range missiles provided by those countries to the Kiev regime. “That’s exposing that America and the UK have military people on the ground in the guise of volunteers or mercenaries or humanitarian workers… which means they are at war with Russia. It’s simply undeclared,” Sleboda argued. Noting that the plans violated the “rules” of the conflict by planning a strike inside of Russia’s mainland. “Russia had two options,” Sleboda explained. “They could escalate back or [which they tried] instead expose this, hoping that it will at least dampen down.”

“The West has two options in response, they can either back down or they can escalate in response,” he added. However, the West has a lot at stake in Russia because they bet Western hegemony on the conflict. “We’ve heard from every Western leader… a Russian victory in Ukraine would be a defeat of NATO. They did this to themselves, they invested this much political and geopolitical capital. They’ve said… that US global leadership… is at stake in the outcome of this conflict.” “The world might not have originally reached the same conclusion, but now they forced them to because they… said it so authoritatively.” Host Jamarl Thomas lamented how the West didn’t need to provoke Russia into the conflict, but Sleboda disagreed, saying that it was inevitable from the perspective of the “deep state.”

“They are fighting for US hegemony over the world – that’s why. From their point of view, this was also an inevitability, from [the perspective of] the people who run the United States, the blob, the deep state… this war was absolutely essential.” Sleboda noted that the US did manage to gain one advantage in the war, it made Europe more subservient to them. “They tied Europe more directly to them. Europe is now spending their money on two to four times more expensive [Liquefied Natural Gas] LNG than they were on Russian energy, which means that Europe’s economy, yes, is facing de-industrialization. But, on the plus side, a lot of those European businesses are going to the US. So they achieved very real geopolitical results out of this conflict.”

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“..their leaderships do agree that the days of marginalizing the Palestinians are over..”

Is Tehran Winning the Middle East? (Juan Cole)

Despite their fiery rhetoric, their undeniable backing of fundamentalist militias in the region, and their depiction by inside-the-Beltway war hawks as the root of all evil in the Middle East, Iran’s leaders have long acted more like a status quo power than a force for genuine change. They have shored up the rule of the autocratic al-Assad family in Syria, while helping the Iraqi government that emerged after President George W. Bush’s invasion of that country fight off the terrorist threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In truth, not Iran but the U.S. and Israel are the countries that have most strikingly tried to use their power to reshape the region in a Napoleonic manner. The disastrous U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, and Israel’s wars on Egypt (1956, 1967), Lebanon (1982-2000, 2006), and Gaza (2008, 2012, 2014, 2024), along with its steady encouragement of large-scale squatting on the Palestinian West Bank, were clearly intended to alter the geopolitics of the region permanently through the use of military force on a massive scale.

Only recently, Ayatollah Khamenei bitterly asked, “Why don’t the leaders of Islamic countries publicly cut off their relationship with the murderous Zionist regime and stop helping this regime?” Pointing to the staggering death toll in Israel’s present campaign against Gaza, he was focusing on the Arab countries — Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates — that, as part of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s “Abraham Accords,” had officially recognized Israel and established relations with it. (Egypt and Jordan had, of course, recognized Israel long before that.) Given the anti-Israel sentiment in the region, had it, in fact, been rife with democracies, Iran’s position might have been widely implemented. Still, it was a distinct sign of terminal tone deafness on the part of Biden administration officials that they hoped to use the Gaza crisis to extend the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia, while sidelining the Palestinians and creating a joint Israeli-Arab front against Iran.

The region had already been moving in a somewhat different direction. Last March, after all, Iran and Saudi Arabia had begun forging a new relationship by restoring the diplomatic relations that had been suspended in 2016 and working to expand trade between their countries. And that relationship has only continued to improve as the nightmare in Israel and Gaza developed. In fact, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi first visited the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in November and, since the Gaza conflict began, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has met twice with his Saudi counterpart. Frustrated by a markedly polarizing American policy in the region, de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei resorted to the good offices of Beijing to sidestep Washington and strengthen their relations further.

Although Iran is far more hostile to Israel than Saudi Arabia, their leaderships do agree that the days of marginalizing the Palestinians are over. In a remarkably unambiguous statement issued in early February, the Saudis offered the following: “The Kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops and all the Israeli occupation forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip.” Significantly, the Saudis even refused to join a U.S.-led naval task force created to halt attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Houthis of Yemen (no friends of theirs) in support of the Palestinians. Its leaders are clearly all too aware that the carnage still being wreaked on Gaza has infuriated most Saudis.

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“..a “sweeping” European defence industry strategy, which will shift the EU’s defence industry to a war-footing..”

The EU’s American Queen (Lily Lynch)

Von der Leyen’s tenure has been marked by an acceleration of what Perry Anderson has termed “European coups” — the gradual agglomeration of power in Brussels. Even the manner in which she became Commissioner in 2019 represented a break with a procedure designed to lend the EU executive greater democratic legitimacy. In 2003, a Franco-German agreement established the foundations of what would become the Spitzenkandidaten (“lead candidate”) process, whereby the political family with the most votes in the European Parliamentary elections would secure the office of Commissioner for its pre-chosen candidate. But in 2019, Von der Leyen was not the Spitzenkandidat of her European People’s Party (EPP) — instead, she was handpicked by EU leaders Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron. The EPP’s Spitzenkandidat, Manfred Weber was thwarted by Macron, who viewed him as unqualified. Von der Leyen, on the other hand, was a long-time Merkel loyalist and, as Macron noted, spoke French exceptionally well.

The then-German Defence Minister was also amenable to closer military cooperation with France and had spoken of the need to create “an army of Europeans” — another point in her favour for Macron. In other words, Von der Leyen’s very rise constituted a quiet coup. Beyond the pretty verbiage about defending democracy, it amounted to what Anderson has described as “the quiet settling of affairs between elites in camera, above the heads of an inert populace below”. Perhaps as a result, Von der Leyen has started to rewrite her origin story, claiming that she “ran in 2019” — referencing a campaign that never happened. For the Queen of Europe, both reality and democracy are malleable. Yet Von der Leyen’s weightiest revisionism concerns the EU’s foreign policy. In 2019, she identified the creation of a “geopolitical commission” as one of her main priorities as Commissioner. The EU, she asserted, needed to become a major “geopolitical” actor “to shape a better world order”.

Chaos and crisis demanded that it “learn to speak the language of power”. Then came the twin threats of Russia and another Trump administration, both of which lent these aims a greater urgency. The result is that Von der Leyen’s EU is gradually being retooled for war. Two years ago, EU officials broke the taboo on financing lethal weapons when they decided to fund the provision of lethal military aid to Ukraine. As article 41.2 of the Treaty of the European Union explicitly prohibits “expenditure arising from operations having military or defence implications”, this move required some creativity to circumvent. Towards this end, the EU mobilised the European Peace Facility (EPF), a misnomer for a tool engineered to finance military engagements abroad. To get around the proscription on the financing of war, the EPF has been designed as a €5 billion “off-budget” instrument. Nor does the drumbeat of war stop there. On Tuesday, the Commission is set to unveil a “sweeping” European defence industry strategy, which will shift the EU’s defence industry to a war-footing, while “upending the way it finances and sells arms”.

Von der Leyen has said it will aim to “turbocharge our defence industrial capacity over the next five years”, with a focus on joint procurement. This approach draws on the Commission’s precedent-setting joint procurement of Covid vaccines, an effort now being touted as a model for success but still mired in major controversy: Von der Leyen’s private text message exchange with Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla — hammering out the details of the April 2021 deal for 1.1 billion doses of the vaccine — has been shrouded in secrecy, with both journalists and the European Court of Auditors stonewalled in their attempts to gain access to the conversation. Suffice it to say such a precedent does not bode well for transparency in the massive new defence procurement process.

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“Companies that fail to abide by the EU’s rules may face fines of up to 10% of their total worldwide annual turnover, or up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements..”

Musk’s X Could Face New EU Restrictions (RT)

Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) could be forced to follow a set of strict guidelines in the EU after the European Commission (EC) announced that the platform may be classified as a ‘gatekeeper’ under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The EC explained that companies can be subject to additional regulations if they operate what is described as a “core platform service,” including search engines, app stores, and messenger services. They must have over 45 million monthly active end users, more than 10,000 yearly business users, or over €75 billion ($81 billion) in market capitalization.

According to an announcement published on the EC’s website on March 1, X, as well as travel website Booking.com and TikTok owner ByteDance, have submitted notifications that their services potentially meet the DMA thresholds. The commission now has 45 days to decide whether to designate the three companies as gatekeepers. If so, they will have six months to comply with DMA requirements. Companies that have already received the gatekeeper designation include the likes of Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet. Companies that fall under the rules are required to let third parties inter-operate with their services, to allow business users to access the data they generate on the platform, and to let them conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s ecosystem.

At the same time, the targeted companies must also refrain from favoring their own services over competitors or blocking users from removing pre-installed software or apps. They must also seek explicit consent from users to track their activity outside the gatekeeper’s core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising. Companies that fail to abide by the EU’s rules may face fines of up to 10% of their total worldwide annual turnover, or up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements. Businesses may also be slapped with periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of their average daily turnover.

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“Some around town think it has something to do with Presiden Biden’s visit to the border..”

Ballot Drop Boxes Installed Along Border Wall (BBee)

Texas residents woke up Thursday morning to find general election ballot boxes had been placed along the southern border wall that divides parts of the U.S. from Mexico. “I’m not sure where these ballot drop boxes came from,” Brownsville resident Tom Walker told reporters. “Some around town think it has something to do with Presiden Biden’s visit to the border. I saw some of his folks down handing out mail-in ballots to these illegal guys who keep coming into town. Makes a person wonder what’s up.” Biden’s team denied placing the boxes strategically along the border wall right where the main surge of illegal immigrants are crossing into the country.

“This isn’t some crazy ploy to rig the election in favor of President Biden by handing out ballots to the millions of illegal aliens that have been streaming into the country over the past three years,” Biden spokesperson Alexander Sheperd told the press. “On a completely unrelated note, does anyone know how to say ‘President Biden will give you a prepaid $10 thousand Visa cash card if you vote for him’ in Spanish?” As of publishing time, Biden aids were seen rounding up as many filled-out ballots as they could in an effort they said would “restore fair and free elections and prevent that fascist Trump from taking office ever again.”

