Jul 112024
 


Henri Matisse Window at Tangiers 1912

 

Orban Is What Zelensky Should Have Been (Amar)
Merkel Would Have Prevented Ukraine Conflict – Orban (RT)
Trump Issues Fresh Challenge To Biden (RT)
Dem Senator Says Trump Could Beat Biden In “Landslide” (ZH)
MSM Launches ‘Muh Russia’ Election Narrative (ZH)
NATO Preparing For ‘Protracted Wars’ – Pentagon (RT)
EU Members Up Defense Spending by 30% Over Last 3 Years – Borrell (Sp.)
New UK Prime Minister Pledges Sharp Rise In Military Spending (RT)
‘Russia Will Not Prevail’ – Biden to NATO (RT)
Kiev Can ‘Never’ Get Enough Weapons – Zelensky (RT)
US Bodycount 35 KIA After Russian Missile Strike (Helmer)
Ukraine Timing Tragedies To Coincide With Important Events – Kremlin (RT)
West to Supply Ukraine With ‘Squadrons’ of F-16 Fighter Jets (Sp.)
High-Tech Western Weapons ‘Useless’ In Ukraine Conflict – WSJ (RT)
We Were “Deceived & Gaslit For Years” (Alastair Crooke)
NC Democrats Vote to Block 3rd-Party Candidates from Ballots (Turley)

 

 


Anti-Trump rally in New York City, June 3, 2017 © AFP / Eduardo Munoz Alvarez

 

 

Trump Kamala

 

 

 

 

Buffett

 

 

 

 

“..Hungary’s leader does not speak for the European Union, even if his country holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. That is true, but to be frank, uninteresting. What is intriguing instead is the compulsive need to keep saying it.”

Orban Is What Zelensky Should Have Been (Amar)

When your enfant terrible is also (almost) the only adult in the room, then something is very wrong with your room. For “the room” read the EU – and the West more broadly – and, for both the enfant terrible and the adult in the room, Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, and there you have it: the shortest possible description of what the big brouhaha about his recent trips to first Kiev, then Moscow and Beijing is really all about. The EU, in reality, has no policy worthy of the name to address the single most urgent issue in Europe at this point, namely, how to end the war in and over Ukraine. As Orbán himself has correctly pointed out in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, all the EU does is copy America’s “policy of war.” In other words, Brussels, like Washington, has ruled out diplomacy and compromise to end the war.

Indeed, if the US and EU had engaged in genuine diplomacy, then the war could have been prevented or ended quickly, in spring 2022. Orbán may be putting too much weight on – and too much trust in – a single Western leader, but that is his larger point when he claims that the large-scale war would not have happened if Angela Merkel had still been in office as chancellor of Germany. Against this backdrop of EU non- or, really – anti-diplomacy, Orbán has dared stand out by going on what, using social media to great effect, he has loudly announced as his “peace mission.” That appeal to public opinion has, of course, angered his detractors even more: Not only has he dared speak to “the autocrats” out there, he has also addressed the masses at home in the West. Perish the “populism”!

Yet it is a traditional and legitimate move among politicians worth their salt: Before practicing the art of – back then – radio reach-out to perfection in World War II, no lesser a leader than young Charles de Gaulle, in his ‘The Edge of the Sword’, recognized the absolute need to “dominate opinion,” since “nothing is possible” without that true “sovereign.” Yet Orbán’s “populism” is not even the main problem this time. That rather has to do with the fact that he has turned his own initiative into a foil against which the EU’s mainstream’s lack of imagination, rigidity, and, last but not least, complete subservience to the US are glaringly obvious. In the EU it is now going “rogue” to do what is not only obvious but reasonable and urgently needed: seek at least dialogue instead of stonewalling. That reflects badly on the EU.

So does the fact that the Hungarian leader has a habit of realism where the EU establishment prefers fictions maintained by – aggressively enforced – group think. Orbán has no time for the silly idea that Russia is a threat to European states inside NATO, he observes – rightly – that Russian policy is rational, and he recognizes the fact that Russia cannot be defeated in Ukraine. All of this is true, and all of it is taboo in Brussels. To complete his register of sin and heresy, the Hungarian prime minister also has the temerity to cultivate a memory and a sense of history. In a Newsweek editorial, he has just reminded NATO of two essential facts: that the alliance was founded for defensive purposes (to which it has badly failed to stick) and that the recent habit of treating a future war with “the world’s other geopolitical power centers,” that is, Russia and China, as de facto inevitable can turn into a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

When you are thin on substance, rely instead on formalities and, if need be, legalism. Much of the EU elites’ response to Orbán’s initiatives has taken that self-revealing form. As soon as Orbán dared go to Moscow, leading EU cadres, such as Josep Borrell, Ursula von der Leyen, and Charles Michel could hardly stop falling over themselves with denunciations and reminders that Hungary’s leader does not speak for the European Union, even if his country holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. That is true, but to be frank, uninteresting. What is intriguing instead is the compulsive need to keep saying it.

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Likely.

Merkel Would Have Prevented Ukraine Conflict – Orban (RT)

The Ukraine conflict would not have escalated into an “international war” if former German Chancellor Angela Merkel were still in power, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He accused current EU leaders of lacking vision in an interview with Die Welt published on Monday. A vocal proponent of a diplomatic solution for Ukraine, Orban last week embarked on a “peace mission” to some of the countries he says are the “five main actors” to the conflict – Ukraine, Russia, China, the EU, and the US.Orban’s first stop was Germany, where he spoke to Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The Hungarian leader said “there was hardly any agreement” between the pair regarding the resolution of the conflict, noting that he “always” misses Scholz’s predecessor, Merkel, due to her practical approach. According to Orban, if Merkel were still in power, the Russia-Ukraine conflict in its current form “would never have happened.”

“She had the ability, the understanding and the skills to isolate the conflicts that are bad for Europe. We made the mistake of allowing there to be a conflict, of allowing there to be a war. And instead of isolating it, we escalated it and made it international,” he stated. Orban recalled the failed Minsk peace accords, brokered by France and Germany, which ostensibly sought to resolve the dispute in Donbass in 2014 that preceded the current conflict. The path to peace would be much easier for all parties today if similar agreements were in place, the Hungarian prime minister argued. “If you believe that a political agreement like Minsk can solve all problems, then Minsk is of course a failure. But if you see that there is a situation that is bad and needs to be resolved somehow, then the only relevant reference point is not how can it be made better, but how it can be prevented from getting even worse,” Orban stated.

“Peace does not come by itself,” he added, stating that it has to be brokered by global leaders who want it, and claiming that “unfortunately we lack those.” Orban has often criticized the West’s approach to the Ukraine conflict, calling for a diplomatic settlement through negotiations. However, his ceasefire overture to Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky earlier this month was rejected, while his EU peers criticized him for his later visit to Russia. Several diplomatic sources told Politico earlier this week that the bloc could even revoke Hungary’s rotating EU presidency, which it assumed last month.

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“Trump said he wanted to give Biden a “chance to redeem himself.”

Trump Issues Fresh Challenge To Biden (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has challenged Joe Biden to a “no-holds-barred” debate and an 18-hole game of golf so that the incumbent leader can prove he is still fit for office. The 81-year-old Biden is facing growing calls from his fellow Democrats to drop out of the 2024 presidential race over concerns about his mental health, following his disastrous performance during a debate with Trump last month. Speaking at a rally in Miami on Tuesday, Trump said he wanted to give Biden a “chance to redeem himself.” “Let’s do another debate this week so ‘Sleepy’ Joe Biden can prove to everyone all over the world that he has what it takes to be president. But this time it will be man to man, no moderators, no holds barred,” Trump said, calling on Biden to “name the place, anytime, anywhere.”

Trump also recalled that during their CNN-hosted debate, Biden had declared that he would be willing to test his skills and stamina against his rival on the golf course. “Can you believe this? Did you ever see him swing?” Trump told his supporters, announcing that he is “officially challenging ‘Crooked Joe’ to an 18-hole golf match right here.” The presumptive Republican candidate promised that if Biden won, he would donate $1 million to any charity of his opponent’s choice. However, Trump doubted that Biden would accept his challenge “because he is all talk.” Biden campaign spokesman James Singer responded to the challenge on Wednesday by claiming that the US president “doesn’t have time for Donald Trump’s weird antics – he’s busy leading America and defending the free world.” He also dismissed Trump as a “liar, a convict, and a fraud only out for himself.”

Biden himself has unequivocally stressed that he is “firmly committed” to staying in the presidential race, while White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has insisted that the incumbent is determined to serve out his full second term in office if reelected. At the same time, calls for Biden to drop out of the election have continued to grow, with many senior Democrats and party donors urging him to “do the right thing” and quit, fearing he would not be able to beat Trump. A survey conducted by CBS News/YouGov in the wake of last month’s presidential debate also found that 72% of registered voters do not believe that Biden has the “mental and cognitive health necessary to serve as president.”

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“The White House, in the time since that disastrous debate, I think, has done nothing to really demonstrate that they have a plan to win this election..”

Dem Senator Says Trump Could Beat Biden In “Landslide” (ZH)

Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO) on Tuesday became the first Democratic senator to publicly cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump in November. “Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election, and maybe win it by a landslide, and take with him the Senate and the House,” Bennett told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday – after telling colleagues the same in private. “So for me, this isn’t a question about polling. It’s not a question about politics. It’s a moral question about the future of our country.” “The White House, in the time since that disastrous debate, I think, has done nothing to really demonstrate that they have a plan to win this election,” he continued.

Bennet’s comments echo those of a growing number of congressional Democrats who say Biden’s reelection bid could hurt the entire party in down-ballot races this fall. As CNN reports, “Democrats, including those inside the administration, view this week as critical to Biden’s political survival, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill gathered privately for their weekly meetings on Tuesday.” “The stakes could not be higher,” said Bennett, who says his voters have “deep concerns” over whether Biden can win. Punchbowl News had a sobering take on the state of affairs for Democrats in their Wednesday AM newsletter, saying Biden has “made a mess of the Democratic party.” Senate Democrats were far from united about whether Biden is the best person to defeat Trump. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told us that Biden needs to “continue to aggressively make his case” to his fellow Democratic senators in order to “earn full support.”

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill issued a statement Tuesday afternoon calling on Biden to step aside in favor of another Democratic candidate. “[B]ecause I know President Biden cares deeply about the future of our country, I am asking that he declare that he won’t run for reelection and will help lead us through a process toward a new nominee.” Fellow New Jersey Democratic Rep. Andy Kim — who’s running for Senate — walked right up the line of whether Biden should get out. “What steps can we actually take right now [to replace Biden.] That’s where some of the confusion is. Especially with all the talk of what are the actual deadlines. It’s hard to kind of make a decision without fully understanding that. We need to get a better grasp on it,” said Kim.

Meanwhile, House Democratic leaders met privately on Tuesday morning with some of their most vulnerable members, for a conversation that was “honest, brutal and intense,” and left some members crying, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting. ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, meanwhile, told TMZ that he doesn’t think Biden can serve another four years. The 63-year-old Stephanopoulos sat down for a closely-watched interview with Biden last week following the president’s disastrous debate performance last month against Donald Trump. “Do you think Biden should step down?” the TMZ journalist asked the “Good Morning America” co-host and moderator of “This Week.” “I don’t think he can serve four more years,” replied Stephanopoulos after a pause.

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Russiagate 3.0.

MSM Launches ‘Muh Russia’ Election Narrative (ZH)

While the Democratic party melts down over Joe Biden’s cognitive decline – an obvious risk to US national security, the 2024 election wouldn’t be complete without a Trump-Russia narrative. To that end, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Russian government has launched a ‘whole-of-government” effort to influence the US presidential election in favor of Donald Trump – who, for some reason, Russia held off on invading Ukraine while he was president (and ostensibly wouldn’t have sent $175 billion and counting in US aid to combat). Citing unnamed ‘senior US intelligence officials,’ the Journal writes: The officials didn’t mention Trump by name, but said that Russia’s current activity—described as covert social-media use and other online propaganda efforts—mirrored the 2020 and 2016 election cycles, when Moscow also favored Trump and sought to undermine Democratic candidates, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Of course, Russia’s 2016 ‘influence campaign’ amounted to roughly $100,000 in Facebook ads, which “didn’t reference any specific presidential candidate, or even the election itself,” largely targeting BLM members and ‘Pokemon Go’ aficionados. Insidious. That said, the officials say that the activity witnessed so far this election cycle “isn’t on the scale or scope seen in 2016, when Russia’s actions included a hack-and-leak of Democratic Party emails, rudimentary cyber-probing of some state election systems and other actions intended to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” Hacked emails, you say? Edit: And as ZeroHedge reader ‘The Wolverine’ notes in the comments below: ‘Remember that time Adam Schiff interviewed the President of CrowdStrike and refused to release the transcript for months and months?’

According to the new report, Russia is seeking to influence specific voting groups, including those in swing states, and promote divisive narratives while denigrating specific politicians, the anonymous US intelligence officials told reporters, without mentioning the specific voters or politicians who have been allegedly targeted. But wait, there’s more! The Kremlin “is also working to influence members of Congress and is broadly seeking to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia,” according to the anonymous officials – one of whom said that Russia was the “pre-eminent threat” to the election, while Iran was a ‘lesser threat at the moment,’ and aims to be a ‘chaos agent’ by exacerbating social tensions. “We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters,” said Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, in a separate Tuesday statement.

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Neverending. And we are all hostages.

NATO Preparing For ‘Protracted Wars’ – Pentagon (RT)

The US and its allies are planning to continue ramping up defense spending, which will ensure long-term demand for weapons, US Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told a gathering of arms manufacturers during a NATO event on Tuesday. Speaking at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum, the official praised NATO members for boosting their military budgets since the initial flare-up of the Ukraine conflict in 2014, and particularly after the open hostilities between Ukraine and Russia erupted in 2022. Over the past decade, the average annual increase in spending was 72%, adjusted for inflation, she said. That reversed a period when “defense industries across the Atlantic were affected by decades of inconsistent funding and blinkered demand signals,” she said. She said the current thinking is: “Production matters. Production is deterrence.”

Western arms manufacturers have the ability “not just to compete, but to out-compete and prevail” over Russia and other nations that the US considers its rivals, including China, North Korea and Iran. “That includes ensuring we are prepared for the possibility of protracted war, which every ally must be prepared for – and not just in Europe, either,” Hicks warned. Developing the manufacturing base on both sides of the Atlantic in a way that combines “information-age ingenuity and industrial-era capacity” will benefit US allies in the Pacific, such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, the official said. She claimed that Western political systems are inherently beneficial for building “arsenals of democracy,” since they foster innovation and transnational cooperation. On the other hand, “autocracies,” according to her reasoning, can’t move beyond “just landing at each other’s airfields, or sailing ships alongside each other for a few days at a time.”

The Pentagon is looking for ways “to be a better customer,” Hicks said, by streamlining its internal processes, delivering targeted investments in the defense sector, and providing security services to weapons businesses. Russian officials have described NATO as a tool of US geopolitical ambition and a way to secure a permanent market for American weapons in Europe. Moscow has cited Washington’s pledge that Ukraine will eventually join the bloc together with NATO’s increased presence in Ukraine since 2014 as among the key triggers of the ongoing conflict. Beijing has accused the US of being stuck in a “Cold War mentality” and playing “zero-sum games” with non-Western nations, including China.

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Yay!

EU Members Up Defense Spending by 30% Over Last 3 Years – Borrell (Sp.)

EU member states have increased their joint defense spending by 30% in the last three years, while in 2024, the bloc’s defense spending is expected to reach approximately 2% of GDP, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Wednesday. “In the last three years, the total expenditure [in the defense sector] in Europe … has increased by 30% and this year we will be reaching almost an average all together of 2% [of GDP], it is not enough, but is much better and it is growing,” the high-ranked EU official said during his speech at the 75th NATO Anniversary Summit in Washington. The NATO summit kicked off in Washington on Tuesday and will run through July 11. In late June, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union needed to invest 500 billion euros ($535 billion) in defense in the next 10 years.

The European Union “regrets” that people are dying in Ukraine, but it will continue to supply weapons to Kiev to counter Russia’s actions, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Wednesday. “We certainly regret that people are dying, but Ukrainian soldiers are fighting and dying because they are defending their country,” Borrell said during a speech at the fifth NATO Anniversary Summit in Washington. The EU will continue to support Ukraine, Borrell added. “I am happy to have heard [US] President Biden a moment ago to say that Russia cannot prevail, for that we have to increase our [military] industrial capacity, putting more money on the table, more technological development,” Borrell said.

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“..not prepared to fight in an armed conflict of “any scale” and would run out of ammunition rapidly..”

New UK Prime Minister Pledges Sharp Rise In Military Spending (RT)

The UK is set to boost its military capabilities and plans to gradually increase defense spending to 2.5% of its GDP, new Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Tuesday as he departed for a NATO summit in Washington. Starmer has pledged to publish a roadmap for defense expenditure following calls from both the UK military and NATO states to clarify his policy, his office has said. “I am committed to that 2.5% [of gross domestic product] within our fiscal rules, but that strategic review needs to come first,” he told Reuters ahead of the NATO summit. His predecessor Rishi Sunak had promised earlier this year that London would reach this target by 2030. According to Starmer’s office, the government will launch a strategic review next week to “determine the future defense posture” of the UK and the military capabilities it needs. The timeline for the review or when the spending goal might be achieved has not been specified, however.

Many NATO states have for years struggled to reach an agreed threshold of 2% of GDP for defense spending, but the push has gained momentum since the start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 and especially after the launch of Russia’s military operation in 2022. Starmer, who became the UK prime minister after his party’s landslide victory in the general election last week, reiterated that London’s commitment to Kiev remains unchanged. Britain has been one of Ukraine’s biggest backers in the conflict with Russia, pledging £12.5 billion (around $16 billion) in support for Kiev, including £7.6 billion (around $9.7 billion) in military aid, since February 2022. Meanwhile, recent military research revealed that Britain’s armed forces are in such a poor state that they are barely able to defend the country, with deficiencies spread across its various branches. Rob Johnson, director of the Oxford Changing Character of War Center, told the FT last week that the UK was not prepared to fight in an armed conflict of “any scale” and would run out of ammunition rapidly.

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“According to Reuters, Biden delivered his remarks without a teleprompter in an explicit and clear-cut manner..”

‘Russia Will Not Prevail’ – Biden to NATO (RT)

US President Joe Biden has delivered a forceful speech to NATO members in a bid to reassure them that Ukraine can still prevail in its conflict against Russia. However, several Western diplomats told Reuters that the US leader’s better-than-expected stage performance failed to make up for his disastrous debate with Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. In the keynote speech at the opening of the NATO summit in Washington on Tuesday, Biden touted the bloc as “the bulwark of global security” and reiterated its intention to support Ukraine with military aid, including new deliveries of air defense systems. “We know [Russian President Vladimir] Putin won’t stop at Ukraine. But make no mistake, Ukraine can and will stop Putin… When this senseless war began, Ukraine was a free country. Today, it is still a free country, and the war will end with Ukraine remaining a free and independent country,” he declared. “Russia will not prevail. Ukraine will prevail.”

Russia has repeatedly condemned Western arms shipments to Ukraine, arguing they only prolong the conflict. It has also called NATO a “hostile” bloc directly involved in the conflict between Kiev and Moscow. According to Reuters, Biden delivered his remarks without a teleprompter in an explicit and clear-cut manner, in sharp contrast to his performance at the debate with Republican rival Trump last month. The 81-year-old president’s performance was described as “fumbling” and “incoherent,” with numerous media reports claiming that the debate disaster led to prominent Democrats urging him to drop out of the race. Several unnamed Western diplomats told Reuters that Biden’s NATO speech failed to erase the damage to his public image done by the recent debacle. “We don’t see how he can come back after the debate,” one European diplomat noted, adding that the president’s remarks were scripted and could not be seen as evidence of his endurance.

“I can’t imagine him being at helm of the US and NATO for four more years,” he remarked. Meanwhile, Biden has insisted he is “not going anywhere” and intends to beat Trump in the November election. On Tuesday, the GOP candidate challenged his rival to another face-off, calling it a “chance [for Biden] to redeem himself in front of the entire world,” and suggesting that the debate should be held without moderators. Biden and Trump are already scheduled to hold another debate, which will be moderated by ABC, on September 10.

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So why give him any?

Kiev Can ‘Never’ Get Enough Weapons – Zelensky (RT)

Virtually no quantity of weapons that the US and its allies supply to Kiev for its fight with Russia will be enough, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has said. The Ukrainian leader is visiting the US this week as the heads of NATO states hold a summit in Washington DC. Zelensky called for more arms deliveries at the Ronald Reagan Institute on Tuesday, where he participated in an event alongside US Senator Mitch McConnell. While he highlighted his determination to continue hostilities with Russia, he stressed on several occasions the disparity in military strength between the two sides in the conflict. ”It’s not enough. It’s never enough,” he said, referring to the five additional Patriot missile systems, which US President Joe Biden pledged the same day to Kiev on behalf of his nation, Germany, Romania and others.

Asked about the fate of the 31 Abrams main battle tanks supplied by the US last year, Zelensky said the number was too low to “change the situation on the battlefield.”He went on to say the number of F-16 fighter jets pledged by Western donors has been insufficient. Russia uses some 300 jets in the Ukraine conflict, while Kiev would only be able to field 10 to 20 F-16s anytime soon, he said. ”Even if we will have 50 it’s nothing. They have 300,” Zelensky said. Being on the defense, Ukraine would need a fleet of 128 F-16s for parity with Russia, he stated.

Zelensky urged the US to lift all restrictions on using American-provided weapons against targets deep inside Russia and to provide Kiev with better long-range strike capability. In late May, the Biden administration revised its policy restricting the use of American weapons inside what the US recognizes as Russian territory, but would not allow long-range strikes, according to media reports and statements by officials. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that his country may supply weapons similar to those that Ukraine gets from the West to parties hostile to the donors elsewhere in the world in case of further escalation. Moscow has described the Ukraine conflict as part of a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which NATO members take part in virtually every aspect except by sending their own troops to the battlefield.

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“Should Moscow conclude that it is now Washington policy to fight Russia, not just to the last Ukrainian, but to the last American?”

US Bodycount 35 KIA After Russian Missile Strike (Helmer)

The latest Russian Defense Ministry daily bulletin was issued on Tuesday afternoon, July 9. Since then the Pentagon and the White House have been as silent as the tomb. Make that thirty-five American tombs. “During the day [July 9],” said the Defense Ministry briefer in Moscow, “the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out a group strike with high-precision weapons on American HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems prepared for strikes on the territory of Crimea, as well as the venue of an official meeting of the AFU [Armed Forces of the Ukraine] command staff. The objectives of the strike have been achieved. Four US-made HIMARS MLRS launchers were destroyed, as well as up to 35 foreign specialists who serviced them.” Several hours later, the Pentagon briefer, Major General Pat Ryder, announced “a great kickoff to NATO summit events this week.”

General Ryder wasn’t referring to the largest number of US battlefield deaths ever recorded under hostile Russian fire. He had nothing to say about the Ukraine battlefield action, and the reporters attending failed to ask him about it. At the White House briefing which followed the Pentagon, the lead announcement was President Joseph Biden’s telephone calls to officials in Texas dealing with Hurricane Beryl; his plan to meet on Thursday with Vladimir Zelensky; and an assurance that “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine poses a threat to transatlantic security. That’s what it does. And it shows how critical the NATO Alliance is and how important it is to continue to make sure that it is strong, and that’s what the president has been able to do.” Reporters did not ask about US combat deaths in the Ukraine.

The New York Times also blacked out the report of the Russian strike on the HIMARS batteries, focusing instead on the Kiev targets of the day, and on claims by anonymous US intelligence and other officials that “Russia is unlikely to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the coming months as its poorly trained forces struggle to break through Ukrainian defenses that are now reinforced with Western munitions.” “You’d think in an election year,” comments a NATO veteran with Afghanistan war service, “that dead American ‘specialists’ would be an issue. This tells that they [the Biden Administration] are as committed to ‘victory’, or hiding an American defeat, as their [Trump campaign] opponents are. They are also loath to get into the role they played in getting things to this point.” That said, what interpretation can President Vladimir Putin and the Russian General Staff give after the 35 US battlefield deaths have been concealed by US officials? Should Moscow conclude that it is now Washington policy to fight Russia, not just to the last Ukrainian, but to the last American?

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“..if a Russian missile had struck the hospital, there would be “nothing left of the building”

Ukraine Timing Tragedies To Coincide With Important Events – Kremlin (RT)

Kiev is deliberately using tragedies for publicity ahead of important international events, such as this week’s NATO summit in Washington, so that Vladimir Zelensky can push for more support from the West, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has claimed. In an interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin, Peskov suggested that Ukrainian authorities are effectively organizing PR campaigns “on blood,” referring to Monday’s deadly tragedy at the Okhmatdet children’s hospital in Kiev, where a missile killed two people and injured dozens more. Kiev and its backers have blamed Russia for the incident. Moscow has denied the allegations, insisting that it has never targeted civilian facilities. Instead, it claims that the hospital was struck by a Ukrainian air-defense missile. Peskov claimed that such tragedies in Ukraine often occur right before international events that are important for relations between Kiev and the West.

“I believe that there are no coincidences in this regard,” the spokesman said, suggesting that the Okhmatdet incident had been another “PR operation.” “This is truly a tragedy, but it is being deliberately used to create a backdrop that would accompany Zelensky’s participation in the NATO summit,” Peskov said, adding that Kiev’s methodology is “quite unclean, jesuitical, well-known, and has been repeated many times.” The Kremlin spokesman also noted that it was “very difficult” for Russia to get its point across to Western audiences regarding such incidents. “They do not want to hear anything,” Peskov said, adding that the “hysteria” in Western newspapers and TV channels “is likely due to the monopolistic dominance of Anglo-Saxon media there.” Nevertheless, Peskov said Russia would continue to “tell the truth about what has happened, both domestically and in countries where the audience is ready to hear us and where we have technical means to reach them.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzia, has also insisted that Moscow had no involvement in the Okmatdet incident. Speaking at the UN Security Council on Tuesday, he suggested that if a Russian missile had struck the hospital, there would be “nothing left of the building” and that “children and adults would have died rather than being injured.” Nebenzia explained that Russia had, in fact, been targeting the Artemov missile plant in Kiev, which is located approximately 2km from the Okhmatdet hospital. “There is every reason to believe that the Ukrainian air-defense missile that hit it was intended for a Russian missile that hit the plant,” he said, noting that the tragedy could have been avoided if Ukraine hadn’t deployed air defense in residential areas.

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“..Russian pilots and air defense personnel “will have new stars on their fuselages and new medals on their chests.”

West to Supply Ukraine With ‘Squadrons’ of F-16 Fighter Jets (Sp.)

