Jun 232024
 


Vincent van Gogh Weeping woman 1883

 

Biden May Decline Nomination If He Does Poorly in June 27 Debate – Hersh (Sp.)
A New Multipolar Security System Based On ‘Pax Rossiya’ (SCF)
Is Washington Trying To Dump The Ukraine War Into The EU’s Lap? (Jay)
The Only Way to End Confrontation Between Russia and the West (Lukyanov)
The Ukrainian Border War Folly (David Stockman)
Tens of Thousands of Ukrainians Hiding From Draft Officers – NYT (TASS)
Belgium Warns Against Seizing Russian Money (RT)
White Christians Being Replaced In Europe – Orban (RT)
Sunak Accuses Farage Of Appeasing Putin (BBC)
Wikipedia’s Political Bias Spreading To AI (RT)
The Supreme Court Swatted Down Hunter Biden’s Hail Mary Pass (Turley)
Common Sense And Memes Are Viruses To The New World Order (Lynn)
Bibi Is Needy (DeMartino)
UK Invents Phantom Skripals To Refuse To Testify In Novichok Inquiry (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

Cuomo Maher
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804499826546983385

 

 

Comer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804207426297561197

 

 

Tucker J6

Jan 6
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804376332077535479

 

 

Judge Judy

 

 

Tesla

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..Biden is going to need to match the intensity he demonstrated at his State of the Union address in March if he wants to stay in the race, Hersh said..”

Biden May Decline Nomination If He Does Poorly in June 27 Debate – Hersh (Sp.)

Democrats are discussing plans to have President Joe Biden decline the Democratic presidential nomination if he has a bad showing at the upcoming presidential debate on June 27, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Friday, citing a longtime friend of the US president. Hersh reported that there is a serious concern among the Democratic Party leadership and major Democratic donors about Biden’s ability to defeat former President Donald Trump in the November election. “One extreme possibility in the case of a very bad showing Thursday night, I have been told, is to obtain agreement from Biden and his family advisers for the president to come to the Democratic convention in Chicago in August and accept the accolades of a first-round delegate victory; then he would decline the nomination and throw the nominating process open to all,” Hersh said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker could be favorites to replace Biden, Hersh said. Next week, Biden is going to need to match the intensity he demonstrated at his State of the Union address in March if he wants to stay in the race, Hersh said. An aggregation of national polls by RealClearPolitics shows that Trump holds a half-a-point lead over Biden and leads him in all seven swing US states.

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“The U.S. and its Western partners – a global minority – have come to be seen by most people of the world as rogue states that have trashed international law..”

A New Multipolar Security System Based On ‘Pax Rossiya’ (SCF)

For several years now, Russia, China and other members of the expanding BRICS alliance have been formulating progressive trade and financial relations of the emerging multipolar world order. That order is based on mutual respect and partnership grounded in international law and the UN Charter. The BRICS concept is rightly the zeitgeist of our time. It is rallying more nations to its fold especially those of the so-called Global South which for decades have been subjected to the unilateralism of Western hegemony. The trouble is that for a new world order based on equality and fairness to succeed in practice, it needs to be secure from arbitrary military aggression and imperialist tyranny. In other words, a new security architecture is required to underpin the development of a multipolar world. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been advocating for a new indivisible international security system. This week saw the plan for a new security arrangement put into action.

The Russian leader embarked on state visits to North Korea and Vietnam during which he signed new strategic partnership and defense accords. Ahead of his trip to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Putin outlined the integrated vision thus: “We are also ready for close cooperation to make international relations more democratic and stable… To do this, we will develop alternative mechanisms of trade and mutual settlements that are not controlled by the West, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions. And at the same time – to build an architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.” The concept of indivisible security is by no means limited to Eurasia. Russia has signaled the same principles apply to Latin America, Africa and indeed every other corner of the world. During Putin’s meetings with Chairman Kim Jong Un of the DPRK and President Lo Tam of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the strategic partnerships agreed were not merely about military defense and security.

They involved comprehensive partnerships for the development of trade, transport, technology, education, science and medicine. Nevertheless, it was clear that the commitment to strategic partnership was underpinned by new mutual defense accords. This was most explicit in the treaty signed with the DPRK which furnished “mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties”. This is a game-changer. It totally upends the geopolitical calculations of the United States and its NATO partners who have been unilaterally expanding military force and provocations in Eurasia and elsewhere. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has ramped up aggression in the Asia-Pacific against China and North Korea with impunity. Under his watch, the US has increasingly moved nuclear forces into the region to intimidate not only Beijing and Pyongyang but also Moscow. The Biden administration has been assiduous in forming hostile military formations in the region with its NATO partners, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.

Year after year, the United States has built up weapon systems in Taiwan to provoke China and on the Korean Peninsula to threaten North Korea. This unilateral aggression and “might is right” arrogance underpin the notion of Pax Americana that prevailed for decades after the Second World War. That notion was always a cruel euphemism for American imperialist violence to impose its economic and political interests. The Korean and Vietnam Wars in which millions of civilians were annihilated were the real-world grim translations of Pax Americana and its fraudulent “rules-based order”. Geopolitical perceptions have dramatically changed in a few short years. The U.S. and its Western partners – a global minority – have come to be seen by most people of the world as rogue states that have trashed international law through illegal wars and unilateral bullying with economic sanctions. The U.S. dollar and Washington’s relentless debt spending are seen as instruments of imperialist looting.

The BRICS multipolar world order is a welcome alternative to the mayhem of the Western-dominated system. The principles of fairness and cooperation are laudable and necessary to implement. But such principles must be reinforced with military defense and security for all. This is far from the one-sided “defense and security” of the United States and its NATO partners, which in reality is an Orwellian cover for aggression. The defense commitments given by Russia to the DPRK this week can be seen as long overdue. One may wonder how the U.S. and its allies got away with threatening the people of North Korea for so long and denying Pyongyang the sovereign right to self-defense. Admittedly, Russia did previously support UN sanctions on North Korea over its missile program. That’s over.

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“America wants to hand over the responsibility of Ukraine to the Europeans and shed responsibility for the mess that it has created..”

Is Washington Trying To Dump The Ukraine War Into The EU’s Lap? (Jay)

With just a mere matter of weeks now before the U.S. presidential election some experts are wondering if Joe Biden is preparing, at the last minute, to wriggle free of the Ukrainian curse and tell voters that in the next term, if he were to be President, Ukraine funding will be reduced dramatically. This would, after all, be a cunning move to outfox Trump who has told reporters on numerous occasions that he would end the war once in office simply through cutting U.S. financial support.Either scenario places EU countries – and the EU itself in Brussels – in a quandary as their worst nightmare is coming true: America wants to hand over the responsibility of Ukraine to the Europeans and shed responsibility for the mess that it has created. One could even argue that relations now between the U.S. and EU countries are on a collision course given one recent offer Washington made to the EU in the form of a loan which the EU would guarantee but U.S. companies would benefit from.

As Hungary prepares to take the helm of the EU’s six month rotating presidency on July 1st, western elites are fretting over whether this time Budapest will veto outright the sanctions which are in place, which need to be signed off every six months. America in particular wants a quick fix solution but is indicating that it wants to hand over all the risk to Europe. It argues that those who hold Russian assets should be the ones to offer the guarantees against default – through interest on Russian cash held by them – and that U.S. Congress anyway is unlikely to sign off another batch of military aid, even in the form of a loan, at such short notice. Following a massive body blow from European elections, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will tell President Joe Biden they reject the American proposal for Europe to act as sole guarantors for the loan, according to conversations with six senior diplomats and officials.

The offer was structured in such a way that EU countries would pay the interest, accept the risk and allow most of what was a 50bn dollar loan to benefit U.S. companies. Remarkable sting for the EU governments when it shows that the relationship between them and the Biden administration just sinks lower and lower each week. Of course, there is a great deal of anger from the EU side as many EU leaders feel as though the U.S. has cleaned up quite nicely from the whole business of war which has profited the U.S. on so many levels but has drained EU economies, explaining why Poland recently held a pole which claimed that a majority of those asked wanted funding for the Ukraine war to end. Europe has really been left holding the baby over the Ukraine war and the palpable resentment against the U.S. is certainly growing. The deal the U.S. pushed of course was never going to be a runner but more likely a new European Commission in September will borrow a new 50bn euro tranche from its seven year 1.2 trillion euro budget for Ukraine.