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Gaza 1970

 

 

Circle of life

 

 

Hedgehog

 

 

Floki

 

 

Survive

 

 

Coyote

 

 

Kiwi

 

 

Putin

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jan 232024
 
 January 23, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Salvador Dalí Dream, Caused by the Flight of a Bee (Around a Pomegranate, a Second Before Waking Up) 1944

 

Will War Result From The Ever Hesitant Putin? (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Four Horsemen of Gaza’s Apocalypse (Chris Hedges)
Netanyahu’s Shape-Shifting ‘Endgame’ (Alastair Crooke)
Russia’s Push for Palestinian State Can Stop Endless ‘Loop’ of Violence (Sp.)
US Sees Ukraine As A ‘Lucrative Business Project’ – Lavrov (RT)
US Forming ‘Colonial Administration’ In Ukraine – Russian Spy Chief (RT)
Ukraine Must Give Up Territory – Fico (RT)
Zelensky Brands Parts Of Russia ‘Historically’ Ukrainian (RT)
Medvedev Denounces Zelensky’s ‘Territorial Claims’ To Russia (RT)
AfD Leader Calls for German ‘Dexit’ Vote to Break From EU (Sp.)
Russian Attack On Nato In 2044 (Zlatko)
DOJ Seeking Retribution Against Journalist for Recent Jan. 6 Coverage (ET)
The Pipe-Bomb Caper (Kunstler)
Dutch Queen Promotes Digital ID at Davos (Martin Armstrong)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tucker Hunter

 

 

Biden inflation

 

 

 

 

RFK autism + allergy

 

 

Tucker Catturd

 

 

 

 

Stop counting

The People’s Pundit: But that’s only half the story. The other half, is that they were lying. They actually continued to add to the totals between midnight and 3AM.

 

 

 

 

“The failure to confront Russia’s enemies with defeats means the pressure against Russia, the ongoing provocations, and the humiliations inflicted will continue until Russia is forced into war.”

Will War Result From The Ever Hesitant Putin? (Paul Craig Roberts)

I have often expressed my concern that the lack of proactive action by Putin, Xi, and Iran was maximizing the expansion of Israeli and US aggression in the Middle East and leading to a dangerous confrontation and outbreak of nuclear war. It is the purpose of Israel and Washington to attack Iran. That is what the Israeli-Hamas-Hezbollah-Washington-Houthis conflict is about. It is an entirely simple matter for Russia, China, and Iran to prevent any expansion of Israel’s war against Palestine. All they have to do is to announce a mutual defense treaty: An attack on one is an attack on all. But proactive action does not seem to be in the skill set of Washington’s targeted enemies. With the single exception of Putin’s intervention in Syria to prevent Obama’s invasion, Putin has proved to be ever hesitant about taking control of the situation. It took him eight years to abandon his delusion about the Minsk Agreement. When he finally realized that he had been taken for a ride, the Russian military was not prepared for the level of violence required. Consequently a war that Russia should have won in a few days is two years old and continuing.

From my experience with the liberal Russian intelligentsia, I would say that their program is surrender to Washington. They would rather be invited as visiting professors to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, and to serve as consultants to American corporations than to be in conflict with the West. As Putin seems to believe toleration of subversion is a sign of democracy, he could have been prevented from required action by pressure to prove that he is not, as the entirety of the West proclaims, a dictator. Putin would have saved many lives by ignoring the propaganda of his enemies and being more forceful in Russia’s defense. But now Putin is showing more awareness of what needs to be done. News reports which I saw in the Indian press, not in the American whore media, a collection of paid liars, say that, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, Russia and Iran are finalizing a pact stressing their commitment to fundamental principles of Russian-Iranian relations, including unconditional respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In a way this is good news. It indicates that Putin has finally realized that left unprotected, Iran is vulnerable, and if Iran goes, Washington has a direct entry to send “jihadists” into the Russian Federation and the former Soviet central Asian republics. But once again, like with the nonsensical “Minsk Agreement,” Putin has made an error. The pact has been announced before it goes into effect. It is unclear when this acknowledgement of mutual association is to be finalized. So the message to Washington and Israel is to attack Iran now before the agreement goes into effect. There is risk that this will happen. By trying to avoid the expansion of conflict in the Middle East, when conflict is Washington’s and Israel’s intention, Putin by his non-intervention, has given a green light for the expansion of conflict.

Moreover, the Russian-Iranian pact does not seem to be, except, by implication, a mutual defense pact. You can bet that Victoria Nuland and Israel’s American neoconservative agents who control US foreign policy will try to strike Iran before the pact is is in effect or they will argue that it is not a mutual defense agreement. It seems that Russia, China, Iran, and Israel’s Muslim enemies think that words count when nothing but action counts. In the West words are meaningless. Only actions count. And Russia’s are missing. Now, let me back off a bit. There are other indications of progress toward an environment less able to be turned into war by Washington. China had the foresight to broker a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. This was a fundamental blow to Washington. This rapprochement, if it holds against Washington’s counter offer, has expanded Putin’s organization BRICS to include Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. This gives new meaning to Saudi Arabia’s abandonment of the petro-dollar.

There is even a potential good sign on Russia’s part. Russia has announced air patrols over the Syrian Golan border with Israel. Putin prevented Washington’s invasion of Assad’s Syria but then went soft. Putin has left the Syrian oil fields in Washington’s hands. Putin has permitted both Israel and the US to conduct air and missile attacks on Syrian territory, apparently preventing Syria from using the Russian-supplied S-300 air defense system to protect Syrian territory. It remains to be seen if this means anything. The Russians have been sufficiently weakened by Western influence that they now have, associated with the Defense Ministry a “Center for Reconciliation.” This center says the air patrols are just for monitoring. In other words, there will be no military intervention, so it is largely meaningless. The failure to confront Russia’s enemies with defeats means the pressure against Russia, the ongoing provocations, and the humiliations inflicted will continue until Russia is forced into war.

There is a great deal of talk about American over-extension, outmoded weapon systems, excessive debt, inability to recruit for the military, etc., most of which is true. But the neoconservatives in control are still full of confidence, and this confidence is ever encouraged by Putin’s lack of decisive action. The war that is shaping up appears to be unavoidable. I know that it seems arrogant, egocentric, and self-glorifying to appear to be giving advice to Putin. But that is not what I am doing. I am describing a situation. To preclude a US/Israeli attack on Iran, there needs to be a Russia-China-Iran alliance which probably should include Turkey. Right NOW Iran needs the highly effective Russian air defense systems and, if Iran doesn’t have them, the hypersonic Russian long distance offensive missiles. Putin showed a strategic side when he committed the Russian Air Force to Syria’s defense, thus blocking Syria’s invasion by Obama. But he was very late getting into the game, almost too late. The multipolar world that Putin is always talking about cannot materialize without a Russian-Chinese-Iranian mutual defense treaty. Without more strategic vision and action on the part of Russia and China, war is unavoidable.

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“Joe Biden’s inner circle of strategists for the Middle East — Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk..”

The Four Horsemen of Gaza’s Apocalypse (Chris Hedges)

Joe Biden’s inner circle of strategists for the Middle East — Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk — have little understanding of the Muslim world and a deep animus towards Islamic resistance movements. They see Europe, the United States and Israel as involved in a clash of civilizations between the enlightened West and a barbaric Middle East. They believe that violence can bend Palestinians and other Arabs to their will. They champion the overwhelming firepower of the U.S. and Israeli military as the key to regional stability — an illusion that fuels the flames of regional war and perpetuates the genocide in Gaza.

In short, these four men are grossly incompetent. They join the club of other clueless leaders, such as those who waltzed into the suicidal slaughter of World War One, waded into the quagmire of Vietnam or who orchestrated the series of recent military debacles in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. They are endowed with the presumptive power vested in the Executive Branch to bypass Congress, to provide weapons to Israel and carry out military strikes in Yemen and Iraq. This inner circle of true believers dismiss the more nuanced and informed counsels in the State Department and the intelligence communities, who view the refusal of the Biden administration to pressure Israel to halt the ongoing genocide as ill-advised and dangerous.

Biden has always been an ardent militarist — he was calling for war with Iraq five years before the U.S. invaded. He built his political career by catering to the distaste of the white middle class for the popular movements, including the anti-war and civil rights movements, that convulsed the country in the 1960s and 1970s. He is a Republican masquerading as a Democrat. He joined Southern segregationists to oppose bringing Black students into Whites-only schools. He opposed federal funding for abortions and supported a constitutional amendment allowing states to restrict abortions. He attacked President George H. W. Bush in 1989 for being too soft in the “war on drugs.” He was one of the architects of the 1994 crime bill and a raft of other draconian laws that more than doubled the U.S. prison population, militarized the police and pushed through drug laws that saw people incarcerated for life without parole. He supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, the greatest betrayal of the working class since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. He has always been a strident defender of Israel, bragging that he did more fundraisers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than any other Senator.

“As many of you heard me say before, were there no Israel, America would have to invent one. We’d have to invent one because… you protect our interests like we protect yours,” Biden said in 2015, to an audience that included the Israeli ambassador, at the 67th Annual Israeli Independence Day Celebration in Washington D.C. During the same speech he said, “The truth of the matter is we need you. The world needs you. Imagine what it would say about humanity and the future of the 21st century if Israel were not sustained, vibrant and free.” The year before Biden gave a gushing eulogy for Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister and general who was implicated in massacres of Palestinians, Lebanese and others in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon — as well as Egyptian prisoners of war — going back to the 1950s. He described Sharon as “part of one of the most remarkable founding generations in the history not of this nation, but of any nation.”

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“Israel’s only answer (to the issue of how to maintain Zionism) was to keep the State’s borders undefined – whilst holding on to scarce water and land resources..”

Netanyahu’s Shape-Shifting ‘Endgame’ (Alastair Crooke)

The late Ariel Sharon, a long-time Israeli military and political leader, once confided to his close friend Uri Dan that, “the Arabs had never genuinely accepted the presence of Israel … and so, a two-state solution was not possible – nor even desirable”. In the minds of these two – as well as for most Israelis today – is the ‘Gordian Knot’ that sits at the heart of Zionism: How to maintain differential rights over a physical terrain that includes a large Palestinian population. Israeli leaders believed that in Sharon’s unconventional approach of ‘spatial ambiguity’, Israel was close to evolving a solution to the conundrum of managing differential rights within a Zionist majority state, which includes substantial minorities. Palestinians, many Israelis believed (until recently), were being successfully contained in a striated political and physical space – and were even being “disappeared” from significance – only for Hamas, on 7 October, to blow apart that whole elaborate paradigm.