Western allies intend to supply Ukraine with entire “squadrons” of modern American-made F-16 fighter jets, according to a joint statement from the leaders of the US, Netherlands, and Denmark. They announced that the transfer of the first of these aircraft has already begun, allowing Ukrainian forces to start using them this summer. “We are committed to further enhancing Ukraine’s air capabilities, which will include squadrons of modern fourth generation F-16 multi-role aircraft,” US President Joe Biden said in a joint statement with Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at the NATO summit in Washington. The coalition, according to the leaders, intends to assist with the maintenance, armament, and pilot training for these jets. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in turn, announced that a transfer of F-16 fighter jets was currently underway from Europe to Ukraine.

“I’m also pleased to announce that as we speak, the transfer of F-16 jets is underway, coming from Denmark, coming from the Netherlands, and those jets will be flying in the skies of Ukraine this summer to make sure that Ukraine can continue to effectively defend itself against the Russian aggression,” Blinken said at the NATO Public Forum. Commenting on the development, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the State Duma Defense Committee told Sputnik that the transfer of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will not affect the course of the special operation and will change nothing. “We have known for a long time that they would give them something by the end of the summer; they have nothing else left but the F-16. Now they will be giving them, perhaps a dozen or so, but it will not change anything at all. We have been expecting them for a long time, and we have been preparing. It will not affect the course of the special operation,” said Kartapolov. He noted that after the transfer of F-16s to Ukraine, Russian pilots and air defense personnel “will have new stars on their fuselages and new medals on their chests.”

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“The Russians have gotten really, really good” at interfering with guided munitions..”

High-Tech Western Weapons ‘Useless’ In Ukraine Conflict – WSJ (RT)

Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities have rendered precision-guided Western munitions “useless” in the Ukraine conflict, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. With their guidance systems scrambled, some of these weapons have reportedly been retired within weeks of hitting the battlefield. When the US announced the delivery of GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shells to Ukraine in 2022, pro-Kiev outlets predicted that the $100,000-per-shot projectiles would make “Ukrainian artillery a whole lot more accurate” and “cause Russia a world of pain.” However, the Russian military adapted within weeks, Ukrainian commanders told the Wall Street Journal. Russian signal-jamming equipment was used to feed false coordinates to the shells and interfere with their fuses, causing them to veer off course or fall to the ground as duds.

“By the middle of last year, the M982 Excalibur munitions, developed by RTX and BAE Systems, became essentially useless and are no longer employed,” the newspaper stated, paraphrasing the Ukrainian commanders. The Soviet Union invested heavily in electronic warfare (EW) during the 1980s, viewing jamming technology as a crucial bulwark against the guided missiles and shells that the US was beginning to develop at the time. While weapons such as the 1990s-era Excalibur shells were used by the US to devastating effect in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials and analysts in Washington have since concluded that they are far less effective against a peer-level opponent like Russia. “The Russians have gotten really, really good” at interfering with guided munitions, US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante told the WSJ.

Retired US General Ben Hodges, who once predicted that Western weapons would help Ukraine seize Crimea by last winter, told the newspaper that “we probably made some bad assumptions because over the last 20 years we were launching precision weapons against people that could not do anything about it… and Russia and China do have these capabilities.” Some of NATO’s most advanced weapons systems have met a similar fate in Ukraine. The newly-developed Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), a joint project of Boeing in the US and Saab in Sweden, was given to Ukraine earlier this year, with Kiev’s troops firing these GPS-guided munitions before their American counterparts. However, it has since been pulled from the battlefield after it proved completely ineffective against Russian EW.

Likewise, Russian EW has significantly blunted the accuracy of Ukraine’s Western-provided GMLRS missiles, which are fired from the HIMARS multiple-launch rocket system, Ukrainian soldiers told the WSJ. As with the Excalibur shells, GMLRS missiles were once described by pro-Kiev pundits and analysts as a “game changer” that would swing the conflict in Ukraine’s favor. Russia has long insisted that no amount of Western weapons systems will prevent it from achieving victory. Supplying these weapons is a “futile project” that will only encourage Kiev to “commit new crimes,” Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, warned last week.

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“Unelected advisers, party hacks, scheming family members and random hangers-on make the critical daily decisions..”

We Were “Deceived & Gaslit For Years” (Alastair Crooke)

Emmanuel Todd, the French anthropological historian, examines the longer dynamics to events unfolding in the present: The prime agent of change leading to the Decline of the West (La Défaite de l’Occident), he argues, was the implosion of ‘Anglo’ Protestantism in the U.S. (and England), with its entailed habits of work, individualism and industry – a creed whose qualities were held then to reflect God’s grace through material success, and, above all, to confirm membership of the divine ‘Elect’. Whereas traditional liberalism had its mores, the decline of traditional values triggered the slide towards managerial technocracy, and to nihilism. Religion lingers on in the West, though in a ‘zombie’ state, Todd avers. Such societies, he argues, flounder – absent some guiding metaphysical sphere that provides people with non-material sustenance.

However, the incoming doctrine that only a wealthy financial élite, tech experts, leaders of multinational corporations and banks possess the required foresight and technological understanding to manipulate a complex and increasingly controlled system changed politics completely. Mores were gone – and so was empathy. Many experienced the disconnect and the disregard of cold technocracy. So when a senior WSJ editor tells us that the ‘deception and ‘gaslighting’ collapsed with the CNN Biden-Trump debate, we should surely pay attention; He is saying the scales finally fell from peoples’ eyes. What was being gaslighted was the fiction of democracy and also that of America declaring itself – in its own scripture – to be the trailblazer and pathfinder of humanity: America as the exceptional nation: the singular, the pure-of-heart, the baptizer, and redeemer of all peoples despised and downtrodden; the “last, best hope of earth”.

The reality was very different. Of course, states can ‘live a lie’ for a long period. The underlying problem – the point Todd makes so compellingly – is that you can be successful in deceiving and manipulating public perceptions, but only up to a point. The reality was, it simply was not working. The same is true of ‘Europe’. The EU’s aspiration to become a global geo-political actor too, was contingent on gaslighting the public that France, Italy and Germany et al could continue to be real national entities – even as the EU scooped up all national decision-making prerogatives, by deceit. The mutiny at the recent European elections reflected this discontent. Of course, Biden’s condition has been long known. So who then has been running affairs; making critical daily decisions about war, peace, the composition of the judiciary and the boundaries of state authority? The WSJ piece gives one answer: “Unelected advisers, party hacks, scheming family members and random hangers-on make the critical daily decisions” on these issues.

Maybe we have to reconcile to the fact that Biden is an angry, senile man who yells at his staff: “During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction”.“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” said one senior administration official. “It’s very difficult and people are scared sh*tless of him.” The official added, “He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it”. Seymour Hersh, the well-known investigative journalist reports: “Biden’s drift into blankness has been ongoing for months, as he and his foreign policy aides have been urging a ceasefire that will not happen in Gaza whilst continuing to supply the weapons that make a ceasefire less likely.

There’s a similar paradox in Ukraine, where Biden has been financing a war that cannot be won – yet refusing to participate in negotiations that could end the slaughter”. “The reality behind all of this, as I’ve been told for months, is that Biden is simply ‘no longer there’ – in terms of understanding the contradictions of the policies he and his foreign policy advisers have been carrying out”. On the one hand, Politico tells us: “Biden’s insular senior team are well acquainted with the longtime aides who continue to have the president’s ear: Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, as well as Ted Kaufman and Klain on the outside”. “It’s the same people — he has not changed those people for 40 years … The number of people who have access to the president has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. They’ve been digging deeper into the bunker for months now.” And, the strategist said, “the more you get into the bunker, the less you listen to anyone”. In Todd’s words then, decisions are made by a small ‘Washington village’.

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“Democrats are seeking to bar third-party candidates from the general election . . . all in the name of perfecting democracy.”

NC Democrats Vote to Block 3rd-Party Candidates from Ballots (Turley)

Months ago, I wrote a column about how Democrats have continued to try to block voters from being able to vote for candidates while claiming the mantle of the defenders of Democracy. This effort not only included Democratic Secretaries of State attempting to remove former president Donald Trump from the ballots, but efforts in the primary from the ballot. Many of these Democrats now calling for a “blitz primary” previously said nothing as voters were barred from having a choice in the primary. Now, in North Carolina, Democrats are seeking to bar third-party candidates from the general election . . . all in the name of perfecting democracy. The Democratically controlled North Carolina’s Board of Elections voted against giving ballot access to new parties supporting presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. All three Democrats (Alan Hirsch, Jefferson Carmon, and Siobhan Millen) voted to prevent voters from being able to vote for Kennedy and West, though the decision will have to be reconsidered.

Yet, even if reversed, they are preserving uncertainty as to whether they will be viable candidates in the minds of voters. The excuses for this action are superficial and manufactured. Chairman Alan Hirsch insisted that their organizations were “problematic” in how they gathered signatures and how Republicans may be supporting their efforts to allegedly “take away votes from Joe Biden.” They also said that they were concerned that the third-party candidates were using the new party rules to gain an easier path to ballots. That is a bizarre objection. They are opting for the best approach under the existing rules. It seems openly partisan for these three Democrats to suddenly raise concerns over the existing rules when it could harm Joe Biden or the Democratic Party. Yet, Democratic commissioner Siobhan Millen worked hard to rationalize what is a raw political muscle play to prevent voters from having a choice:

“If this board keeps rubber-stamping thinly veiled so-called parties, national operatives are going to continue to come in and keep manipulating our system. Allowing unaffiliated candidates to follow the more lenient new-party rules is allowing a blind eye to partisan mischief, potentially.” If Millen wants to see partisan mischief, she does not have to look far. She and her colleagues are engaging in precisely such mischief to deny voters choices this election to try to bolster the chances of Biden in a swing state. Democrats continue to claim to defend Democracy while resisting democratic choice and abusing the legal process. This glaring disconnect was evident when President Joe Biden spoke on the top of the Point-du-Hoc in Normandy on the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Biden again used the event to suggest that democracy was in danger in the United States with the upcoming election.

Yet, Biden has overseen widespread government censorship with federal agencies targeting those with opposing views on everything from elections and climate change to COVID-19 and transgender policies. As Democratic secretaries of state sought to bar Trump from ballots, Biden refused to oppose the efforts. When liberal law professors and members demanded to pack the Supreme Court to guarantee a liberal majority, Biden refused to denounce it during the last campaign. This is why some in the country may view Biden and the Democrats as existential threats not just to Democracy, but to themselves. They see a party that is engaged in efforts to cleanse ballots (of Republicans), censor dissenting voices and prosecute political opponents. The effort in North Carolina continues this hypocritical and cynical narrative. These three Democratic board members just voted to prevent their fellow citizens from being able to cast votes for third-party candidates who are attracting increasing support among disgruntled voters.

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Dog stairs

 

 

Malinois
https://twitter.com/i/status/1810787853091115082

 

 

Whales

 

 

Dance
https://twitter.com/i/status/1810755264343106007

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 302023
 
 April 30, 2023  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  46 Responses »


Mark Chagall I and the village 1911

 

Zelensky’s Top Adviser Threatens China With Economic Ruin (RT)
Poland’s Top General Has Some Unpopular Truths About The Ukraine Proxy War (ZB)
Medvedev Calls For ‘Complete’ Dismantling Of ‘Kiev Regime’ (RT)
Medvedev Sees No Point In Maintaining Diplomatic Relations With Poland (TASS)
Russian Next-Gen T-14 Tank Makes Ukraine Debut (ZH)
Merkel Says She Used Everything To Try To Prevent Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)
Europe Is Buying Record Amounts Of Refined Russian Fuels Through India
Morocco Supplies Spain With Russian Diesel – El Mundo (RT)
US Troops Drill For Taiwan War – Media (RT)
Kiev Decries EU Restrictions On Ukrainian Imports (RT)
EU Reaches Deal On Ukrainian Food Imports (RT)
War Threatens Ukraine Auto Empire of Biden Megadonor (Sperry)
Hunter’s Collapsing World: A Criminal Plea Could Now Be Best Option (Turley)
No Buyer for First Republic Bank at Any Price (Mish)
Irish President Condemns ‘Obsession’ With Economic Growth (Leahy)

 

 

 

 

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652184461302276096

 

 

 

 

Doctorow

 

 

Net zero

 

 

 

 

“..why China would “help Russia, which is experiencing the collapse of its civilization?”

Zelensky’s Top Adviser Threatens China With Economic Ruin (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s main adviser, Mikhail Podoliak, has claimed that China must follow the West’s position on Ukraine or “lose its influence, including economic influence.” Beijing has given no indication that it intends to take his advice. “Now China has to make a choice,” Podoliak said on Ukraine’s Rada TV on Friday. “Either it works within the framework defined by international law, and then replaces Russia in the full sense of the word, or China continues to stand aside and then it will gradually lose its influence, including economic influence.” Podoliak’s statement came two days after Zelensky and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone, their first known conversation since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began last February.

According to the Chinese side, Xi stressed that Beijing’s “core position” on the conflict is that “dialogue and negotiations are the only viable way out.” The US has repeatedly called on China to condemn Russia over the conflict, which Beijing has refused to do. Instead, China and Russia have deepened their diplomatic and trade links, and officials from both countries have repeatedly condemned the US for attempting to impose what it calls a “rules-based international order” upon the world through military force and sanctions. China and Russia have instead called for the construction of a multipolar system based on the rule of international law and respect for the UN charter. “Right now there are changes – the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving these changes together,” Xi told Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last month.

Podoliak has attempted to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing before. Late last month he asked the Italian Corriere della Sera newspaper why China would “help Russia, which is experiencing the collapse of its civilization?” “It would be an irreversible investment, and China is too pragmatic to make such mistakes,” he added. However, even if China were to break from Russia, it would still face a United States hostile to its interests. The Pentagon’s most recent National Defense Strategy lists countering the supposed “threat posed by China” as its number one priority, while Washington has blocked the sale of some semiconductor manufacturing hardware to China and rallied its Asian allies to shut Beijing out of this vital industrial sector. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has said on several occasions that he would use the US military to defend Taiwan – which China considers its territory – from a potential Chinese invasion.

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“It’s simply impossible to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of the West’s multidimensional aid to Ukraine if the conflict drags on.”

“..Russia can continue conducting its special operation for 1-2 more years before it begins to feel any structural pressure to curtail its activities.”

“We just don’t have ammunition. The industry is not ready not only to send equipment to Ukraine, but also to replenish our stocks, which are melting.”

Poland’s Top General Has Some Unpopular Truths About The Ukraine Proxy War (ZB)

The last time that Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces General Rajmund Andrzejczak generated media attention was in late January after he elaborated on how formidable Russia remained at the time, but now he’s once again making headlines for building upon this assessment. Poland’s Do Rzecy reported on his recent participation in a strategy session with the National Security Bureau, during which time he shared some unpopular truths about the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine. Andrzejczak said that the situation doesn’t look good for Kiev at all when considering the economic dynamics of this conflict, with him drawing particular attention to finance, infrastructure issues, social issues, technology, and food production, et al. From this vantage point, he predicts that Russia can continue conducting its special operation for 1-2 more years before it begins to feel any structural pressure to curtail its activities.

By contrast, Kiev is burning through tens of billions of dollars’ worth of aid, yet it still remains very far away from achieving its maximum objectives. Andrzejczak candidly said that Poland’s Western partners aren’t properly assessing the challenges that stand in the way of Ukraine’s victory, including those connected to the “race of logistics”/ war of attrition” that the NATO chief declared in mid-February. Another serious problems concerns refugees’ unwillingness to return to their homeland anytime soon. These economic, logistical, and population factors combined to convince him that he must urgently raise the greatest possible awareness of these problems in order to “give Ukraine a chance to build its secure future”, which in the context that he shared this motivation, is a euphemism for even more Western aid. He elaborated by adding that “As a soldier, I am also obliged to present the most unfavorable and difficult to implement variant, giving a field to all those who can and should help Ukraine.”

Nobody should therefore doubt Andrzejczak’s intentions or suspect that he’s a so-called “Russian agent” since he sincerely wants the West to win its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, but he’s also very worried that it might lose unless his side acknowledges the unpopular truths that he just shared. In his view, their failure to do so could doom Kiev to defeat, though the argument can also compellingly be made that indefinitely perpetuating this conflict like Poland seeks to do might be even more disastrous. After all, none of the three challenges that he drew attention to can be overcome anytime soon. The only exception might be the population one, but that would entail changing EU legislation in order to allow the expulsion of refugees, which is unlikely to happen. The economic and logistical factors are systemic ones, which affect not only Ukraine, but the entire West in general. It’s simply impossible to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of the West’s multidimensional aid to Ukraine if the conflict drags on.

As Andrzejczak himself admitted, “We just don’t have ammunition. The industry is not ready not only to send equipment to Ukraine, but also to replenish our stocks, which are melting.” Considering that Poland is Ukraine’s third most important patron behind the Anglo-American Axis, this strongly suggests that all other NATO members are struggling just as much as it is to keep up the pace, scale, and scope of support, if not more since many are a lot smaller and thus less capable of contributing in this respect. Accordingly, this observation means that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will likely be its “last hurrah” prior to resuming peace talks with Russia since the West won’t be able to keep up its assistance for much longer. Andrzejczak seems keenly aware of this “politically inconvenient” fact, hence why he wants his side to give its proxies as much as possible until the end of that operation in the hopes that they can then be in a comparatively more advantageous position by the time these talks recommence.

Cavoli
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652039270784180246

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“Otherwise, they will not calm down, and the drug-addled nonsense can turn into reality and the war will drag on for a long time. Our country does not need that..”

Medvedev Calls For ‘Complete’ Dismantling Of ‘Kiev Regime’ (RT)

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called for the “complete dismantling” of the “Kiev regime,” as well as for inflicting “mass destruction” on the country’s military personnel and hardware. Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of Russia’s National Security Council, made the remarks in a Telegram post on Friday, commenting on an interview Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky recently gave to several Nordic media outlets. He summarized Zelensky’s comments as consisting of demands for more weapons from Kiev’s Western backers and promises of a successful counteroffensive, including an attack on Crimea, while also warning that the conflict may drag on for “decades.” While the interview appeared to be “contradictory” and “delusional,” even such statements should not be underestimated, Medvedev warned.

“One should not underestimate even delusional speeches. This is a hysterical manifesto of the Kiev regime, which is seeking to consolidate its Nazi elites, maintain the morale of the troops and receive additional support from its sponsors.” To successfully foil Kiev’s plans, Russia must inflict “mass destruction of personnel and military equipment” during the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive and inflict a “maximum military defeat” on Kiev’s military, Medvedev said. Ultimately, the “Nazi regime in Kiev” must be “completely dismantled” and demilitarized throughout the entire territory of “former Ukraine,” he added. Apart from that, Russia must pursue those who manage to flee, and seek “retribution” against the “key figures of the Nazi regime, regardless of their location and without statute of limitations,” Medvedev stressed. Anything short of that would not suffice, the ex-president believes.

“Otherwise, they will not calm down, and the drug-addled nonsense can turn into reality and the war will drag on for a long time. Our country does not need that,” Medvedev said. The ex-president has repeatedly warned Kiev against any attempts to seize the Crimean peninsula, which broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup and joined Russia after locals overwhelmingly supported such a move during a referendum. Last month, Medvedev issued a nuclear warning to Kiev, cautioning that any attempt at a “serious offensive” targeting the peninsula would be “the basis for the use of all means of protection, including those provided for by the fundamentals of the Doctrine of Nuclear Deterrence.”

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“This state must not exist for us while there is no one but Russophobes in power and Ukraine is full of Polish mercenaries..”

Medvedev Sees No Point In Maintaining Diplomatic Relations With Poland (TASS)

Russia sees no sense in maintaining diplomatic relations with Poland as long as anti-Russian forces remain in power, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his Twitter page on Saturday. “I see no point in maintaining diplomatic relations with Poland. This state must not exist for us while there is no one but Russophobes in power and Ukraine is full of Polish mercenaries, who should be ruthlessly exterminated like stinky rats,” Medvedev wrote in English and Polish.


Medvedev’s tweet was posted in the wake of the situation with the school at the Russian embassy in Warsaw. Andrey Ordash, Minister-Councilor at the Russian embassy in Poland, told TASS that the Polish authorities had demanded that the staff of the Russian school at the embassy in Warsaw vacate the building by 7 p.m. on Saturday. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Russia deems the Polish authorities’ intrusion into the Russian embassy school in Warsaw as a blatant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention and another encroachment on Russian diplomatic property in Poland. The Foreign Ministry said that Warsaw’s steps would not remain without Moscow’s firm response and consequences for Poland.

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It won’t be their last new toy.

Russian Next-Gen T-14 Tank Makes Ukraine Debut (ZH)

While Western nations are working to upgrade Ukraine’s ground game with US M-1 Abrams and German Leopard 2 tanks, Russia has now introduced its latest-generation tank into the war in Ukraine, according to Russia’s state-owned RIA. The new Russian tank is the T-14 Armata, which features an unmanned turret, with a three-man crew operating the vehicle from what RIA describes as an “isolated armored capsule located at the front of the hull.” The tank has a maximum highway speed of 50 miles per hour. It’s equipped with a 125mm smoothbore main gun with a reported range of 8 kilometers. The gun is fed by an automated loader with a 45-round capacity, and can also fire laser-guided missiles.

On defense, it has both reactive armor that explodes outward upon a projectile’s impact, and an “active protection system” (APS), which BBC has described as “essentially an anti-missile system for tanks, with radars capable of tracking the incoming anti-tank missile, and projectiles that are launched to disrupt or destroy it.” The T-14 is additionally distinguished from predecessor T-90 tanks by having higher ground clearance. A developer also claimed the tank would have technology to hide it from radar- and heat-seeking targeting systems: “We essentially made the tank invisible.” RIA reports the deployed T-14s have received “additional side protection from anti-tank ammunition.”

Until now, T-14 appearances have been largely limited to a series of Moscow Victory Day parades stretching all the way back to 2015, though RIA says they have been “tested in Syria.” [..] The initial order called for 2,300 of them to be delivered by 2020. However, the UK claims “production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat,” and suggested its introduction in Ukraine may largely be for propaganda purposes. Of course, that jab may itself be propaganda.

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Mutti knew exactly what was going on with the Misk agreements. No use denying it.

Merkel Says She Used Everything To Try To Prevent Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)

Former German chancellor Angela Merkel said she used every means at her disposal to try to prevent the current conflict in Ukraine. “I used everything at my disposal to try to prevent this situation,” Merkel said, commenting on the Russian special operation in Ukraine on Saturday in an interview with the German daily Die Zeit. “The fact that it failed is not proof that it was wrong to try,” she stressed. Diplomacy is a “necessity,” as the ex-Chancellor noted.However. Merkel repeatedly defended her policy towards Russia. She called the efforts to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine after the events in Crimea in 2014 as part of the so-called Minsk agreements correct.

“I support these diplomatic efforts,” the former head of the German government said, adding that she was “very worried” about Ukraine. “To my great chagrin, there were quite a few who were not interested in this,” Merkel admitted. According to her, in the European Council Germany and France, made efforts to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.= The ex-Chancellor of Germany said that she talked a lot with the former President of Ukraine Pyotr Poroshenko and the current President Vladimir Zelensky. “President Zelensky was very critical of the Minsk agreements. He already said this during his election campaign and noted that he considers it unfeasible,” Merkel stated.

She noted that, according to Ukrainian political leaders, this agreement is not popular in Ukraine, and it was very difficult to implement it politically. In an interview with Die Zeit, published on December 7, 2022, Merkel stated that the 2014 Minsk agreements were an attempt to let Ukraine gain time. She said “it was clear to everyone” that the conflict had been frozen and the problem had not been resolved. Russian President Vladimir Putin later said that he found Merkel’s statement completely unexpected and disappointing.

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“..the Asian country is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month..”

Europe Is Buying Record Amounts Of Refined Russian Fuels Through India

Last August, we were the first to show how Russia was bypassing Europe’s so-called commodities embargo: it was selling LNG to China which was then re-selling it to Europe at a substantial mark up. And while we also frequently reported that Russia was using a similar sanctions bypass for oil, this time using India instead of China, few were willing to confirm as much: after all, it would seem very shortsighted if European consumers were paying an extra surcharge to India, while Russia was not suffering any adverse consequences from Europe’s laughable “sanctions.” Not any more: on Friday, Bloomberg reported that for all of Europe’s fire and brimstone about an embargo (which has gotten decidedly quieter in recent months), “Russian oil is still powering Europe just with the help of India.”

As we reported at the time, last December the EU barred almost any seaborne crude oil imports from Russia. It extended the prohibition to refined fuels two months later. However, the rules didn’t stop countries like India from snapping up cheap Russian crude, turning it into fuels like diesel, and shipping it back to Europe at a big markup: as shown in the chart below, just the Brent to Urals price differential, a byproduct of the Russian sanctions, is about $25/bbl, almost a third of the price of a barrel of crude. The markups on Russian product are even greater when dealing with refined products such as gasoline or diesel. In fact, India has become so good at reselling Russian oil to the same Europeans who refuse to buy it directly from Moscow for a much lower price, that the Asian country is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month while simultaneously buying record amounts of Russian crude, according to data from analytics firm Kpler.


In other words, Europe is still buying Russian oil, keeping Putin’s military machine well-funded, but because of the virtue signaling exercise of buying Russian oil though a mediator, the transaction ends up costing Europeans billions more than if they simply had purchased the oil directly. “Russian oil is finding its way back into Europe despite all the sanctioning and India ramping up fuel exports to the west is a good example of it,” said Viktor Katona, lead crude analyst at the firm. “With India taking in so much Russian barrels, it’s inevitable.”

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They all do it.

Morocco Supplies Spain With Russian Diesel – El Mundo (RT)

Morocco is purchasing Russian diesel and other refined products at discounted prices and re-exporting the fuel to Spain, El Mundo reported on Friday, citing ship tracking sources. Data from navigation tracking portal Vesselfinder showed that, on April 28, at least three tankers were heading from Russia’s Baltic ports to Morocco carrying approximately 170,000 tons of oil products on board. The North African country, which bought about 600,000 barrels of Russian diesel throughout 2021, ramped up imports of the product to 2 million barrels in January 2023, with another 1.2 million barrels arriving in the country in February, according to tracking sources. Morocco’s fuel exports almost stopped after its only processing plant was shut down in 2015 over unpaid taxes and legal hurdles, leaving the country dependent on refined oil imports.

In the beginning of the year, Rabat resumed fuel supplies and expanded exports of diesel from its Horizon Tanger terminal to Spain, Türkiye, Ghana, and southern Africa, the outlet said. In January, the country sent 280,000 barrels of diesel to the Spanish Canary Islands and another 270,000 barrels to Türkiye. “At the end of 2022, Morocco began to buy diesel fuel from Moscow at an average of more than 7 million liters per day. In parallel, Rabat began to export it to Spain,” the outlet wrote. According to ship tracking data, Moroccan deliveries now account for 10% of monthly Spanish demand for diesel, estimated at $60 million. According to some media reports, in March, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria accounted for 30% of Russia’s diesel exports.