Even in this scenario, the EU is scraping the barrel and reaching new lows in throwing cash into the fire just as an ephemeral last-ditch effort to stay warm. But both the U.S. and EU realise that time is running out for whoever wants to pour more money into the black hole of Ukraine. Time is running out because while Ukraine desperately needs the money, there’s no certainty that a Donald Trump presidency would back any loan initiatives. A final agreement will now be delayed until at least in autumn with just a matter of few weeks before November 5 election. Relations between the U.S. and EU have never been so tipped in Washington’s favour. And that’s before Trump even gets into the White House.

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Talk.

The Only Way to End Confrontation Between Russia and the West (Lukyanov)

The concept adopted at the end of the Cold War stated that NATO ensured European security, and a bigger NATO meant a more secure continent. As a first step towards this, everyone (including Moscow) agreed that a reunited Germany would remain a member of the bloc instead of receiving neutral status, as some had suggested earlier. Further, it was implied that each country had the right to choose whether or not to join any alliances. Theoretically, that is what sovereignty implies. But in practice, the geopolitical balance of power had always imposed restrictions that forced alliances to consider the reaction of non-member countries. However, the triumphalism that reigned in the West following the Cold War significantly reduced the willingness to take such reactions into account. In other words, NATO felt like it could do anything and no reply would follow.

The situation could have changed dramatically if Russia had considered the possibility of joining NATO, and if the bloc itself had considered such a scenario. Then the principle of the indivisibility of security, proclaimed in the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe, would have been respected within the framework of the bloc. However, it was impossible for Russia to join NATO, since, even at its weakest, Russia remained one of the world’s largest military powers and possessed the largest nuclear arsenal. The hypothetical accession of such a state to NATO would mean the emergence of a second force within the club that would be on a par with the US, and therefore, would not obey it on the same level as other allies. This would change the very essence of the organization, and alter its principles of Atlanticism (simply because of Russia’s geographical location). No one was prepared for this. The qualitative transformation of NATO was never on the agenda.

As a result, NATO’s expansion, which in a sense became automated, pushed Russia further and further to the east. Moscow’s attempts to regulate this process – first through participation in joint institutions (such as the NATO-Russia Council of 2002, which was an expansion of the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997) and then through growing opposition (starting with Putin’s Munich Speech in 2007) – did not bring the desired results. In addition to the inertia of the West’s initial approach (which implied that the bloc’s very existence is security in itself), the West believed that Moscow didn’t have the right to set conditions and must only follow the rules set by the stronger and more successful Western community. This is how the EU eventually got involved in the current Ukraine war. Could relations between NATO and Russia have developed in a different way? The West believes that the persistence of Russia, which continued to consider NATO a threat to its security, led to the current military crisis. And, in fact, this became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But even assuming that this was true, the speed and ease with which NATO returned to a strong confrontation with Russia shows that it had been prepared for this.

Russia’s memorandum of December 2021 and the 2022 military operation in Ukraine were designed to put an end to the idea of NATO’s uncontested expansion as the only means of ensuring European security. Two-and-a-half years later, we see that the scale of the conflict has exceeded all initial expectations. Judging by Moscow’s statements, the confrontation may only come to an end when the principles on which European security is based are fundamentally reconsidered. This is not a territorial conflict, but a conflict which may only end when NATO abandons its main goal and function. So far, there is no compromise on the horizon. The Western side is not willing to agree that the results of the Cold War must be reconsidered, and the Russian side is not ready to retreat without this assurance. Thirty years after the signing of the Partnership for Peace program, there’s still no partnership or peace between Russia and NATO. And neither is there a clear understanding of why the two sides were unable to achieve it.

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Not one country. Never was.

The Ukrainian Border War Folly (David Stockman)

once the iron-hand of totalitarian rule ended in 1991, the deep and historically rooted conflict between Ukrainian nationalism, language and politics of the central and western regions of the country and the Russian language and historical religious and political affinities of the Donbas and south came rushing to the surface. So-called democracy barely survived these contests until February 2014 when one of Washington’s “color revolutions” finally “succeeded”. That is to say, the Washington fomented and financed nationalist-led coupe d état ended the fragile post-communist equilibrium.

That’s the true meaning of the Maidan coup. It ended the tenuous cohesion that kept the artificial state of Ukraine intact for barely two decades after the Soviet demise. So save for Washington’s destructive intervention, the partition of a communist-confected state that had never been built to last would have eventually materialized. The evidence that the Maidan coup was the coup ‘d grace for the makeshift Ukrainian state is apparent in the maps below. These maps below tell you all you need to know about why this is a civil war, not an invasion of one neighbor by another. The first map is from the 2004 presidential election, which was won by the Ukrainian nationalist candidate, Yushchenko. The latter predominated in the orange areas of the map, over the pro-Russian Yanukovych, who swept the blue regions in the east and south.

2004 Ukraine Election Results—National Divorce In The Making

The second map is from the 2010 election, showing the same stark regional split, but this time the pro-Russian candidate, Yanukovych, won. In the map below, the dark blue parts to the far east (Donbas) indicate an 80% or better vote for Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 election. By contrast, the dark red areas in the west voted 80% or more for the Ukrainian nationalist, Yulie Tymoshenko. That is to say, the skew in the Ukrainian electorate was so extreme as to make America’s current red state/blue state divide seem hardly noteworthy by comparison. As it happened, the sum of the pro-Yanukovych skews from the east and south (Donbas and Crimea) added up to 12.48 million votes and 48.95% of the total, while the sum of the extreme red skews in the center and west (the lands of old eastern Galicia and Poland) amounted to 11.59 million votes and 45.47% of the total.

Stated differently, it is hard to imagine an electorate more sharply divided on a regional/ethnic/language basis. Yet it was one which still produced a sufficient victory margin (3.6 percentage points) for Yanukovych – so as to be reluctantly accepted by all parties. That became especially clear when Tymoshenko, who was the incumbent prime minister, withdrew her election challenge a few weeks after the run-off in February 2010. At that point, of course, Russia had no beef with the Kiev government at all because essentially Yanukovych’s “Regions Party” was based on the pro-Russian parts (blue areas) of the Ukrainian electorate. But when Washington essentially put the anti-Russian regions in charge of Ukraine’s government by orchestrating, funding and immediately recognizing the Maidan coup, everything changed on a dime. That was especially the case when the new, illegal government enshrined in its constitution a requirement to join NATO at the earliest possible opportunity.

In effect, Washington’s 2014 Maidan coup was the equivalent of Khrushchev’s emplacement of missiles in Cuba during 1962. Even had Putin been as erudite and civilized as JFK, rather than the ruffian he actually is, he would have had little choice except to insist that NATO missiles 30 minutes from Moscow cannot stand. In a word, there has been no unprovoked “invasion” by Moscow of the transitory artifact known as the Ukrainian state. The latter effectively began and ended with the Soviet Union.Moreover, with respect to the actual underlying reason for intervention in Ukraine—NATO’s proxy war against Russia– a simple question recurs: Besides restocking the NATO arsenals depleted by the demolition derby in what remains of Ukraine, what’s the reason for NATO’s war? Alas, the question answers itself. The War Capital of the World on the Potomac insists upon it, and its vassals in Europe like Ursula von der Leyen nod, jawohl!

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“..hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians to be called up into the army..”

Tens of Thousands of Ukrainians Hiding From Draft Officers – NYT (TASS)

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian men have gone into hiding as they avoid conscription for fear of dying in the conflict involving “bloody trench warfare,” The New York Times reported on Friday. While it is not clear how many men are hiding from authorities, in big cities like Kiev and Lvov, social media groups alerting members to mobilization include tens of thousands of people, the newspaper wrote. Ukrainian men expressed fear of dying in the conflict, the NYT continued. According to the newspaper, Kiev has been sending troops without “sufficient training” to the front to replace combat losses.