This event has triggered a widespread and existential fear that the Zionist project could possibly implode, were its Zionist exceptionalist foundations to be rejected by a wide resistance ready to take the issue to war. U.S. journalist Steve Inskeep’s recent piece – Israel’s Lack of Strategy is the Strategy – brings into focus the seeming paradox: That whilst Netanyahu is very clear about that which he does not want, he at the same time remains obstinately opaque about what he does want as a future for Palestinians living on a shared terrain. For those who think that Middle East peace might (or should) be Netanyahu’s goal, this opacity appears as a serious ‘flaw’ to resolving the Gaza crisis. However, if Netanyahu (backed by his cabinet, and a majority of Israelis) offers no strategy for peace with the Palestinians, then perhaps its omission is not ‘a bug’, but is its feature.

To understand the underlying oxymoron, you have to grasp why Ariel Sharon and Uri Dan ‘said what they said’, and understand how Sharon’s military experience from the 1973 War effectively has shaped the entire Palestinian paradigm. In 2011, I wrote a piece in Foreign Policy which postulated that Sharon’s notion of Palestinian Permanent Ambiguity was – and has been – the Zionists’ principle answer to how to bypass the paradox inherent within Zionism. Thirty years later, it still lurks in all of Netanyahu’s (and Israeli leaders across the political spectrum’s) recent pronouncements. Even in 2008, Foreign Minister (and lawyer), Tzipi Livni, was spelling out why “Israel’s only answer (to the issue of how to maintain Zionism) was to keep the State’s borders undefined – whilst holding on to scarce water and land resources – leaving Palestinians in a state of permanent uncertainty, dependent on Israeli goodwill”.

And I noted in a separate piece: “Livni was saying that she wanted Israel to be a Zionist state – based on the Law of Return and open to any Jew. However, to secure such a state in a country with very limited territory – means that land and water must be kept under Jewish control, with differential rights for Jews and non-Jews – rights that affect everything, from housing and access to land, to jobs, subsidies, marriages and migration”. A two-state solution inherently therefore, did not solve the problem of how to maintain Zionism; rather, it compounded it. The inevitable demand for full equal rights for Palestinians would bring the end of Jewish ‘special rights’, and of Zionism itself, Livni argued – a threat with which most Zionists concur. Sharon’s answer to this ultimate paradox, however, was different: Sharon had an alternative plan for managing a large non-Jewish ‘out-group’, physically present within a Zionist State of differentiated rights. Sharon’s alternative amounted to frustrating a two-state solution within fixed borders.

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“Without the establishment of a Palestinian state, there can be not reliable security for Israel,” Lavrov said.”

Russia’s Push for Palestinian State Can Stop Endless ‘Loop’ of Violence (Sp.)

A lasting resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis is the keystone to regional stability, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. “The main focus of efforts should be the creation of a Palestinian state in full compliance with the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. The state described in these decisions would be competent and would exist in security and good neighborliness side by side with Israel and other countries in the region,” Lavrov said, speaking at a press conference on the results of Russian diplomacy in 2023 on Thursday. “Without the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Palestinian people will continue to feel disadvantaged and disenfranchised. Generation after generation of young Palestinians will fell this injustice and pass it on to their children. This must end through the creation of a Palestinian state. I hope that the Israeli leadership will eventually come to this conclusion…Without the establishment of a Palestinian state, there can be not reliable security for Israel,” Lavrov said.

The foreign minister announced plans to address the United Nations Security Council next Tuesday to discuss how the crisis in the Middle East can be resolved through “collective efforts,” in place of current attempts by the United States to “advance its agenda around the world.” “Perhaps our Western colleagues should learn some life lessons. And the countries of the region must insist that they are the ones who live here, and that for them, the security of all states [in the region] is of decisive importance to them. No one wants to prohibit advice from the outside, but the final decisions should be made by regional countries themselves,” Lavrov stressed. The creation of a Palestinian state is the “dream” of the Arab and Muslim World, and Russia’s position on the Palestinian-Israeli crisis indicates a very good understanding of the Middle East, says Riyadh-based political analyst Dr. Ahmed Al Ibrahim.

Russia’s position on Palestinian statehood is “going to be very well-received,” Al Ibrahim told Sputnik. “It’s going to cause stability. It’s going to give a lot of ground for the foreign policy of Russia to integrate here in the Muslim-Arab World. If Russia succeeded in that, then Russia has solved the most crucial thing in the history of this region by aligning Israel and Palestine to be together next [to each other]. And they’re going to win the hearts and the minds of the Arab and the Muslim World.” Attempts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have been spearheaded by the United States for some seven decades, Al Ibrahim recalled, noting that in all this time “nothing happened except destruction for the Palestinian land, and more expansion, more settlers taking lands.”

“Definitely the whole world would welcome Russia and the BRICS members to be mediating this. But the solution is going to be very hard. Russia and the BRICS members [would] have to coordinate with the United States and with Britain because they are the majority stakeholders of this file, in order to yank it from them and do something on the ground,” the political analyst noted. Otherwise, unless a genuine, multilateral effort is launched to establish Palestinian statehood, the cycle of violence being seen today will continue indefinitely, Al Ibrahim believes. “The real core of the problem is in the deep mind and the deep state of the Israelis,” Al Ibrahim stressed. “Do they want a two-state solution?

We still see at the Knesset, when you enter the building, a big map – a big Israeli state from the [Jordan] River to the Sinai. If this is the creed of the Israelis, then there is no point of anybody mediating and Israel needs to work within themselves in order to come up an evolution to change their mindset and work to have a peaceful neighboring country with the Arab World supporting them. By reaching that, Israel is going to gain a lot by normalizing relationships with many Arab and Muslim countries,” he emphasized. “But if they’re going to play the cat and mouse game, you know, ‘I say something and I do something else on the ground,’ this is not going to work,” Al Ibrahim said, saying Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Arab countries and the Muslim World in general are too smart to be tricked by such deception.

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“..not as a war that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives … but as a profitable business project.”

US Sees Ukraine As A ‘Lucrative Business Project’ – Lavrov (RT)

Recent statements from the US suggest it regards Ukraine as nothing but a “lucrative business project,” one that it is profiting from, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the UN Security Council on Monday. The minister was referring to earlier statements made by US State Secretary Antony Blinken. Last month, the top US diplomat claimed that 90% of the money allocated for Ukrainian aid ends up getting funneled back to the US “to the benefit of American business, local communities, and strengthening the US defense industrial base.” In November 2023, the Washington Post also reported that the majority of these funds were spent on manufacturing new weapons or replacing the equipment sent to Ukraine out of American stockpiles.

The US is essentially “developing its military industrial” complex while “dumping the old junk in Ukraine,” Lavrov said. Russia’s top diplomat also claimed that most major Ukrainian companies, including lithium producers, are being sold to Americans and US companies have been able to get their hands on Ukraine’s fertile land “on the cheap.” Lavrov denounced the statements made by US officials as “cynical” and said that Washington has been treating the ongoing conflict “not as a war that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives … but as a profitable business project.” Moscow is waging a military campaign not against Ukraine but against “a criminal regime, presumptuous in its impunity,” he declared.

Kiev has not forgone on the “war against its own citizens in the east and south” despite years-long efforts by Moscow to find a peaceful solution to this crisis, he explained, adding that over 7 million Ukrainians had found refuge in Russia since the 2014 Maidan coup. Kiev’s Western backers have never tried to stop the government from persecuting Russian-speaking Ukrainians, the minister said, accusing the US and its allies of using the past few years to “arm Ukraine and prepare it for war against Russia,” while using the Minsk Agreements as a cover. Russia is ready for talks on Ukraine but it is not willing to discuss ways to keep Kiev’s current government in power, Moscow’s top diplomat concluded.

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“Zelensky realizes that the damaging data that the Americans have is capable of destroying him as president. In this situation, he’ll continue to dance to the tune of his American masters..”

US Forming ‘Colonial Administration’ In Ukraine – Russian Spy Chief (RT)

Washington has begun creating “a colonial administration” in Ukraine consisting of local politicians who have sworn allegiance to the US, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said. The US government has demanded that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky “remove” dozens of high-ranking officials, whom Washington no longer trusts, from their posts under various pretexts, Sergey Naryshkin claimed on Monday. Washington wants those jobs to be filled by “Ukrainians trained in the West, who have sworn allegiance to American interests,” he said in comments cited by the SVR press service. “As part of the policy of total vassalization of Ukraine, the US has started forming what is essentially a colonial administration in that country,” the spy chief stated.

According to Naryshkin, the required changes in the Ukrainian government were relayed to Zelensky during his visit to Washington in December. “The Americans are pushing for Ukrainian ambassador to Washington Oksana Markarova, who received her education at Indiana University Bloomington, to take the post of prime minister. The deputy head of the Finance Ministry, Alexander Kava, who studied at Harvard University, is being suggested for the job of finance minister. The current deputy head of the Economy Ministry, Taras Kachka, a graduate of Poland’s National School of Public Administration (KSAP), is recommended for the post of economy minister,” he said. The latest high-profile change in the Ukrainian cabinet follows the pattern described by Naryshkin. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who replaced Zelensky’s ally Aleksey Reznikov in the job last fall, used to participate in the Future Leaders Exchange program, funded by the US State Department.

The Biden administration, which is in possession of a “killer corruption dossier” on members of Zelenksy’s inner circle, is threatening to make this information public if Ukrainian leader refuses to greenlight the desired personnel decisions, the spy chief claimed. “Zelensky realizes that the damaging data that the Americans have is capable of destroying him as president. In this situation, he’ll continue to dance to the tune of his American masters,” Naryshkin predicted. The US, which has provided Zelensky’s government with $111 billion in military and economic assistance since the start of the conflict with Russia, already has advisers embedded in all key Ukrainian ministries, but Washington believes this is not enough and is “steadily increasing Kiev’s feudal dependence,” Naryshkin said.

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“What are [the Ukrainians] waiting for? That the Russians will leave Donbass and Lugansk, or that they will leave Crimea? It’s unrealistic,” Fico insisted.”