Meanwhile, the Spanish government has pledged to ensure that no Russian fuel enters the kingdom. “Our obligation is to investigate what happens with the fuel [supplies],” Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Teresa Ribera told reporters on Friday. “Initially, it comes with documents confirming its appropriate origin,” she added. Russia has been diversifying its energy supplies in response to Western sanctions after the EU stopped accepting the country’s oil transported by sea. In December, the EU, G7, and allied countries imposed an embargo and a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian crude. Similar restrictions were introduced in February for exports of petroleum products.

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Posturing.

US Troops Drill For Taiwan War – Media (RT)

The US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has reportedly carried out drills simulating its response to a Chinese seizure of Taiwan for the first time, reflecting rising concern in Washington that Beijing may try to seize control of the self-governing island by force. The Taiwan scenario was played out as part of the USAOC’s annual capabilities exercise, known as CAPEX, at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, Military.com reported on Saturday. Troops practiced being inserted into Taiwan to help defend against a Chinese offensive, using a concrete mock-up on the base to simulate the environment in which they would fight the People’s Republic of China (PRC). “The PRC, in accordance with our national defense strategy, is our true pacing challenge out there,” Lieutenant General Jonathan Braga, commander of USASOC, said in a speech before the exercise on Thursday. “Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is prevent World War III. That’s our job.”

The drills included firing recoilless rifles, breaching tunnels and operating Switchblade drones, the media outlet said. The special forces used some of the same weaponry and tactics employed during Washington’s so-called War on Terror, along with “other tools reflecting a seismic shift for the command as it prepares for potential conflict against major military rivals.” It’s unusual for USASOC to identify the opposition force so directly during APEX, “given the military’s hesitancy to overtly suggest conflict,” according to Military.com. US-China relations have deteriorated in the past year amid Beijing’s refusal to join in a Western sanctions campaign against Russia over the Ukraine crisis. Chinese officials have accused US leaders of emboldening separatists in Taiwan, such as when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taipei last August. China responded by breaking off defense and climate ties with Washington and launching massive military drills in the Taiwan Strait.

The US government recognizes, without endorsing, China’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan. For decades, Washington has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” keeping Beijing and Taipei guessing as to whether, and to what extent, the US military would intervene if China invaded Taiwan. However, President Joe Biden has repeatedly hinted that Washington would come to Taiwan’s aid militarily in the event of a Chinese offensive. Washington think tanks have conducted wargaming exercises in recent months to simulate how a war over Taiwan might play out. One such study was done for a congressional committee by the Center for New American Security, which found earlier this month that US forces would be unable to resupply Taiwan with weapons and equipment once a Chinese offensive began. An exercise done by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that although US and Japanese forces would be able to successfully repel Beijing’s offensive, they would lose dozens of warships, hundreds of planes, and thousands of troops.

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“Such restrictions, for whatever reason, do not comply with the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement and the principles and norms of the EU Single Market..”

Kiev Decries EU Restrictions On Ukrainian Imports (RT)

The Ukrainian authorities have sent notes of protest to the Polish and EU embassies, decrying the restrictions on imports of the country’s agricultural products to the bloc. This was announced on Saturday by Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Oleg Nikolenko in a Facebook post. According to Nikolenko, Ukraine considers the restrictions “utterly unacceptable.” “Such restrictions, for whatever reason, do not comply with the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement and the principles and norms of the EU Single Market,” he wrote. The minister noted that Kiev has “all legal grounds” to immediately resume its exports to Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria and continue uninterrupted transit of all Ukrainian products to other countries both inside and outside of the EU. “The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry urged its [EU] partners to find a balanced solution based on EU legislation, the Association Agreement, and in the spirit of solidarity,” he added.


Earlier this month, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria unilaterally banned the import of agricultural products from Ukraine in a bid to protect their domestic markets, which has been overflowing with cheap Ukrainian products. Romania did not impose an import ban, but joined the other four in calls for Brussels to free the region of Ukrainian goods. After two weeks of discussions, the European Commission and the five member states struck a deal on Friday, which involves replacing the individual bans placed by the countries on Ukrainian imports with “emergency safeguard measures” for four major staples – wheat, maize, rapeseed, and sunflower seeds. Sources claim that imports of these crops into the five Eastern European countries will likely be blocked unless for transit.

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They treat Ukraine like a member. It’s not.

EU Reaches Deal On Ukrainian Food Imports (RT)

The European Commission on Friday struck an agreement with five EU member-states to help clear the supply glut caused by Ukrainian agricultural imports. The announcement was made on Twitter by EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis. “The European Commission has reached an agreement in principle with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania & Slovakia regarding Ukraine agri-food products. We have acted to address concerns of both farmers in neighboring EU countries and Ukraine,” Dombrovskis wrote on the social media platform. According to the official, the key elements of the new deal include the withdrawal of unilateral import restrictions previously placed by the countries on Ukrainian agricultural produce, a €100 million ($110 million) support package for the member-states’ farmers, and “emergency safeguard measures” for four Ukrainian staples – wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seeds.

Dombrovskis did not elaborate on what these emergency measures would entail, but sources claim that the imports of these crops into the five Eastern European countries will likely be blocked unless for transit. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the deal, saying that it would help guarantee the transit of Ukrainian produce. “This agreement preserves both Ukraine’s export capacity so that it continues to feed the world, and the livelihoods of our farmers,” she tweeted. In June last year, the EU lifted tariffs and quotas for Ukrainian agricultural imports for one year in order to enable grain from Ukraine to be shipped to global markets amid the conflict with Russia. Many of the shipments, however, ended up in Eastern European countries, flooding their markets with cheap produce and sparking protests among local farmers.

Earlier this month, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria unilaterally banned agricultural products imported from Ukraine in bid to protect their markets. While Romania had not imposed its own import ban, it joined the other four in urging Brussels to find a solution to the glut of Ukrainian produce. Import bans were deemed “unacceptable” by Brussels, as they undermined the bloc’s single market rules. The news of a deal on Ukrainian food imports followed a decision by EU ambassadors to extend Ukraine’s tariff-free access to the bloc’s market by another year. However, the extension is still subject to formal approval by the European Parliament and EU countries in the coming weeks.

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“The connection between Joe Biden and Hynansky’s business ventures dates back to 2009, when the then-vice president made his first visit to Ukraine..”

War Threatens Ukraine Auto Empire of Biden Megadonor (Sperry)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky isn’t the only one demanding more military assistance from President Biden to protect Kiev from Russian forces. So too is a close Delaware friend and financial backer of Biden, who owns several luxury car dealerships around the Ukrainian capital. By sending billions of dollars in weapons and other military aid to help defend Ukraine, Biden also is securing the investments of millionaire car magnate John Hynansky, a Ukrainian American and longtime supporter of the president. Over the course of Biden’s political career, Hynansky and his family have contributed more than $100,000 to his campaigns, including $8,000 in 2020, Federal Election Commission records show. Hynansky family members have been guests at the White House, and Hynansky has floated hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to Biden family members, property records show.

Hynansky’s son, Michael, who helps run his car empire, lent the use of his Lear jet to Biden when he was a senator. Since Russia started shelling the area around Kiev in February 2022, the U.S. government has spent $77 billion to help Ukraine rebuild and repel future attacks. Government ethics watchdogs say the president’s friendship poses a potential conflict of interest that demands a full accounting of how the massive foreign aid, which includes open-ended humanitarian and economic assistance, has been used and who has benefited from it. On the military side, moreover, billions of dollars have gone to unspecified areas, such as “security,” “intelligence,” and “training.” In the past, Hynansky has supplied the police cars and ambulances in several regions of Ukraine.

[..] The connection between Joe Biden and Hynansky’s business ventures dates back to 2009, when the then-vice president made his first visit to Ukraine. In a speech in Kiev to government officials, Biden singled out Hynansky for praise, noting that he had just had breakfast with “my very good friend, John Hynansky.” (The previous year, Hynansky had individually contributed more than $33,000 to the Obama-Biden ticket primarily through the Obama Victory Fund, according to FEC records.) Within months of his hobnobbing with the vice president and local officials in the Ukrainian capital, Hynansky scored his first international development loan from the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC, a federal body whose board was appointed by President Obama.

Hynansky used the $2.5 million to break ground on a new headquarters and massive distribution center outside Kiev that prepares 8,000 cars for sale every year. In 2012, Hynansky landed another $20 million in OPIC funding to expand his dealership facilities, federal records show, helping him corner roughly 25% of the luxury car market in Ukraine. “The proceeds of the loan will be used to construct and operate two new, state-of-the-art dealership facilities for Porsche and Land Rover/Jaguar automobiles, and repay any outstanding balance of an existing OPIC loan,” according to a 2012 OPIC financing document.

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Without implicating the Big Guy?

Hunter’s Collapsing World: A Criminal Plea Could Now Be Best Option (Turley)

This week, Hunter Biden’s defense team traveled to Delaware seeking an update on the federal criminal investigation that has dragged on for almost five years. The reason seems clear: Time is running out on Hunter and the Biden family. After years of delaying disclosures and admissions, Hunter could now be pushing to cap off the criminal side of the scandal before more information is released in Arkansas and Washington. For the White House, even a criminal plea is preferred if they can avoid one particular claim — and they may be succeeding. For years, the Bidens have worked (with the media’s help) to delay any recognition of the influence peddling and corruption that may be revealed on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Even this week, in child support proceedings in Arkansas, Hunter’s counsel continued to refuse to admit ownership of the laptop abandoned at The Mac Shop in Wilmington, Del., in April 2019.

It won’t work any more than his long refusal to acknowledge his fathering of his four-year-old child, Navy. Just as Hunter could not deny DNA, forensic and other evidence will soon make his laptop denials untenable in proceedings in which he and his counsel are required to tell the truth. These proceedings are now colliding for the Bidens. With the laptop being raised in Arkansas and being investigated in Washington by House committees, time is up and the Biden team knows it. An establishment of the laptop’s authenticity in one forum could produce cascading effects in the other forums. There has already been a recent shift to a scorched-earth strategy, including reportedly threatening possible witnesses and calling for the IRS to investigate critics.

New leaks from the Justice Department investigation have indicated that prosecutors are considering four charges: two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes and a potential felony count on falsifying a form linked to a gun permit. Those four charges could well result in jail time, but the situation is likely to get worse for Hunter if the House reveals new evidence of foreign dealings and payments. That is why a capstone plea could control the damage for both Hunter and his father. A capstone is designed to protect against erosion and even help to hold together an arch that might otherwise collapse. This capstone plea could avoid a worst scenario (and charge) that would undermine years of denials by both Bidens.

However, there was one conspicuous omission from the list of potential charges that may also indicate a reason to push toward a plea. There is no mention of a charge as an unregistered foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). The Justice Department aggressively used this charge against Trump figures like Paul Manafort and, if the same standard is applied, it is hard to see the basis for discarding the charge in the Hunter Biden case. The laptop shows emails from various foreign sources, including some with close connections to foreign governments and intelligence services. There are also records of visits of clients and business associates to the White House as well as pictures with then-Vice President Joe Biden. Finally, there are emails showing Hunter reached out to high-ranking officials like Antony Blinken for “advice.” Now our secretary of state, Blinken was then deputy secretary of state.

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“..merger accounting rules would require a buyer to immediately mark down FRC’s assets to fair value..”

No Buyer for First Republic Bank at Any Price (Mish)

In one of the biggest bank collapses ever, First Republic Bank is down 96 percent in two months. But look on the bright side. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) fared even worse. At least FRC is still kicking. It rose 8.79 percent on Thursday. You likely can’t give FRC away. There would be no takers. Its assets are worth less than zero. That’s because merger accounting rules would require a buyer to immediately mark down FRC’s assets to fair value. FRC lost $100 billion in deposits. And unlike SVB, it is stuck with severely underwater mortgage loans. The FRC business model was to give ridiculously cheap mortgage loans to high-wealth clients in return for their business. When that model started blowing up, clients pulled their deposits.


Given all around silliness by banks chasing yield, any buyer would likely have to raise capital which would hammer their own share price. According to the WSJ, Autonomous Research analyst David Smith commented “It might cost you $30 billion of capital to buy the bank for free.” If the run on assets continues, either the Treasury or the Fed is likely to step in. Elizabeth Warren would then moan about the Fed bailing out the wealthy. If the bank went under, she would moan about something else. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen repeated her comment that the U.S. banking system remains sound and the U.S. government will take “any necessary steps” to keep it the strongest and safest financial system in the world.

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“envisage our future utopia”, suggesting that Ireland must “rebalance economy, ecology and ethics..”

Irish President Condemns ‘Obsession’ With Economic Growth (Leahy)

President Michael D Higgins has condemned the “obsession” with achieving economic growth in a speech on Friday that was implicitly critical of the economic policies pursued by successive governments. In a reception at Áras an Uachtaráin for Tasc, a think tank dedicated to social change, the President delivered a typically wide-ranging speech that featured a strong critique of economic policy that seeks to prioritise growth, a condemnation of “neoliberalism” and an evaluation of the shortcomings of the teaching of economics at universities. He also urged those present to “envisage our future utopia”, suggesting that Ireland must “rebalance economy, ecology and ethics”. And he insisted that the current exchequer surplus was not just the product of corporation tax receipts from multinationals, but “has been made possible by an educated and hard-working population”.


“Many economists remain stuck in an inexorable growth narrative, or at best a ‘green growth’ narrative,” he said. “A fixation on a narrowly defined efficiency, productivity, perpetual growth has resulted in a discipline that has become blinkered to the ecological challenge – the ecological catastrophe – we now face. “That narrow focus constitutes an empty economics which has lost touch with everything meaningful, a social science which no longer is connected, or even attempts to be connected, with the social issues and objectives for which it was developed over centuries. It is incapable of offering solutions to glaring inadequacies of provision as to public needs, devoid of vision.” Later he added: “Our obsession with inexorable economic expansion expresses, perhaps, a desire to transcend our material limits and rise above the state of nature. Yet this growth fixation paradoxically increases the potency of those very limits. “A deadly cocktail of exploding inequalities, massive deregulation and a globalisation defined solely by trade densities has precipitated this ecological crisis.”

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Fern
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652411867732557825

 

 

 

 


Greta oto, also known as glasswinged butterfly, has transparent wings with a span of 5.6 to 6.1 cm

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jan 012023
 


René Magritte La belle captive 1946

 

The End of 500 Years of Conquistador Civilisation (Batiushka)
Hollande, Merkel Confessions ‘Formalization Of Betrayal’ – Russian Senator (RT)
German Chancellor Merkel Has Just Declared Russia Was Never Pacified (Helmer)
US Congress Urged To Assess ‘Risks’ Of Patriot Delivery To Ukraine (RT)
Russian Oil Products Refined Abroad Exempt From Price Cap – US Treasury (RT)
Elon Musk: Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘Cannot Be Regarded As A Scientist’ (DW)
10 Ways COVID Changed How People Think About Health–Part 1 (ET)
The Shameful Suppression Of Pandemic Public Policy Dissidents (OCR)
Age-Stratified Infection Fatality Rate Of Covid-19 In The Non-elderly (Ioannidis)
Why It Isn’t Mad To Oppose The World Economic Forum (Gregg)
In War for Control of Humanity (ET)
Law Will Install Kill Switches In All New Cars (Y!)

 

 

Happy New Year!

 

 

54 states

 

 

 

 

Yeadon

 

 

 

 

Ed Dowd
https://twitter.com/i/status/1609235208183726089

 

 

Just 5.5% of Americans aged 18 to 24 have received the bivalent COVID-19 booster, according to data from the CDC, while 66% of the same age group received the initial COVID-19 vaccine

 

 

 

 

 

 

This erudite priest has become one of my favorite writers.

The End of 500 Years of Conquistador Civilisation (Batiushka)

[..] now we come to the end of the vital crossroads year of 2022 and a revolution that happens only once every 500 years. What we had been waiting for over so many years is now here. The date of 24 February 2022 has already gone down in world history. With the incredibly aggressive refusal of Washington to allow the Kiev puppet regime to grant freedom to the people of the Donbass, Russia has been obliged to turn to Defence Plan B, to partial mobilisation and the demilitarisation and liberation of all of the Ukraine and even beyond, as the suicidal attitudes of the Western world will oblige it to do. A limited operation has had to be turned by Western aggression into a full-scale war and the US/West/NATO has deprived itself of peace and prosperity through its suicidal sanctions. It means the end of Western Conquistador Civilisation.

Thus, we try to peer over the horizon into 2023 and beyond. What will come once the Ukrainian war is over? Some who follow the Western reporting of the conflict may be surprised by these statements. However, that reporting has been a strange mixture of delusional fantasies/wishful thinking and straightforward propaganda, organised by Western secret services and PR agencies, omitting truth, logic and reality. Venal journalists have been ordered to report such nonsense from on high – otherwise, they would have lost their careers and their income. Such reporting has essentially been destined to try and keep Western peoples under control in the hardships they are facing as a result of the suicidal decisions of their US-controlled political elites.

The US elite is making use of the meagre resources of its NATO vassals (so-called ‘allies’), using as its battlefield the Ukraine and as its cannon fodder Ukrainians and mercenaries. But Russian victory is inevitable, even if delayed because the US is deliberately and suicidally making the Ukraine into its Second Vietnam. The Western elite wants to fight ‘to the last Ukrainian’. (“We don’t care how many Ukrainians will die. How many women, children, civilians and military. We don’t care. Ukraine cannot take the peace decision. The peace decision can only be taken in Washington. But for now we want to continue this war, we will fight to the last Ukrainian.” Former US Senator Richard Blake). Therefore, it is immorally supplying all sorts of lethal arms for hundreds of thousands more of these hoodwinked Slavs to die or to be maimed.

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How are they ever going to negotiate peace after this?

Hollande, Merkel Confessions ‘Formalization Of Betrayal’ – Russian Senator (RT)

Thousands of people have lost their lives in eastern Ukraine since 2014 because the West treated the Minsk agreements as scrap paper, the vice speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament said on Saturday. Senator Konstantin Kosachev was reacting to an admission by former French president Francois Hollande that the Minsk agreements were actually a ploy to buy time for the Kiev government to strengthen its military. This move should be credited for Ukraine’s “successful resilience” to Russia in the ongoing conflict with its neighbor, he added. Hollande was echoing a statement by former German chancellor Angela Merkel, who described the Minsk accords in December as “an attempt to give Ukraine time” to build up its armed forces.

The Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 deals were signed in 2014 and 2015 following mediation by Germany, France and Russia. They were designed to put an end to fighting between Kiev and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk by giving them special status within the Ukrainian state. Kiev’s failure to implement those agreements has been cited as one of the reasons for Moscow launching its military operation on February 24. “For the West, the territorial integrity of Ukraine is all about control over land and not about achieving social consensus. It’s about territory, not people. It’s about violence, not negotiations,” Kosachev wrote on Telegram. This approach “directly contradicts so-called European values,” he said. The senator noted that Western attitudes towards the territorial integrity of the UK and Spain have been completely different in the face of Scotland and Catalonia’s push for independence.

“The confessions by Merkel and Hollande are a formalization of betrayal… The price of this betrayal is thousands of human lives lost over the past eight years of civil war in Ukraine. The civil war that the West didn’t stop by treating the Minsk agreements as scrap paper,” Kosachev wrote. According to the UN estimates, more than 14,000 people were killed in Donbass between 2014 and early 2022. The only co-author of the Minsk agreements that genuinely tried to act as a guarantor was Russia, the senator claimed. Moscow sided with the people and left the territorial issue aside for as long as “it was still possible to implement the Minsk accord,” he added. The People’s Republic of Donetsk and Lugnask, as well as Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, joined the Russian state in autumn after holding referendums. Kiev and its Western backers have called the votes a “sham” and refused to recognize the results.

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Merkel hated the Soviet Union and that is somehow supposed to make all this alright.

German Chancellor Merkel Has Just Declared Russia Was Never Pacified (Helmer)

Angela Merkel, the chancellor who destroyed the Christian Democratic party in German politics always hated Russia and President Vladimir Putin most of all. She concealed this for as long as she calculated she needed to preserve the votes of East Germany, German businesses and unions for her re-election. But lie after lie she leaked through her staff to the German and English press. She even tried to promote a German candidate to rule the Ukraine in her war against Russia – until Washington installed their own in Kiev, and told Merkel to fall in line. She did. The outcome of Merkel’s rule between 2005 and 2021 is her 4-election failure to win a majority of votes or seats in the Bundestag; the defeat of every German voting bloc which had supported her in power in Berlin; the rebuilding of the Berlin Wall in the minds of the remaining Germans who disagree and who resist; and the return of Russia-hating and Adolf Hitler’s war aims for Germany against Moscow.

They are also the war aims of Joseph Kennedy, father financier of the US Democratic Party whose fascist line was tolerated by the White House until the fighting war started in earnest in Europe and Kennedy was gotten rid of. No comparable resistance to the alliance between German and American fascism exists today in the US, Europe, Berlin or London. The resistance, however, is worldwide; does not speak English as a native language; and the Russian armed forces are stronger than they ever were. The problem for them is how wide and deep the demilitarized zone must be drawn to defend Russia for the foreseeable future – how far west of the Dnieper River? To the Oder and Neisse Rivers of Poland and Germany, or to the Berlin Wall? With every new bombing, missile, and drone raid, the Stavka meeting daily in Moscow conducts its experiment in drawing the lines westward to the last Ukrainian, then to the last German.

In the Russian Foreign Ministry’s final briefing for the year, spokesman Maria Zakharova had not yet registered what Merkel said in Italian, in her interview with Corriere della Sera on December 27. That was: “ We all knew that it was a frozen conflict, that the problem was not solved, but this gave Ukraine precious time…the Cold War never really ended because Russia was never pacified.” For Merkel’s “problem to be solved” and “pacify Russia” read the US and NATO war to destroy Russia. “Today we act like this under the pressure of war,” she added, “which I approve of.” According to Zakharova, referring to Merkel’s earlier interviews in German with Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, “Angela Merkel’s confessions that the Minsk agreements only served to buy “time for Ukraine” leads to an interesting situation.

The Western countries prevented their media from visiting Donbass. At the same time, they needed time, as they say, for the Kiev regime to grow stronger. This is real evidence of what Russian leadership has been talking about. All this indicates that the Ukrainian army and the West are using unacceptable methods not only on the battlefield, but also in the information war that they have unleashed against Russia. The Kiev regime and its Western handlers are trying to hide their own crimes and the truth about what is really happening in Ukraine.”

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“..operation of the system requires dozens of trained personnel..”

“Training repair crews for the Patriot system alone takes some 53 weeks..”

“..estimated to cost about $4 million per missile.”

US Congress Urged To Assess ‘Risks’ Of Patriot Delivery To Ukraine (RT)

The US Congress is facing issues “in both its legislative and oversight roles” over the planned delivery of Patriot anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has warned. The research institute is a US government agency that provides expert support to members of Congress on a nonpartisan basis. The US government pledged to deliver one battery of the advanced MIM-104 Patriot anti-aircraft system to Kiev earlier this month, following an unannounced visit to Washington by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The timeframe for the delivery remains unclear, as the operation of the system requires dozens of trained personnel. US media outlets have suggested that Ukrainian troops may be invited to America for training, which has yet to occur in the context of the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Training repair crews for the Patriot system alone takes some 53 weeks, the CRS noted, adding that “there is a lot of learning to do before Ukraine will have a functioning Patriot system on the ground.” The research body also urged lawmakers to examine the exact source of the battery to be supplied to Kiev. It’s still unclear whether Washington itself or some of its NATO allies will provide the Patriot battery. The CRS warned that, ultimately, the “battery and associated interceptors being sent to Ukraine could be taken from existing army units and stockpiles.” “If it is withdrawn from other operational forces, such as US Central Command or US Indo-Pacific Command, transferring the system to Ukraine may create opportunity costs and potential risks in those theaters,” it said, adding that supplying a battery from the US homeland “could impede training or modernization cycles.”

The research agency also raised concerns over the “massive price tag” of the Patriot systems and their interceptor missiles, which are “estimated to cost about $4 million per missile.” According to available data, “a newly produced Patriot battery costs about $1.1 billion, including about $400 million for the system and about $690 million for the missiles,” the CRS said. Congress should therefore consider the question of whether certain “restrictions [would] be imposed on what types of hostile systems can be engaged by” the systems operated by Ukrainian troops, the agency suggested.

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They declare sanctions with big words…and then seek to undermine them.

Russian Oil Products Refined Abroad Exempt From Price Cap – US Treasury (RT)

Seaborne deliveries of Russian petroleum products that are ‘substantially transformed’ outside Russia will not be subject to a price cap, the US Treasury Department said in preliminary guidance on the measure on Friday. The cap on Russian oil products is set to come into force on February 5. In order to be exempt from the price limit, Russian oil products must undergo one of a number of processes abroad, according to the document. These include distillation, thermal or fluid coking, catalytic cracking, hydrotreating, de-waxing, as well as other refinery processes involving chemical transformation, separation, conversion, or treatment. Previously published guidance confirmed that the same exemption applies to Russian oil if it undergoes deep refining outside of the country.

“Once Russian petroleum products or Russian oil are substantially transformed… in a jurisdiction other than the Russian Federation, they are no longer considered to be of Russian Federation origin, and thus the price cap no longer applies,” the document states. It noted, however, that blending operations, including gasoline, distillate and crude blending, would not be considered “substantial transformation” and therefore oil products resulting from them would still be subject to the price cap. The US Treasury Department has not yet provided specific figures for the price cap on Russian oil products. The price ceiling on Russian oil was set at $60 a barrel, but may be revised depending on market conditions.

It was introduced by the EU, the G7 countries, and Australia, and came into effect on December 5. Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree banning the supply of oil and petroleum products under contracts that apply or even mention the price cap. According to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Russia is ready for a partial output reduction that is expected as a result of the measure. Novak expects output to drop by between 500,000 and 700,000 barrels per day, or between 5% and 7% of the total production volume.

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Scientific method.

Elon Musk: Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘Cannot Be Regarded As A Scientist’ (DW)

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday that the social media company’s new official policy will not penalize users for legitimately questioning scientific claims and narratives that are promoted in the media. The statement from Musk comes as he has taken multiple shots at leftists this week for buying into mainstream media narratives. “New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science,” Musk said. In a subsequent tweet, Musk responded to professor Gad Saad, who posted a video mocking Dr. Anthony Fauci and his decision to retire as Republicans are set to take over the House of Representatives next week.

“Anyone who says that questioning them is questioning science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist,” Musk said in response to the video about Fauci. Prior to Musk’s purchase of Twitter, users could often face suspension or permanent bans for questioning some scientific matters, especially those surrounding COVID, vaccines, and transgender issues. Musk called out other social media companies and Google earlier this week for alleged censorship on their platforms. Musk made the remarks in response to a tweet from left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald, who wrote: “For the crime of reporting that the US Security State agencies are heavily involved in Big Tech’s censorship regime, and for confessing that he found this deeply disturbing, liberals have spent a full week saying that @mtaibbi has mental health problems and needs therapy.”

Included in Greenwald’s tweet was a screenshot of one of journalist Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files threads. “The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm,” Taibbi said. “These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without government.” Musk responded, “Most people don’t appreciate the significance of the point Matt was making: *Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government.”