Military analysts agree that a lack of adequate training makes it difficult for Kiev to hold its lines, the newspaper concluded. Ukraine announced a general mobilization in February 2022, which it has extended periodically ever since, with the country’s authorities doing their utmost to prevent men of conscription age from dodging the draft, including a ban on male residents of Ukraine from leaving the country. On May 18, a law tightening mobilization rules came into force in Ukraine, allowing hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians to be called up into the army.

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In a video I posted June 18, Jim Rickards says: “..Russia will retaliate by putting a lien on $40 trillion at the Euroclear custodian..” That’s not Russian money, but the total of what Euroclear processes. A recipe for absolute chaos.

Belgium Warns Against Seizing Russian Money (RT)

Belgium does not support the seizure of Russian assets that have been frozen by the EU as part of Ukraine-related sanctions, the country’s Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem said on Friday, highlighting the mounting risks related to the move. The West froze nearly $300 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Russia following the launch of Moscow’s military campaign against Ukraine in February 2022, a move denounced by Moscow as “theft.” Around $280 billion of this sum is held in the EU, primarily in the Belgium-based depositary and clearing house Euroclear. “First of all, for our country there are two elements that are important: we did not touch the assets themselves, as the ownership title change would yield consequences both on the legal side and financial side that are unknown,” Van Peteghem said during a press conference after the bloc’s ECOFIN meeting in Luxembourg.

“And second, of course, risk sharing, that I think is important in the rollout of the instruments and is a crucial element of all discussion,” the minister added. Earlier this month, the G7 nations announced that they had reached an agreement on using interest from frozen Russian assets to finance a $50 billion loan to help Kiev buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure. At the time, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that the confiscation of the assets was not on the table. In April, Van Peteghem stated that the bloc was close to reaching a political agreement on seizing the profits generated by Russia’s central bank reserves, stressing that the first tax collection could take place as early as July 1.

The idea of seizing the frozen Russian assets has been debated by EU lawmakers and the bloc’s allies for about two years. While the US and UK have called for the outright confiscation of the funds, multiple reports suggest that EU member states remain cautious regarding the move, citing the lack of a legal basis for such a measure as well as fears that Russia will take retaliatory steps. Some top officials have reportedly warned that the drastic move could undermine investors’ confidence in the EU’s financial system. The Kremlin has denounced the push to use its immobilized funds to provide support for Ukraine. Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow has a “wide arsenal” of political and economic countermeasures it can use to respond to the potential confiscation of its sovereign assets.

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Sounds familiar.

White Christians Being Replaced In Europe – Orban (RT)

A “militant” faction of pro-migration politicians is overseeing the “replacement” of white European Christians with Muslim immigrants, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has declared. “In Europe there is an exchange of populations, the number of white, Christian, traditional – let’s say European – people is decreasing, the number of migrants being imported and the number of people belonging to the Muslim community born here is radically increasing,” Orban told Kossuth Radio on Friday. German politician Manfred Weber, who leads the centrist European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament, is the “beelzebub” responsible for this alleged scheme, Orban continued, adding that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is Weber’s “little servant girl” responsible for its implementation.

The EPP remained the largest faction in the European Parliament after last month’s elections. However, the decline of the Greens and a surge in support for right-wing parties has left the EPP with fewer allies with whom to pass legislation. Hours after he spoke to Kossuth Radio, Orban flew to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ahead of Hungary assuming the EU Council’s rotating presidency next month. The Hungarian PM claimed that Germany has suffered greatly as a result of immigration, and “no longer looks like it did ten years ago.” “This Germany is no longer the Germany that our parents and grandparents held up to us as an example,” he said, adding that the country is now a “colorful, changed multicultural world” in which migrants are “no longer guests.”

Hungary’s stance on immigration has placed the country at odds with Brussels in recent years. Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ordered Budapest to pay €200 million ($216 million) for failing to comply with EU asylum law, and imposed a fine of €1 million per day until Hungary fully implements the legislation. According to the court, Budapest has limited migrants’ access to asylum procedures since 2020, making the process of filing applications “virtually impossible.” “It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens,” Orban responded, vowing to “figure out a way, so [the ruling] hurts Brussels more than it hurts us.”

Orban was criticized in the German media for his comments on Friday, with Munich’s Merkur newspaper accusing him of spreading “conspiracy myths” about immigration. The idea of a so-called ‘Great Replacement’ is often written off by liberals as a racist conspiracy theory. However, the population share of white Europeans has been decreasing across the continent since the mid-20th century, and European leaders sometimes admit that they intend to use non-European immigration to replace the aging native workforce. Speaking in Athens earlier this year, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson stated that “legal migration should grow by more or less 1 million per year” to achieve this goal.

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“..the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say, ‘They’re coming for us again’ and to go to war”.

Sunak Accuses Farage Of Appeasing Putin (BBC)

Nigel Farage’s claim the West provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “completely wrong and only plays into Putin’s hands,” Rishi Sunak has said. The prime minister accused the Reform UK leader of “appeasement” that was “dangerous for Britain’s security”. In a BBC Panorama interview, Mr Farage said that “of course” the war was President Vladimir Putin’s fault. But he added that the expansion of the EU and Nato gave Mr Putin a “reason” to tell the Russian people “they’re coming for us again”. His remarks have prompted criticism from across the political spectrum. Labour’s shadow defence secretary John Healey said they made the Reform UK leader “unfit for any political office in our country, let alone leading a serious party in Parliament.” Former Conservative defence secretary Ben Wallace described Mr Farage as “pub bore”, who did not understand the “real world” of politics.

Speaking on an election campaign visit in London, Mr Sunak said: “What he (Mr Farage) said was completely wrong and only plays into Putin’s hands.”He added: “This is a man (Mr Putin) who deployed nerve agent on the streets of Britain, who is doing deals with countries like North Korea, and this kind of appeasement is dangerous for Britain’s security, the security of our allies that rely on us, and only emboldens Putin further.” In his Panorama interview, the former UKIP and Brexit Party leader was asked by Nick Robinson about his past comments on Mr Putin. “I said I disliked him as a person, but I admired him as a political operator because he’s managed to take control of running Russia,” he replied. He said it had been “obvious” to him for many years “that the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say, ‘They’re coming for us again’ and to go to war”.

Pressed further, he added: “We provoked this war. It’s, you know, of course it’s his fault – he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.” After the interview aired on Friday, Mr Farage, a former member of the European Parliament, said on X that he was “one of the few figures that have been consistent and honest about the war with Russia”.Alongside the new statement, he reposted a speech in the European Parliament from 2014 in which he called for the West to “stop playing war games with Putin. “The Ukrainian presidency has told the BBC it will not be putting out an official statement on Mr Farage’s comments. But a source in the presidential office warned about the “virus of Putinism and the rise of war propaganda”, adding: “The task of civilized humanity is to fight this virus in the bud.”

Reform UK has been gaining ground on the Conservatives in the opinion polls since Mr Farage announced he was returning to front-line politics as the party’s leader shortly after the general election campaign got under way.
He has said his aim is for Reform to replace the Conservatives as the official opposition to Labour, which he says is certain to gain power on 4 July, although polling suggests the party may win only handful of seats at this election.

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“..its co-founder, Larry Sanger, saying last year that the website had become an instrument of “control” used by the US intelligence agencies to wage information warfare..”

Wikipedia’s Political Bias Spreading To AI (RT)

Wikipedia’s tendency to negatively portray right-wing political figures is feeding into AI large language models (LLMs) that harvest data from the online encyclopedia, a US-based conservative think-tank has claimed. A report released on Thursday by the Manhattan Institute looked at evidence of political bias in English-language articles on Wikipedia, by correlating the names of Western leaders and prominent politicians with emotion-laden words. The study found “prevailing associations of negative emotions (e.g., anger and disgust) with right-leaning public figures; and positive emotions (e.g., joy) with left-leaning public figures,” suggesting “evidence of political bias embedded in Wikipedia articles.” “We find some of the aforementioned political associations embedded in Wikipedia articles popping up in OpenAI’s language models,” the report concluded.