Ukraine Must Give Up Territory – Fico (RT)

Ukraine should concede the loss of some of the territories that were previously under its control in order to end the conflict with Russia, Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico has said. Fico made the statement during a weekend interview with broadcaster RTVS dedicated to his upcoming visit to Ukraine. The Slovak PM is scheduled to travel on Wednesday to Uzhgorod, a city near the border between the two countries, for a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Denis Shmygal. The ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev can’t be resolved through military means and should end in compromise that might be “painful for both sides,” he said. “What are [the Ukrainians] waiting for? That the Russians will leave Donbass and Lugansk, or that they will leave Crimea? It’s unrealistic,” Fico insisted.

The People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were officially incorporated into the Russian state in the fall of 2022, together the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, as a result of referendums held in those areas. Crimea has been a part of Russia since 2014. The continuation of the fighting that has been underway since February 2022 will only make Moscow stronger, Fico added. The Slovak premier also said Ukraine was “not a sovereign, independent country” due to it being “under the absolute influence of the US.” He criticized the EU for making “a huge mistake” of following Washington’s lead when it comes to dealing with Kiev, instead of developing its own “sovereign” view on the issue. As for his talks this week with Shmygal, Fico promised to tell his Ukrainian counterpart that he’s against Kiev’s membership in NATO, as that would be “exactly the basis of World War Three,” and to reiterate that President Vladimir Zelensky’s government won’t be getting any more weapons from Bratislava.

The prime minister’s interview caused angry reaction in Kiev, with the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Aleksandr Merezhko demanded that Fico’s trip to Ukraine be canceled for his “disgraceful statements” that crossed “the red line.” “Every country should have at least minimal self-respect. It’s absolutely unacceptable to pretend that nothing is happening when the leader of another state makes statements that question the sovereignty of a state” that he’s about to visit, Merezhko wrote on Facebook. Fico made a comeback as Slovakia’s prime minister in October after his party won the snap election in the EU country, campaigning on promises of, among other measures, cutting military aid to Kiev and improving ties with Moscow.

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The MO: crazy claims.

Zelensky Brands Parts Of Russia ‘Historically’ Ukrainian (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky declared six Russian regions to be “historically inhabited by Ukrainians” in a decree published on Monday. The list does not include any of the territory that Kiev claims sovereignty over in the ongoing conflict with Moscow, and focuses on globally recognized parts of Russia. The document includes Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions, all of which border Ukraine. It also lists Voronezh, Rostov, and Krasnodar regions, all of which bordered Ukraine before 2014, when Crimea decided to join Russia in a referendum and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics declared independence from Kiev. Zelensky claimed the population of these territories had been subjected to “the policy of forced Russification,” and ordered the government in Kiev to develop “an action plan” to “preserve” Ukrainian “national identity” in Russia.

The decree calls on Russia to “provide Ukrainians living in its territories” with access to education in the Ukrainian language, as well as access to Ukrainian-language mass media and special “civil, social, cultural, and religious rights.” Moscow has never imposed any restrictions on the Ukrainian language. Russia’s education minister, Sergey Kravtsov, said in July 2022 that “no one was banning” it, and that it would be taught in schools where necessary. Zelensky’s decree also tasks the Ukrainian government and the National Security and Defense Council with “collecting and studying facts and testimonies about crimes” supposedly committed against Ukrainians in Russia throughout its history, as well as “countering disinformation and propaganda” about Ukrainian history, allegedly spread by Moscow.

The president also instructed the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences to “prepare materials” on the “thousand-year-old history” of Ukraine and distribute them around the world. The country’s educational programs and textbooks should also contain “the true history of ethnic Ukrainians,” Zelensky added. The Russian regions mentioned in the decree have repeatedly been targeted by Ukrainian missile and drone attacks as well as shelling since the start of hostilities with Moscow in February 2022. Zelensky’s decree comes just weeks after Kiev launched a major attack on the city of Belgorod. The strike, which according to the Russian Defense Ministry involved the use of banned cluster munitions, claimed the lives of 25 people, including children, and left more than a hundred injured. In mid-January, a child was injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on the city of Voronezh – the capital of another region Zelensky claimed was “historically inhabited by Ukrainians.”

The developments come amid Kiev’s attempts to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – the country’s biggest Christian denomination, which is reported to have more than 8,000 parishes. The Ukrainian government has long accused it of having ties with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Ukraine in its pre-2014 borders was largely “created” by the Soviet leadership over the course of the 20th century. Historically, “Ukrainian lands” included a much smaller territory, he has argued. When the Cossacks living on the territory of modern Ukraine broke away from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century following the Bogdan Khmelnitsky uprising and asked the then-Tsardom of Russia to take them in, the territory they controlled effectively amounted to present-day Kiev, Chernigov, and Zhitomir regions – three areas in the north of Ukraine, the Russian president said in 2022.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1749432104612405410

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“Medvedev dismissed the decree as a “crude PR stunt” aimed at drawing public attention away from the Ukrainian forces’ failures on the front lines..”

Medvedev Denounces Zelensky’s ‘Territorial Claims’ To Russia (RT)

The latest decree by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky essentially amounts to “territorial claims” on sovereign Russian regions, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday. Posting on Telegram, he was referring to a document declaring six Russian regions to be “historically inhabited by Ukrainians.” Signed on Monday, Ukraine’s Day of Unity, the presidential decree claims that six territories that are universally recognized as a part of Russia – the Krasnodar, Rostov, Voronezh, Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions – had been “historically” populated by “ethnic Ukrainians” that were then supposedly subjected to “forced Russification.” The document then orders the Kiev government to develop an “action plan” to “preserve” the Ukrainian national identity in Russia and demands the “true history” of Ukraine be made known to the “world.”

It also demands Russia provide people living in these regions with access to Ukrainian-language mass media and to some special “civil, social, cultural and religious rights.” Medvedev dismissed the decree as a “crude PR stunt” aimed at drawing public attention away from the Ukrainian forces’ failures on the front lines. He also said there was even no need to comment on the contents of the order, since the territories mentioned in it have always been part of Russia. The former president (2008-2012) also said it was high time Zelensky “stopped” such policies and abandoned them, or he might end up “annexing Canada in the near future.” Zelensky himself described signing the decree as a way to promote “truth about Ukrainians… and their history.” He also claimed that it was aimed at “restoring the truth about the historical past for the Ukrainian future.”

The Russian regions mentioned in the decree have been regularly subjected to drone and missile attacks as well as shelling by the Ukrainian troops. In December, Belgorod – the capital of one of the regions supposedly “historically inhabited by Ukrainians” – was struck by a major Ukrainian attack. The strike claimed the lives of 25 people, including children. The Russian Defense Ministry also said that Kiev’s forces used banned cluster munitions in an attack targeting the city center just a day before New Year’s Eve celebrations.

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Scholz will try to ban the AfD.

AfD Leader Calls for German ‘Dexit’ Vote to Break From EU (Sp.)

The Alternative for Germany party promotes direct voting on legislation and strict immigration controls. It was the subject of nationwide protests last week after some of its members were spotted at a meeting that advocated for mass deportation of immigrants in Germany, including those with German passports. Britain was “dead right” to leave the European Union and Germany should consider its own “Dexit,” the leader of the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) Alice Weidel said in an article published in US media on Monday. “If reform isn’t possible, if we fail to rebuild sovereignty of the EU member states, we should let the people decide, just as Britain did,” she said, adding that “we could have a referendum on ‘Dexit’ – a German exit from the EU.”

A recent poll found that only 45% of AfD members would currently vote to leave the EU and only 10% of the general population said they would. It is worth noting that opinions can shift rapidly. In late 2014, only 36% of Britons said they would support the UK leaving the EU; less than two years later, more than half voted for “Brexit.” The AfD is leading the polls in five East German states and is polling second nationally at 22%. The party hopes to make gains at both the European Parliamentary elections in June and the regional elections in September. However, AfD’s high polling numbers may not reflect how much power the party will have in the near term. Establishment parties, including conservative-leaning ones, have ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD, limiting its potential power.

Weidel admitted that the issue will limit her party’s power in the short term but believes the “firewall” will not last forever, pointing to the conservative establishment CDU party, which includes former chancellor Angela Merkel, as the first likely to break. “The CDU will not be able to maintain its firewall in the long term,” Weidel said. She added that the last year proved “that we can form a clear right-wing majority. And the CDU can’t refuse to accept that in the long term, especially in the eastern states.” Weidel admitted her party is unlikely to take control until 2029 at the earliest. It is currently polling only behind the CDU but is ahead of every other party, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three coalition parties.

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X thread. War games.

Russian Attack On Nato In 2044 (Zlatko)

Europe is being frightened by the “scenario of a Russian attack on NATO” in 2044. Former US commander Hodges and defense analyst Sam Cranny-Evans put together “their” scenario: “This is not about Russia trying to take over all of NATO. This is not what their goal will be in 20 years. It would be about destroying NATO as an alliance by invading the eastern flank and conquering critical places – like the Arctic – that would benefit them,” General Hodges said. In their opinion, everything will begin with cyber attacks on transport chains, after which a missile attack will be launched on key infrastructure facilities in Europe.

The ground operation will begin in Finland, where tanks controlled by artificial intelligence will “enter.” At the same time, the Suwalki corridor will be taken under control and the Baltic countries will be attacked. The Russian Navy, as planned by Hodges, will take control of the Arctic regions. “There is even the possibility of some kind of conflict in space, where satellites are used to attack each other or jam satellites, which has already been done at a lower level in Ukraine,” Cranny-Evans added. Ostashko reports.

The best take on this, from a commenter:

Then aliens will come down and mate with all the women in Sweden, Orcs will invade France and steal all the wine, and Zelensky will have run off with Von Der Layen and fathered 20 children……..

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“..events described under oath by two Capitol Police officers in the first Oath Keepers trial in 2022 could not have happened, based on Mr. Baker’s examination of security video..”

DOJ Seeking Retribution Against Journalist for Recent Jan. 6 Coverage (ET)

Attorneys for a journalist threatened with prosecution for being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are challenging federal prosecutors to try his case outside the District of Columbia, suggesting prosecutors are seeking retribution for his recent reporting on possible Capitol Police perjury and the Jan. 6 pipe bombs. Six attorneys who said they volunteered to represent Stephen Baker of Raleigh, N.C., released a statement on Jan. 22 expressing belief that the DOJ is seeking even more serious Jan. 6 charges as retaliation. Mr. Baker, a former independent journalist, now writes for Blaze Media. “We now have information that Steve’s reporting has so agitated officials in multiple federal agencies that an effort is now underway to find a basis to charge Steve with more serious crimes and to use those more serious crimes as a pretext for early morning raids to execute search and arrest warrants on him and his family,” the statement read.