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Click the headline to get the other 9.

10 Ways COVID Changed How People Think About Health–Part 1 (ET)

1. Declining Trust in Vaccinations – Vaccines, once seen as sacrosanct in modern medicine, have begun to lose favor with the general public since the COVID-19 pandemic response. As early as June 2022, an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that the uptake of influenza vaccine doses has fallen in states that also saw low COVID vaccine uptake. Authors of the study suggest that the two polarizing attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccines are influencing behavior toward other public health measures, and that those who approved of the COVID-19 vaccines readily took up the influenza annual vaccine, while those that declined the COVID-19 vaccines also declined subsequent vaccines.

“Safety concerns and mistrust of COVID-19 vaccines or government” may also have been associated factors, the authors wrote. The pandemic response to COVID-19 saw many changes to public health. For the first time in history, emergency-use products were mandated and heavily promoted by the government and social media with little to no disclosure of possible health risks and informed consent. Dr. Robert Malone, a biochemist and one of the inventors of the mRNA pharmaceutical platform, said mandating experimental drugs challenged basic bioethics. It has since resulted in “push back,” against Big Pharma by the public, said CEO of Progenabiome and gastroenterologist Dr. Sabine Hazan.

Despite the continuous “safe and effective” narrative from public health agencies on COVID-19 vaccinations, emerging reports of myocarditis, pericarditis, immunological, and neurological symptoms, as well as an unprecedented increase in vaccine adverse event reports suggest otherwise. A December poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports on COVID-19 vaccines found that 57 percent of Americans were concerned about “major side effects” of the vaccine. Hazan said that doctors are getting more and more of their patients coming to their clinics, asking why they are falling ill after vaccination, and have had to challenge the safe and effective narrative. “It’s hard to tell a parent who’s son was an 18-years-old athlete who died 4 days after a shot, that [the death] is not from the shot,” Hazan wrote to The Epoch Times.

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“It’s lucky that Twitter didn’t exist when Pope John Paul II proclaimed, “Be not afraid.” The Soviet Union might still be standing.”

The Shameful Suppression Of Pandemic Public Policy Dissidents (OCR)

In March 2021, Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff answered a question on Twitter about whether younger age groups and people who had already had COVID needed to be vaccinated. “No,” he responded, “Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should.” Dr. Kulldorff recommended vaccination for “high-risk people and their care-takers,” but said it was not needed by children or those with prior natural infection. Internal emails at Twitter show that a moderator flagged the tweet by Kulldorff, a Harvard Medical School professor, as “false information” and a violation of the company’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. Twitter slapped a “Misleading” warning on the tweet and suppressed its reach. “This Tweet can’t be replied to, shared or liked,” the warning label stated.

Twitter flagged tweets as “misleading” if they diverged at all from the official government line, even if the tweets quoted or copied data directly from scientific journals or government websites. Dr. Andrew Bostom, an internal medicine specialist who was on the faculty of Brown University Medical School from 1997 to 2021, was permanently suspended from Twitter for tweeting a link to a scientific article on COVID-19 vaccines lowering sperm counts. Dr. Bostom’s account has been restored to Twitter under Elon Musk’s new regime, along with the accounts of many other distinguished, accomplished and frequently published scientists and medical doctors. One particularly revealing communication about content moderation unearthed by Zweig involves then-President Donald Trump’s personal experience as a COVID patient.

“I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 p.m.,” Trump tweeted on October 5, 2020. “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker, formerly a top attorney at the FBI, sent an email to two Twitter executives that read, “Why isn’t this POTUS tweet a violation of our COVID-19 policy (especially the ‘Don’t be afraid of Covid’ statement)?” One of the executives responded that the tweet is a “broad, optimistic statement” that “doesn’t incite people to do something harmful,” and so “doesn’t fall within the published scope of our policies.” However, the executive acknowledged that Baker might have a “different read on it.” It’s lucky that Twitter didn’t exist when Pope John Paul II proclaimed, “Be not afraid.” The Soviet Union might still be standing.

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It’s not the Infection Fatality Rate we’re worried about. It’s the vaccines.

Age-Stratified Infection Fatality Rate Of Covid-19 In The Non-elderly (Ioannidis)

The largest burden of COVID-19 is carried by the elderly, and persons living in nursing homes are particularly vulnerable. However, 94% of the global population is younger than 70 years and 86% is younger than 60 years. The objective of this study was to accurately estimate the infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 among non-elderly people in the absence of vaccination or prior infection. In systematic searches in SeroTracker and PubMed (protocol: https://osf.io/xvupr), we identified 40 eligible national seroprevalence studies covering 38 countries with pre-vaccination seroprevalence data. For 29 countries (24 high-income, 5 others), publicly available age-stratified COVID-19 death data and age-stratified seroprevalence information were available and were included in the primary analysis.

The IFRs had a median of 0.034% (interquartile range (IQR) 0.013–0.056%) for the 0–59 years old population, and 0.095% (IQR 0.036–0.119%) for the 0–69 years old. The median IFR was 0.0003% at 0–19 years, 0.002% at 20–29 years, 0.011% at 30–39 years, 0.035% at 40–49 years, 0.123% at 50–59 years, and 0.506% at 60–69 years. IFR increases approximately 4 times every 10 years. Including data from another 9 countries with imputed age distribution of COVID-19 deaths yielded median IFR of 0.025–0.032% for 0–59 years and 0.063–0.082% for 0–69 years. Meta-regression analyses also suggested global IFR of 0.03% and 0.07%, respectively in these age groups. The current analysis suggests a much lower pre-vaccination IFR in non-elderly populations than previously suggested.

Large differences did exist between countries and may reflect differences in comorbidities and other factors. These estimates provide a baseline from which to fathom further IFR declines with the widespread use of vaccination, prior infections, and evolution of new variants.

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“..Schwab’s core commitment is to political and economic arrangements which used to be known as corporatism.”

Why It Isn’t Mad To Oppose The World Economic Forum (Gregg)

A key concept for Schwab’s vision of a reset world is ‘stakeholder capitalism.’ In his 2021 book Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet, Schwab defines it as ‘a form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimise short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long-term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large.’ By value-creation, Schwab partly has in mind economic prosperity. But he also calls for the promotion of three other values: ‘People,’ ‘Planet,’ and ‘Peace.’ These rather broad concepts illustrate just how all-embracing Schwab’s stakeholder capitalism seeks to be.

So who are the stakeholders who will collaborate to usher in the four Ps? For Schwab, they are ‘governments,’ ‘companies,’ and ‘civil society’ (NGOs, unions, etc.). At this point we arrive at the essence of Schwab’s grand redesign. For all his invocation of the predictable woke pieties, Schwab’s core commitment is to political and economic arrangements which used to be known as corporatism. Schwab is quite explicit about this. In one article describing the origins of his present outlook, he writes: “This approach was common in the postwar decades in the West, when it became clear that one person or entity could only do well if the whole community and economy functioned. There was a strong linkage between companies and their community. In Germany, for example, where I was born, it led to the representation of employees on the board, a tradition that continues today.”

Corporatism is a broad concept. It can run the gamut from the hyper-authoritarian version embraced by Mussolini’s Italy to worker-boss structures of the type described by Schwab in postwar western Europe. All forms of corporatism, however, share some common themes. One is the necessity of limiting market competition in order to preserve social cohesion. Another is mandating cooperation between representative groups of different social and economic sectors – a process overseen and, if necessary, enforced by government officials for the sake of the common good. What, you might ask, could be wrong with this? The answer is: plenty.

For a start, corporatism – including its Schwabian expression – isn’t big on freedom. It’s all about forming and then maintaining a consensus on economic and social policies. For this reason, corporatism doesn’t cope well with dissent. Indeed, it discourages any questioning of the consensus, whether the issue is tax-rates or climate change. The language of corporatism, like that of Schwab’s WEF, may be one of coordinated consultation, but the agenda is one of control. For what matters is the harmonisation of views, no matter how absurd the idea and or how high the cost in liberty.

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The Gorgon Stare.

In War for Control of Humanity (ET)

Inventor of mRNA vaccines Dr. Robert Malone, having worked with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for many years, warns that a war is being waged by the government for control of people’s minds, and that social media platforms are being weaponized in this war and are “actively employed” by the intelligence community to influence what people think and feel. “This new battleground, in which your mind and your thoughts, your very emotions are the battleground. It is not about territory,” Malone said during a recent interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “Twitter, it’s clear now, has become the premium platform for shaping emerging global consensus about the topics of the day.”

During his work with the DOD, Malone became aware of companies researching multilingual programs that assess the emotional content of the language used on social media, which those companies then use to “map relationship clouds,” including what topics people are discussing, who the influencers are, and who is at the fringe of that cloud, said Malone. Phenomena like being deplatformed, shadowbanned, and a “tweet” going viral is a part of this weaponizing of social media. “By using these tools of manipulating what information, what tweets you put out, what messages you put out to your influencer cloud, they can modulate how those people behave,” he said. “You can actually very actively control what individuals are thinking, the information that they’re gathering, what they’re being influenced to do.”

The people who control information warfare weapons can modulate the messaging within the influencer clouds that can be readily mapped, Malone said. “Your current state of mind, based on the language that you’re using and the topics that you’re talking about, can be mapped very precisely, psychologically,” he said. “It can be tied into a web of influence relationships.” Members of a specific “influencer cloud” can be tracked using the military spy technology called the Gorgon Stare, said Malone. This spy technology is capable of detecting movements including what car you drive, who gets in your car, and where you go, he said.

The Gorgon Stare is a surveillance technology, originally created to target terrorist groups, that utilizes high-tech cameras mounted on drones to capture video images of large areas, such as entire cities. Then artificial intelligence is used to analyze the surveillance footage. Arthur Holland Michel, author of the book, “Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All,” called this technology the “pinnacle of aerial surveillance” during a 2019 interview with the CATO Institute and said the things he learned while writing the book were so troubling, they kept him up at night.

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Feel lucky?

Law Will Install Kill Switches In All New Cars (Y!)

According to an article written by former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, hidden away in the recently passed infrastructure bill, the very one I warned before would negatively impact drivers across the country if it were to pass, is a measure to install vehicle kill switches into every new car, truck, and SUV sold in this country. The regulation likely won’t be enforced for five years, so maybe there’s time to do something about this. As we’ve seen both in this country and others recently, what constitutes “law-abiding” can change drastically overnight. For example, in September a car was pulled over in New Zealand and the occupants arrested when police discovered the trunk was full of Kentucky Fried Chicken meals. They were smuggling the fast food to customers in locked-down Auckland, against quarantine measures. Yet not too long before, delivering restaurant orders to people was considered a reputable, legal activity.

It gets even better: Barr points out that the bill, which has been signed into law by President Biden, states that the kill switch, which is referred to as a safety device, must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.” In other words, Big Brother will constantly be monitoring how you drive. If you do something the system has been programmed to recognize as driver impairment, your car could just shut off, which could be incredibly dangerous. There is the possibility the kill switch program might measure your driving as impaired, then when you try to start the car up again the engine won’t fire up. That would potentially leave you stranded.

But wait, there’s more. This kill switch “safety” system would be open, or in other words there would be a backdoor. That would allow police or other government authorities to access it whenever. Would they need a warrant to do that? Likely not. Even better, hackers could access the backdoor and shut down your vehicle. Barr points out what a tremendous violation of Americans’ privacy this is, and he’s right. In addition, the term “impaired driving” isn’t defined by the legislation, so it would be open to interpretation by regulators such as the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Do you want government regulators helping to write algorithms which might force your car to pull over and stop because you might be a little tired instead of tipsy?

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Last ever Calvin and Hobbes, Dec 31 1995.

 

 

Walters
https://twitter.com/i/status/1609069514049880064

 

 

 

 

Brush strokes

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 122022
 


Paul Gauguin Landscape with black pigs and a crouching Tahitian 1891

 

Musk Says Fauci Lied, People Died (RT)
Zelensky Was Ready For Neutrality In March – Col. Macgregor (RT)
How the Mainstream Media Misses the Money Quote (Antiwar)
Twitter Files: Corporate Media Ignores The Biggest Story Of The Decade (ZH)
Dupe or Designated Defendant? The Criminal Case Against Jack Dorsey (Turley)
Jack Dorsey Defiantly States He Has Never Heard Of Twitter (BBee)
4 Minutes of Undiluted Truth on Mainstream TV (Mike Whitney)
Merkel’s Ukraine Remarks Show Breach Of Trust – Serbia (RT)
China Wants To Drop Dollar In Oil Trade – Reuters (RT)
Western Price Cap Disrupting Global Oil Markets – Economist (RT)
Sanctions On Russia Are Backfiring – Former Austrian Vice-chancellor (RT)
FBI Reveals It Has More Information on Deceased DNC Staffer Seth Rich (ET)
Are We Finally Reaching Peak Climate Hysteria? (Spiked)
Dutch Gov’t Attempts To Forcibly Close 3,000 Farms For ‘Green’ Agenda (ZH)
Viagra Lowers the Risk of Alzheimer’s By Almost 70% (GR)

 

 

 

 

Back to the future?!

 

 

Douglas Macgregor: Zelensky Has Made A Terrible Mistake By Trying To Pin Missile Strikes On Russia

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twitter files on censorship of doctors, and promoting Fauci, should be explosive. If they still exist. Musk has promised them.

Musk Says Fauci Lied, People Died (RT)

The billionaire Tesla and Twitter boss, Elon Musk, has triggered a social media firestorm on Sunday after suggesting that US Covid-19 czar, Dr. Anthony Fauci, should be investigated and prosecuted for allegedly lying under oath about the funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab in China. In what initially appeared to be an ironic dig, poised to trigger an avalanche of criticism from the left, Musk also posted a meme showing the retiring White House chief medical adviser whispering “Just one more lockdown my king” in President Biden’s ear. But after Fauci’s name was propelled to the top of Twitter trends with over 600,000 mentions, Musk apparently felt forced to elaborate why he thought the controversial face of America’s response to the pandemic should be investigated.

“As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people,” Musk said in response to one critic, adding “not awesome imo.” The 81-year-old Fauci, who plans to retire by the of the month, led a disjointed US Covid-19 response marked by his flip-flopping on issues such as the efficacy of masks and herd immunity targets. Shortly after Fauci announced that he would step down as Biden’s chief medical adviser and as director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) – Senator Rand Paul demanded that the US administration preserve documents and messages that could become evidence in the potential probe.

“Fauci’s resignation should not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He must be required to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the Wuhan lab leak. His policies destroyed lives,” tweeted Paul. The senator previously accused Fauci of directing public funding to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and lying about it under oath in congressional testimony, as the two sparred repeatedly in Senate hearings. Gain-of-function is the modification of pathogens to enhance them in various potential ways, including transmissibility. The rationale is that scientists can study new strains and find ways to stop them before similar adaptations emerge naturally.

The ‘lab leak’ theory – that the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab – was popularized by former US President Donald Trump, who made the allegation amid a trade war with China. Major US media organizations and tech platforms initially labeled it as ‘disinformation’ and tried to suppress the theory from public discourse. However, after Musk took over Twitter, the company stopped enforcing its Covid-19 “misleading information policy.”

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“Fiona Hill [..] wrote in September that an “interim settlement” had been agreed in Istanbul. In May, Ukrainian media linked the collapse of these talks to pressure imposed on Kiev by Johnson.”

Zelensky Was Ready For Neutrality In March – Col. Macgregor (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was ready in March to meet some of Moscow’s conditions for peace, retired US Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor has claimed in a recent interview. He blamed former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for preventing a settlement. As Ukrainian and Russian delegations sat down in Istanbul in March, news surfaced of a potential deal that would have seen Kiev renounce its ambition to join NATO and agree to neutrality, in exchange for Russia’s withdrawal to pre-February battle lines. Days later, Zelensky said he had discovered evidence of war crimes in territory evacuated by Russian forces, and negotiations were called off. In an interview with military historian Michael Vlahos, published on Saturday, MacGregor claimed that the UK was responsible for the abrupt end of the peace talks.

“We have evidence that towards the end of March, Mr. Zelensky said ‘well, we could live with neutrality,’ and when that word reached Washington and London, people became incensed,” he said. “Boris Johnson represented Washington’s interests and said ‘absolutely not, we will support you to the bitter end. You must stand your ground and fight for every inch of Ukraine’.” MacGregor is not the first US official to suggest that Zelensky was ready for peace in March. Fiona Hill, a veteran US diplomat who served as the US National Security Council’s senior director for Europe and Russia in the Trump administration, wrote in September that an “interim settlement” had been agreed in Istanbul. In May, Ukrainian media linked the collapse of these talks to pressure imposed on Kiev by Johnson.

The prime minister visited Kiev on April 9, reportedly without warning, and according to the Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper, told officials that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the West] are not.” Now, almost ten months into the conflict, Zelensky has forbidden negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has promised to retake all of the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye – which voted to join the Russian Federation in September. The Ukrainian leader has also vowed to capture Crimea, which has been a part of Russia since a 2014 referendum. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has said Russia remains open to talks, but cautioned in October that Western powers must be involved, as an agreement with Ukraine alone could be “instantly canceled upon orders” from the West.

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“..there was a canyon between the leader of the US and the leader of the loyal European opposition. The canyon was so wide that it included disagreement over the causes and solutions of the war.”

How the Mainstream Media Misses the Money Quote (Antiwar)

On December 1, French President Emmanuel Macron went to Washington for the first state visit of the Biden administration. After the pageantry, presents, hand holding and flattering words of fraternity and solidarity, Macron faced the gathered press. “We will never urge Ukrainians to make a compromise that will not be acceptable for them.” “That,” said Helene Cooper of The New York Times, “is the money quote.” But it wasn’t the money quote by several euros. The money quote came days later when Macron was not standing shoulder to shoulder with Biden in front of an American audience, but standing on his own addressing a French audience.

Macron told the French television network TF1, in an interview filmed during his visit to Washington but aired as he left, that “We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.” Then Macron made his full meaning clear: “One of the essential points we must address – as President Putin has always said – is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.” The money quote was that, despite the display of solidarity, there was a canyon between the leader of the US and the leader of the loyal European opposition. The canyon was so wide that it included disagreement over the causes and solutions of the war.

Biden and Macron both “strongly condemn Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.” But for Biden, in the beginning, that war was wholly unprovoked, and, in the end, the settlement must reflect that and protect core US values. For Macron, though the war was illegal, Russia had legitimate security concerns that NATO had been pushing, and the settlement must reflect that too. Macron hinted at that crucial separation at the press conference with Biden. Even then, Macron said “We want to build peace and a sustainable peace means full respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” But then, hinting at Russia’s demand to be included in a new European security structure that takes its concerns seriously, he added, “but at the same time [it means] a new architecture to make sure we have a sustainable peace in the long run.” But that didn’t make it into the money quote.

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“Twitter was participating in a form of treason, along with the agencies that they cooperated with. It’s a huge story, and one that should lead to punishment for those involved.”

Twitter Files: Corporate Media Ignores The Biggest Story Of The Decade (ZH)

Twitter has long denied that they “shadow ban” users, but this was a lie. The data shows that small groups within Twitter called “strategic response teams” suppressed up to 200 accounts per day. Usually these were accounts of larger and more influential conservative politicians and celebrities. And, these teams operated in coordination with Democrat officials and agencies like the FBI. In some cases the goal was to mute a particular individual. In other cases the goal was to steer national elections. Internal Twitter communications show that SRT groups spent most of their time fabricating reasons why certain information was subject to TOS. In other words, if Twitter’s rules were not being violated, they made up new rules.

The exposure of Twitter is the biggest story of the decade because it provides proof of a hidden cabal. It shows the ugly mechanics behind the scenes and exposes a network of elites and their errand boys who were involved in direct operations to destroy the 1st Amendment for the sake of ideological supremacy. It’s the classic definition of fascism, a definition that Benito Mussolini reiterated when he argued: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” And, if this brand of Fascism was happening within the halls of Twitter, then there is little doubt it is also happening at companies like Google/YouTube, Apple, Facebook, etc. Before we had evidence, now we have confirmation.

The corporate media argues over relevance instead of morality because they benefited from the censorship. It’s important to remember that one of the first measures Big Tech companies applied after suppressing the alternative media during the pandemic was to then amplify the corporate media. These companies are floundering with dismal audience numbers and dwindling profits. No one listens to them anymore. Yet, as long as they promote the establishment narrative their opinions and disinformation are given priority on nearly every search engine and social media platform. Of course they aren’t interested in the Twitter Files, liars are often “bored” by honest commentary and factual information.

Also, their continued existence relies on the censorship of their competition in the alternative media. The bottom line is this: According to the Bill of Rights, it is illegal for agents of the US government to obstruct the free speech of law abiding American citizens. It does not matter if the action is done by using “private businesses” as middlemen. And, if a private business is colluding with government to implement political policy then it is no longer a private business. Twitter was participating in a form of treason, along with the agencies that they cooperated with. It’s a huge story, and one that should lead to punishment for those involved.

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“..lying in public is generally not a crime. However, when you repeat a lie to federal investigators or Congress or the courts, it becomes a federal offense.”

Dupe or Designated Defendant? The Criminal Case Against Jack Dorsey (Turley)

The latest Twitter disclosures have raised potential legal liability for Twitter and its executives. No one appears more at risk than Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey It is an ironic turn of events since Dorsey supported the takeover by Elon Musk and has called for all files to be released without filtering. Dorsey has the feel of a “designated defendant,” someone who was pushed forward by others to take any legal hit. On its face, Dorsey has vulnerability after the latest release. He was repeatedly asked by members of Congress about censoring and shadow-banning, which has now been confirmed in these files. In September 2018, Dorsey testified under oath and denied what these files appear to now confirm. Rep. Mike Doyle, D., Pa., asked, “Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?”

Dorsey responded, “No.” Doyle then asked “Are you censoring people?” “No,” Dorsey said. “Twitter’s shadow-banning prominent Republicans… is that true?” Doyle asked. Dorsey again said no. Dorsey was also asked about my prior testimony on private censorship in circumventing the First Amendment as a type of censorship by surrogate. Dorsey and the other CEOs were asked about my warning of a “‘little brother’ problem, a problem which private entities do for the government that which it cannot legally do for itself.” In response, Dorsey insisted that “we don’t have a censoring department.” It now appears that the entire company was operating as a censoring department. However, there were in fact super-censors.

Dorsey did not mention the Strategic Response Team-Global Escalation Team (SRT-GET), which operated above what journalist Bari Weiss described as “a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper.” That group reportedly included Vijaya Gadde, head of Legal, Policy and Trust; Yoel Roth, the global head of Trust and Safety; CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others. Notably, others at the company made similar denials as Dorsey but may not have done so under oath. In 2018, Gadde and head of product Kayvon Beykpour expressly declared, “We do not shadow-ban. And we certainly don’t shadow-ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”

Even if untrue, lying in public is generally not a crime. However, when you repeat a lie to federal investigators or Congress or the courts, it becomes a federal offense. The question is whether Dorsey was left in the dark on these decisions. He was reportedly a member of SRT-GET. However, some of the files indicate that these decisions may have been made without his knowledge. That includes the decision on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which Dorsey called a “total mistake.”

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“I’m not here talking to you right now. My name is not Jack Dorsey. I vehemently deny my own existence at this time.”

Jack Dorsey Defiantly States He Has Never Heard Of Twitter (BBee)

In the aftermath of the second wave of what have come to be known as the “Twitter Files” — in which documented evidence is presented that Twitter engaged in systematic practices to suppress and “shadowban” conservative or otherwise dissenting accounts, despite previous claims to not do so — co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has issued a defiant statement that he has, in fact, never heard of Twitter. “I have no comment on, and indeed, no knowledge regarding anything known as a ‘Twitter,'” Dorsey said. “Any claims to the contrary are untrue and a wholesale misrepresentation. The previous statements attributed to me regarding ‘shadowbanning,’ while made by me, were simply not made by me.”


Furor continues to grow in the wake of new Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk authorizing the release of large amounts of internal communications and descriptions of practices under the company’s previous regime. “Twitter and its former brain trust have very serious questions to answer,” said Senator Ted Cruz in comments to the media. “Mr. Dorsey testified before Congress and denied that Twitter had engaged in such practices. The American people demand the truth.” “I never appeared before Congress,” Dorsey said in response. “I’m not here talking to you right now. My name is not Jack Dorsey. I vehemently deny my own existence at this time.” At publishing time, investigations into Dorsey’s knowledge of secret Twitter practices were ongoing, as further questions sent to Dorsey remained unanswered as he denied ever providing his previous answers to the first questions.

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“..the best ‘easy-to-understand’ summary of the Ukraine War you’ll hear anywhere..”

4 Minutes of Undiluted Truth on Mainstream TV (Mike Whitney)

The last thing you’d ever expect to hear on a mainstream news channel, is the truth. But—strange as it might seem—that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday night on the Tucker Carlson Show. Carlson interviewed veteran journalist Glenn Greenwald in a 4-minute segment that provided the best ‘easy-to-understand’ summary of the Ukraine War you’ll hear anywhere. And what was so shocking about the interview, was how casually both men veered onto topics that are essential to grasping “How we got to where we are today” but which are entirely banned on all the other cable news channels. You are not allowed to know, for example, that Russia was “lured into the conflict in Ukraine”.


That does not fit the script that has been passed-along from the Biden State Department to their lapdogs at the cable news stations. You’re also not allowed to know that the US does not fight wars “to spread democracy” or that “the US has no vital interests in Ukraine” or that “Russia is not really our enemy”. All of those topics are verboten. You’re not even allowed to think about these things, which is why– for the most part– they have been completely scrubbed from any-and-all discussion of foreign policy in the corporate media.

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The EU also faces another problem with Serbia, which wants troops in Kosovo. Germany says no way. But there is a UN resolution.

Merkel’s Ukraine Remarks Show Breach Of Trust – Serbia (RT)

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent comments on the 2014-15 Minsk agreements have cast the Ukraine conflict in a new light, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Saturday. Merkel stated that Kiev used the ceasefire to rearm its troops. The peace deals brokered by Germany and France eight years ago laid out a path for the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics’ (DPR and LPR) peaceful reintegration into Ukraine. However, they were never implemented because the government of Ukraine argued over the interpretation of the agreements. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko eventually admitted that Kiev mainly intended to use the ceasefire to rebuild its military and the economy. Merkel seemed to confirm this in an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit on Wednesday, saying that by signing the agreements, Ukraine won “valuable time” to muster a stronger army.

“We have witnessed a historically important statement by Angela Merkel. I am surprised and still checking whether it is possible that she has said such a thing,” Vucic told local media. “She is a woman whom I appreciate greatly, but for me this statement is almost unbelievable.” The former chancellor’s words “shed a completely new light” on the history of the conflict, Vucic said. “It cannot change the fact of who attacked whom, but changes a lot in terms of facts and relations inside what has been going on since 2014 … it is a clear sign for me that [they] cannot be trusted.” “It’s a lesson for us,” Vucic added, as his country now faces heightened tensions in Kosovo, Serbia’s breakaway region that the majority of EU and NATO members recognize as an independent state.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he was disappointed by Merkel’s remarks that “nobody intended to fulfill any part of the Minsk agreements.”Earlier, Putin cited Kiev’s inability to stick to the Minsk agreements as one of the reasons Moscow recognized the independence of the two Donbass republics on February 21, three days before launching its military operation in Ukraine. The DPR and LPR, along with two other former Ukrainian territories, became parts of Russia after referendums in late September.