The researchers noted that Wikipedia articles are likely a prominent part of OpenAI’s “secret corpus of data” used to train ChatGPT. The report acknowledges, however, that this pattern is not universal, and is more common in articles about US political figures, while there was no evidence of Wikipedia bias in entries on British politicians or US-based think tanks. For example, in references to recent US presidents, Donald Trump – now the Republican presidential frontrunner – was portrayed with the most negative sentiment, while Barack Obama was listed as having the most positive references. The report concluded that Wikipedia “is not living up to its stated neutral-point-of-view policy.”

The policy referred to, which Wikipedia describes as one of the pillars of the encyclopedia, stipulates that articles must exclude personal opinions and interpretations of the editor, be based on reliable sources, and explore multiple points of view when dealing with a controversial topic. Wikipedia has been repeatedly criticized for its supposedly biased takes on hot-button political issues, with its co-founder, Larry Sanger, saying last year that the website had become an instrument of “control” used by the US intelligence agencies to wage information warfare.

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“What is now left for Hunter are sentencing guidelines that strongly support jail time and a judge who has imposed such jail time in past cases..”

The Supreme Court Swatted Down Hunter Biden’s Hail Mary Pass (Turley)

While the result in Washington was not as bad as the unanimous decision in Delaware, it may well have sealed his fate on appeal. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika did not leave him much for appeal in overseeing a fair and textbook trial. The Biden legal team had been counting on Hail Mary passes since a Special Counsel was appointed. It almost worked. Special Counsel David Weiss seemed to work hard to avoid any felony charges against the president’s son. The Justice Department not only allowed the statute of limitations to run on major crimes, but sought to finalize an obscene plea agreement with no jail time for Hunter. In the hearing to accept the plea, Judge Noreika decided to ask a couple of cursory questions of the prosecutor, particularly about a sweeping immunity provision covering any and all crimes committed by Hunter.

The prosecutor admitted that he had never seen an agreement this generous for a defendant. The plea fell apart and the Biden team seemed unwilling to accept anything but a single throw victory. They told the prosecutor in court “just rip it up.” The Biden legal team then blundered in taking the case to trial with a jury nullification strategy. Some of us wrote that Hunter needed to plead guilty to avoid jail time. Instead, they hoped that a Delaware jury in Bidentown could never convict a Biden. They were wrong. That left the last pass to the Supreme Court, which just seemed to land in the stadium seats. In reality, it was never a strong throw. After all, Hunter was convicted for lying on gun forms, something that the Court was never likely to excuse.

What is now left for Hunter are sentencing guidelines that strongly support jail time and a judge who has imposed such jail time in past cases. The other group of people that may be even more upset with this ruling may be many in the media and Congress. Once again, the Court has shattered the false narrative that this is a hopelessly divided Court along ideological lines. This month the Court has continued to rule unanimously or nearly unanimously, including in cases like Rahimi in controversial constitutional claims. Instead, the Court rendered a reasonable, balanced accommodation for public safety under the Second Amendment. It is not clear who is more disappointed: Hunter or the Court critics.

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The New World Order can’t meme anymore than the left..

Common Sense And Memes Are Viruses To The New World Order (Lynn)

Relativism, undeniably, trends in modernity. And Orwell was right: “The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” Orwell, George, ”1984”: part 2, chapter 9. So whether by Marxism or any other form of secular utopianism: The goals are always out with the “old” and in with the “new”. Order out of chaos. Dissolve and coagulate. Also like Orwell’s “1984”: The world’s global societal power structure is stratified into concentric rings of power. The Inner Party functions to continuously preserve and enrich itself; as the Outer Party (i.e. those following orders) and the Proles are utilized and cannibalized when necessary.

The circles of power have become increasingly interconnected in modernity; and technology allows the Inner Party to launch policies that are enforced by the Outer Party and unto the Proles. This process is also called “history”. The Outer Party depends upon the Inner Party for survival and it always remains a difficult challenge to convince the Proles of something they can’t, or won’t, see. As a result, history unwinds in inevitable, cyclical waves. Yet, the Inner Party has survived for generations – even before the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and its unleashing of the modern Fractional Reserve Banking monster. Slavery is rooted in economics; and so the Inner Party uses debt to implement and expand its various wars. The rich get richer as the poor suffer, starve, and die. While driving the other day, I listened to an “expert” on AM radio discussing the vast increase of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere and the conclusion was this: “Climate Change is real!” The radio voice seemed very confident in its conclusions and, by implication, it was ready to do everything necessary to stop what it perceived as a genuine threat. Always the same dialectics, again and again.

Is America having seizures? Or postmortem convulsions? At this point in time, I am convinced it’s the latter. While in communication with a retired retarded professor, she expressed exasperation at those who still plan to vote for Trump. After all, he was convicted by a jury of his peers and is now a convicted felon. In response, and from memory, I typed out a meme I saw on the internet: “He lived over 70 years without a criminal record. But when he ran for president he was charged with over 90 crimes! How can you explain that?” Silence. But… oops! Did you notice what I did there? Did you see how the Inner Party’s phony dialectics had me defending the proud promoter of Operation Warp Speed®?

When it was revealed that U.S. Senate ratification was required for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Pandemic “Treaty”, it was, instead, transitioned into an “agreement”. Except that strategy went down in flames, too, at the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly. In response, Team Biden, China, and other unelected WHO totalitarians stealthily passed new International Health Regulations (IHR) behind closed doors. This was done on June 1, 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland. The Ethiopian Communist, and WHO Director, Tedros Ghebreyesus, violated the IHR’s Article 55.2 eligibility requirements and with less than the required quorum of member states voting. This power grab was completely illegal and unlawfully elevated the WHO “from a global advisory-only body to an international enforcer of its mandates.” So we all better get the word out, before it’s too late. Especially now that it’s another election year so flu season is almost here.

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“Turning on a practically endless faucet of cash for a friend and then being criticized because it wasn’t endless enough..”

Bibi Is Needy (DeMartino)

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu released a video complaining about a short-lived pause of one weapon shipment from the United States. In the video, he directly criticized the administration of US President Joe Biden. “It is inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel,” The Israeli Prime Minister said, despite the United States being the largest provider of weapons to Israel and its most stalwart defender on the international stage. The White House canceled a meeting with high-ranking Israeli officials in response and attempted to assure the public that it had not stopped sending weapons to a country that has been accused of genocide by several nations. The decision to delay one shipment of weapons was in response to Israel’s decision to go forward with its Rafah invasion, despite pressure from the United States to hold off.

Biden has been dealing with protests over the US supplying weapons to Israel, but the pause on one shipment seemingly did nothing to slow Israel’s campaign. More than 6% of the Gaza population has been killed, seriously injured or remains missing. Turning on a practically endless faucet of cash for a friend and then being criticized because it wasn’t endless enough must be a familiar experience for Biden. Ukraine’s illegitimate President Volodymyr Zelensky complained earlier this year that aid from the US, which he had already received well over $110 billion worth, was arriving too slowly. But, considering who his family is, he is probably used to it. Last year, texts between Biden and his son Hunter were revealed that showed the younger Biden– despite earning millions allegedly on the back of his father’s name– complaining about being broke and asking his uncle James Biden for money.

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“The British have presented no evidence of Novichok on the Skripal home door handle; in the blood, skin, and urine testing of the Skripals in hospital; or in subsequent inquest and court proceedings..”

UK Invents Phantom Skripals To Refuse To Testify In Novichok Inquiry (Helmer)

A new lawyer appeared in a London court on Friday claiming to represent Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Jack Holborn, a barrister specializing in what he calls human rights, told Lord Anthony Hughes, who is conducting a public inquiry into the alleged Novichok death of Dawn Sturgess in 2018, that the Skripals should not be called to give evidence or testify in the case. Holborn claimed the Skripals are fearful for their security. “No security measures are perfect”, he said. Holborn has not been in contact with the Skripals, however. He refuses to answer questions put to him on what visual contact or other communications he has had with either Sergei or Yulia Skripal. Instead, he was told what to say at the hearing by the law firm of Kingsley Napley which the British government is paying to show that the Skripals are participating in the Novichok case. The spokesman for Hughes and the inquiry was asked to explain Holborn’s presence in court for the first time on Friday. She was also asked what authority the Skripals had given Holborn to represent them.