“If this is true, and search and arrest warrants are used to drag Steve out of his house in the early morning hours someday soon, that will be evidence of retaliation against a journalist exercising his First Amendment rights to report information that is embarrassing to government officials.” The statement is signed by five well-known Jan. 6 defense attorneys: James Lee Bright, Brad Geyer, Phillip Linder, William Shipley, and Edward Tarpley Jr. It was also signed by Mr. Baker’s Raleigh-based attorney, Matthew Ceradini. Mr. Geyer and Mr. Shipley were federal prosecutors for more than two decades. “After not having indicted me for three years, it is clear that any move to do so now will be in retaliation for my reporting,” Mr. Baker wrote in a news release. “I will not be intimidated. I will continue to report the findings of my investigation into the evidence being made available to me to review,” he said.

The attorneys challenged the DOJ to try any case against Mr. Baker in the eastern district of North Carolina where Mr. Baker lives, or the northern district of Texas, where his employer, Blaze Media, is located. “Are citizens of those two districts not suitable jurors in Steve’s case?” the statement asked. “Is the federal judiciary in those two districts not able to provide a fair and impartial trial? “On what basis does the United States Department of Justice believe the ‘United States’ can only get a fair trial in the District of Columbia and not one of those ‘United’ States?” Mr. Baker’s most recent coverage identified the person who found one of the two pipe bombs on Jan. 6 as an undercover U.S. Capitol Police officer and not a “passerby.” Since October 2023, he wrote a series of stories that said events described under oath by two Capitol Police officers in the first Oath Keepers trial in 2022 could not have happened, based on Mr. Baker’s examination of security video.

Mr. Geyer suggested that reporting should result in the Oath Keepers’ convictions being thrown out. Mr. Baker was one of dozens of journalists at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. His video footage appeared in an HBO film and was licensed by the BBC, The New York Times, and The Epoch Times. Mr. Baker was first contacted by the FBI in July 2021 about his presence at the Capitol. He voluntarily sat down with FBI special agents in November 2021. He said he was told the DOJ was considering charging him with interstate racketeering because he received money from licensing his Jan. 6 video. In March 2023, he said he was warned by a high-profile journalist that his reporting was chafing some high-level DOJ officials. In August, he was served a subpoena for his Jan. 6 video. In December, the FBI told his attorney that his arrest was imminent, although that plan was subsequently delayed.

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“..the falsely-elected, tyrannically corrupt, and epically deranged regime fronted by the ghost-in-the-White House, “Joe Biden.”

The Pipe-Bomb Caper (Kunstler)

“The FBI must come forward with the whole truth, immediately. If they will not, then Republicans have a duty to tear the FBI down to its foundation, and ensure that no government organization is allowed to amass this kind of power ever again.” — Charlie Kirk . Kudos to Darren J. Beattie of Revolver News and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) for doing the FBI’s work for the FBI, smoking out the role of law enforcement (including the FBI) in but one module of the J6 operation that turned a peaceful mass assembly of disgruntled voters into a riot in order to color it as an “insurrection” and so destroy opposition to the falsely-elected, tyrannically corrupt, and epically deranged regime fronted by the ghost-in-the-White House, “Joe Biden.”

Mr. Massie arranged to extract previously unseen video from the Capitol Police vaults showing the exceedingly strange behavior of various law-men in the minutes after one of their number reported a pipe-bomb beside a park bench, a few steps away from their parked vehicles, outside the DNC headquarters near the US Capitol building around one o’clock in the afternoon on J6/21, just around the time that a joint session of Congress would commence the entertainment of official complaints and objections to the certification of votes in the 2020 presidential election. Of course, that proceeding was disrupted by events outside and inside the US Capitol, and those many complaints and objections were never registered.

Two cars are shown parked blocking the driveway to the basement garage: a white Washington DC Metro Police SUV and a black Secret Service cruiser — because Veep Kamala Harris happened to be in the building at the time. A man with a backpack, later identified as a plainclothes Capitol Police officer, steps up first to the Metro car, then to the Secret Service cruiser, cueing minutes of slow milling-about by the officers in the two cars. Eventually several cops dawdle over to the bench to inspect what turns out to be a pipe-bomb planted in plain sight on the ground there. The video shows no effort to cordon-off the area or to stop cars or pedestrians (children) from entering the scene near the bomb.

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“The power they tasted during the lockdowns opened Pandora’s Box..”

Dutch Queen Promotes Digital ID at Davos (Martin Armstrong)

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands took to the Davos stage to declare that digital IDs are necessary for nearly every aspect of social engagement. The Dutch queen told the World Economic Forum (WEF) that they can no longer trust the people, and digital IDs will provide governments with a clear way to track our behavior. Vaccine passports are necessary to tell “who actually got a vaccination or not,” highlighting how those at the top do not trust the public. They want complete unilateral control. In fact, she believes that children should not be allowed to enroll in school unless they have a digital ID that includes their vaccination passport. “It [digital ID] is also good for school enrollment; it is also good for health – who actually got a vaccination or not; it’s very good actually to get your subsidies from the government,” she said to a room of nodding heads. Want to open a bank account? You must present a digital ID.

Now the Netherlands implemented a COVID certificate that was required for travel throughout the EU. Citizens were provided yellow vaccination booklets that they were required to carry throughout the pandemic. Mass protests erupted, but the government did not drop restrictions until 72% of the population was already injected. Over 40% of restaurants said they would not ask patrons to show proof of vaccination to enter. Prime Minister Mark Rutte immediately fired Deputy Economic Affairs Minister Mona Keijzer for questioning the vaccine passport. “If we end up in a society where we have to be afraid of each other unless we can show proof, then you really have to scratch your head and ask yourself: Is this the direction we want to go?” Dissent is no longer tolerated. The power they tasted during the lockdowns opened Pandora’s Box. The Dutch government must realize they will be met with resistance as the Dutch people will not allow the government to control them without a fight.

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Foal

 

 

Bouzouki bear
https://twitter.com/i/status/1749553698412335104

 

 


When humans lose weight, fat is eliminated and leaves the body. 80% of the fat is exhaled through the lungs as carbon dioxide

 

 

Lyrebird

 

 

Cathedral
https://twitter.com/i/status/1749361361044517131

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 092023
 
 December 9, 2023  Posted by at 9:44 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Bernini The Vision of Constantine 1670

 

The Evil Israel Does is the Evil Israel Gets (Chris Hedges)
Iran’s Raisi Asks Putin To Support Gaza Action – Putin Is Evasive (Helmer)
Flooding Gaza Would Be War Crime – Russia (RT)
Dozens of Democrats Could Beat Trump – Biden (RT)
Zelensky Sees the Writing on the Wall – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
White House Touts ‘Year Of Suffering’ For Russian Troops (RT)
Medvedev Warns Of Direct Russia-NATO Clash (RT)
Hunter Indictment Designed Specifically To Avoid Joe Biden (Turley)
Hunter Is In A Lot Of Trouble (@willscharf)
Hunter Biden Claims GOP Is “Trying To Kill” Him (Sp.)
Hunter Biden is a Case Study of the Perils of Legal Gluttony (Turley)
Tucker Carlson Comments On Running As Trump’s VP (RT)
Is Truth Becoming Valueless? (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

 

The day before yesterday, Refaat received a phone call from the Israeli intelligence about locating him in the school where he took refuge. They informed him that they were going to kill him. He left the school not wanting to endanger the others, and at 6 p.m. his sister’s apartment was bombed, where he was killed, his sister and her four children

 

 

Cuomo RFK

 

 

 

 

Vivek
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732974839810416666

 

 

 

 

“The wars do not end. The suffering continues. The Palestinians die in the tens of thousands. This is by design.”

The Evil Israel Does is the Evil Israel Gets (Chris Hedges)

I knew Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, the co-founder of Hamas, along with Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin. Al-Rantisi’s family were expelled to the Gaza Strip by Zionist militias from historic Palestine during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He did not fit the demonized image of a Hamas leader. He was a soft spoken, articulate and highly educated pediatrician who had graduated first in his class at Egypt’s Alexandria University. As a nine-year-old boy, he witnessed executions in Khan Younis of 275 Palestinian men and boys, including his uncle, when Israel briefly occupied the Gaza Strip in 1956, the subject of Joe Sacco’s magisterial book Footnotes in Gaza. Scores of Palestinians were also executed by Israeli soldiers in the neighboring town of Rafah, where tens of thousands Palestinians are currently being forced to flee now that Khan Younis has come under attack.

“I still remember the wailing and the tears of my father over his brother,” al-Rantisi told Sacco and me when we visited him at his home. “I couldn’t sleep for many months after that…It left a wound in my heart that can never heal. I’m telling you a story and I’m almost crying. This sort of action can never be forgotten…[T]hey planted hatred in our hearts.” He knew he could never trust the Israelis. He knew that the goal of the Zionist state was the occupation of all of historic Palestine – Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 along with Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula – and the eternal subjugation or extermination of the Palestinian people. He knew he would avenge the killings.

Al-Rantisi and Yassin were assassinated in 2004 by Israel. Al-Rantisi’s widow, Jamila Abdallah Taha al-Shanti, had a doctorate in English and taught at the Islamic University in Gaza. The couple had six children, one of whom was killed along with his father. The family’s home was bombed and destroyed during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge. Jamila was killed by Israel on Oct. 19 of this year. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is rearing a new generation of enraged, traumatized and dispossessed Palestinians who have lost family members, friends, homes, communities and any hope of living ordinary lives. They, too, will seek retribution. Their small acts of terrorism will counter Israel’s ongoing state terror. They will hate as they have been hated. This lust for vengeance is universal. After World War Two, a clandestine unit of Jews who served in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, called “Gmul,” – Hebrew for “Recompense” – hunted down former Nazis and executed them. “I and the public know/What all schoolchildren learn,” W.H. Auden wrote. “Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.”

[..] The Biden administration has little to gain from the leveling and depopulation of Gaza, indeed it is alienating huge segments of the Democratic Party, especially as it attacks protestors calling for a ceasefire as “pro-terrorist.” Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer led chants of “We stand with Israel” and “No ceasefire” at a pro-Israel rally on Nov. 4 in Washington D.C., despite a Reuters/Ipsos survey indicating 68 percent of respondents believed that Israel should implement a ceasefire and negotiate an end to the war. That number rises to 77 percent among Democrats. Biden has a dismal approval rating of 37 percent.