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Oil markets are global. The yuan is not a global currency. And China won’t make it one.

China Wants To Drop Dollar In Oil Trade – Reuters (RT)

Beijing will work to make energy purchases in yuan instead of US dollar signalling another step towards shifting further away from the greenback, China’s President Xi Jinping told Gulf Arab leaders as cited by Reuters. China’s leader highlighted the necessity of the move while speaking at a Chinese-Arab summit that was hosted by Saudi Arabia earlier this week. Xi had held separate talks with the heads of the Persian Gulf states at the summit that reportedly brought together 30 leaders from across the region. The world’s biggest crude importer, China in November ramped up purchases of oil by 12% year-on-year, marking the 10-month high despite the severe pandemic-related restrictions. Chinese state refiners stepped up purchases of US crude oil, while maintaining high imports of Russian oil prior to the December 5 European embargo and imposition of an oil price cap.


China’s independent refiners also moved a record amount of deeply discounted Iranian crude passed off as oil sourced from Malaysia, which is commonly used as a transfer point for oil originating from the sanction-hit Venezuela and Iran. Saudi Arabia was China’s number one oil supplier in the first ten months of 2022, making up 18% of China’s total crude oil purchases, with imports totaling 73.54 million tons, or 1.77 million barrels per day, Chinese customs data showed. Keen interest in the yuan and other currencies from major oil importers have arisen in the wake of unprecedented sanctions introduced by Washington and the allies against Russia, one of the world’s biggest oil producers and exporters over Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.

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“43% of EU inflation is related to energy prices, while only 17% of US inflation is due to energy prices..”

Western Price Cap Disrupting Global Oil Markets – Economist (RT)

The latest EU sanctions on Russian oil exports will fail to strip the country of its revenues, but are already causing global oil supply disruptions, a senior energy economist at CER-Centro Europa Ricerche told Sputnik news agency on Wednesday. The EU embargo took effect on Monday and was accompanied by a $60 price cap on Russian crude, supported by G7 countries and Australia. Any transactions over this limit are now barred from receiving brokerage, shipping, or insurance services. Demostenes Floros said that although the price cap has not sparked an immediate surge in oil prices, severe consequences lie ahead. The economist predicts rising demand in China, which will inevitably affect the cost of crude. He added that higher energy prices will deal a blow to the EU at a time of spiraling inflation and an unfolding recession.

Floros explained that “43% of EU inflation is related to energy prices, while only 17% of US inflation is due to energy prices and this is a very big difference between the European Union and the United States,” adding that the price cap will deepen the split within the bloc. The sanctions may also result in serious problems with contracting necessary volumes of diesel in the EU once the ban on Russian refined oil products comes into force on February 5, he warned. “I think that prices will increase, especially if other OPEC+ producers will not compensate Russian output,” the economist said, cautioning that the “politicization” of energy supplies could further destabilize a market which has not yet recovered from the Covid crisis.

EU oil sanctions on Russia are already causing setbacks. Dozens of tankers carrying 23 million barrels of crude are currently stuck in the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, unable to pass, as Turkish authorities demand proper insurance guarantees. Most of the Black Sea crude stuck in the straits was from Kazakhstan, which is not targeted by sanctions, according to EU officials. At the same time, Russian insurance companies have already provided letters of confirmation to Turkish authorities in order to secure passage.

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“If it goes on like this, next year in March and April we will face mass insolvencies and bankruptcies..”

Sanctions On Russia Are Backfiring – Former Austrian Vice-Chancellor (RT)

Western sanctions imposed on Moscow have failed to make a dent in Russia’s economy and ultimately only hurt Europeans, former Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said on Saturday. He also accused European policymakers of turning a blind eye to the deadly fighting in Donbass, which he said served as a prelude to the current conflict for many years. Speaking at a pro-neutrality rally in Vienna, which was also a protest against sanctions on Russia, Strache claimed that Austria’s decision to join the restrictions had turned out to be a self-inflicted wound. “Austria has shown Europe how the sanctions are damaging itself,” he said, telling his audience that the measures have caused soaring electricity and gas prices, with more and more people feeling the impact.

“If it goes on like this, next year in March and April we will face mass insolvencies and bankruptcies,” he warned, calling the possibility “damn dangerous.” If the crisis is exacerbated and more people get desperate, “this could bring a dangerous development in the form of social tensions that we all do not want,” the former vice-chancellor added. At the same time, Strache continued, the restrictions have failed to undermine the Russian economy. According to him, “this year, the Russians have doubled [their] business,” raking in $220 billion in revenue. Strache also stated that Europe had found itself in the current situation because it had been “looking the other way” for many years when it comes to hostilities in Donbass, which started in 2014 after violent riots in Kiev overthrew the democratically-elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.

After Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February, Western nations imposed new severe sanctions on Moscow, freezing half its gold and foreign currency reserves and targeting its energy exports. The restrictions, however, caused energy prices and living costs to surge, prompting numerous protest rallies across Europe. Earlier this month, hundreds of Italian activists gathered in the center of Milan to protest sending weapons to Ukraine and expanding the sanctions. In late November, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova insisted that EU policymakers have only themselves to blame for their ongoing energy crunch.

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”The agent claimed that disclosure of the records would harm an FBI investigation into the allegations that Russians had hacked into U.S. systems.”

FBI Reveals It Has More Information on Deceased DNC Staffer Seth Rich (ET)

The FBI not only has possession of a laptop computer owned by slain Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich, but a report detailing forensic imaging of what’s being described as Rich’s work computer, the bureau revealed in a new filing. The FBI’s records office located the report while searching for the work computer, Michael Seidel, chief of the office, said in a sworn declaration filed with a federal court in Texas on Dec. 9. He described the document as “a three (3) page forensic report detailing the actions performed by an outside entity to image the work laptop.” The report was among four documents that had never been disclosed by the FBI in relation to Rich’s case.

Journalist Sy Hersh said in or around 2017 that he was told by a source about an FBI report on Seth Rich. He said, according to the source, that Seth Rich’s computer showed the DNC staffer had relayed DNC documents to WikiLeaks, a pro-transparency group. Hersh talked about the source’s claims during a phone call with Ed Butowsky, an investor who later retracted claims about Rich being a WikiLeaks source, and discussed the call during a deposition. Rich was gunned down in the early morning hours on July 16, 2016, near his home in Washington. The killing of Rich, the DNC’s voter expansion data director, remains unsolved. Authorities have claimed that the killing was a robbery gone wrong. Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, has suggested that Rich passed DNC files to the group, which released the DNC files in 2016. U.S. authorities have alleged that Russians hacked into the DNC systems, but those allegations were made before the FBI received images from the DNC’s server to determine their validity.

The Metropolitan Police Department has said it is the lead investigating agency into the death. It has declined to say whether the FBI was helping with the probe into Rich’s death. The new records were found after the records office contacted an unnamed FBI special agent during its search for Rich’s work computer, according to FBI Records Chief Seidel. The other records are a letter from a third-party that accompanied the work computer and two FBI chain of custody forms. None of the records were indexed to Rich inside of the bureau’s central records system and neither the forensic report nor the custody forms mention Rich’s name, according to the FBI. They were also not included in an electronic file created for Rich’s case. The agent claimed that disclosure of the records would harm an FBI investigation into the allegations that Russians had hacked into U.S. systems.

The FBI now wants the court to agree to keep the new records shielded from Brian Huddleston, a Texas resident who filed a lawsuit against the bureau over its ignoring a Freedom of Information request for records on Rich. Bureau officials initially claimed in sworn statements that the FBI had searched for records on Rich but did not locate any. In 2020, for the first time, the FBI admitted it had files from a computer belonging to Rich. Some of those files were then released to Huddleston and made public, including documents that appear to suggest that someone could have paid for his death. The FBI has said it has images from a second computer owned by Rich, which the bureau described as Rich’s personal laptop. A federal judge in September ordered the bureau to hand the images over to Huddleston, finding that the bureau improperly withheld them.

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No way.

Are We Finally Reaching Peak Climate Hysteria? (Spiked)

The madness of the greens is peaking. This week a leading eco-politician in the UK, Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, referred to the building of a new coalmine as a ‘crime against humanity’. Take that in. Once upon a time it was mass murder, extermination, enslavement and the forced deportation of a people that were considered crimes against humanity. Now the building of a mine in Cumbria in north-west England that will create 500 new jobs and produce 2.8million tonnes of coal a year is referred to in such terms. Perhaps the coalmine bosses should be packed off to The Hague. Maybe the men who’ll dig the coal should be forced alongside the likes of ISIS to account for their genocidal behaviour.

We cannot let Ms Lucas’s crazed comments just slide by. We need to reflect on how we arrived at a situation where a mainstream politician, one feted by the media establishment, can liken digging for coal to crimes of extermination. It was in the Guardian – where else? – that Ms Lucas made her feverish claims. On Wednesday, when the government gave the go-ahead to the Cumbria mine, the first new coalmine in Britain for 30 years, Lucas wrote that the whole thing is ‘truly terrible’. This ‘climate-busting, backward-looking coalmine’ is nothing short of a ‘climate crime against humanity’, she said.

It isn’t though, is it? Sorry to be pedantic but it is not a crime to extract coal from the earth. If it were, the leaders of China – where they produce 13million tonnes of coal a day , rather putting into perspective the Cumbria mine’s 2.8million tonnes a year – would be languishing in the clink. I look forward to Ms Lucas performing a citizen’s arrest on Xi Jinping. It certainly is not a crime against humanity. That term entered popular usage during the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. It refers to an act of evil of such enormity that it can be seen as an assault on all of humankind. Earth to Ms Lucas: extracting coal to make steel – what the Cumbria coal will mostly be used for – is not an affront to humankind. I’ll tell you what is an affront, though: speaking about the burning of coal in the same language that is used to refer to the burning of human beings. That, Caroline, is despicable.

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I still don’t know where the focus on nitrogen came from. Wasn’t it always CO2?

Dutch Gov’t Attempts To Forcibly Close 3,000 Farms For ‘Green’ Agenda (ZH)

Dutch farmers protesting for months over the government’s radical ‘green’ plan to slash nitrogen emissions by 50% – 95% could soon face forced buyouts of their land. “For agricultural entrepreneurs, there will be a stopping scheme that will be as attractive as possible,” Christianne van der Wal, nitrogen minister, recently said in the Dutch parliament. The Dutch government plans to purchase 3,000 “peak polluter” farms via a €24.3 billion ($25.6 billion) fund. Van der Wal said farmers would be offered 100% value for their land, but if voluntary efforts fail, farmers will face forced buyouts. The country is attempting to reduce nitrogen pollution and will make farm purchases if not enough landowners accept buyouts. She added: “There is no better offer coming.”

So, how did this happen? As we explained over the summer, farmers were livid with the Dutch government for following through with their green agenda to reduce nitrogen emissions on farms. Many of these folks took to the streets with their tractors and pitchforks and demanded the government reverse course on crushing the country’s agriculture industry. The Dutch government began implementing new rules on nitrogen activity on farmers and farm buildings as early as 2019. That halted the expansion of dairy, pig, and poultry operations for the last several years, which are significant sources of nitrogen pollution. One Dutch farmer spoke with ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ to discuss the pressure from the government and their move to close down thousands of farms.

“I don’t know what we can expect. For my own family, I hope that one of my sons can continue farming if he wants,” Dutch Farmer Geertjan Kloosterboer said. The Netherlands is trying to reduce emissions and follow through with a green agenda, but it could jeopardize the nation’s food supply and put the world’s supply at risk. Recent data shows the country, which is the size of Maryland, is the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the US. Their centrality in the global food supply is indisputable, and so-called green politicians want to destroy the industry in the name of climate change. It seems like the protests aren’t going away anytime soon.

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Brain health.

Viagra Lowers the Risk of Alzheimer’s By Almost 70% (GR)

New research published recently suggests that Pfizer’s erectile dysfunction drug Viagra can decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by up to 69%. The research, which was published in Nature, found that the medication has a direct effect on brain health and significantly reduces the toxic proteins that can cause dementia. The study’s findings are so promising that the drug may someday be used to counter dementia. A new team of experts is preparing to conduct another study that builds on this data but tests the generic version of Viagra — sildenafil — in patients suffering from early Alzheimer’s.

The team of researchers arrived at Viagra’s viability as a treatment for dementia after analyzing 1,600 approved drugs hoping to find one that could be repurposed to fight the root causes of dementia. “Sildenafil, which has been shown to significantly improve cognition and memory in preclinical models, presented as the best drug candidate. Sildenafil may have neuroprotective effects and reduce levels of toxic tau proteins,” said Dr. Feixiong Cheng, the lead researcher on the study, which was conducted by the Cleveland Clinic. Despite the excitement surrounding the study’s promising results, some experts are advising people to not get their hopes up quite yet, as clinical trials are still necessary.

Another recent study uncovered another unlikely weapon in the fight against dementia: coffee. Research suggests that coffee consumption may significantly decrease your chances of developing the disease. The study sheds light on the mysterious disease, for which there is no cure as of now. While coffee does not mitigate or fight Alzheimer’s like some medications do, the study found that people with no memory loss who also drank larger than average amounts of coffee were at less of a risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, which is considered a pre-stage of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Bout

 

 

 

 

Weaver

 

 

Blue-footed booby

 

 


Blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii)

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 092022
 


Salvador Dali Back the girl 1926

 

Second Wave Of Twitter Docs Reveal ‘Blacklists’ And ‘Shadow Bans’ (JTN)
Saxo Bank Predictions Warn Of A Wild 2023 (Spears)
Merkel’s ‘Confession’ May Be Ground For Tribunal – Moscow (RT)
US Trying To Make Ukraine Conflict Last For Years – Russia (RT)
Kremlin Explains When Ukraine Conflict May End (RT)
Bandera’s ‘Insurgency-in-Waiting’ (Robeson)
ADL: Ukraine’s Azov Battalion No Longer ‘Far-right’ (GZ)
EU Lacks ‘Critical Defense Capabilities’ – Borrell (RT)
The Russian Oil Price Cap Isn’t As Simple As It Seems (OP)
“People Are Losing Faith In This Institution”: ECB Staff (ZH)
FBI Sees ‘Threat’ In Apple Encryption Move (RT)
The Coming Purge of the China-Hands (Pattberg)
The Fixed-pPice Shopping Basket: Greece’s Answer To Cost Of Living Crisis (G.)
Daniel Ellsberg: Indict Me Too (Lauria)
Disinformation Down 92% As NYT Writers Go On Strike (BBee)

 

 

In 2018, Twitter was doing fine with the same amount of people they now employ. What was the rest doing? Just censoring?

 

 

Shadow ban

 

 

Zelensky

 

 

@CelineDion reveals she has ultimately been diagnosed with Stiff Person Syndrome. This is a known vaxx side effect that Pfizer kept quiet until the court forced them release the side effects in the first Pfizer dump.

 

 

Tucker board

 

 

 

 

Christine Anderson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1599487419530629120

 

 

 

 

Interesting discussions on Twitter about Twitter. Much more to come. It’ll be hard on Elon too. For instance, he tweeted that Twitter doesn’t employ the Perkins Coie law firm. And then someone sends a Dec. 8 paper that says it does. How now?

Second Wave Of Twitter Docs Reveal ‘Blacklists’ And ‘Shadow Bans’ (JTN)

Former New York Times editor Bari Weiss on Thursday released internal documents on Twitter’s censorship efforts and detailed the creation of blacklists and use of shadow ban technique to throttle “disfavored” tweets. Last week, Musk released information on the company’s censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story via alternative journalist Matt Taibbi. Thursday’s dump came through a team of reporters Weiss led and to whom Musk granted broad access to the company’s files to investigate on condition they first publish their findings on Twitter. “[T]eams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss posted in the first of a series of tweets.

Weiss subsequently outlined how conservative personalities or individuals with “disfavored” positions would end up on internal blacklists to stunt the spread of their messaging. Talk-show host Dan Bongino was featured on a “search blacklist” while Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s account was set to “Do Not Amplify,” Weiss detailed. COVID-19 lockdown critic Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University wound up on a “trends blacklist” that prevented his tweets from featuring on the website’s trending section. Weiss then recalled prior comments from Twitter executives denying that the company used shadow bans to stifle traffic on accounts without their knowledge.

“We do not shadow ban. And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology,” said then Head of Legal Policy and Trust Vijaya Gadde and Head of Product Kayvon Beykpour in 2018. Weiss then outlined testimony from Twitter engineers detailing an identical process the company termed “Visibility Filtering” in which the platform would quietly limit the reach of specific posts. VF decisions would go through the Strategic Response Team — Global Escalation Team Weiss explained, which she said often handled up to 200 cases per day. She further asserted that a secret dubbed “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support” included top-level officials who made the biggest decisions. Weiss asserted that former CEO Jack Dorsey participated in the group’s deliberations.

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‘If I was a strategic thinker in the non-western world I would be thinking about what to do with my US dollar reserves..’

Saxo Bank Predictions Warn Of A Wild 2023 (Spears)

From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to a British prime minister being ousted after six weeks, it has been a year of shocking events. More volatility lies ahead if Saxo Bank — whose previous annual list of ‘outrageous predictions’ did not see those two coming — is accurate with its prophecies for 2023, which include the reversal of Brexit and the end of dollar dominance. Some of Saxo Bank’s predictions are more outrageous than others, admits Steen Jakobsen, chief investment officer, who has been overseeing the annual project for more than 20 years. He says the most likely prediction of Saxo’s 10 for 2023 could see the US dollar’s dominance assailed by concerted action among non-Western countries.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to the ‘US weaponising the US dollar,’ as part of the sanctions response, says Jakobsen. ‘If I was a strategic thinker in the non-western world I would be thinking about what to do with my US dollar reserves going forward.’ Oil-producing nations could agree with large consumers such as China and India to do deals in a new reserve asset, leaving the dollar behind. Saxo’s possible scenario sees non-US allied countries create an international clearing union (ICU) and a new reserve asset. Based on an idea by economist John Maynard Keynes after the Second World War, the idea would make the purchasing price for oil more stable in currency terms. ‘Why would Saudi Arabia and China do deals in dollars?’ adds Jakobsen. He believes it would be a natural move ‘at a time when the US has stepped back from being a world policeman.’

Saxo’s predictions suggest a splintering world in which national economies ‘shift into War Economy mode, where sovereign economic gains and self-reliance trump globalisation.’ But closer regional links are also foreseen, most notably in the UK, which votes to ‘un-Brexit’ and rejoin the EU in the wake of economic turmoil and political demonstrations. Jakobsen does not think Rishi Sunak’s more measured approach as prime minister will be any more effective than predecessor Liz Truss’s attempts to create a laissez-faire economy. ‘Neither is going to do anything for the debt or inflation (problems) in the UK,’ he says. ‘Maybe this leads to dissatisfaction, demonstrations and ultimately an election which will see Labour come in. Maybe the Liberal Democrats show up as a Europe-friendly party, (popular) with young people in particular.’

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Merkel made clear that the “collective west” spent years trying to create a war with Russia. It’s that simple.

A tribunal would have no effect. Because all tribunals these days listen to only one side. A “Russian war crimes tribunal” will exclude Ukraine war crimes. Useless. Or worse.

Merkel’s ‘Confession’ May Be Ground For Tribunal – Moscow (RT)

A confession by former German chancellor Angela Merkel regarding the true nature of the Minsk agreements – a roadmap for peace in Ukraine that was brokered by Berlin – could be used as evidence in a tribunal involving Western politicians responsible for provoking the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. The former German leader admitted in an interview with Die Zeit on Wednesday that the actual purpose of the Minsk agreements was to give Ukraine time to prepare for a military confrontation with Russia. “They talk a lot about legal assessments of what is happening around Ukraine, certain tribunals and so on in all sorts of ways,” Zakharova said during a media briefing on Thursday. “But this is a specific reason for a tribunal.”

She claimed that Merkel’s comments were nothing short of the testimony of a person who had openly admitted that everything done between 2014 and 2015 was meant to “distract the international community from real issues, play for time, pump up the Kiev regime with weapons, and escalate the issue into a large-scale conflict,” Zakharova added. She said Merkel’s statements “horrifyingly” reveal that the West uses “forgery as a method of action,” and resorts to “machinations, manipulation and all kinds of distortions of truth, law and rights imaginable.” The spokeswoman claimed that the West had known well in 2015, when it spent hours negotiating the second part of the Minsk accords, that it would never even attempt to fulfill any part of the agreements and would instead pump weapons into Kiev.

“They did not feel sorry for anyone: women, children, the civilian population of Donbass or the whole of Ukraine. They needed a conflict and they were ready for it back then, in 2015,” Zakharova said. Earlier this month, a number of Western officials called for the creation of a special UN-backed court to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Russia during its ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. The Kremlin has said the West has no legal or moral right to set up any courts to investigate or prosecute Russia over the conflict, which Moscow claims was ultimately provoked by the US and its allies.

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“She also said that Zelensky should watch his back, considering last week’s visit to Ukraine by Victoria Nuland..”

US Trying To Make Ukraine Conflict Last For Years – Russia (RT)

US arms procurement documents show that Washington intends to fuel the conflict in Ukraine for at least three more years, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky should take notice of it when assessing the future of his country, she added. “Washington plans to fuel hostilities in Ukraine at least till the end of 2025. That’s what their plans are, judging by documents, which they don’t hide from anybody,” the Russian diplomat told journalists during a briefing on Thursday. Zakharova was referring to a contract for Raytheon’s National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), which the Pentagon announced last week.

The US Army will buy $1.2 billion worth of hardware for Ukraine, according to the announcement, with an estimated completion date in late November 2025. The US, which pledged to provide military assistance to Kiev for “as long as it takes” to defeat Russia, previously supplied this type of anti-aircraft system to Ukrainian troops. Advisors to President Vladimir Zelensky should tell him about the procurement timeline, Zakharova suggested, so that he didn’t promise his people that the conflict would end next year, as he did this week. “Washington has different plans. There is a lot of money to be embezzled” through Ukraine aid programs, she alleged. Zakharova claimed that Western assistance was “a corruption marathon” going from the White House to Kiev and back again and profiting grifters on a global scale.

She also said that Zelensky should watch his back, considering last week’s visit to Ukraine by Victoria Nuland, a veteran US diplomat, whom Zakharova called “a harbinger of tragic shocks, caused by the Washington-orchestrated bloody putsch” of 2014. “A new palace coup may be in the making or some other reshuffle. I believe the Zelensky regime, which has repeatedly tested Washington’s patience, has some things to consider,” she remarked, adding that the US didn’t care who was in power in Kiev. Nuland, who served as US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in 2014, was recorded discussing with then-US Ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, the composition of the post-coup Ukrainian government. The private conversation was leaked online by unidentified parties. Her preferred candidate for prime minister subsequently got the job.

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“Zelensky knows when all this can end, it can end tomorrow if desired..”

Kremlin Explains When Ukraine Conflict May End (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky knows that if desired the fighting between Moscow and Kiev could end at any moment, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said during a press call on Thursday. “You can talk about when all of this will end until you are blue in the face,” Peskov said in response to the Ukrainian president’s recent prediction that the conflict could be over next year. “Zelensky knows when all this can end, it can end tomorrow if desired,” the spokesperson added. In a recent interview with Politico – which named him ‘the most powerful person in Europe’ – Zelensky stated that Ukrainians “will be the most influential next year, but already in peacetime.”


Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine could turn out to be a “lengthy process” because achieving all of Russia’s objectives could take quite some time. Earlier, the Russian leader also said that it was wrong to talk about the timing of the special operation or try to adjust it. He noted that it was impossible to set an exact date for when the conflict could end because the fighting is still intense. “We are working calmly, the troops are moving, reaching the lines that are set as tasks. Everything is going according to plan,” Putin said back in June.

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“[Zelensky] can’t go forward with full peace negotiations with Russia, with Putin, unless America has his back..”

Bandera’s ‘Insurgency-in-Waiting’ (Robeson)

In early February 2022, a couple weeks before Putin’s invasion, Ragozin observed, “While downplaying the risk of a Russian offensive and even reprimanding the West for sowing panic, the Ukrainian leadership appears preoccupied with a different threat – that of a coup.” In the same article (“What is Zelenskiy afraid of?”), he described the “Capitulation Resistance Movement” as “a radical street force dedicated to toppling Zelensky” and “a paramilitary force associated with the nationalist opposition that coalesced around former president Petro Poroshenko.” Nationalists officially launched the “Capitulation Resistance Movement” (Rukh Oporu Kapitulyatsiyi, ROK) in October 2019 to sabotage Zelensky’s peace mandate after the political newcomer crushed Poroshenko and his political party in elections held earlier that year.

“No Capitulation” became the slogan of a broader, far-right-led campaign against Zelensky and his government, with protests typically spearheaded by the neo-Nazi Azov movement and the ROK. “Zelensky ran as a peace candidate,” and the hardliners vigorously opposed him, the late Russia expert Stephen F. Cohen explained to journalist Aaron Maté that month. “He won an enormous mandate to make peace. So, that means he has to negotiate with Vladimir Putin.” But there was a major obstacle. Ukrainian fascists “have said that they will remove and kill Zelensky if he continues along this line of negotiating with Putin… His life is being threatened literally by a quasi-fascist movement in Ukraine.” Peace could only come, Cohen stressed, on one condition. “[Zelensky] can’t go forward with full peace negotiations with Russia, with Putin, unless America has his back,” he said.

“Maybe that won’t be enough, but unless the White House encourages this diplomacy, Zelensky has no chance of negotiating an end to the war. So the stakes are enormously high.” That was three years ago. After Russia invaded, the ROK became the FURM, or the Free Ukraine Resistance Movement, which has mostly flown under the radar. After interviewing a representative of the FURM in early March, a neoconservative US journalist referred to the “Resistance Movement” as an “insurgency-in-waiting, one of many, no doubt, that plans to resort to guerrilla warfare in the event that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempted conquest of Ukraine turns into a prolonged occupation of major population centers.”

After keeping tabs on this “quasi-fascist” movement for a few years (although it mostly went dark after Russia invaded), I feel comfortable speculating that the ROK was partially responsible for making Zelensky feel that negotiating peace with Russia would be too dangerous for him. I also suspect that once Putin declared war, Zelensky as an actor felt his only choice was to become an action hero, not just to rally international support for his country, but to become so popular in Ukraine and the West to rule out a coup d’etat.

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“The New York Times has even referred to the unit as the “celebrated Azov Battalion.”