The spokesman answered: “Kingsley Napley has been designated as the recognised legal representative of the Skripals under r[ule] 6 of the Inquiry Rules 2006. By rule 8, the recognised legal representative may appoint a team to assist them and Kingsley Napley have accordingly instructed counsel to appear on their clients’ behalf.”. In other words, there has been no contact between the lawyers who say they represent the Skripals, and the Skripals themselves. The judge and government are refusing to give evidence that Sergei Skripal is alive, and that Yulia Skripal is not in prison. The problem for the British Government is that if the Skripals are allowed to give live evidence at the Hughes inquiry, there is no telling what they may say to contradict or discredit the six-year official narrative of the Russian Novichok attack in England. The lawyer for the inquiry, Andrew O’Connor KC, told Hughes on Friday morning this was a “difficult question as to whether either or both of Sergei and Julia Skripal should give oral evidence.”

He also acknowledged there was the same problem in revealing what the Skripals have already said. “In the case of the Skripals, the transcripts of their police interviews have not yet been provided to CPs [Concerned Parties] but will be very shortly.” In fact, the Skripal transcripts will be so redacted, the officials and lawyers admitted in court, it is uncertain what the Skripals believe had happened to them, and why. Release of the redacted Skripal transcripts from March of 2018 risks being contradicted by fresh written statements to the Hughes inquiry from the Skripals, so that form of testimony is also being barred. Since March 4, 2018, when the Skripals slumped unconscious on a Salisbury town bench and were kept in hospital under police guard, three British prime ministers — Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Rishi Sunak — have continued the story that three Russian military officers attacked the Skripals with a Novichok nerve agent they had brought by plane into England, and sprayed on to the door handle of Sergei Skripal’s home; that was several hours before he and his daughter showed symptoms and collapsed.

The British have presented no evidence of Novichok on the Skripal home door handle; in the blood, skin, and urine testing of the Skripals in hospital; or in subsequent inquest and court proceedings. The alleged Russian attack weapon – a perfume bottle atomiser – did not materialize for months until July 2018, when police claim to have found it on a kitchen bench in the home of another alleged victim, Dawn Sturgess, ten days – repeat ten days — after exhaustive police searches of the house had failed to find it. Sergei Skripal has not been seen in public since the day of the alleged Novichok attack, March 4, 2018. He has not been heard on the telephone by family members in Russia since June 26, 2019. Yulia Skripal was last seen in a government-directed interview at a US bomber base in England in May 2018; her last telephone call to Russia was heard on November 20, 2020. The Skripals have not been seen or heard from since.

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Off-switch
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804219814627471641

 

 

Aurus

 

 

Only men

 

 

Brahmaputra
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804372316085981370

 

 

Coral
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804467986520002771

 

 

 

 

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Mar 022021
 
 March 2, 2021  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  26 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Acrobat 1930

 

“Did You Agree To This? Everybody’s Locked Up” – Edward Snowden (ZH)
Coronavirus Crisis Unlikely To Be Over By The End Of The Year – WHO (G.)
WHO Panel: Hydroxychloroquine Should Not Be Used To Prevent COVID-19 (Hill)
Data On Long Covid In UK Children Is Cause For Concern, Scientists Say (G.)
A Return To Normalcy Seen In November (K.)
Party Like It’s 1984 (Jim Kunstler)
US, EU Set To Impose Sanctions On Russia (NBC)
Duckworth Calls For Russian Bounties Intelligence To Be Declassified (Hill)
Stefan Halper’s Role In Crossfire Hurricane Larger Than Previously Known (ET)
Halper Reports Reveal Wider-Ranging Operation To Spy On Trump Campaign (JTN)
Bernie Sanders Vows To Force Vote On $15 Minimum Wage (Hill)
Joe Biden Says His Hands Are Tied On $15 Minimum Wage. That’s Not True (Sirota)
Finance As Culture (Luttig)
Mob Justice May Be Poetic Justice, But Cuomo Deserves Due Process (Turley)
Cuomo Swears He Always Kept Mask On While Sexually Harassing Women (BBee)
Odyssey Banned for Violence, Sexism; Is this the End of World Classics? (GR)

 

 

Update: as you may notice, we’re experimenting with ads a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Word!

“Did You Agree To This? Everybody’s Locked Up” – Edward Snowden (ZH)

A new video montage of recent interviews with former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden exposes how the global COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns – which have been particularly severe and far-reaching in Western countries like the UK, Canada, and in a number of major US cities – coupled with the already immense power of Silicon Valley and its allies in the national security state, has served to keep individuals and entire populations ‘gated off’ from one another. “This is just the beginning,” Snowden warns of these unprecedented times. “All of these things today have consequences which we are not informed about.” “I would say this is sort of unusual… we’re all spread all over the world in different rooms, everybody’s locked up… but for me this is how I’ve always lived.”

He narrates that so much of our life is “intermediated by the screens.” Increasingly our lives are “intermediated by these screens. We spend less time outside and more and more time staring into glass or through glass to connect with that larger world – something beyond ourselves.”Ultimately he poses the following questions as a warning in the video entitled, “Edward Snowden 2021: The Most VICIOUS HONEST 10 Minutes of your LIFE!”… “Increasingly it feels something distinct from us, something apart from us – something that we are witnessing rather than participating in. Ask yourself: Is this your will? Is this what you want? Did you agree to this? Is this consistent with the vision of the future you want to see?

Snowden continues, “The institutional powers of our day… which have assumed for themselves some mandate – whether to conduct business, whether its to govern the lives of others, whether it’s to make war, .. these institutional powers don’t seem to particularly care about your answer to that question: is this what you wanted? Is this OK? Did you agree to it?” The answer is frequently “you don’t have a choice” as to whether you agree or not… “because they have the gun, they have the baton. And Facebook would say ‘Click OK to continue’ – and if you don’t you can’t do anything…”

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the “virus is very much in control”…

Coronavirus Crisis Unlikely To Be Over By The End Of The Year – WHO (G.)

Despite the spread of Covid-19 being slowed in some countries due to lockdowns and vaccination programs, it is “premature” and “unrealistic” to the think the pandemic will be over by the end of the year, the World Health Organization’s executive director of emergency services has said. Speaking at a press briefing Geneva, Dr Michael Ryan said while vaccinating the most vulnerable people, including healthcare workers, would help remove the “tragedy and fear” from the situation, and would help to ease pressure on hospitals, the “virus is very much in control”. “It will be very premature, and I think unrealistic, to think that we’re going to finish with this virus by the end of the year,” Ryan said.


“If the vaccines begin to impact not only on death and not only on hospitalisation, but have a significant impact on transmission dynamics and transmission risk, then I believe we will accelerate toward controlling this pandemic.” The number of new global infections rose last week for the first time in almost two months. Reported cases increased in four of the WHO’s six regions: the Americas, Europe, south-east Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. “This is disappointing, but not surprising,” said the director general of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We’re working to better understand these increases in transmission. Some of it appears to be due to relaxing of public health measures, continued circulation of variants, and people letting down their guard.” He said while vaccines would help to save lives, “if countries rely solely on vaccines, they’re making a mistake”.

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Meawhile in Greece…

A Return To Normalcy Seen In November (K.)

Greek authorities’ main concern is now the timeline for a return to normalcy, after a year of the pandemic. The economy cannot withstand many more months of lockdowns and increasing coronavirus fatigue is gripping the population. Experts say the return to normalcy will happen when “herd immunity” is achieved. For that to happen, they say, 70% of the population must be vaccinated. Then, of course, there are questions of how long the immunity lasts, whether the disease will recur, and so on. According to a team of researchers at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki who have developed a Covid-19 risk evaluation model, the vaccination of 70% of the population, and thus herd immunity, will be achieved in November, provided there are 1 million vaccinations per month.


Under this caveat, the percentage of the vaccinated population, now standing at 9%, will reach 30% at the end of May, 38% in June, 46% in July, 54% in August and 62% in September. By the end of May, a “wall of immunity” for the most vulnerable groups – the elderly and those suffering from serious underlying diseases – will have been built, the researchers say. “[The wall] doesn’t mean complete freedom but at least means the likelihood of lockdown becomes remote,” says Dimosthenis Sarigiannis, professor of environmental engineering at Aristotle University.

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Ok, let’s see the trials.