On Friday, the United Nations Security Council voted 13-1 for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and unconditional release of all hostages. The U.S. voted against the resolution. The U.K. abstained. The draft resolution was not adopted due to the U.S. veto. Biden’s real base is not disenchanted voters but the billionaire class, corporations, such as the weapons industry, which is making huge profits from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and groups such as the Israel lobby. They determine policy, even if it means Biden’s defeat in the next presidential election. If Biden loses, the oligarchs get Donald Trump, who serves their interests as doggedly as Biden. The wars do not end. The suffering continues. The Palestinians die in the tens of thousands. This is by design.

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“The war has to be economic and infrastructure suffocation [of Israel],” a Moscow source says. “Yes, that’s the only way to beat the beast.”

Iran’s Raisi Asks Putin To Support Gaza Action – Putin Is Evasive (Helmer)

An Iranian-Russian initiative on the Gaza War was tabled when Iranian President Sayyid Ebrahim Raisi met with President Vladimir Putin for several hours on Thursday. For the time being the Kremlin is doing its best to hide it. According to Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, speaking after Raisi had returned home, “a significant part of the negotiations focused on the Palestinian issue and Russia is thinking about an initiative on Gaza. The two sides stressed the need for an immediate cessation of the war and genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, he said, noting that the presidents of Iran and Russia also called for stopping the forced migration of Gazans and the immediate opening of the Rafah border to deliver massive humanitarian aid to Gazan people.”

There was a one-on-one session between Raisi and Putin at the commencement of the talks; a session of the two presidents with brief public statements; and then closed delegation presentations and a supper. Altogether, the talks lasted five hours. There were no press briefings at the conclusion. There has been a blackout on the talks by Russian Defense Ministry, the military bloggers, and Moscow media like Vzglyad which has been taking a pro-Israel line. No Russian official will clarify what Abdollahian meant by his claim that “Russia is thinking about an initiative on Gaza” – except to point out that Abdollahian’s wording does not mean that the “initiative” at this stage was initiated by the Russian side. Vedomosti reports that “Iran would like Russia to more actively express the pro-Palestinian position within the framework of public discourse, which would correspond to Iranian rhetoric. From the point of view of the North–South economy, of course, Tehran has a priority, it’s just that against the current background it, like any Muslim country, cannot demonstrate that it can have something more important than the situation in the Gaza Strip.”

According to the Kremlin communiqué, Raisi told Putin “the events unfolding in Gaza” are “surely genocide and a crime against humanity. It is lamentable that more than 6,000 children have been killed by the hands of the Zionist regime. Even sadder is the fact that all these crimes have been supported by the United States and Western countries. What is even more regrettable is that international organisations and the human rights organisations have lost their effectiveness… One of the issues that I would like to discuss with you, Mr Putin, is Palestine, as well as the challenges faced by the oppressed but strong Palestinian people. According to statistics, one child dies every ten minutes. Bombing must be stopped as soon as possible. This is not a regional issue, but a global issue, and a solution should be found promptly.”

Putin replied by changing the subject. “Mr President, I will definitely take you up on your invitation [to visit Iran]. And I should note that we will keep working almost through the end of the year. We have scheduled the signing of an agreement on creating a free trade area between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union in late December. It will create additional opportunities for expanding our interaction.” The Kremlin has published the names of the Russian delegation accompanying Putin at the talks but refuses to disclose the names of their Iranian counterparts. “Wait for additional materials on our website”, the spokesman said. Although Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was the second ranking member of the Russian side, Iranian sources confirm there was no military counterpart on their side.

Privately, Russian sources believe the two sides are discussing the protracted, long war strategy of Hamas and Hezbollah and the parallel engagement from Yemen and Iraq. They are also discussing ideas for breaking the Israeli blockade of Gaza with massive humanitarian aid in which the Arab states and China are also engaged in the planning. “The war has to be economic and infrastructure suffocation [of Israel],” a Moscow source says. “Yes, that’s the only way to beat the beast.”

Putin 2024

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I’m afraid they’re crazy enough to try.

Flooding Gaza Would Be War Crime – Russia (RT)

If Israel is truly considering flooding the “Hamas tunnels” under Gaza with seawater, this would be a clear-cut atrocity, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said at the Security Council meeting on Friday. China, Russia and the United Arab Emirates called for the emergency session, given the deteriorating situation in the Palestinian enclave after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) resumed military operations at the start of December. “In recent days, shocking information has spread about Israeli plans to flood underground structures in the Gaza Strip with seawater,” Polyansky told the council. “According to publicly available information, the IDF has already built a system of pipes and pumps designed to pump seawater, and is currently discussing with the United States the practical possibility of such flooding: will there be enough water, will the ‘topography’ of the tunnels allow it, and so on.”

“Such a step, if taken, would constitute a clear war crime”. Polyansky explained that the flooding would be indiscriminate and the equivalent of ordering “take no prisoners,” while the sea water would contaminate the groundwater in Gaza and make the area uninhabitable. Documents published in mid-October suggest that the Israeli authorities would like to displace all of Gaza’s Palestinian population into Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas after the Gaza-based militant group raided nearby Israeli settlements on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking scores hostage. Since then, more than 16,000 Palestinians have died in Israeli operations in Gaza.

After a week-long “humanitarian pause” at the end of November, Israel has launched a “more brutal and bloody phase” of its operation, Polyansky told the UN, with the scale of destruction indicating “indiscriminate” use of force and striking of targets considered protected by humanitarian law. “The brutal Hamas raid on October 7 cannot justify Israeli crimes against humanity,” the Russian diplomat argued. “Failure to respect humanitarian law by one side does not relieve the other from the same obligations.” Polyansky added that he doubted the International Criminal Court would do anything, as it will not act “against its Western masters.” The ICC is likely to “forgive” Israel just as it turned a blind eye to Western atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, he added.

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But “I just have to run.”

Dozens of Democrats Could Beat Trump – Biden (RT)

President Joe Biden has claimed there are dozens of Democrats who could defeat Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, but has insisted he must be the one to do so. Some sections of the Democratic Party and the media are already treating Biden as the default nominee for next year’s presidential election. The party’s Florida branch has refused to place any other names on the ballot for its primary vote, while the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has refused to organize debates with other contenders. Biden was asked by the media on Wednesday whether he thought there were fellow Democrats who could defeat Trump. “Probably 50 of them,” the president responded, declining to offer any names. “I’m not the only one, but I will defeat him.”

Questions about Biden’s willingness to run for a second term were triggered by remarks he made at a campaign fundraiser in Boston on Tuesday. “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” said the incumbent leader. Again citing the challenge from his predecessor, Biden later told journalists outside the White House that “I just have to run.” Biden overcame Trump in the 2020 presidential election, and a likely rematch has been touted by the Democrats as an existential battle against the Republican frontrunner’s supposed authoritarianism. However, Biden’s approval ratings recently reached a low of just 37%, according to a CNN poll published on Wednesday. Last month, a New York Times survey predicted Biden would lose to Trump in five of six battleground states. Critics of the Democrats’ strategy claim that the party would rather risk losing to a man it has branded a unique threat to democracy, rather than make Biden contest the nomination fairly against potentially better candidates.

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“..the counter-counter offensive..”

Zelensky Sees the Writing on the Wall – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must face the “writing on the wall” after the failure of his summer counter-offensive, says a former UN weapons inspector. In an interview with YouTube host Danny Haiphong, Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, Ritter gave a stark assessment of the notoriously botched Ukrainian counteroffensive that began in early summer of 2023. “The counteroffensive is over. It’s been a strategic defeat for the Ukrainians for the collective West. And what I think we’re going to see now is that the Russians, having absorbed the Ukrainian blow, are going to slowly go on the counter-counter offensive and begin to put pressure on the Ukrainians,” Ritter stressed. “The Russians will be on the initiative from now on. And eventually the Ukrainian line is going to collapse.”

Ukraine’s inability to secure any sort of tangible success on the battlefield will lead to political turmoil in Kiev, the pundit argued. Eventually, Zelensky will face the rage of his soldiers. “They feel betrayed by his incompetence. Especially when it becomes clear how corrupt he is, and how corrupt his government is. Everybody knows it,” Ritter pointed out. “There is a growing resentment over this. There are people who aren’t getting their pensions paid. People who aren’t getting the healthcare they need because of the corruption.” Ritter noted how the US is funding the entire country, paying salaries to civil servants, military personnel and healthcare workers — Washington completely disregards the same needs at home.

“As an American I take umbrage at this. If you’re going to do that there, first, do it here. Let’s take care of the immigration problem. Let’s take care of the dirty water up in Flint, Michigan. Let’s take care of the homeless problem. Let’s take care of all those junkies on the street of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Let’s take care of America before we start taking care of Ukraine,” he concluded. Recently, the Ukrainian media have given substantial coverage to rising tensions between President Zelensky and Ukraine’s top general Valery Zaluzhny. In the interview with British magazine the The Economist, the Commander-in-Chief admitted that the Ukrainian forces had reached an impasse. Zaluzhny came under fire for that statement, with Zelensky rushing to refute it.

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“He said he disagreed with the notion that the operation “not going as far as people wanted reflects some degree of Ukrainian failure.”

White House Touts ‘Year Of Suffering’ For Russian Troops (RT)

The White House wants to keep funding Ukraine in its conflict with Russia because it believes that in a year Moscow may be willing to concede to Kiev’s demands, an aide to Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said in an interview on Tuesday. Jon Finer, Sullivan’s principal deputy, discussed the White House Ukraine strategy at an event hosted by the Aspen Institute, an influential US think-tank. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s request to allocate over $110 billion in foreign security aid, including for Ukraine, was blocked from a vote in the Senate. Finer made a case for releasing the funds despite Kiev’s inability to secure any major successes on the battlefield during its summer counteroffensive. He said he disagreed with the notion that the operation “not going as far as people wanted reflects some degree of Ukrainian failure.”

If Washington keeps bankrolling Kiev’s war effort for the next year, the Ukrainian government will maintain “a degree of parity” with Russia, he promised. “Another year of funding and another year in which Russia will have to suffer on the battlefield is fundamentally a better position than we are in today without that funding,” Finer said. “I think there is no way to dispute that.” By the end of 2024, Western nations will have ramped up arms production and be helping Ukraine do the same, the White House expects. Then Russia will have to either “come to the negotiating table on terms that would be acceptable to Ukraine” or face a stronger opponent, according to Finer’s expectations.