ADL: Ukraine’s Azov Battalion No Longer ‘Far-right’ (GZ)

A November 9 email from the Anti-Defamation League to The Grayzone provided a twisted defense of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion. Despite its self-proclaimed “anti-hate” mission, the ADL insisted in the email it “does not” consider Azov as the “far right group it once was.” The Azov Battalion is a neo-Nazi unit formally integrated into the US government-backed Ukrainian military. Founded by Andriy Biletsky, who has infamously vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led untermenschen,” Azov was once widely condemned by Western corporate media and the human rights industry for its association with Nazism. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In the months that immediately followed, Azov led the Ukrainian military’s defense of Mariupol, the group’s longtime stronghold. As the militia assumed a frontline role in the war against Russia, Western media led a campaign to rebrand Azov as misunderstood freedom fighters while accusing its critics of echoing Kremlin talking points. The New York Times has even referred to the unit as the “celebrated Azov Battalion.” Like the Washington Post and other mainstream outlets, the ADL ignored Azov’s atrocities this April in Mariupol, where locals accused the group of using civilians as human shields and executing those who attempted to flee. One video out of Mariupol showed Azov fighters proudly declaring the Nazi collaborator and mass murderer of Jews, Stepan Bandera, to be their “father.”

The Azov Battalion has long served as a magnet for the international white nationalist movement, attracting recruits from the terrorist Atomwaffen Division to a US Army Specialist arrested on charges of distributing bomb-making instructions. Back in March 2022, just a month before the battle of Mariupol, the ADL itself issued a report acknowledging that white nationalists see Azov “as a pathway to the creation of a National Socialist state in Ukraine.” Eight months later, however, the ADL has changed its tune, asserting to this outlet that Azov has rooted the fascists from its ranks. So did Azov change its Nazi ways, or did the ADL simply shift its messaging to conform to the imperatives of a Biden administration still intent on sending billions in military aid to Ukraine?

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Does Borrell work for Raytheon? His spending demands will make Europe a lot poorer…

EU Lacks ‘Critical Defense Capabilities’ – Borrell (RT)

Europe must begin to take more responsibility for its own security, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said, announcing that total expenditure by member states will grow by €70 billion over the next three years. Speaking at the ‘Investing in European Defence’ forum on Thursday, Borrell, who also heads the European Defence Agency (EDA), called on European nations to cooperate more on upping defense capacities in the common interest of bloc security. They should also look past the current conflict in Ukraine and anticipate “future threats.” Borrell said states’ spending on defense had surpassed the €200 billion-level in 2021 for the first time, though they’re still playing catch-up. “After the Cold War, we shrunk our forces to small-size armies without coordination … We lack critical defense capabilities,” he said.

“We have to compensate for years of underspending.” “Total defense expenditure that Member States have announced will grow by another €70 billion in the next three years,” Borrell said, adding that “people don’t fight with banknotes.” Borrell said Brussels faced a challenge to spend the money “in a coordinated manner” and that national decisions should not be focused solely on present needs, an apparent reference to the turmoil in Ukraine. If the focus remains only on current requirements, Europe will once again be faced with “a fragmented European capability landscape,” he warned. The top diplomat said a balance must be found between responding to current needs and preparing for future threats. Those threats are “close by and likely to get worse,” he said.

The EU has committed around $2.5 billion in weapons to Ukraine since Russia’s offensive began in February. Borrell’s pledge comes as European nations are running out of weapons to give Ukraine as they see their own stocks dwindling. The constant transfers of weapons to Ukraine has left most NATO nations’ stockpiles strained, according to a New York Times report last month, which said the bloc’s smaller nations had “exhausted their potential” and at least 20 of NATO’s 30 members were “pretty tapped out.” Politico reported last week that France unofficially admitted it has run out of weapons to send Kiev due to the state of its own supplies, while Germany also faces a €20-billion shortfall in ammunition.

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“..wondering how a fixed price would work in a market that trades oil on a forward floating basis against international benchmarks..”

The Russian Oil Price Cap Isn’t As Simple As It Seems (OP)

The $ 60-per-barrel price cap on Russian crude oil, which came into effect on Monday, looks pretty straightforward. Buyers paying $60 or less per barrel of Russia’s crude will have full access to all EU and G7 insurance and financing services associated with transporting Russian crude to non-EU countries. However, the physical oil market doesn’t usually see trades with fixed prices of crude – oil is being sold at a price premium or discount against the forward prices of the major international benchmarks such as Brent or the Oman/Dubai average. So, the price cap is much more complicated than a straightforward $60 per barrel ceiling. As a result, traders of physical oil cargoes are confused by the price cap on Russian crude, wondering how a fixed price would work in a market that trades oil on a forward floating basis against international benchmarks.

Physical oil traders, those who are willing to trade crude in compliance with the price cap, are also concerned that they could end up inadvertently violating the cap if, for example, the price of Russia’s flagship grade, Urals, with a discount to Brent, is higher than $60 per barrel weeks after the oil trade has been made. In such cases, traders would be stuck with above-$60 Russian crude that violates the price cap and would significantly limit access to EU/G7 tankers and maritime transportation services such as insurance and financing, oil traders tell Bloomberg. This could complicate the physical handling of Russian crude oil cargoes and hedging, they say. “Physical traders rarely trade on a fixed price,” John Driscoll, chief strategist at JTD Energy Services Pte Ltd, told Bloomberg.

“It’s a much more complex space where they trade on formulas and spot differentials to a benchmark crude for the trading of actual cargoes as well as for hedging that follows,” said Driscoll, who has more than 30 years of trading oil in Singapore. The price cap is not set in stone – it “is fixed for now but adjustable over time,” the EU said last week. A price revision would “take into account a variety of factors, which can include the effectiveness of the measure, its implementation, international adherence and alignment, the potential impact on coalition members and partners, and market developments,” the EU says. Even within the price cap, banks are generally wary of providing financing, industry officials told Global Trade Review this week.

Banks are concerned by the high compliance risk and fear they will have to increase scrutiny and due diligence to avoid being caught in a trade or deceptive shipping practices. Adding further confusion for physical oil traders is Russia’s position on the matter. Moscow says it will not trade its oil with countries that have joined the price cap. The EU says that “With the price cap, there are clear incentives for Russia, oil importing countries and market participants to maintain the flow of Russian oil. This will achieve both objectives at the same time.” But Russia says the price cap artificially limits prices—a mechanism Moscow will not accept.

Read more …

In times of plenty, incompetence tends to remain hidden. But today, almost everyone working in European institutions turns out to be incompetent. They’ve been selected not for their skills, but for loyalty to some ideology or another.

“People Are Losing Faith In This Institution”: ECB Staff (ZH)

This one is just too funny to pass by: having watched as their incompetent and clueless “leaders” sparked the biggest surge in European inflation since Weimar, crushing the purchasing power of ordinary people across the continent, it is only when their own purchases were suddenly threatened that the ECB’s rank and file decided to make some noises. According to the FT, workers at the world’s biggest hedge fund (or at least it was until the Euro hit parity), known as the European Central Bank, will discuss protest action and even potential strikes after rejecting a pay offer well below the rate of eurozone inflation, a union official has warned. The ECB’s proposal to increase pay by “only” 4.07% in January is – hilariously enough – consistent with the bank’s own opposition to deals that link wages to inflation that it believes risk fuelling a damaging wage-price spiral.

There is just one problem: its own employees think Christine Lagarde – herself a multimillionaire who barely avoided jail time despite being a convicted felon – is full of it and demand much higher pay… which if extended to all European workers will result without doubt in a wage-price spiral, as higher wages will mean higher prices, which mean even higher wages, and so on. The ECB’s latest pay offer, up from a 1.48% rise at the start of this year, is less than half what annual eurozone inflation is expected to be this year and will leave its staff with a significant pay cut in real terms (don’t tell them, but most Europeans won’t even get a 4.07% nominal wage increase: are they supposed to strike too). “People are losing faith in this institution,” said Carlos Bowles, vice-president of the Ipso union that represents ECB staff. “What the ECB leadership is telling us is ‘sorry we missed our own inflation target and now you, the staff, are going to pay the price’. “We really see an issue in the way the ECB stance is damaging the bargaining power of workers,” said Bowles.

“This is playing a role in increasing inequality.” Of course, that’s what we have been saying since 2009. But it was only when their own livelihood was on the line, did workers for Europe’s money printer figure it out too. A recent survey by the union found “the vast majority of colleagues are angry” about the ECB’s pay offer, he said. “The pay consultation is due to finish at the end of the year and we will decide in January if we protest.” The union reportedly met with the ECB’s ultra wealthy president Christine Lagarde – who doesn’t care what food costs, after all with the help of Bernard Tapie she embezzled enough to last her a lifetime – a few weeks ago and she made it clear there was no room for negotiation, he said. A strike, as happened at the ECB over pension reforms in 2009, was “not excluded” but it would only “come after an escalation curve”.

Read more …

“In this age of cybersecurity and demands for ‘security by design,’ the FBI and law enforcement partners need ‘lawful access by design.’”

FBI Sees ‘Threat’ In Apple Encryption Move (RT)

The FBI has issued a warning about upcoming security updates for Apple products, insisting the company’s plans to strengthen end-to-end encryption will interfere with efforts to track down criminals and terrorists. The agency sounded alarms soon after Apple announced several “advanced security features” set to be introduced in the coming months – including new protections for files stored in the cloud – telling the Washington Post it is “deeply concerned with the threat end-to-end and user-only-access encryption pose.” “This hinders our ability to protect the American people from criminal acts ranging from cyber-attacks and violence against children to drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism,” an unnamed FBI spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.

“In this age of cybersecurity and demands for ‘security by design,’ the FBI and law enforcement partners need ‘lawful access by design.’” US and allied law enforcement officials have long demanded tech firms to provide open access to all devices, with the FBI frequently citing the aftermath of a 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernadino, California, when agents were unable to get into an Apple phone used by the shooter. Though the bureau pressed the company to help it break in, Apple refused, leading to a lengthy legal battle centered on encryption. Between 2015 and 2016 alone, Apple received at least 11 separate court orders to help police access various devices thought to be involved in criminal activity, but objected to all of them. A New York City court would later conclude that Apple could not be compelled to unlock its phones on the basis of the 1789 All Writs Act, which the FBI had repeatedly cited in prior cases.

Alongside agencies in the UK and Australia, the US Department of Justice has placed similar pressure on other tech giants in the past. In 2019, the three countries issued an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg which argued that “companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content.” Officials suggested encryption could interfere with investigations into “the most serious crimes,” effectively asking for the ability to crack any device at any time. Privacy advocates, including famed national security whistleblower Edward Snowden, have pushed back on the drive to undermine strong encryption, saying it is impossible to create a backdoor exclusively for law enforcement, and that any such security loophole will also be open to everyone, including bad actors.

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How our impression of China is shaped. Read!

The Coming Purge of the China-Hands (Pattberg)

There comes a time during or shortly after the academic training of every “Student of China” when he frequently runs into one of the many agents of Western anti-China state security. They are adverse hostile forces, they run a complete background-check on you, and then they‘ll make you a simple offer: You either produce anti-Chinese content for the West, or they‘ll mark you as anti-democratic and enemy of freedom, a traitor. In that case, you’ll never find work in the West again. And if you make a big fuss about it and cry coercion or blackmail, they are gonna start decomposing you. Like most young students back then, I, too, was completely ignorant about the inner workings of Western world hegemony. And, like the idiot I always was, I threw myself heedlessly into “China Studies” at a respective University in the United Kingdom, Edinburgh to be exact.

Immediately, the conceited profs and lecturers, they taught us the horrors of Han chauvinism, the horrors of Qing China and the horrors of the Maoists and the horrors against the poor people of Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan. When I looked it up, those were all former British colonies and/or places of interest to the British Crown. We were told LIES by the very British people whose soldiers raped, looted and colonized China, and were now angry that China somehow stood its ground and survived. I do not expect you to believe at first what I am about to tell you. I would not have believed it myself, back then I mean, before I joined some of the many “Studies” invented by the Western Empire of LIES. “China Studies” is not about China. It could be, but it is not. It is warfare against China. To keep China down. To sabotage her. To control her people and her history. In this war, it is the West or you perish.

Joining the enemy, China, is a capital crime. Have you ever wondered why there are no pro-China talking heads in the books, in the papers or on telly? It is because pro-China people in “China Studies” were the enemy. They didn’t make it through graduation, they weren’t hired, etc.. Our common sense is often betrayed by what sociologists call ‘the survivor bias’: We believe that since all we hear or read about China is negative, this must be sure proof that China is a very nasty place. What we fail to see, however, is that all the negative stuff we heard and read about China was the product of just 1 “China Studies” graduate for every 1,000,000 people or so of the general Western population. Nobody who was pro-China survived the selection process or came anywhere near central power.

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“For many it was not in the increased number of homeless on the streets, or beggars huddled around tourist sites, or eye-wateringly high energy bills – although all of those existed before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ”

The Fixed-pPice Shopping Basket: Greece’s Answer To Cost Of Living Crisis (G.)

Even before the cost of living crisis was formally pronounced, it had arrived in Greece. For many it was not in the increased number of homeless on the streets, or beggars huddled around tourist sites, or eye-wateringly high energy bills – although all of those existed before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “It was there for everyone to see on the supermarket shelves,” says Panagiota Kalapotharakou, who heads the consumer rights association Ekpizo. “Eighteen months ago there were so many products with price labels that a great number of Greeks could not afford. Costs were going up long before the war in Ukraine.” It came as little surprise for consumer groups, then, that when talk turned to the need for relief measures to counter rising inflation the government chose to focus on staple goods.

What emerged was the novel concept of the “household basket”: supermarkets agreed with the government to sell about 51 staples – from flour to fish – at fixed prices. The measure, thrashed out around a long mahogany table in the ministry of commerce, went into effect in early November. Officials in the centre-right government intend the scheme, scheduled to run to the end of the winter, as a bulwark for the most vulnerable against the inflationary storm. No government subsidies are involved. “We spent weeks sitting around this table working on it with supermarket market representatives and our competition committee,” says Sotiris Anagnostopoulos, the ministry’s fresh-faced general secretary. “In politics you have to anticipate what is coming next. The cost of living crisis is a huge challenge, maybe the biggest we have faced since the adoption of the euro.”

Nationwide chains have signed up to the programme, selling products under blue household basket labels. With the country’s annual consumer inflation rate currently at 10% – down from a high of 12% in September – the government insists the initiative has succeeded in stabilising prices at a time of uncertainty and, in some cases, driving them lower. “What was never expected was the price war that we have seen among the big supermarket chains,” says Anagnostopoulos. “It’s been a surprise and a pleasant one because in general Greeks have much lower purchasing power.” Forced to survive on some of the lowest wages in the EU – at less than €1,200 a month, the average monthly salary is about a quarter of that in Germany – Greeks have felt the impact of soaring prices perhaps more than other EU nations.

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“Anyone who has downloaded a classified document from WikiLeaks, Cryptome or any other source, or posted it online is liable to prosecution under the Act..”

Daniel Ellsberg: Indict Me Too (Lauria)

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has told the U.S. Justice Department and President Joe Biden that he is as indictable as WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange for having unauthorized possession of classified materials before they were published by WikiLeaks and that he would plead “not guilty” because the Espionage Act is unconstitutional. Ellsberg revealed this week to the BBC interview program Hard Talk that Assange had given him the files leaked by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to keep as a backup before they were published by WikiLeaks in 2010. Assange has been charged with violating the Espionage Act for possession and dissemination of classified information and faces 175 years in a U.S. prison if he is extradited from Belmarsh Prison in London.

Ellsberg is the second figure this month to come forward calling on the U.S. government to indict them for the same reasons Assange has been charged. “Cryptome published the decrypted unredacted State Department Cables on September 1, 2011 prior to publication of the cables by WikiLeaks,” John Young wrote in a Justice Department submission form, which Young posted on Twitter last week. “No US official has contacted me about publishing the unredacted cables since cryptome published them,” he wrote. “I respectfully request that the Department of Justice add me as a co-defendant in the prosecution of Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act.” The 1917 Espionage Act does not exempt journalists from receiving and publishing classified information, which Ellsberg says is a clear violation of the First Amendment and should be challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Anyone who has downloaded a classified document from WikiLeaks, Cryptome or any other source, or posted it online is liable to prosecution under the Act, which would include millions of people around the world. Receiving and publishing classified information is routine work for journalists at major publications. Five newspapers partnered with WikiLeaks to publish Manning’s material in 2010 but only Assange has been charged. Those five newspapers last week called on the Biden administration to drop the charges on Assange because of the threat to the First Amendment. The Obama administration declined to indict Assange in 2011 because it understood that it would also have to indict New York Times editors and reporters for having published the same materiel Assange did. That is the only material Assange was indicted for.

He was not charged for releases exposing Central Intelligence Agency hacking activities in 2016, though that so infuriated then C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo that Pompeo later asked for plans to be drawn up to either kidnap or kill Assange while he was living under asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy. The Trump administration then had Assange arrested and charged under the Espionage Act in 2019. Despite being part of the Obama administration, Biden has refused to drop the case. When those plans were first revealed at Assange’s extradition hearing in 2020, Ellsberg said that the government was treating Assange worse than he had been treated and that it should have set Assange free.

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“..all other news outlets around the country reported feeling “lost” as they were so used to just copying and pasting from the New York Times each morning.”

Disinformation Down 92% As NYT Writers Go On Strike (BBee)

Researchers are reporting that disinformation on Twitter, Facebook, and mainstream news sources is already down by 92% in the wake of a 24-hour writer’s strike at the New York Times. “We always wondered where all this harmful disinformation was coming from,” said Darryl Ball, a researcher with the Center for Combatting Bad Things Online. “Turns out, it was all coming from those knuckleheads at the Times. Who knew?” Several studies indicate the country has seen a sharp decrease in hate speech, foreign propaganda, and shockingly dumb hot takes since the entire writing staff walked out of the building in New York City, which experts believe could lead to an outbreak of peace and harmony across the nation.


“All this time, the threat to democracy was us all along!” said NYT Union Boss Fuggs Crullers to reporters from other news organizations not on strike. “We have begun negotiations with leadership to pay us more money to never come back to work in hopes of saving America.” At publishing time, all other news outlets around the country reported feeling “lost” as they were so used to just copying and pasting from the New York Times each morning.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Paul Marik

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tucker dreamers

 

 

 

 

Referee
https://twitter.com/i/status/1600902123486470145

 

 

Polar bear cub

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 082022
 


Pablo Picasso Couple on a bench 1943

 

Merkel Confirms Ukraine Ceasefire Was A Ploy (RT)
Germany Says Ukraine Can Strike Inside Russia (RT)
Putin: Risk Of Nuclear War Rising, Ukraine Operation To Be “Long Process” (ZH)
Ukraine Operation Could Take A Long Time – Putin (RT)
EU Has To Show It ‘Has Its Own Interests’ – Lavrov (RT)
Russia’s Mega Gas Pipeline To China Nearly Complete (RT)
Elon Musk: Data May Have Been Hidden And Deleted From The Twitter Files (PM)
Fight Over Officer Testimony Roils Proud Boys Sedition Case (AP)
Report: Those Who Died Suddenly Likely Killed by the Covid Vaccine (Jones)
Analysis Shows 26% Worse Mortality Among the Vaccinated (RVM)
Australia Concerned As People Dying At ‘Incredibly High’ Pace (Benzinga)
COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters For Young Adults (BMJ)
The Faux Urgency Of The Climate ‘Crisis’ (Curry)
Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Warns Assange May Be Extradited “Within Weeks” (WSWS)
Julian Assange’s Family Pleads For Unity (AAP)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mRNA military

 

 

Tucker military
https://twitter.com/i/status/1600677795369132032

 

 

 

 

She always acted in bad faith. Because she was going to blame Russia anyway: “..the Cold War never really ended because Russia was basically not at peace..”

And now, at some point, there must be new talks. How do you think Putin and Lavrov will act?

Merkel Confirms Ukraine Ceasefire Was A Ploy (RT)

The 2014 ceasefire brokered by Berlin and Paris in Minsk was an attempt to give Kiev time to strengthen its military and was successful in that regard, former German chancellor Angela Merkel argued in an interview published on Wednesday. In an extensive interview about her 16 years in power, Merkel told the Zeit magazine her policy towards Russia and Ukraine was correct, even if not successful. “I thought the initiation of NATO accession for Ukraine and Georgia discussed in 2008 to be wrong,” Merkel said. “The countries neither had the necessary prerequisites for this, nor had the consequences of such a decision been fully considered, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine and to NATO and its rules of assistance.”

She described the September 2014 Minsk agreement as “an attempt to give Ukraine time.” France and Germany had brokered a ceasefire after the failure of Ukraine’s attempt to subdue the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk by force. “[Ukraine] used this time to get stronger, as you can see today,” Merkel continued. “The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. As you saw in the battle for Debaltsevo in early 2015, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could easily have overrun them at the time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do now to help Ukraine.” The defeat at Debaltsevo resulted in the second Minsk protocol being signed in February 2015. Merkel said that it was “clear to all of us that the conflict was frozen, that the problem had not been solved, but that gave Ukraine valuable time.”

Meanwhile, she defended the decision to build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for Russian gas, since refusing to do so would have “have dangerously worsened the climate” with Moscow given the situation in Ukraine. It just so happened that Germany couldn’t get gas elsewhere, she added. Asked for any self-criticism, Merkel told Zeit that “the Cold War never really ended because Russia was basically not at peace,” and that NATO “should have reacted more quickly to Russia’s aggressiveness” in 2014. Pyotr Poroshenko, who became president of Ukraine after the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, told the domestic audience in August 2015 that Minsk was a ruse to buy time for a military build-up. He admitted as much to the West in July 2022, in an interview with German media.

Read more …

Guaranteeing the end of Ukraine. Why does Germany want that?

Germany Says Ukraine Can Strike Inside Russia (RT)

While the US distanced itself from Ukraine’s drone strike at two air bases hundreds of kilometers inside Russia, the German government’s spokesman said on Wednesday that Kiev doesn’t have to limit its war effort to Ukrainian territory. “Ukraine has a right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter,” Steffen Hebestreit told journalists, when asked to comment on reports of explosions at the Russian airfields. “Ukraine is not obligated to limit defense efforts to its own territory.” Two strategic bomber bases in Ryazan and Saratov regions came under attack by drones on Monday morning, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Three service members were killed and several more injured, while two airplanes suffered minor damage.

The attack did not disrupt the planned strike against Ukrainian military logistics later in the day. The attack came on the same day as revelations that the US had modified HIMARS rocket launchers so Ukraine could not use them for longer-range missiles, allegedly because the White House wanted to avoid escalation with the Kremlin. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Tuesday that Washington has “neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia,” but instead provided them with “the equipment that they need to defend themselves.”

Moscow has repeatedly warned the US and NATO that providing heavy weapons to Ukraine risks crossing Russia’s “red lines,” and involving them in the conflict directly. Washington and its allies insist they are not a party to the hostilities, but continue arming Kiev. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pledged to invest much more into his military, so that Berlin can become “the guarantor of European security that our allies expect us to be, a bridge builder within the European Union.” However, German media have noted that it will take until 2026 to hit the NATO-mandated goal of spending 2% of the GDP on the armed forces.

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“Russia does not have tactical nuclear weapons in other countries, unlike the US.”

Putin: Risk Of Nuclear War Rising, Ukraine Operation To Be “Long Process” (ZH)

On Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a wide-ranging public war update during a televised session of his Human Rights Council, which at least one independent regional outlet said was tightly controlled in terms of the kind of questions Kremlin officials could ask. Among the more important topics he addressed related to the now 10-month long “special military operation” in Ukraine was future plans for broader mobilization and the prospect of deployment of nuclear assets. On the latter point, Putin lashed out at the United States and NATO, saying “Russia does not have tactical nuclear weapons in other countries, unlike the US.” This was in reference to the fact that some NATO members in Europe, including extending as far east as Turkey, do act as host countries to many of the US’ tactical nukes under the NATO defense umbrella.

“Our nuclear forces are in a more advanced state than any other country in the world,” he boasted at one point. Importantly, given the ratcheting US-NATO arms pipeline to Ukraine’s forces, which has lately involved transfer of increasingly sophisticated and longer range missiles, Putin warned that the “risk of nuclear war in the world is rising.” He further took the opportunity to restate Russia’s ‘defensive’ nuclear doctrine, stressing that nuclear weapons would be considered as a response to an attack on Russian territory, while also stating that he stands ready to defend Russian territory “using all available means”. According to a translation of Putin’s remarks in Sky News: “We didn’t speak about usage of nuclear weapons.” Then, he said: “Russia has not gone mad.”

“We have the most advanced weapons, but we do not want to wave it around.” But in taking a swipe at Washington’s nuclear deployments in Europe, he seemed to suggest that it’s precisely the US side doing the nuclear saber-rattling. “Yes, we will do this by various ways and means. First of all, of course, we will focus on peaceful means, but if nothing else remains, we will defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal,” Putin said. Western mainstream media will more than likely run with the comments as a fresh “threat” that Russia stands ready to conduct a nuclear attack if cornered in Ukraine, and yet just like the previous time he made similar statements, the Russian leader was in fact articulating the defensive nature of the country’s official nuclear policy against ‘existential’ threats to Russian territory.

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“..Paris and Berlin later negotiated a ceasefire between Kiev and the Donbass republics in Minsk, but did nothing to uphold or promote it.”

Ukraine Operation Could Take A Long Time – Putin (RT)

The military operation in Ukraine may go on for a while, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, in a meeting with the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. Addressing a question about the duration of hostilities that escalated in February, Putin said that achieving all the objectives will take time, but pointed to several major gains already won. “Of course, this might be a lengthy process,” Putin said, pointing out that the conflict really began in 2014, when the US backed a nationalist coup in Kiev. He explained that Moscow had little choice but to intervene in February, to defend the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk – which have since voted to join Russia, along with most of Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

“These new territories are a major gain for Russia,” the president said. “Even Peter the Great sought access to the Azov Sea, and it is now an internal sea of the Russian Federation.” “Most importantly, the people who live there showed in a referendum that they want to be in Russia and feel themselves part of our world,” Putin said. “They are now with us, millions of them, and that is the greatest outcome.” Putin also said there was “no point” in discussing additional mobilization measures, as the more than 300,000 reservists called up to fill the ranks of the military were quite sufficient. In fact, some of the Donbass students who have been fighting for years are in the process of mustering out so they can finish their studies.

The Russian president also revealed that Western European leaders now objecting to the military operation “fall silent” when he reminds them their countries were supposed to guarantee the peace process in Ukraine since 2014. France and Germany negotiated a peaceful end to the Maidan turmoil just before the US-backed nationalists violently seized power in February that year. Paris and Berlin later negotiated a ceasefire between Kiev and the Donbass republics in Minsk, but did nothing to uphold or promote it. Earlier this year, former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko openly admitted the ceasefire was a tactic to buy time so Kiev could build up an army for a military solution.

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“..the European Union will be able to participate in these processes on an equal footing when it realizes that it doesn’t have to say 100% ‘yes, sir’ to the United States.”