WHO Panel: Hydroxychloroquine Should Not Be Used To Prevent COVID-19 (Hill)

The anti-inflammatory drug hydroxychloroquine should not be used to prevent COVID-19, according to a new recommendation from the World Health Organization. Multiple clinical trials of more than 6,000 people showed the drug had no meaningful effect on death or admissions to the hospital in people who had no prior exposure to COVID-19. The trials showed a “moderate certainty” that not only did hydroxychloroquine have no meaningful effect on laboratory confirmed COVID-19 infection, it also probably increased the risk of adverse effects.


The WHO’s recommendation was published in The BMJ, a medical journal. A WHO expert panel is studying different drugs that could be used to prevent COVID-19 infection, and the hydroxychloroquine recommendation is the first that the panel has published. “The panel considers that this drug is no longer a research priority and that resources should be used to evaluate other more promising drugs to prevent COVID-19,” the WHO said in a statement. The recommendations are meant “to provide trustworthy guidance on the management of COVID-19 and help doctors make better decisions with their patients,” the WHO said.

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No word on how many children are affected. If it’s just five, maybe they should tell us.

Data On Long Covid In UK Children Is Cause For Concern, Scientists Say (G.)

Scientists have warned that emerging data on long Covid in children should not be ignored given the lack of a vaccine for this age group, but cautioned that the evidence describing these enduring symptoms in the young is so far uncertain. Recently published data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has caused worry. The data suggest that 13% of under 11s and about 15% of 12- to 16-year-olds reported at least one symptom five weeks after a confirmed Covid-19 infection. ONS samples households randomly, therefore positive cases do not depend on having had symptoms and being tested.

With schools in England poised to reopen on Monday – Prof Christina Pagel, a member of the Independent Sage committee and director of clinical operational research at University College London – in a Twitter post suggested that although emerging data on long Covid in children was uncertain, it should not be ignored, particularly given there was no licensed vaccine for these age groups, and there probably won’t be until the end of this year or early next year. Although children are relatively less likely to become infected, transmit the virus and be hospitalised, the key question is whether even mild or asymptomatic infection can lead to long Covid in children, said Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London.

[..] Some children are initially asymptomatic or have mild symptoms but then it might be six or seven weeks before they start experiencing long Covid symptoms, which can range from standard post-viral fatigue and headaches to neuropsychiatric symptoms such as seizures, or even skin lesions. At the moment there is no consensus on the scale and impact of long Covid in adults, but emerging data is concerning. For children, the data is even more scarce. Recent reports from hospitals in Sweden and Italy have generated concern, but this data is not from national trials – they are single-centre studies – and include relatively small patient numbers, said Sir Terence Stephenson, a Nuffield professor of child health at University College London.

Stephenson was awarded £1.36m last month to lead a study investigating long Covid in 11- to 17-year-olds. “I don’t have a scientific view on what long Covid is in young people is – because frankly, we don’t know,” he said.

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Of course, steers and cows are easier to push around than bulls, and the technology for transforming bulls into steers — or men in to eunuchs — is not that complex or nuanced..

Party Like It’s 1984 (Jim Kunstler)

Chalk up a fatal blow to The Patriarchy. That avatar of toxic masculinity, Mr. Potato Head has been dumped into the same humid chamber of perdition where the ghosts of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Theodore Bilbo, and Phyllis Schlafly howl and squirm — liberating the billions of potatoes world-wide from the mental prison of binary sexuality. The move by Hasbro (bro? really??) may yet disappoint the legions in Wokesterdom as a-bridge-not-far-enough while they await the debut of Transitioning Potato Head, complete with play hormone syringe and play scalpel, so that the under-six crowd can begin to map out their own gender reassignments without the meddling of Adult 1 and Adult 2, formerly known as Mommy and Daddy.

Was it mere coincidence that the action in Toyland happened the same week that one Rachel Levine was grilled in hir Senate confirmation hearing for the post as Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services? The hearing tilted toward transphobia when Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) asked zie, a little too aggressively, if they were in favor of pubescent children opting for sexual reassignment in opposition to xyr parents. The nominee, who hirself transitioned from “male” to “female” in 2011, answered that transgender medical issues are “complex and nuanced.” True (perhaps). And probably more than a Senator who transitioned from ophthalmologist to politician might appreciate.

Such are the great preoccupations of American leadership in these late days of empire. Are their any “historic firsts” left for Progressives to achieve in the march to a transhuman nirvana? An “undocumented” president? Animal representation in the House and Senate? A-I “entities” qualifying for public office — Governor Smartphone? Let’s face it, the pitiful old school humans in charge of things for so long are making a hash of our affairs. A cash register could probably do a better job as Chairman of the Federal Reserve than the always-waffley Jerome Powell. And a MacBook Pro might make a better president than Joe Biden in the brief daily operational hours before his managers a “call a lid.” We’d have to come up with some new personal pronouns for them, of course.

Pundits and observers-of-the-scene have warned us that all this artificially-generated turmoil over the sex-of-things is but one part of the prelude to a “Great Reset” in which people the world over are to be herded into corrals of ultra-regulated behavior. Of course, steers and cows are easier to push around than bulls, and the technology for transforming bulls into steers — or men in to eunuchs — is not that complex or nuanced. The question is: will enough American men submit to castration, either chemical, financial, political, or literal? Maybe not.

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Oh, cut it out already.

US, EU Set To Impose Sanctions On Russia (NBC)

The U.S. and the European Union are expected to impose coordinated sanctions on Russia as early as Tuesday for the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his arrest and detention that followed, three sources familiar with the planning said. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not otherwise authorized to speak to the media. The sanctions will be the first to target Moscow since Joe Biden became president and opened a comprehensive review of U.S.-Russia policy, including the Kremlin’s actions against Navalny, interference into the U.S. election, the Solar Winds hack and reported bounties offered to Taliban-linked groups to target U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The Trump administration declined to take action against Russia for the attempted assassination of Navalny.

The U.S. is expected to use legal authorities to impose sanctions on Russia for its use of a chemical nerve agent against Navalny in August, said a senior administration official, a congressional aide and a Western diplomat. Toxicology tests conducted in Germany, France and Sweden and by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found that Navalny was poisoned with a novel form of the Novichok nerve agent in violation of the international Chemical Weapons Convention. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the attack. Upon his return to Russia in January, Navalny was arrested and sentenced to more than two years in jail. He has been transferred to a penal colony. The E.U. has taken action against Russia for poisoning Navalny, restricting travel and freezing the assets of six Russians in October, but this week’s sanctions would be the first issued under the E.U.’s new human rights regime.

E.U. Foreign Minister Josep Borrell told the Atlantic Council last week that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had asked the E.U. to coordinate with the U.S. on the new sanctions. The E.U.’s procedural vote to formally adopt the sanctions will close at noon Tuesday Brussels time. “I wouldn’t want to speak to any measures that we may have coming, but suffice it to say that we have coordinated very closely,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Monday about the cooperation between the U.S and the E.U. Price did not elaborate on the timing of the sanctions but added, “We’ve been working on it as an urgent challenge.” An investigation by U.N. experts released Monday found that the attack against Navalny falls within a wider trend, observed over several decades, of arbitrary killings and attempted killings of Russian citizens and government critics, both within Russia and extraterritorially.

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I said cut it out!

Duckworth Calls For Russian Bounties Intelligence To Be Declassified (Hill)

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) on Monday called for the Biden administration to declassify intelligence related to reports that the Kremlin offered bounties to Taliban forces for targeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan. “While any intelligence assessment on this matter is understandably sensitive, the American public, and Gold Star Families in particular, have a pressing need to know if there is any truth to these claims,” Duckworth wrote in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines first obtained by Politico. “I believe such a finding may be presented while protecting classified information.” The intelligence, first reported last year, was dismissed as a “hoax” by then-President Trump.

Last September, Gen. Frank McKenzie, who oversees U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said the military was still investigating, adding that the report “has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me.” Haines has been tasked with reviewing intelligence on recent Russian activity, including the alleged bounty initiative. In her letter, Duckworth asked for Haines to publish an unclassified report to “provide urgently needed transparency on this grave matter.” Duckworth, a veteran who lost both legs in Iraq, was one of the leading voices calling for action in response to the report last year. In July, she led a letter from Senate Democrats asking to see the then-president’s intelligence briefings relating to the alleged bounties.