Kiev’s demands for peace include full control over pre-2014 Ukrainian territory, war reparations and a tribunal for the Russian leadership, as detailed last year by President Vladimir Zelensky. Moscow has dismissed it from the start as detached from reality. Moscow has cited NATO expansion in Europe and the promised inclusion of Ukraine into the US-led military bloc as a threat to its national security. Preventing that outcome is imperative, senior Russian officials have said. In the first weeks of hostilities, Ukraine and Russia came to a preliminary agreement on a truce, which would have seen Kiev drop its NATO aspirations and pledge neutrality. Then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Kiev to “make war instead,” David Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian delegation at the talks in Istanbul, confirmed in a recent interview.

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“..no American president has ever “extorted so much money for a minor country that is in the process of collapsing..”

Medvedev Warns Of Direct Russia-NATO Clash (RT)

Moscow and Washington are tiptoeing on the precipice of a hot war, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said, adding that the last similar crisis in relations dates back to the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s. Writing on Telegram on Friday, Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, weighed in on what he called US President Joe Biden’s “primitive blackmail” of Congress. He was referring to the American leader’s recent plea to lawmakers to approve a $111 billion security package, which included funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. To convince Republicans – who have been reluctant to support the measure due to a dispute over border security – Biden warned that Russia might not stop at Ukraine and go on to attack NATO countries, leading to a direct clash involving the US. His plea, however, failed to impress the Senate Republicans, who blocked the funding.

Medvedev said the Biden administration’s ploy “is nothing new.” According to the official, many US presidents in the past have said, “Give the money to our guy (fill in the name), or you will have to fight the Russians.” The difference, Medvedev added, is that no American president has ever “extorted so much money for a minor country that is in the process of collapsing,” which is also connected to a corruption controversy involving both the sitting US president and his family members – in reference to allegations that both Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes from a Ukrainian gas executive. The former Russian president went on: “Never since the Cuban Missile Crisis has the threat of a direct clash between Russia and NATO leading to World War III been so real.”

The 1962 crisis brought the US and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war after Moscow responded to Washington’s deployment of missiles in Türkiye by placing its own atomic assets in allied Cuba. The two superpowers narrowly managed to defuse the tensions by withdrawing their missiles from both countries. Medvedev predicted that despite the gridlock in Congress, both the administration and its “cowering fosterling” in Kiev would get the money sooner or later, allowing all parties involved to continue profiting off the conflict. Russia has repeatedly warned the West against sending arms to Kiev, arguing that doing so will only prolong the conflict while making it a direct participant in the hostilities.

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How do you withdraw $1.6 million from an ATM?

Hunter Indictment Designed Specifically To Avoid Joe Biden (Turley)

The 56-page indictment of Hunter Biden for tax evasion makes for racy reading, with the special counsel describing a four-year criminal pattern directed at maintaining Biden’s “extravagant lifestyle.” That lifestyle included massive expenses for strippers, sex clubs, fast cars and other distractions. The steps taken by Hunter to evade taxes are impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the efforts of the Justice Department to evade any direct implications for his father, President Biden. In that sense, the indictment itself is a marvel of evasion. There are three glaring omissions in the indictment that tend to shield critical payments and conduct that implicate the president. First, the special counsel only indicts tax evasion that occurred in recent years. That’s because the long “investigation” into Hunter inexplicably allowed the statute of limitations to expire on the most controversial payments from Ukraine gas company Burisma.

Recent testimony from IRS whistleblowers suggests that wasn’t an accident. Investigators were stonewalled, they claimed, and the Justice Department was previously moving to reject any charges against Hunter Biden. Exploring those earlier Ukrainian payments opens up questions about Hunter’s influence peddling and would have highlighted the conflict in his father’s extraordinary move to force the Ukrainians to fire a prosecutor investigating Burisma by holding back a billion dollars in aid for the country. There is still no explanation why special counsel David Weiss would allow the statute of limitations to run out. But this recent indictment keeps the focus squarely on taxes not paid, not how the money was “earned” in the first place. Also missing in the indictment is any charge against Hunter Biden as an unregistered foreign agent.

Recently, the Justice Department added a charge to the indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) that he ran afoul of FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. FARA also was used to go after Donald Trump associates such as Paul Manafort. The problem with charging Hunter with FARA is obvious. It opens up questions about the millions of dollars going to the Biden family from foreign sources, a topic that Attorney General Merrick Garland has spent years avoiding. In the second indictment, Weiss spends more time detailing the salacious use of this money rather than how and why it was given to the Bidens. He just matter-of-factly describes millions flowing through these accounts from China, Romania, Ukraine, Russia and other countries. By focusing on tax evasion alone, Weiss again avoids any direct reference to the focus of the influence-peddling used to raise these millions of dollars.

Even without mentioning the president, the implications of the indictment are devastating for the narrative and denials of Joe Biden. The president has continued to maintain that he had no knowledge or interaction with these dealings. Those statements are clearly and knowingly false. The president also maintained that his son has “never done anything wrong” and never accepted any money from China. That is also untrue, according to the Justice Department and Hunter himself. Yet Weiss continues to avoid any need to address the person who was the selling point of the influence peddling. It was the same person who repeatedly called in to dinners and meetings, repeatedly attended events, and held meetings and photo shots for these clients. Instead, Weiss indicts the failure to pay taxes on the proceeds of these dealings without addressing that underlying corruption. It is akin to arresting a bank robber for speeding away from the crime scene without mentioning the reason for his flight.

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X thread.

Hunter Is In A Lot Of Trouble (@willscharf)

I have reviewed the new Hunter Biden indictment. As a former federal prosecutor, and someone who has followed the Hunter saga quite closely for years, here are my initial reactions:

(1) Hunter is in a lot of trouble. With the sweetheart deal previously offered to him now off the table, Hunter is in an awful lot of trouble. He is facing four counts of willfully failing to pay his taxes for tax years 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, and two counts of failing to file a tax return for tax years 2017 and 2018, all in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7203. He is also charged with one count of tax evasion and two counts of filing false and fraudulent tax forms for tax year 2018, in violation of § 7201 and § 7206, for chalking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of fake business expenses. These fake expenses included payments for: hotel rooms that he turned into crack dens, payoffs for his girlfriends, strippers, escorts, luxury cars, a sex club membership, porn sites. He also tried to claim his daughter’s law school tuition as business-related legal expenses. He tried to hide income, and made numerous false statements under penalty of perjury. If he were to go to trial and be convicted of all of these counts, based on my calculations, the advisory federal sentencing guidelines range for him could easily reach 4–5 years’ imprisonment. Even if he were to plead guilty to these counts, his guidelines range sentence would likely be around 3 years. That is a lot of prison time for the son of a sitting president.

(2) Weiss appears to be playing this straight. I said after David Weiss’s appointment as special counsel that this was going to go in one of two directions: Either Weiss was going to continue the concerted effort to cover up and clean up Hunter’s long history of criminal activity to protect Joe Biden and the Biden family. Or Weiss was going rogue, and would hammer Hunter with the full force of the law. My assumption was cover up, but based on this indictment and the previous firearms indictment, I can’t find fault with his actions thus far. He is appropriately and vigorously prosecuting the tax and gun crimes that we already knew about. The real test will be what comes next. Will Hunter be offered a new sweetheart plea deal to sweep this all under the rug? Most importantly, will more indictments follow? Foreign money laundering? Failure to register as a foreign agent? Bribery? Only time will tell, but I am hopeful that maybe—just maybe—we will see some justice here.

(3) Joe Biden is a liar. If the facts in the indictment are proven, and based on Hunter’s previous abortive plea deal I believe they can be and will be, this indictment is further proof (as if we needed more) that Joe Biden lied repeatedly to the American people during the 2020 election. “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China.” That was Joe Biden at the presidential debate on October 22, 2020. That was a lie. Biden denied that Hunter had made “a fortune in China, in Moscow and various other places” at the presidential debate on September 29, 2020. That was a lie. I could go on, but the point is made. Joe Biden needs to answer to the American people for his lies. They implicate him in criminal conspiracies abroad involving the shadiest of foreign actors, and cut to the heart of his fitness for office.

(4) More egg on the media’s face. As if mainstream media credibility could fall even lower . . . The mainstream media was an active participant in Joe Biden’s lies in 2020. The media actively ran cover, burying Hunter Biden stories, showing a startling lack of interest in the Biden family’s web of foreign business interests, and insisting — insisting! — that there was nothing to see here. The blackout on reporting about Hunter’s now-validated laptop was the pinnacle of this all hands on deck effort. I want to hear from the journalists who participated in burying these stories, who wrote fake “explainer” pieces on how the Republicans were conspiracy theorists, who lashed out at Trump for attacking Joe over the Hunter scandals. Who decided that getting Joe elected was more important than uncovering the truth. Is that what they taught you in journalism school?

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Playing the victim appears to be Hunter’s second nature.

Hunter Biden Claims GOP Is “Trying To Kill” Him (Sp.)

Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, sat down with the Grammy-nominated musician Moby for a podcast interview that was released on Friday, detailing that the GOP is harassing him as part of an effort to tank his father’s 2024 reelection bid. The 58-year-old musician explained at the beginning of the “Moby Pod” interview that he had previously met Biden at one of his art shows while the two had been recovering from an addiction. During the interview, Biden claimed right-wing attacks against him were not actually “about” him, but are instead part of a broader approach to attack his father’s presidency. “They are trying to, in their most illegitimate, but rational way, they’re trying to destroy a presidency,” Biden said on Friday. “And so it’s not about me, and [in] their most base way, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle.”

“They decided that the one way in which they would be able to certainly just undermine my dad’s confidence and ability to continue to campaign and move forward – particularly after the death of my brother – [was] to think that he could lose his son that he just had regained from an almost-death, through addiction,” said Biden. During the interview, Biden also lamented his challenges with drug and alcohol addiction following the death of his mother, sister and his brother, as well as his shame at feeling like the “f***-up” in his family. He acknowledged it’s difficult to maintain sobriety when he’s the focus of “a hatred and an intensity that is both specific and global.”This is the first time Biden has spoken publicly on the topic since his memoir was released in 2021. Since then, he has allowed public statements to come from his attorneys. During the podcast, he said he was speaking out (after being advised to keep a low profile) because he wanted to help others suffering from an addiction.