EU Has To Show It ‘Has Its Own Interests’ – Lavrov (RT)

The European Union could have a place in a new multipolar world but it has to first free itself from excessive dependence on its allies across the Atlantic Ocean, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has argued. He added that the bloc needs to learn how to stick up for itself in areas that are important to it. Speaking on Wednesday at the Primakov Readings, an international forum of experts, diplomats and decision-makers held in Russia, Lavrov said: “the European Union will be able to participate in these processes on an equal footing when it realizes that it doesn’t have to say 100% ‘yes, sir’ to the United States.” He added that the bloc needs to demonstrate that it “has its own interests.” The minister also noted that, of late, voices calling for this have been emerging in European countries.


Lavrov stressed that Moscow is by no means trying to drive a wedge between Washington and Brussels, arguing that it is obvious that not all of Europe’s interests are necessarily in line with those of the US. “That Europe cannot defend these interests is, in my opinion, for now also a medical fact,” the official quipped. Lavrov pointed to the apparent lack of any meaningful results from French President Emmanuel Macron’s meeting in Washington last week with his US counterpart Joe Biden, as proof of his assertion. Addressing the guests at the Valdai Discussion Club meeting outside Moscow in late October, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed confidence that sooner or later “new centers of power in the multipolar world and the West will have to start talking as equals about our common future.”

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“The East Route is part of a $400 billion, 30-year agreement between Russia’s Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation, signed in May 2014..”

Russia’s Mega Gas Pipeline To China Nearly Complete (RT)

A crucial section of the East Route natural gas pipeline between Russia and China has been completed, Xinhua News agency reported on Wednesday, citing construction company PipeChina. It will allow gas to be transported from Russia to China’s eastern economic powerhouse Shanghai, according to the report. The 5,111 km cross-border pipeline reportedly enters China via the border city of Heihe in northeastern Heilongjiang Province, and runs through nine provincial-level regions, supplying natural gas to areas along the route, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. It is part of the East Route project, connecting to the 3,000 km Power of Siberia pipeline in Russia. The East Route was partially launched in December 2019, becoming the first pipeline to supply Russian gas to China.


The mega project, which is expected to be completed and become fully operational by 2025, will provide China with 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas annually, starting in 2024. That could help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 164 million tons per year, according to PipeChina. The energy corridor will boost the energy security and economic development of the eastern regions of China, the company said. The East Route is part of a $400 billion, 30-year agreement between Russia’s Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation, signed in May 2014. The two companies are also working on a western gas route, which involves the construction of a pipeline to China through the territory of Mongolia. The route will be capable of delivering as much as 50 billion cubic meters of gas, once operational.

Read more …

Why didn’t @jack release the files himself?

Elon Musk: Data May Have Been Hidden And Deleted From The Twitter Files (PM)

On Wednesday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk revealed that important data in the Twitter Files releases was “hidden” and “deleted,” but vowed that “everything we find will be released.” “Most important data was hidden (from you too) and some may have been deleted, but everything we find will be released,” the Wednesday afternoon tweet read. The tweet came in response to a post from former Twitter CEO and company cofounder Jack Dorsey demanding that all information related to the Twitter Files be released “without filter.” “If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions? Make everything public now. #TwitterFiles,” the tweet read.

On Tuesday evening, Musk also tweeted out the phrase, “Oh, what a tangled web they weave, when first they practice to …,” referencing the 1801 poem by Sir Walter Scott Marion: A Tale of Flooded Field, with the complete line ending in “deceive,” according to the Daily Mail. In Tuesday’s release of the Twitter Files, it was revealed that now-former twitter Deputy General Counsel James Baker had “vetted” the Twitter Files, causing delay and occurring without “knowledge of new management,” said journalist Matt Taibbi.


“We can now tell you part of the reason why” there was a delay, Taibbi posted. “On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.” “The process for producing the “Twitter Files” involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated.” “Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @BariWeiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim. When she called to ask “Jim’s” last name, the answer came back: “Jim Baker,” Taibbi continued.


Elon knew about James Baker since at least April. Curious?!

Read more …

How can Tarrio have a fair trial? He wasn’t in DC on Jan 6. Unlike a lot of FBI agents.

Fight Over Officer Testimony Roils Proud Boys Sedition Case (AP)

A legal fight has erupted over a Washington D.C. police officer who was communicating with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack that could shape the outcome of the upcoming trial of Tarrio and other far-right extremists. Metropolitan Police Lt. Shane Lamond’s testimony is crucial for the former Proud Boys national chairman’s defense against seditious conspiracy and other serious charges stemming from the attack, Tarrio’s attorneys say. But Lamond plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination if called to the witness stand after prosecutors warned the officer he could be charged with obstructing the investigation into Tarrio, the Proud Boy’s attorneys say.

They have accused the Justice Department of trying to bully Lamond into keeping quiet because his testimony would hurt their case. Prosecutors have vehemently denied that charge. The legal skirmish is unfolding two weeks before jury selection is supposed to begin in one of the highest-profile cases the Justice Department has brought since the Jan. 6 insurrection. Prosecutors charge Tarrio and four co-defendants conspired to forcibly stop the transfer of presidential power from former President Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden. The Proud Boys trial will be another major test for the Justice Department, which secured a major victory last month in the seditious conspiracy convictions of two other far-right extremist group leaders: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, and Kelly Meggs, who was the leader of the group’s Florida chapter.

Tarrio’s far-right, male chauvinist extremist group that seized on the Trump administration’s policies was a major agitator during earlier pro-Trump protests and at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Tarrio wasn’t in Washington when the riot erupted, but authorities say he helped put into motion the violence of that day. Shortly before the riot, authorities say Tarrio posted on social media that the group planned to turn out in “record numbers” on Jan. 6, but would be “incognito” instead of donning their traditional clothing colors of black and yellow. Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before the riot and charged with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December 2020. Tarrio was released from jail on Jan. 14, 2022 after serving his five-month sentence for that case.

[..] Tarrio told Lamond that Proud Boys would not be wearing their traditional colors of black and yellow in order to protect themselves from possible attacks from antifa activists. Tarrio told the officer they planned to watch Trump’s speech, protest the results of the election “and later that night they planned to party with plenty of beers and babes,” Tarrio’s lawyers wrote. “He told me they are trying to go incognito this time,” Lamond told fellow officers in one message, according to Tarrio’s attorneys. “Even if they aren’t wearing their colors they will stick together as a group so we should be able to identify them. Not to mention they won’t be head to toe in black with makeshift shields!”

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“..inflammation of the heart tissue due to an autoimmune response triggered by the vaccine..”

Report: Those Who Died Suddenly Likely Killed by the Covid Vaccine (Jones)

A major new autopsy report has found that three people who died unexpectedly at home with no pre-existing disease shortly after Covid vaccination were likely killed by the vaccine. A further two deaths were found to be possibly due to the vaccine. The report, published in Clinical Research in Cardiology, the official journal of the German Cardiac Society, detailed autopsies carried out at Heidelberg University Hospital in 2021. Led by Thomas Longerich and Peter Schirmacher, it found that in five deaths that occurred within a week of the first or second dose of vaccination with Pfizer or Moderna, inflammation of the heart tissue due to an autoimmune response triggered by the vaccine had likely or possibly caused the death.

In total the report looked at 35 autopsies carried out at the University of Heidelberg in people who died within 20 days of Covid vaccination, of which 10 were deemed on examination to be due to a pre-existing illness and not the vaccine. For the remaining 20, the report did not rule out the vaccine as a cause of death, which Dr. Schirmacher has confirmed to me is intentional as the autopsy results were inconclusive. Almost all of the remaining cases were of a cardiovascular cause, as indicated in the table below from the supplementary materials, where 21 of the 30 deaths are attributed to a cardiovascular cause. One of these is attributed to blood clots (VITT) from AstraZeneca vaccination (the report was looking specifically at post-vaccine myocarditis deaths), leaving 20 from other cardiovascular causes.

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“..we’d have to assume that this is now the baseline, there’s going to be 145% higher mortality..”

Analysis Shows 26% Worse Mortality Among the Vaccinated (RVM)

‘COVID-19 Vaccines: What They Are, How They Work and Possible Causes of Injuries’. That’s the title on the agenda today (December 7, 2022), as Senator Ron Johnson holds a roundtable discussion of doctors, medical experts, and researchers in an effort to shed light on the current state of knowledge regarding the Covid-19 shot. An enlightening speaker today was Josh Stirling, a highly-recognized insurance research analyst. And what he brought forth was “the one chart that tells the entire story.” Here it is: “The UK Government, until this summer, was reporting a data series that showed the relative mortality rates for the vaccinated and unvaccinated by the number of doses of the vaccine,” stated Stirling.

“We’ve done what we think is really professional work with this. And we think it simplifies down to a conclusion that says that through the last available data set, the people in the UK who took the vaccine have a 26% higher mortality rate. The people who are under the age of 50 who took the vaccine now have a 49% higher mortality rate. And worst of all, the people who only took one dose of the vaccine at approximately 145% worse mortality rate.” “That last data point is on its face confusing.” “It just doesn’t make a ton of sense unless you realize that what’s going on with this really is that the people who took the dose, the first dose in the United States — that’s about 12% of people — but then stop taking any other doses, those people, through their choice to stop, disproportionately [were] the ones who are harmed,” explained Stirling.


“And so, what we’re concluding is that if you happen to be an unlucky person who was in some fashion, even moderately injured [or] with a minor injury [and] have decided not to continue, the statistics, the best statistics we have show that you’re gonna have, at least through today, maybe it’ll get better … but if that doesn’t happen we’d have to assume that this is now the baseline, there’s going to be 145% higher mortality. And if you were to take these numbers and just apply them to the United States, that ends up being something like 600,000 excess deaths per year in the United States from this higher vaccine-induced mortality.”

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Worldwide.

Australia Concerned As People Dying At ‘Incredibly High’ Pace (Benzinga)

Australia’s peak actuarial body has asked the government to urgently investigate the country’s “incredibly high” 13% excess death rate in 2022. What Happened: An analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data by the Actuaries Institute showed that an additional 15,400 people died in the first eight months of the year in the country. Actuaries said that number includes around one-third of those having no link to COVID-19. 13% was an “incredibly high number for mortality,” and it was “not clear” what was driving the increase, said Karen Cutter, spokeswoman for the institute’s Covid-19 Mortality Working Group.


“Mortality doesn’t normally vary by more than 1 to 2%, so 13% is way higher than normal levels,” she said. “I’m not aware [of anything comparable] in the recent past but I haven’t gone back and looked [historically]. They talk about the flu season of 2017 being really bad, and the mortality there was 1% higher than normal. So it’s well outside the range of normal,” she said. This came after Australia’s latest mortality data released in November showed that there had been 128,797 deaths from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, which was 17% higher than the historical average.

Edward Dowd

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At this point, how dare you even talk about it?

COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters For Young Adults (BMJ)

In this paper, we integrate a risk-benefit assessment of SARS-CoV-2 boosters for adults under 30 years old with an ethical analysis of mandates at universities. Our estimate suggests an expected net harm from boosters in this young adult age group, whereby the negative outcomes of all SAEs and hospitalisations may on average outweigh the expected benefits in terms of COVID-19 hospitalisations averted. We also examine the specific harms to males from myo/pericarditis. We then outline a five-part ethical argument empirically assessing booster mandates for young people informed by the quantitative assessment.


First, we argue that there has been a lack of transparent risk-benefit assessment; second, that vaccine mandates may result in a net expected harm to individual young adults; third, that vaccine mandates are not proportionate; fourth, that US mandates violate the reciprocity principle because of current gaps in vaccine injury compensation schemes; fifth, that mandates are even less proportionate than the foregoing analyses suggest because current high levels of coercion or pressure may create wider societal harms. We consider possible counterarguments including potential rationales for mandates based on a desire for social cohesion or safety and summarise why such arguments cannot justify current COVID-19 vaccine mandates. We suggest that general mandates for young people ignore key data, entail wider social harms and/or abuses of power and are arguably undermining rather than contributing to social trust and solidarity.


Rod Stewart lost his 2 brothers within 2 months earlier this year. He’s a vaccine promoter.

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“..we should not delude ourselves into thinking that eliminating emissions would have a noticeable impact on weather and climate extremes in the 21st century..”

The Faux Urgency Of The Climate ‘Crisis’ (Curry)

For the past two centuries, fossil fuels have fuelled humanity’s progress, improving standards of living and increasing the life span for billions of people. In the 21st century, a rapid transition away from fossil fuels has become an international imperative for climate change mitigation, under the auspices of the UN Paris Agreement. As a result, that transition is now dominated by stringent targets to rapidly eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. However, the recent COP27 meeting in Egypt highlighted that very few of the world’s countries are on track to meet their emissions reductions commitment. The desire for cleaner, more abundant, more reliable and less expensive sources of energy is universal.

However, the goal of rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is at odds with the urgency of providing grid electricity to developing countries. Rapid deployment of wind and solar power has invariably increased electricity costs and reduced reliability, particularly with increasing penetration into the grid. Allegations of human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region, where global solar voltaic supplies are concentrated, are generating political conflicts that threaten the solar power industry. Global supply chains of materials needed to produce solar and wind energy plus battery storage are spawning new regional conflicts, logistical problems, supply shortages and rising costs. The large amount of land use required for wind and solar farms, as well as transmission lines, is causing local land use conflicts in many regions.

Given the apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding climate change, does the alleged urgency of reducing carbon dioxide emissions somehow trump these other considerations? Well, the climate ‘crisis’ isn’t what it used to be. The COP27 has dropped the most extreme emissions scenario from consideration, which was the source of the most alarming predictions. Only a few years ago, an emissions trajectory that produced 2 to 3C warming was regarded as climate policy success. As limiting warming to 2C seems to be in reach, the goal posts were moved to limit the warming target to 1.5C. These warming targets are referenced to a baseline at the end of the 19th century; the Earth’s climate has already warmed by 1.1C since 1880.

In context of this relatively modest warming, climate ‘crisis’ rhetoric is now linked to extreme weather events. Attributing extreme weather and climate events to global warming can motivate a country to attempt to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels. However, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that eliminating emissions would have a noticeable impact on weather and climate extremes in the 21st century. It is very difficult to untangle the roles of natural weather and climate variability and land use from the slow creep of global warming. Looking back into the past, including paleoclimatic data, there has been more extreme weather everywhere on the planet. Thinking we can minimise severe weather by using atmospheric carbon dioxide as a control knob is a fairy tale.

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“Julian’s case is coming to the end of all possibilities of getting a fair solution through the court proceedings.”

Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Warns Assange May Be Extradited “Within Weeks” (WSWS)

Julian Assange could be extradited to the United States within weeks, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson has warned. He told journalist Glenn Greenwald that Assange was “running out of time” and that legal avenues in London to challenge his unlawful extradition were being exhausted, “he will never get a fair trial there”. Hrafnsson’s urgent warnings came during an interview in Brazil, published Monday on Rumble. He told Greenwald, “Julian’s case is coming to the end of all possibilities of getting a fair solution through the court proceedings. He is fighting extradition in London. Within weeks he could be extradited.”

Assange has been charged under the Espionage Act (1917) for WikiLeaks’ publications exposing war crimes by US imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and anti-democratic conspiracies of the US government and its intelligence agencies throughout the world. If found guilty, the 51-year-old journalist and father of three faces 175 years in a US federal prison. He has already spent more than a decade in detention in the UK, including three years without charge in Belmarsh maximum security prison. Hrafnsson was appointed WikiLeaks editor in 2018 after Assange’s communication with the outside world was cut under pressure from the US government, a prelude to his seizure from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019.

An award-winning journalist in his own right, Hrafnsson worked with Assange to verify WikiLeaks’ most famous release, the Collateral Murder video, travelling to Iraq in early 2010 to interview relatives of civilians killed by targeted airstrikes launched from US AH-64 Apache helicopters. Speaking last week in Brazil, Hrafnsson said legal channels for Assange to appeal his extradition are fast closing. In June, then UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Assange’s extradition after the High Court overturned an earlier court decision barring it on medical grounds. The High Court accepted worthless assurances by the US government that Assange would not face oppressive treatment, ignoring overwhelming evidence that the CIA plotted to kidnap and kill Assange.

Britain’s courts have mounted a legal vendetta against Assange, approving the extradition request in violation of his fundamental legal and democratic rights as a publisher and journalist.The High Court and Supreme Court have handed down rulings aimed at speeding his dispatch to his would-be assassins. In March, the High Court refused Assange’s application to appeal its earlier ruling to the Supreme Court. His lawyers have since appealed the Home Secretary’s extradition order.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1599528877201641472

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“quiet diplomacy”

Julian Assange’s Family Pleads For Unity (AAP)

Julian Assange’s family wants supporters of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder to politely advocate for his release, rather than “disparaging” the Australian government. Endorsing the approach of “quiet diplomacy” and thanking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for a supportive statement in parliament last week, Mr Assange’s mother Christine called on backers to unite in their support of the government’s efforts to bring her son home. Mr Assange is facing espionage charges in the United States and remains in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he’s been since 2019 while fighting extradition. Ms Assange asked advocates to “support and not thwart or disparage the efforts of the Australian government in their diplomatic efforts to bring Julian safely home”.

“Diplomatic negotiations at this level are not easy. They require a high level of skill, experience, understanding, mutual respect, time and patience,” she said in a statement on Wednesday. “Please continue to politely inform your politicians, media and the general public of the facts of Julian’s plight to raise public and political support for the Australian government’s diplomatic efforts.” Mr Albanese has previously opted for quiet diplomacy in his efforts to secure the 51-year-old Australian’s release, but told parliament last week he had raised the matter personally with US government officials. “My position is clear, and has been made clear to the US administration, it is time this matter be brought to a close,” he said.

“This is an Australian citizen … what is the point of continuing this legal action, which could be caught up now for many years into the future.” Ms Assange thanked the PM for the government’s commitment to bring the “12-year legal stalemate and suffering to an end”. “His simple but compassionate statement ‘enough is enough’ resonates with the hearts of people around the world,” she said. “I endorse quiet diplomacy as the Australian government’s preferred path for reaching a resolution … to date all other methods have failed. “The involvement of diplomatic teams negotiating at a high level is the most appropriate and historically the most successful way to resolve the detention of Australian citizens overseas in political cases.”

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Fossil fuels

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A good friend
https://twitter.com/i/status/1600474899092758530

 

 


Golden crowned Kinglet

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 152022
 
 October 15, 2022  Posted by at 8:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Harbour scene, Dieppe 1883

 

Borrell: The EU Is A Garden, The Rest Of The World Is A Jungle (RT)
Borrell: West Will ‘Annihilate’ Russian Army If Moscow Uses Nukes (Antiwar)
Borrell: ‘Propaganda Is Our Battlefield’ (ZH)
EU Opens Probe Into Vaccine Deals (RT)
Putin Explains Why There Are No Peace Talks With Ukraine (RT)
Russia Courts Muslim Countries As Strategic Eurasian Partners (Escobar)
The EU Courageously Denounces Terrorism (Saker)
Merkel Defends ‘Very Rational’ Russian Gas Deals (RT)
German Leaders Care More About NATO Than Their Own People – Putin (RT)
Russia ‘To Repair Crimea Bridge Damage By July 2023’ (RT)
Putin Reveals Threat To Istanbul Grain Deal (RT)
The Western Empire Attacks Russia: The World Strikes Back (Red)
The Supremes Get It Right – Again (Denninger)
We’re Coming For You (Jim Kunstler)
Trump ‘Loves The Idea Of Testifying’ Before Jan. 6 Committee (Fox)

 

 

 

That got Elon on the list:

 

 

Kuleba

 

 

 

 

George Webb Black Sea

 

 

This got the cartoonist banned.

 

 

Dec 2016. Got everything right, except one detail.

 

 

 

 

Borrell must go. I can repeat that every day. He’s the EU equivalent of Lavrov, but can’t stand in his shadow . Embarrassing.

Borrell: The EU Is A Garden, The Rest Of The World Is A Jungle (RT)

The European Union is a “garden” that has the best combination of “political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion” ever known to humankind – and must be protected from the outside “jungle.” That’s according to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who made the comparison while delivering a speech at the inauguration of a pilot university program designed to cultivate the next generation of European diplomats. Addressing a group of students at the College of Europe in Bruges on Thursday, Borrell said “The rest of the world… is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden. The gardeners should take care of it, but they will not protect the garden by building walls.”

He insisted that Europeans have to be “much more engaged” with the rest of the world and put their “privilege” to good use. The gardeners have to go to the jungle… Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means. Led by Borrell’s predecessor, Federica Mogherini, the European Diplomatic Academy is a brainchild of the European External Action Service (EEAS) launched this year with the stated goal of cultivating a “truly European diplomatic corps.” Some 42 students are taking part in the first year pilot, mostly candidates from various EU institutions, but also diplomats from the Western Balkans countries, Georgia, Moldova and Türkiye – as well as two candidates from Ukraine.

“You are the first generation. You are the trailblazers of a process, and I hope that many others will come,” Borrel told the group of future diplomats. “Keep the garden, be good gardeners. But your duty will not be to take care of the garden itself but [of] the jungle outside.” It’s not the first time Borrell has compared the EU to a beautiful and tidy garden surrounded by a chaotic, lawless jungle. Back in March he told El Mundo that “if we don’t want the jungle to eat our garden, we have to wake up.”

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Not a day goes by without some westerner telling us Russia wants to use nukes. Problem is, they’ve made very clear that they don’t.

Borrell: West Will ‘Annihilate’ Russian Army If Moscow Uses Nukes (Antiwar)

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell issued a threat against Russia on Thursday, warning that Western powers would “annihilate” the Russian army if Moscow uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “Putin is saying he is not bluffing. Well, he cannot afford bluffing, and it has to be clear that the people supporting Ukraine and the European Union and the Member States, and the United States and NATO are not bluffing neither,” Borrel said at a European Diplomatic Academy event in Bruges, Belgium. “Any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian Army will be annihilated,” he added. The warning from Borrel came as NATO defense ministers held the second day of talks in Brussels, which included a closed-door meeting of the alliance’s nuclear planning group, the body that sets and reviews NATO’s nuclear policies.


NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also warned Russia against using nuclear weapons, saying it would have “severe consequences.” But he said the chances of NATO using a nuclear weapon are “extremely remote.” When announcing a partial mobilization last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia could use all of the weapons at its disposal to defend its “territorial integrity.” Russian officials insist Putin’s comments were nothing new and fell within Russia’s long-established military doctrine, which says nuclear weapons could be used if the country faces an “existential threat.” But the warning was significant since Russia has extended its territory by annexing areas in Ukraine under its control, and other Russian officials have explicitly said they could defend the new territories with nuclear weapons.

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“What would have happened if, instead of [Joe] Biden, it would have been [Donald] Trump or someone like him in the White House? What would have been the answer of the United States to the war in Ukraine?”

Borrell: ‘Propaganda Is Our Battlefield’ (ZH)

“This is a perfect storm,” exclaims European Commission Vice President Josep Borrell in his opening speech to EU Ambassadors this week. Having noted previously his warnings to The Fed that it is “bringing us to a world recession,” Borrell went considerably further in a surprisingly frank and plain-speaking address. He began by warning that “the world we are facing is a world of radical uncertainty.” The speed and scope of change is exceptional. We should not try to deny it. We should not try to resist it. It would be a futile effort. We have to accept it and to adapt [to] it, prioritising flexibility and resilience. But uncertainty is the rule. Events that one could imagine that they will never happen, they are happening one after the other. At this pace, the black swan will be the majority. It will not be white swans – all of them will be black – because one after the other, things have happened that had a very low probability of happening, nevertheless they happened, and they had a strong impact and certainly they happened.”

The EC VP then goes on to try and summarize the extent of the European crisis and how they got there, admitting that they were entirely dependent on China (trade), Russia (energy), and US (security)… “I think that we Europeans are facing a situation in which we suffer the consequences of a process that has been lasting for years in which we have decoupled the sources of our prosperity from the sources of our security. This is a sentence to provide the headline, and I am taking that from Olivier Schmitt, who has been developing this thesis – I think – quite well. Our prosperity has been based on cheap energy coming from Russia. Russian gas – cheap and supposedly affordable, secure, and stable. It has been proved not [to be] the case. And the access to the big China market, for exports and imports, for technological transfers, for investments, for having cheap goods.

I think that the Chinese workers with their low salaries have done much better and much more to contain inflation than all the Central Banks together. So, our prosperity was based on China and Russia – energy and market. Clearly, today, we have to find new ways for energy from inside the European Union, as much as we can, because we should not change one dependency for another. The best energy is the one that you produce at home. That will produce a strong restructuring of our economy – that is for sure. People are not aware of that but the fact that Russia and China are no longer the ones that [they] were for our economic development will require a strong restructuring of our economy.

The access to China is becoming more and more difficult. The adjustment will be tough, and this will create political problems. On the other hand, we delegated our security to the United States. While the cooperation with the Biden Administration is excellent, and the transatlantic relationship has never been as good as it is today – [including] our cooperation with the United States and my friend Tony [Anthony] Blinken [US Secretary of State]: we are in a fantastic relationship and cooperating a lot; who knows what will happen two years from now, or even in November? What would have happened if, instead of [Joe] Biden, it would have been [Donald] Trump or someone like him in the White House? What would have been the answer of the United States to the war in Ukraine? What would have been our answer in a different situation?

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And Von der Leyen should go too, of course. In a normal setting, her position would long have been untenable.

EU Opens Probe Into Vaccine Deals (RT)

The European Union prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into the bloc’s procurement of billions of Covid-19 vaccine doses, amid allegations of corruption and secret backroom dealings from several members of parliament. EU officials announced the probe in a brief statement on Friday, confirming an “ongoing investigation into the acquisition of Covid-19 vaccines in the European Union.” They added that the case follows “extremely high public interest” around the issue, though declined to share any other details. While prosecutors were tight-lipped about the exact nature of the probe, the announcement follows allegations from MEPs that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen conducted vaccine negotiations with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in secret.

Despite requests from journalists, lawmakers and an EU watchdog, von der Leyen’s office has failed to produce personal text messages sent to Bourla during talks for nearly 2 billion vaccine doses, prompting accusations of corruption. Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakusic noted the new investigation later on Friday, saying the decision was made thanks to pressure from lawmakers. Though he was unable to shed additional light on the probe, Kolakusic has been highly critical of the EU’s vaccine procurement process, claiming deals for billions of doses were marred by “corruption” and secrecy.

“Today, 10 of us MEPs asked [von der Leyen] the following question: when will she present to us… the communication she had with Pfizer during the procurement of 4.5 billion doses of vaccines at a time when there was absolutely no proof of the effectiveness, and especially not of the harmfulness, of that product?” he said in a tweet earlier this week, calling the issue the “biggest corruption scandal in the history of mankind.” Last month, the European Court of Auditors said that it has asked the commission to provide information on “preliminary negotiations” for the EU’s largest Pfizer purchase – including “scientific experts consulted and advice received, timing of the talks, records of the discussions, and details of the agreed terms and conditions” – but added that “none was forthcoming.” The European Commission still has yet to make the information public, fueling corruption allegations from MEPs.

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“Those agreements were almost initialled. But as soon as the troops were pulled back from Kiev, the leadership in Kiev lost all desire to have talks..”