“Despite my persistent attempts to bring transparency to these alarming reports, the Trump administration failed to provide an official response to basic questions: did the United States Government or our partners assess the likelihood of the existence of the GRU bounty payment activity, and did the United States Government find evidence indicating correlation or causation between GRU bounty payments and deadly attacks on U.S. troops by Taliban-linked militants?” Duckworth wrote in the letter on Monday, referring to Russia’s secretive military intelligence agency.

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Always thought his role was quite substantial.

Stefan Halper’s Role In Crossfire Hurricane Larger Than Previously Known (ET)

Newly released FBI documents shed light on two meetings between FBI Agent Stephen Somma and FBI source Stefan Halper, providing further insight into the wide scope of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump 2016 presidential campaign—and the active role played by Halper, who acted as a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI. Although Halper was not considered an official CHS for the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation prior to these meetings, Somma had known Halper since 2011, according to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on FISA Abuse. Additionally, Somma had served as Halper’s handler from “2011 through 2016” as part of Somma’s “regular investigative activities.”

The FBI’s meetings with Halper on Aug. 11 and 12, 2016, were done at the proposal of Somma, who said he “lacked a basic understanding” of political campaigns. Somma said that he selected Halper because he knew that Halper had been “affiliated with national political campaigns since the early 1970s” and “might have information about, and potentially may have met, one or more of the Crossfire Hurricane subjects”—Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Somma said that he did not initially tell Halper that there was already an open FBI investigation or who the subjects were, nor, he told the IG, did he tell Halper of the conversation between Papadopoulos and Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, which was the FBI’s claimed reason for opening Crossfire Hurricane.

Somma was proven to be prophetic, as Halper already had direct knowledge of two of the three people considered subjects of Crossfire Hurricane. And Halper would later fashion a meeting in London with Papadopoulos, the one person he didn’t already know. Halper also managed a meeting with Sam Clovis from the Trump campaign. Additionally, based on the FBI documents obtained by Just The News, it appears that Halper was responsible for pushing Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as a “person of interest” to the FBI with what appears to have been a false story that the FBI failed to immediately verify—and then later failed to correct as the story gained traction in the media during a crucial period of the Trump presidency.

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Problem remains: who will investigate the investigators?

Halper Reports Reveal Wider-Ranging Operation To Spy On Trump Campaign (JTN)

Once-secret reports show the FBI effort to spy on the Trump campaign was far wider than previously disclosed, as agents directed an undercover informant to make secret recordings, pressed for intelligence on numerous GOP figures, and sought to find “anyone in the Trump campaign” with ties to Russia who could acquire dirt “damaging to Hillary Clinton.” The now-declassified operational handling reports for FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper — codenamed “Mitch” — provide an unprecedented window both into the tactics used by the bureau to probe the Trump campaign and the wide dragnet that was cast to target numerous high-level officials inside the GOP campaign just weeks before Americans chose their next president in the November 2016 election.

Among the revelations, the memos make clear that: Almost immediately after the FBI opened a Russia collusion probe on July 31, 2016 narrowly focused on the foreign lobbying of a single Trump campaign aide named George Papadopoulos, agents pressed Halper for information on more than a half dozen other figures, including future Attorney General Jeff Sessions, foreign policy adviser Sam Clovis, campaign chairman Paul Manafort, economic adviser Peter Navarro, future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser Carter Page. Halper provided significant exculpatory evidence to the FBI — including transcripts of conversations he recorded of targeted Trump advisers providing statements of innocence — that was never disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved a year of surveillance targeting the Trump campaign, and specifically Page.

While current FBI Director Chris Wray has insisted the bureau did not engage in spying on the Trump campaign, Halper’s taskings include many of the tradecraft tactics of espionage, including the creation of a fake cover story (he wanted a job at the Trump campaign), secret recordings, providing background on targets, suggested questions to ask and even contact information for potential targets. But the memos’ most explosive revelations are the sheer breadth of the FBI’s insufficiently predicated dragnet targeting the Trump campaign, and the agents’ clearly stated purpose of thwarting any Trump campaign effort to get dirt from Russia that could hurt his Democratic rival.

“The Crossfire Hurricane investigative team is attempting to determine if anyone in the Trump campaign is in a position to have received information either directly or indirectly from the Russian Federation regarding the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton,” one of the early FBI electronic communications (ECs) from Halper’s undercover work stated. Ordinarily, FBI counterintelligence investigations that target Americans legally must be predicated on specific allegations that narrowly focus the bureau’s spy powers on limited targets to avoid unnecessary infringement of privacy and civil liberties. But the Halper documents reveal a large, unfocused FBI search with little substantiation of alleged wrongdoing, and significant evidence that undermined the core allegations, experts told Just the News.

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Bernie vs Ol’ Joe.

Bernie Sanders Vows To Force Vote On $15 Minimum Wage (Hill)

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says Democrats should “ignore” the recent ruling of the Senate parliamentarian and is vowing to force the Senate to vote this week on an amendment to set the federal minimum wage at $15 an hour. Sanders on Monday declared he would not back down on his signature wage initiative after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled last week that a provision setting the federal minimum wage at $15 an hour would not be eligible under special budget rules Democrats are using to avoid a filibuster while passing their coronavirus relief bill. “My personal view is that the idea that we have a Senate staffer, a high-ranking staffer, deciding whether 30 million Americans get a pay raise or not is nonsensical.


“We have got to make that decision, not a staffer who’s unelected, so my own view is that we should ignore the rulings, the decision of the parliamentarian,” Sanders told reporters. Sanders added, “Given the enormous crises facing this country and the desperation of working families, we have got to as soon as possible end the filibuster.” “We cannot have a minority of members define what the American people want,” he said. Sanders said he will force a vote on an amendment raising the federal minimum wage this week. “To the best of my knowledge, there will be a vote on the minimum wage, and we’ll see what happens,” he said. “I intend to offer the bill that will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and we’ll see how the votes go.” “If we fail in this legislation, I will be back,” he warned. “We are going to keep going. “We are going to raise that minimum wage very shortly to $15 an hour,” he said.

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LBJ did it.

Joe Biden Says His Hands Are Tied On $15 Minimum Wage. That’s Not True (Sirota)

When a Republican is president, Democratic politicians, pundits and activists will tell you that the presidency is an all-powerful office that can do anything it wants. When a Democrat is president, these same politicians, pundits and activists will tell you that the presidency has no power to do anything. In fact, they will tell you a Democratic president cannot even use the bully pulpit and other forms of pressure to try to shift the votes of senators in his own party. A tale from history proves this latter myth is complete garbage – and that tale is newly relevant in today’s supercharged debate over a $15 minimum wage. In that debate so far, we have seen Democratic senators prepare to surrender the $15 minimum wage their party promised by insisting they are powerless in the face of a non-binding advisory opinion of a parliamentarian they can ignore or fire.

That explanation is patently ridiculous and factually false, so Democratic apologists are starting to further justify the surrender by suggesting that even if the party kept a $15 minimum wage in the Covid relief bill, conservative Democrats such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would block it anyway. The White House itself is now falling back on the idea that it doesn’t have the votes to do much of anything, insinuating that Joe Biden – who occupies the world’s most powerful office – somehow has no power to try to change the legislative dynamic. And this spin is being predictably amplified across social media. [..] it is laughable and preposterous to argue that a newly elected president has zero power to even try to shift the dynamic.

And yet, whether you call this all deliberate deception or learned helplessness, this fantastical myth of the Powerless President will inevitably be used to shield Biden from criticism for abandoning his pledge to fight for a $15 minimum wage. The apologism is particularly absurd because unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, who was a relative newcomer to politics, Biden’s major selling point was that he knows “how to make government work”. The guy explicitly pitched himself as the best Democratic presidential candidate by suggesting that in an era of gridlock, he knows how to make the Democratic agenda a reality and Get Things Done™, like master of the Senate Lyndon Baines Johnson. That’s where LBJ himself comes in to destroy the narrative that Democratic presidents in general – and Biden specifically – are inherently helpless.