“One of the reasons why I’m gonna survive this – and I’m gonna survive it clean and sober – is because I am not gonna let these motherf****** use me as just another example of why people in recovery are never gonna be OK, never to be trusted, they’re all degenerates – I’m just not gonna let that happen.” He later described being doxxed by the New York Post, which he said led to Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats, shouting through bullhorns outside his house when his wife was eight months pregnant. During the podcast, Biden also mentioned feeling sorry for Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who he said are “not healthy people.” The two lawmakers have been some of Biden’s toughest credits, with Greene holding up posters displaying him in graphic and sexual photos during an Oversight Committee hearing in July. The photos had come from the infamous scandal-ridden laptop belonging to Biden.

“The second thing that I realized is that these people are just sad, very very sick people that have most likely just faced traumas in their lives that they’ve decided that they are going to turn into an evil that decides that they’re going to inflict on the rest of the world,” Biden said.

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“..why ask for a sweeping immunity deal? The answer was why not. That all came crashing down when Judge Noreika just cleared her throat in court.”

Hunter Biden is a Case Study of the Perils of Legal Gluttony (Turley)

Five months ago, exasperated Biden defense counsel Chris Clark snapped at federal prosecutors to “just rip it up” after a plea bargain hit a snag in a hearing before Judge Maryellen Noreika. They did and, for the first time, Hunter could be facing a real chance for jail time. The six misdemeanor charges and three felonies carry a potential sentence of 17 years for alleged tax evasion and filing a false return. It could have been worse. The Justice Department inexplicably allowed the statute of limitations to run on the most serious allegations involving payments from years going back to 2016. Those are mentioned in the narrative of the indictment but not charged as separate offenses. None of this would have happened if Judge Noreika did not ask a very simple question about the plea agreement and a sweeping immunity provision buried in its language.

Many judges would have likely flagged through the agreement and given Hunter the sweetest of sweetheart deals. Noreika noticed that the deal seemed to give Hunter immunity for any crime going forward and asked the prosecutor if he had ever seen any agreement like this one. He honestly answered “no.” It was later learned that there was a push within the Justice Department to have no charges at all brought against Hunter in an investigation that was heavily laden with special treatment, according to IRS whistleblowers. The investigation by the House has shown how Hunter and his counsel allowed their appetite for special treatment to turn into a raging disorder. The Justice Department reportedly gave Hunter a “heads up” about planned searches and interviews, scuttling those efforts. Even though the Justice Department had an agreement to “toll the statute” to prevent the early charges from expiring, the Special Counsel just let them die without any rational reason.

In this “all-you-can-eat” legal Smorgasbord, it is little surprise that the Biden team would demand an unprecedented immunity deal and just two misdemeanors after years of tax evasion covering millions from insider trading. After all, Attorney General Merrick Garland had refused the calls of many of us to appoint a Special Counsel to look into the corruption scandal. The scandal was capped off legally and the media was running cover for Hunter.The laptop was falsely denounced as Russian disinformation and the media largely dismissed influence peddling claims. Whenever new allegations surfaced, the President and the media would literally run to the nearest ice cream shop to discuss the President’s favorite flavors. In other words, why ask for a sweeping immunity deal? The answer was why not. That all came crashing down when Judge Noreika just cleared her throat in court.

As the prosecutors struggled to explain the absurd immunity provision, the Biden legal team was obviously shocked at the notion that they might have to exercise portion control. After all, the President himself has declared “no one f**ks with a Biden.” That is when they told the prosecutors to “just rip it up.” Those are the four most dangerous words that a criminal defendant could utter in a hearing on a plea deal. They could have immediately narrowed the immunity deal and even added a few misdemeanors to salvage the deal. Instead, they shredded their client. What followed was performative and frankly a tad pathetic. To the thrill of some in the media, the Biden team promised to get aggressive with witnesses and critics. They started to make demands as if they still controlled events, including saying that they would only comply with a congressional subpoena on their own terms.

It won’t work. A bill has come due. While Garland is still protecting President Biden from a Special Counsel, Hunter Biden is going to have to face these alleged crimes and corruption. Even the media is now admitting that he was influence peddling, though maintaining a final line of defense for the president. The last defense is that it was corrupt, but merely illusory because it did not actually influence Joe Biden. In other words, Hunter is rapidly becoming expendable.

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“To go from being, like, a well-paid street corner schizophrenic to, like, a politician – it’s just kind of hard to envision..”

Tucker Carlson Comments On Running As Trump’s VP (RT)

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has stopped short of ruling out becoming former US President Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate in 2024, suggesting that he would need a directive from God to take the job if it’s offered to him. Carlson, who has attracted millions of viewers to his channel on X (formerly Twitter) since being fired by Fox in April, made his comments on Thursday night in response to a media report that he was the potential VP candidate favored by former First Lady Melania Trump. Asked about the report after he gave a speech at an event in Washington, Carlson said, “God would have to yell at me very loud” to accept such an offer. Independent media outlet Semafor was first to report on Carlson’s response. The political commentator noted that he doesn’t really know the first lady.

He has repeatedly insisted that he has no interest in running for elected office. “To go from being, like, a well-paid street corner schizophrenic to, like, a politician – it’s just kind of hard to envision,” he said on Thursday. However, Semafor reported, there were cheers from the audience when he didn’t fully rule out joining Trump’s 2024 ticket. Axios reported on Thursday that the former first lady was advocating for her husband to pick Carlson as his running mate. “She thinks Carlson would make a powerful onstage extension of her husband,” the outlet said, citing an unidentified person close to Trump. Trump is polling as, far and away, the leading Republican candidate to face Democrat incumbent Joe Biden in next year’s presidential election. He also faces 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases filed by prosecutors in Washington, New York, Florida, and Georgia.

Carlson has said that he became an avid Trump supporter after the FBI raided the former president’s home in Florida last summer. He has vowed to vote for Trump and lead protests if the ex-president is convicted of a crime and jailed: “You cannot allow the regime, the president of the United States, the Justice Department, to knock the frontrunner out of the race. You can’t do that.” Other potential Trump VP candidates include Senator J.D. Vance, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Representative Byron Donalds, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, according to the Axios report.

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“Many misinterpret 1984 as a warning against Stalinism and Nazism, but George Orwell was predicting the future of the Western world. That future is here.”

Is Truth Becoming Valueless? (Paul Craig Roberts)

In America and its Western puppet states, there is today no greater crime than to be a truth-teller. Despite habeas corpus and due process enshrined in British law and the US Constitution, Julian Assange has been illegally detained for a decade for telling the truth. Reiner Fuellmich, the Germany attorney, who was about to file charges against the pharmaceutical companies for deaths and injuries from the Covid “vaccine,” was kidnapped in Mexico by the German government and placed in solitary confinement in Germany on obviously false charges in order to prevent the lawsuit. Barry Young, the New Zealand Covid database administrator who released the official data showing that the alleged “vaccine” was a deadly killer, has been arrested for revealing the truth. Be sure you understand what I am telling you. Those who tell you the truth are being arrested and treated worst than mass murderers. Murder is not a threat to the corrupt ruling establishment, but Truth is.

All truth-tellers have a target on their backs, including me. For reporting accurately on Putin’s hopes for reconciliation with Washington, I was labeled a “Putin agent/dupe.” This was just the beginning. George Soros, who Elon Musk said “appears to want nothing less than the destruction of Western civilization,” finances “fact checkers” and “verification” sites, the purpose of which is to discredit those who tell the truth. The State Department, the FBI, CIA, Mossad, and any number of government agencies and official organizations in the West work overtime to discredit truth-tellers. Wikipedia labeled me an “anti-semite” for quoting WW II historian David Irving in a book review. A truth-suppression website–NewsGuard–financed by who?–describes my website, which is read in every country in the world, as “A Conspiracy-oriented website that regularly publishes falsehoods about US election, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, and other issues.”

It is extraordinary that after describing me as a disinformation artist, NewsGuard accurately describes me as an Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, a presidential appointment which requires confirmation by the US Senate in order to take office, as an editor of the Wall Street Journal, as an author of books published by Harvard University Press and Oxford University Press, highly prestigious publishers who required credibility on the part of their peer-reviewed authors. So here I stand, with numerous top secret security clearances over many years, confirmed in a presidential appointment by the US Senate, a Wall Street Journal editor, a Business Week columnist for a dozen or more years, an academic at Stanford University and occupant for a dozen years of the William E. Simon Chair for Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and all of these front line institutions appointed a “conspiracy theorist.”

I have the French Legion of Honor signed by French President Mitterrand, the US Treasury’s Meritorious Service Award, the US Treasury’s Silver Medal, the International Journalism Award from the Press Club of Mexico. I have been in Who’s Who In America and Who Who’s in the World for decades. I have Who’s Who in America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. I have been on boards of multi-billion dollar financial and manufacturing institutions. I have been an adviser to J.P. Morgan Guaranty Trust and other large money managers. I have endless endorsements from distinguished Americans. And a dismal unverified hired gun organization called NewsGuard declares the entire journalistic, academic, business, and political establishment to have appointed a “conspiracy theorist” to the highest positions in the society.

No, I am not bragging on myself. I am pointing out that NewsGuard has no shame. The organization declares a truth-teller who has the highest honors to be a liar. Every corrupt, evil, material interest has money to demonize the truth. NewsGuard is one of their operatives. These are people devoid of integrity, but these sorts of sites are plentiful online, and given the insouciance of the American people, these sites might have more influence than truth-tellers. It raises the questions: can truth prevail when endless money can shout truth down? Can truth survive when people show scant interest in supporting truth and those who tell it? If you look objectively with open eyes at the news and at the indoctrination that passes for education, you will see that you live in a world of lies constructed by official narratives. Throughout the Western world police powers are being used to enforce the official narratives–every one of which is a lie.

Think about what this means for science and scholarship when Big Pharma-paid shills can shout down and discredit honest independent scientists, when educators can turn fiction into fact and fact into lies, when we live in Orwell’s world where Newspeak and Doublethink prevail: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” “Ignorance is strength.” Many misinterpret 1984 as a warning against Stalinism and Nazism, but George Orwell was predicting the future of the Western world. That future is here. Stand with me or soon you will find that you cannot stand at all.

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JOHN LENNON was taken from us 43yrs ago today. Every year on the anniversary of his death, the National Trust leave the bedroom light on in John’s childhood home, all night.

 

 

 

 

Bronze doors

 

 

 

 

Dragon

 

 

 

 

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