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Memes “R” Us.

Finance As Culture (Luttig)

In practice, what does financialization look like? We’ve all heard the institutional narrative. The US stock market has nearly tripled in the past 10 years. The FIRE sector (finance, insurance, real estate) now accounts for 20% of US GDP, versus 10% in 1947. S&P buybacks nearly doubled in the 2010s. IPOs grew 2.5x in 2020. But financialization is no longer purely institutional; it has seeped into our culture. A combination of low interest rates, a historic tech bull run, and the resulting torrent of fomo has tethered us to our monitors to watch candlestick charts. The financialization of culture has manifested in two primary ways: lottery culture and equity culture. We’ve always had lottery culture, in which people trade assets hoping to make money without understanding or conviction of their fundamental value.

In the summer of 1929, for example, Joe Kennedy’s shoe shine boy gave him stock tips, signaling the market peak. But lottery culture has exploded in the past few years. Robinhood has achieved its vision of democratizing access to financial markets, boasting over ten million monthly active users and exponential growth. Retail investor trading as a percentage of stock market volume has more than doubled since 2010. When “stocks only go up”, people realize the stock market is a casino with much better payouts. Gamified trading has tethered us to our phones and bank accounts. Through GameStop, even protest became financialized. At the peak of the GameStop saga, millions of Americans owned GME, arming themselves against hedge funds.

This was part protest, part nihilistic hail mary to get rich. The number of subscribers to the wallstreetbets (WSB) subreddit certainly spiked in 2021, but the exponential compounding for years beforehand implies a degree of inevitability. Memes took lottery culture to new heights. Stocks popular among a retail audience, like Apple, have historically traded at higher multiples than others in their category. Tesla accelerated the divergence between retail excitement and fundamentals: TSLA revenue grew 50% over the past two years, but meme culture helped its market cap grow by 12x. GameStop completed the meme-fundamentals duality: investors don’t even pretend that the company’s fundamentals will ever substantiate its market cap.WSB revealed where Robinhood culture was headed all along: a nihilistic lottery. It was historically viewed as a disorganized and degenerate mob, but the mob has evolved into a laser-focused and motivated militia.

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So do the people who died in care homes.

Mob Justice May Be Poetic Justice, But Cuomo Deserves Due Process (Turley)

In 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before at Northwestern University Law School to announce President Obama’s “kill list” policy, under which he reserved the right to unilaterally order the death of any American deemed an imminent threat. After all, Holder explained, “the Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.” The response was as chilling as the message: The audience of judges, lawyers and law students applauded an attorney general who just told them that any of them could be killed tomorrow on the president’s order. Some of us denounced the “kill list” policy, which foreshadowed what has become a campaign against due process. In our hair-triggered culture of Twitter attacks and “canceling” opponents, due process is treated as hopelessly arcane and inconvenient.

Our political discourse must now be tweet-worthy — less than 280 words — and delivered in a news cycle measured in minutes. Due process, like free speech, is rarely valued until its loss becomes personal. Take Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.). Cuomo advanced his political career by positioning himself at the front of every mob pursuing political rivals, as during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. Before hearing the defense of now-Justice Kavanaugh, Cuomo described the allegations against him by Christine Blasey Ford as presumptively true. He not only effectively called Kavanaugh a rapist, without any due process, but demanded that Kavanaugh take a polygraph as a condition to be believed. Cuomo was not alone. Many Democratic leaders insisted that “women must be believed” when raising sexual harassment allegations and declared Kavanaugh guilty before hearing any testimony.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) dismissed due process concerns for Kavanaugh, adding: “When we talk about … due process and justice, it must focus on the victim.” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said Kavanaugh was not entitled to a presumption of innocence and that men should “just shut up” and accept the allegations. Last year, when Lindsey Boylan’s allegations went public, I wrote a column asking if Cuomo would presume himself guilty, absent a polygraph. Now, after Boylan added details of Cuomo’s alleged kissing and propositioning her, many are struggling with his (and their) prior positions against due process. While CNN, MSNBC and other networks blacked-out the story or barely covered it, others — including many on the right — have declared Cuomo to be guilty and dangerous.

Cuomo deserves due process, despite loudly denying it for others. Simply because Boylan made the allegations is not proof of guilt. Both sides have a right to be heard — not a right to be believed solely on their word. Due process allows us to determine who is a victim — not, as AOC suggested, to vindicate one party as the declared victim. [..] Of course, as Gov. Cuomo has learned, one can lead a mob one day only to be pursued by the mob on the next. It would be easy to leave him to the mob and call it poetic justice, but that is not justice of any kind. Cuomo should receive all of the due process he denied to others — not because he deserves it, but because he embodies the costs of ignoring it.

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He’ll be arrested any day now.

Cuomo Swears He Always Kept Mask On While Sexually Harassing Women (BBee)

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo apologized this weekend for his long-standing habit of sexually abusing young women he holds power over. And while that all sounds quite bad, Governor Cuomo did make it clear to the public that he always wore a mask and socially distanced during these interactions– a fact that has some folks saying he should get off free. “I have the greatest respect for my employees,” Cuomo explained during a press conference. “Especially the girls—we’ve got a lot of young girls on staff who do a really good job.” Cuomo paused for a moment and seemed to wink at someone offscreen.


“And I can guarantee you right now, sure I might be a sexual predator, but not once did I remove my mask, never once broke the six-foot rule during conversations with my girls– at least in 2020. Isn’t that right, Kelly?” Cuomo went on to explain how some of his sexual jokes may not have landed with the women since they couldn’t see his facial expressions. He also claimed that the women may have misheard him since his words were muffled by his mask and they were standing so far apart. “Do I regret making those comments?” Cuomo asked as he stood up to leave the press conference. “No. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got some strip poker, er– I mean poker, to play.”

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Ban the Bible!

Odyssey Banned for Violence, Sexism; Is this the End of World Classics? (GR)

Odyssey, Homer’s classic of world literature written in the time of Ancient Greece, was recently banned in Lawrence, Massachusetts for portraying ideas that do not conform to modern norms of behavior. The move, reported recently by the Wall Street Journal, appears to stem from a “social justice” movement, created by Twitter users, called #DisruptTexts. Its proponents believe that any world literature that does not portray the norms that they hold today in terms of gender roles, violence and racial equality must be banned in the interest of shaping a new generation that will not be allowed to come into contact with concepts that they consider repugnant — or even just outdated.

Penelope, sitting at her loom patiently for twenty years while hubby Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan War, is not the model of female behavior that teachers who espouse this new type of book banning want their students to emulate. But not only do they not want their students to emulate these behaviors — they want to ban books that contain they want to ban books that portray violence, traditional gender roles and racism, making sure that future generations will never learn about the many adventures of Odysseus and his companions as they made their way across the sea, fought against Troy and wended their way back home after twenty years away.

Books such as this, which provide a treasury of historical references and form the basis of educated peoples’ understanding of the Classical world, naturally contain violent images of battle and strife and portray the social milieu of the day. Until recently, however, teachers would focus on the tremendous literary and historical merit of the world of Homer and other ancient writers, leaving their students to come to their own conclusions as to whether or not they would like to wage warfare or alternatively sit at home weaving while the husband is away at battle.

[..] But the politically-correct rush to judgment, which began in recent years with the banning of American classics such as Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and even more recent works such as How to Kill a Mockingbird — for the use of the n-word — has come back to bite society now that the floodgates have been opened. Originally, the pendulum swung the other way, and it was conservative Americans who were originally guilty of banning books — despite the freedom of speech and expression explicitly enshrined in the Constitution. The first book to be officially banned in America was Thomas Morton’s “New English Canaan,” published in 1637.

A massive, three-volume work, it contained not only Morton’s insightful observations about Native Americans, but also — raising the ire of those who had settled Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Company — a biting satire of the Puritans. As the centuries went on, it wasn’t just political positions that drew the ire of book banners, it was more often portrayals of sex that attracted the eye of censors and caused works of literature to come under scrutiny. And the list of banned books in America is shamefully long, including Peyton Place,The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Beloved, and The Lord of the Flies.

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Tulsi Syria
https://twitter.com/i/status/1366391821362819077

 

 

 

 

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