“[Boris] Johnson arrived in Kiev, “almost without warning” on April 9. He allegedly told the Ukrainian leader that Western nations would refuse to sign up to the security guarantees that Kiev wanted to receive under the proposed peace treaty.”

Putin Explains Why There Are No Peace Talks With Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine is refusing to engage in peace talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists on Friday, when asked about possible negotiations to end the conflict between the two countries. The Kiev government “had been saying that they wanted talks and ostensibly asked for them, but now they issued a formal decision that prohibits them,” he said during a press conference in Astana, Kazakhstan. Earlier this month, Zelensky signed a decree forbidding any negotiations with Putin, saying Ukraine will only talk to Russia when it has a different president. Speaking to journalists on Friday, Putin remarked that mediation by nations including Türkey between Moscow and Kiev may be required, if Ukraine’s position changes. Putin recalled that Russia and Ukraine reached a preliminary agreement which could have the halted hostilities, during Turkey-mediated talks in late March.

“Those agreements were almost initialled. But as soon as the troops were pulled back from Kiev, the leadership in Kiev lost all desire to have talks,” he remarked. The Russian Defense Ministry announced a withdrawal of troops from the Ukrainian capital after news broke that the negotiators in Istanbul had agreed on a draft treaty. Under its terms, Ukraine would have pledged to maintain a neutral status and not allow foreign troops and military installations on its soil, in exchange for security guarantees from foreign nations, including Russia. Days later, President Vladimir Zelensky accused Russian troops of committing war crimes, claiming that evidence was discovered in Bucha, one of the towns near Kiev that the Russian army had left. He declared that the Ukrainian people would not allow him to negotiate with Russia after the discovery.

Moscow claimed that the evidence was fabricated to justify breaking off the talks. According to Russian diplomats, Moscow wrote up a formal peace agreement based on Ukrainian proposals and sent it to Kiev, but never heard anything back. According to Ukrainian media reports in May, Zelensky was pressured into breaking off negotiations with Russia by Boris Johnson, then-prime minister of Britain. Johnson arrived in Kiev, “almost without warning” on April 9. He allegedly told the Ukrainian leader that Western nations would refuse to sign up to the security guarantees that Kiev wanted to receive under the proposed peace treaty. President Zelensky has repeatedly stated that his only goal in the conflict is to defeat Russia on the battlefield and retake control of all territories that Kiev claims to be under its sovereignty.

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Go east, young man.

Russia Courts Muslim Countries As Strategic Eurasian Partners (Escobar)

Everything that matters in the complex process of Eurasia integration was once again at play in Astana, as the – renamed – Kazakh capital hosted the 6th Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The roll call was a Eurasian thing of beauty – featuring the leaders of Russia and Belarus (EAEU), West Asia (Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Palestine) and Central Asia (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan). China and Vietnam (East and Southeast Asia) attended at the level of vice presidents. CICA is a multinational forum focused on cooperation toward peace, security, and stability across Asia.,Kazakh President Tokayev revealed that CICA has just adopted a declaration to turn the forum into an international organization.

CICA has already established a partnership with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). So in practice, it will soon be working together side-by-side with the SCO, the EAEU and certainly BRICS+. The Russia-Iran strategic partnership was prominently featured at CICA, especially after Iran being welcomed to the SCO as a full member. President Raeisi, addressing the forum, stressed the crucial notion of an emerging “new Asia”, where “convergence and security” are “not compatible with the interests of hegemonic countries and any attempt to destabilize independent nations has goals and consequences beyond national geographies, and in fact, aims to target the stability and prosperity of regional countries.”

For Tehran, being a partner in the integration of CICA, within a maze of pan-Asia institutions, is essential after all these decades of”maximum pressure” unleashed by the Hegemon. Moreover, it opens an opportunity, as Raeisi noted, for Iran to profit from “Asia’s economic infrastructure.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, predictably, was the star of the show in Astana. It’s essential to note that Putin is supported by “all”nations represented at CICA. High-level bilaterals with Putin included the Emir of Qatar: everyone that matters in West Asia wants to talk to “isolated” Russia. Putin called for “compensation for the damage caused to the Afghans during the years of occupation” (we all know the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder will refuse it), and emphasized the key role of the SCO to develop Afghanistan.

He stated that Asia, “where new centers of power are growing stronger, plays a big role in the transition to a multipolar world order”. sHe warned, “there is a real threat of famine and large-scale shocks against the backdrop of volatility in energy and food prices in the world.” He further called for the end of a financial system that benefits the “Golden billion” – who “live at the expense of others” (there’s nothing “golden” about this “billion”: at best such definition of wealth applies to 10 million.) And he stressed that Russia is doing everything to “form a system of equal and indivisible security”. Exactly what drives the hegemonic imperial elites completely berserk.

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“..Russia should simply forget about the West (at least for a decade or so)..”

The EU Courageously Denounces Terrorism (Saker)

In the meantime, the FSB has pretty much figured out how the explosives which were used by the Ukrainian GUR were brought into Russia: by using the Istanbul grain deal of course! [..] This would all be truly hilarious if it was not so evil, hypocritical and dishonorable. This is also very dangerous as the countries which participate in this farce are all showing either 1) their true allegiance to the AngloZionist Empire or 2) their total lack of courage. Which means that they are not only removing themselves from any real negotiations, they are also painting themselves into a political corner from which they won’t be able to get out again. To put it differently, the EU nations want to regime change Russia, which means that Russia will have to regime change them.

That is also what “denazification” and “demilitarization” means! Of course, the example of Serbia, which voted against Russia, shows that a comprador regime never represents the interests of the people it rules over. Besides, votes and declarations by non-sovereign states mean absolutely nothing. The only vote which counts is the vote of countries with actual agency and sovereignty. In conclusion, I will just repeat here what I have been writing for years and which I still believe to be true: Russia should simply forget about the West (at least for a decade or so). I mean, of course, Russia needs to be fully cognisant that the West will continue its total war against Russia in every conceivable manner short of a direct and overt military attack (and some hyenas and former empires are even capable of that!).

And if the West wants to buy something from Russia – by all means! Russia did not create these idiotic sanctions and she sure has no obligation or reason to enforce them against herself. But the future of Russia is in the South (Mediterranean, Middle-East, Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, etc.) the East (China) and the North (the Arctic, the Northern Route, the Russian Northeast). Russia is also making major inroads with various Muslim countries who, each for their own reasons, are really getting fed up with the infinite arrogance and incompetence of Uncle Shmuel and seek to collaborate with Russia. As for the West, it is turning itself into a pile of compost without any need for Russian assistance. Why interrupt it?

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“This is a turning point, and of course the new government has to deal with it. And that is what it is doing,” she said of the Scholz leadership.”

It is? You sure? Do we think NS2 would ever have been shut under Merkel, who initialled it?

Merkel Defends ‘Very Rational’ Russian Gas Deals (RT)

Germany’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, has said she does not regret her decision to sign natural gas deals with Russia during her 16 years in power, arguing that Moscow has long been a “reliable energy supplier” and offers lower prices than its competitors. Speaking to reporters at an event in Lisbon, Merkel explained that Germany has long sought to move away from coal as an energy source, and that Russian natural gas was the best available option as Berlin aimed to eventually “arrive at CO2-free forms of energy.” “From the perspective of that time, it was very rational and understandable to obtain pipeline-bound gas from Russia, which was cheaper than LNG [liquefied natural gas] from other parts of the world,” she said on Thursday, adding that “Even during the Cold War, Russia was a reliable energy supplier.”

After taking office in 2005, Merkel presided over two major gas deals with Moscow, both intended to funnel energy directly into Germany from Russia through the Nord Stream 1 and later Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which bypassed transit states such as Ukraine and Poland.[..] After taking office in 2005, Merkel presided over two major gas deals with Moscow, both intended to funnel energy directly into Germany from Russia through the Nord Stream 1 and later Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which bypassed transit states such as Ukraine and Poland. However, Nord Stream 2 never became operational, as Merkel’s successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, paused the project’s certification just days before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in late February.

American LNG exports to Europe have ramped up significantly in recent months as much of the continent seeks to distance itself from Russian energy supplies, nearly doubling sales recorded in 2021. Given that Russia previously covered about 40% of the EU’s gas imports, however, prices have seen a sharp rise, stoking fears that some Europeans will be unable to heat their homes come winter. Merkel, who has faced criticism for maintaining Germany’s dependence on Russia, went on to say that it was “right to accelerate the fight against climate change at the end of my term,” referring to the Russian gas purchases and efforts to end the use of coal, but added that Moscow’s “brutal invasion” of Ukraine had changed Germany’s calculus. “This is a turning point, and of course the new government has to deal with it. And that is what it is doing,” she said of the Scholz leadership.

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“I believe that it’s a mistake, and business, the economy, and the citizens of the Federal Republic [of Germany] are paying for this mistake..”

German Leaders Care More About NATO Than Their Own People – Putin (RT)

Berlin made a mistake by placing its obligations to NATO above the interests of the German people, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Now business, the country’s economy and its citizens are paying for this mistake, he told journalists on Friday. “Apparently, some kind of allied obligations have been placed to the forefront” by Germany “within the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance,” Putin said at a press conference after the Central Asia-Russia summit in Astana, Kazakhstan. “Is it right or wrong? I believe that it’s a mistake, and business, the economy, and the citizens of the Federal Republic [of Germany] are paying for this mistake, because it has negative economic consequences for the eurozone in general and for the Federal Republic in particular,” Putin pointed out.

He was answering a question about Berlin’s role in the Ukraine conflict, where it has been among key backers of Kiev. According to the Russian leader, German authorities “should decide for themselves what is more important: the fulfilment of some allied obligations as they see them, or ensuring the interests of their own people, their national interests.” Earlier this week, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov announced that Kiev received the first unit of the German cutting-edge IRIS-T air defense system. His German counterpart Christine Lambrecht called the shipment an important contribution to the Eastern European nation’s ability to defend itself from “missile shelling.” That’s while the German military has so far not received a single unit of the ground-based IRIS-T system variant, which led to concerns being voiced by some politicians and media outlets, who believe that the country is depleting its own weapons stockpile by sending the arms to Kiev.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said earlier that Berlin will keep up its support for Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” After Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February, many Western states imposed unprecedented sanctions against the country. This has led to a significant drop in Russian natural gas shipments to Western Europe, including Germany, and resulted in soaring energy prices and accelerating inflation. Berlin has introduced a series of measures meant to reduce winter energy consumption. Meanwhile, prices for firewood and wood pellets rose by over 85% in August compared to the same month last year, according to a recent report by Destatis, the Federal Statistics Office.

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No hurry, security first.

Russia ‘To Repair Crimea Bridge Damage By July 2023’ (RT)

: Russia’s government has ordered contractors to finish repairs to a key bridge linking annexed Crimea to Russia by July 2023. The bridge was damaged by a blast last Saturday which officials say left at least three people dead. Russia blamed Ukraine for the attack but Kyiv has not said it was behind it. The 19km (12-mile) bridge, Europe’s longest, is a key supply route for Russian forces in Ukraine, but heavy goods vehicles are unable to use it. The explosion caused midway sections of two of the four carriageways of the bridge to collapse into the sea and also damaged the railway line. Currently, lorries are forced to queue for a ferry, in a process which is thought to take several days.


A document on the Russian government’s website said it had appointed the company Nizhneangarsktransstroy to be the sole contractor, tasked with the “design and restoration of destroyed elements of the transport and engineering infrastructure of the Crimean Bridge”. It sets “a deadline by which state contracts for the work are to be completed… of 1 July 2023”. The bridge was opened by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018, four years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

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“..if it turns out that humanitarian corridors [used] for grain shipments to the poorest nations… are used for terrorist attacks, it would put the very existence of these corridors in question.”

Putin Reveals Threat To Istanbul Grain Deal (RT)

Ukraine apparently transported the explosives used in last week’s attack on the Crimean Bridge by sea, Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists on Friday, citing a report by the Federal Security Service (FSB). If it is proven that grain carriers operating in the Black Sea under the Istanbul grain deal were involved, it would have dire consequences for the agreement, he warned. Earlier this week, the FSB revealed that explosives disguised as a 22-ton shipment of plastic construction sheeting arrived at the Bulgarian Danube port of Ruse from Ukraine’s port of Odessa by sea. “It is not yet clear if grain carriers were involved,” Putin said at a press conference in the Kazakh capital of Astana. If it turns out that humanitarian corridors [used] for grain shipments to the poorest nations… are used for terrorist attacks, it would put the very existence of these corridors in question.

The president admitted that Russia still does not have any solid evidence confirming that Ukraine may be using grain exports for such activities. However, he warned that the response would be swift and tough if this is the case. “There will be a simple answer: We will shut down [the grain export corridors] and there is an end to it,”Putin warned, adding that Moscow would look for rock-solid proof first. The breakthrough grain deal between Moscow and Kiev was reached in Istanbul in July with mediation by the UN and Türkiye. It aimed to unlock exports of Ukrainian and Russian grain. The two countries are among the world’s leading grain exporters, but trade had come to a halt due to the protracted conflict between the two neighbors.

On Friday, Russia also warned that it may still quit the deal if obstacles to its own food and fertilizer exports are not removed. Moscow has been complaining for months that restrictions on its food and fertilizer exports linked to international sanctions have not been lifted, months after it provided conditions for the Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea. The developments also come in the wake of an attack on the Crimean Bridge linking the peninsula to mainland Russia. A truck explosion on the bridge killed at least four people and led to a partial collapse of the highway bridge section. Russia then declared the attack a terrorist act and blamed the Ukrainian security services. The Russian security services also detained a total of eight suspects, including Russians, Armenians and Ukrainians, in connection with the attack.

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“Jo Red is “lucky enough to be born in Italy: studied a lot, knows nothing”

The Western Empire Attacks Russia: The World Strikes Back (Red)

At this point, even Biden must be realizing that there were deeper reasons behind the Saudi prince’s decline of his phone call already in March, besides inflicting him and the American government the umpteenth humiliation on the world stage. Not only the US are finally given the brush-off in one of the most important regions of the world: the latter is actively being reshaped by the hatred of them. The Middle East connects three continents, including the two largest, not to mention oceans and seas, and by controlling its straits the Anglo-American have been able to choke the world economy for well over a century. Add the infamously rich resources of the region.

It is no coincidence that the same Raymond Geuss considers the British loss of control of the Suez strait in 1956 as the end of their empire, more than the independence of India. Let’s not forget this was “facilitated” by Khrushchev’s threat at the UN to resort to missiles in case the colonial powers did not withdraw from Egypt. The region continued to be torn apart by the West’s skillful exploitation of its ideological, social, national, and especially religious diversity: first of all, the conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims. These are behind the most dramatic – and almost completely ignored – humanitarian crisis of our time: the devastation of Yemen.

It won’t be easy, but if the interests of such opposite countries as Saudi Arabia and Iran were to align, with a little help by American hostile resentment against the independence of both, and perhaps a friendly nudge by Russia (and China), this would be a massive blow to Western hegemony. Much more than the temporary occupation of I don’t know how many soccer fields in rural Ukraine.

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“..Constitutional Rights, such as they are, attach at birth as being born is the delineating point for the purpose of the Constitution at a federal level.”

The Supremes Get It Right – Again (Denninger)

Oct 11 (Reuters) – “The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to decide whether fetuses are entitled to constitutional rights in light of its June ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide, steering clear for now of another front in America’s culture wars. The justices turned away an appeal by a Catholic group and two women of a lower court’s ruling holding that fetuses lacked the proper legal standing to challenge a 2019 state law codifying the right to abortion in line with the Roe precedent. The two women, pregnant at the time when the case was first filed, sued on behalf of their fetuses and later gave birth.”

This is a correct decision; the Constitution is clear. This doesn’t mean a state cannot go further. It can; that which is not under the view of the Federal Constitution can still be addressed under a State Constitution. It cannot be argued that at the time of the drafting of the Constitution or that of the 14th Amendment there was any question as to the significance of gamete fusion and creation of a zygote. That event was known to the drafters of both along with its significance; there is no reasonable argument possible otherwise. Therefore there is no “controversy” nor anything to be “clarified” as to the meaning of the words in the Constitution: The words are clear on their face; Constitutional Rights, such as they are, attach at birth as being born is the delineating point for the purpose of the Constitution at a federal level.

If someone wants to change this (and clearly plenty of people do) the proper way to do it is through a Constitutional Amendment, not running to a court and demanding that the court rewrite that which is there, or simply ignore what’s written and make something up. Going through that process is difficult, it requires large super-majorities and thus it requires overwhelming consensus and careful consideration by everyone involved including input from the citizens in each of the respective 50 States and their Legislatures. It should require exactly that and people on both sides who are trying to short-cut that process are wrong and should be slapped down because the only reason to short-cut the process is that you do not believe you can carry the debate when it is held in full.

In other words you insist on short-cutting the process because it is your expressed intent to cheat! I don’t care which side of a given argument one may be on for a given issue; either the Constitution is contained within the four corners of the page and the words are as-written or it is toilet paper and of no force and effect whatsoever. In the latter case all law flowing from same is of no force and effect and nobody has an obligation to adhere to any of it, whether at a state, local or individual level. Think long and hard about the implication of that before you advocate for what these jackasses tried to do — and which was properly rebuffed by the Justices.

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“The lamp-posts in the WalMart parking lots could be decorated with dangling local election officials..”

We’re Coming For You (Jim Kunstler)

Have you noticed, as the election looms, the Party of Chaos trips deeper into its own self-created chaos? Turns out that the effort to make Ukraine the fifty-first state is not going over so well with the voters. Nor is the campaign to convince children to switch sexes. Or the crusade to sell ever more mRNA “vaccines” that the CDC knows good-and-goshdarn-well is killing and maiming credulous citizens by the millions. Or the program for importing limitless alien “vibrance” across the open border with Mexico…. As the venerable Rolling Stones sang more than a half century ago: “Rape… murder… it’s just a shot away!” This is the kind of country that the Party of Chaos has been grooming you up for.

It’s not working. We are coming for you: leaders, mesmerized minions, and obliging tools of this Satanic faction that seized the levers of power in America and turned them into wrecking bars. After the nervous hiatus from November to January, we’re coming for you in 2023. You are going to answer for the decisions you took and the rules you made that drove our country to its knees and half out of it’s mind. We are storming you in your Kafka’s Castle of lies and malice, and we are going to drag you out of there kicking and screaming. Preserving your decorum will not be our first consideration, Rochelle Walensky, Tony Fauci, Alejandro Mayorkas, Merrick Garland, Christopher Wray, and the people who work for you.

There’s a lot of loose talk about some as-yet-unknown Party of Chaos’s ploy to stave off the November 8th reckoning — say, drag out the vote count for weeks and confabulate the results… declare some emergency to shut down in-person voting… or somehow postpone the vote altogether. Nothing like that will go over successfully this time around. The lamp-posts in the WalMart parking lots could be decorated with dangling local election officials who get caught churning phony ballots, tweaking Dominion machines, and taping-up the polling places’ windows with cardboard. You’re getting no help, meantime, from the folks who run the maundering flunkey you installed as president. They just flipped-off Sergey Lavrov’s invitation to negotiate some reasonable end to your $60-plus billion orchestrated fiasco in Ukraine. These are the people that party apostate Tulsi Gabbard identified lately as “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.” She got that exactly right, and at exactly the right moment in history, too.

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Nancy Pelosi had her daughter lead an entire film crew on Jan 6. Who happened to catch it “all”. Doesn’t smell right.

Trump ‘Loves The Idea Of Testifying’ Before Jan. 6 Committee (Fox)

Former President Donald Trump “loves the idea of testifying” before the House select committee investigating January 6th, a source close to Trump told Fox News Digital just after the panel unanimously voted to subpoena him. The source said that if Trump complied with the subpoena and testified, he would “talk about how corrupt the election was, how corrupt the committee was, and how Nancy Pelosi did not call up the National Guard that Trump strongly recommended for her to do three days earlier on January 3, 2021.” The source told Fox News Digital that it is unclear at this point if Trump actually will testify before the committee, but stressed that Trump “loves the idea.” The committee — which consists of seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans — voted Thursday to compel Trump to testify about his conduct leading up to and during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on Thursday, Trump slammed the committee and its investigation as a “witch hunt.” “The committee is a hoax, a sham, a partisan witch hunt which is a continuation of the witch hunt that has gone on since the great day for our country that I came down the golden escalator with our future first lady,” Trump said. “They have no case, they have no ratings, so they have to try to do this to get publicity.” Trump told Fox News Digital that the investigation has been “a partisan witch hunt, together with two Republicans that have been thrown out of the party — one not wanting to run because he couldn’t win; and another losing by a record number of more than 40 points.” sTrump was referring to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who lost her primary earlier this year, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who decided not to run for re-election.

Trump told Fox News Digital that the committee “never covered the important subject of election fraud, or why Pelosi and the mayor of D.C. did not call up the National Guard — which I strongly recommended.” “They didn’t cover the reason for January 6 — the largest crowd — it wasn’t set up by me,” Trump said. “The committee didn’t cover election fraud, which was massive, and they didn’t cover why Pelosi didn’t call the National Guard.” Trump said that he had recommended that Pelosi and the mayor of Washington call up the National Guard on Jan. 6 because he “felt the crowd was going to be far bigger than anyone understood.” “They didn’t do their job. I believed the crowd was going to be bigger — just my instinct — and they had the chance to call up the National Guard three days before Jan. 6, and if they did, Jan. 6 would have been a very different day,” Trump said. “But they didn’t do it.”

Epps Pelosi

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Misinformation. Maddow

 

 

Winston Churchill and prohibition.

 

 

 

 

Where are we on the graph?

 

 

 

 

Smart dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1580540061245853699

 

 

Nosey

 

 


The Emerald tree boa is a non-venomous boa species found in the rainforests of South America

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 082022
 
 October 8, 2022  Posted by at 8:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  67 Responses »


Marc Chagall The watering trough 1925

 

Putin and Zelensky To Attend G20 – Indonesia (RT)
Merkel: Lasting Peace In Europe Only Possible With Russia’s Input (RT)
Russia Abandons The Dream Of A Greater Europe (RT)
US Media’s Intellectual No-Fly-Zone on Nord Stream (FAIR)
Lavrov Explains Why Russia Sees Ukraine As A Threat (RT)
EU Again Urged To Open Wallet For Kiev (RT)
Belgium Fails To Support New Round Of Sanctions Against Russia (RT)
Orban Urges Changes To EU Sanctions Policy (RT)
Joe Biden Is Not A Real President (Scarry)
OPEC Humiliates President Biden On A Global Stage (QTR)
Luxembourg Raises Red Flag Over Energy Price Caps (RT)
Citi: Financial Crisis May Surprise EU (RT)
November Surprise? (Jim Kunstler)
Washington Post Lying About Kremlin ‘Turmoil’ – Moscow (RT)
When Anti-Government Speech Becomes Sedition (Whitehead)
CDC: Record Number Of Children Hospitalized With Weakened Immune Systems (ZH)

 

 

This morning: Explosions on the Kerch bridge (Crimean bridge), which connects Crimea with Russia.

 

 

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

Ed Dowd

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We are deciding which hotels to put them up in – one for Mr. Putin and one for Mr. Zelensky..”

“..his press secretary, Sergey Nikiforov, in a comment to Ukrainian media, denied the information that Zelensky had decided to visit the G20 summit..”

Putin and Zelensky To Attend G20 – Indonesia (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Vladimir Zelensky, will both travel to Bali in November for the G20 summit, an Indonesian diplomat has told UAE’s The National newspaper. If true, the summit will be the first event attended by both leaders since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began. “Both have agreed [to attend],”Indonesia’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Husain Bagis, told The National on Friday. He conceded that “the situation isn’t easy because of the Ukraine-Russia war,” and said that his government is already planning how to manage the arrival of the two leaders. “We are deciding which hotels to put them up in – one for Mr. Putin and one for Mr. Zelensky,” he said.

The Kremlin confirmed in June that Putin would attend the summit, although spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the format of Putin’s participation “is still not defined.” Kiev stated in August that Zelensky “believes that he should be on the territory of Ukraine,” but would “think about”making the trip if Putin were to attend in person. Today his press secretary, Sergey Nikiforov, in a comment to Ukrainian media, denied the information that Zelensky had decided to visit the G20 summit. US President Joe Biden and a number of other Western leaders urged Indonesian President Joko Widodo not to invite Putin to the summit in Bali.

However, Widodo resisted the pressure campaign and invited the Russian leader as planned. With Widodo having met both Zelensky and Putin earlier this summer in a bid to “invite the two leaders to open dialogue and stop the war,” Bagis told The National that Indonesia aims “to make the G20 a platform for peace, not conflict.” Biden also appears to have softened his exclusionary stance toward Putin, telling reporters on Thursday that it “remains to be seen” whether he would meet the Russian president on the sidelines of the summit. The State Department quickly stepped in to say that in the view of the entire government, “it cannot be business as usual when it comes to Russia.” Although Ukraine is not one of the world’s 20 largest economies, Zelensky was invited to Bali as a guest.

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Sustainable peace = Green peace?!

Wonder if Merkel is involved in secret talks with Russia.

Merkel: Lasting Peace In Europe Only Possible With Russia’s Input (RT)

Sustainable peace in Europe may only be achieved if Russia is part of it, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. Speaking during the 77th anniversary of the German newspaper ‘Suddeutsche Zeitung,’ Merkel explained that while the West has been adamant in its support for Ukraine as the nation remains locked in conflict with Russia, it should also keep its mind open about what might seem as “unthinkable” now – Moscow’s future role in Europe’s affairs. She stressed that “a future European security architecture within international law will meet the requirements” only if it involves Russia. “As long as we haven’t achieved that, the Cold War is not really over either,” she added.

Merkel described February 24 – the day Russia launched its military campaign in Ukraine – as a “turning point,” adding that statements made by various parties to the conflict should be taken “seriously and not to be classified as a bluff from the start.” She was apparently referring to recent comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who signaled that Moscow would use “all means to defend Russia and our people” if its territorial integrity was threatened. He also warned the West that those who use nuclear blackmail against Russia “should know that the wind rose can turn around.”

Merkel earlier urged the Western world to take Putin and his words seriously, arguing that such an approach is “by no means a sign of weakness,” but rather “a sign of political wisdom.” She also noted that former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, who before his death, was widely regarded as her political mentor, would have kept an open mind about “how relations to and with Russia could one day be redeveloped” after hostilities in Ukraine end. Such a stance, however, did not sit well with Ukrainian officials. Last week, Andrey Melnik, Kiev’s outgoing ambassador to Berlin, called Merkel’s attitude towards Russia and its role in European security “almost perverse.”

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“A Greater Europe didn’t happen; a Greater Asia that includes Russia is de facto emerging.”

Russia Abandons The Dream Of A Greater Europe (RT)

Re-uniting the divided people of Russia and gathering the lands where they live is essentially the core element of the new Russian idea that Putin is offering to his compatriots. The immediate task of course is to integrate the new territories that have just joined Russia following the referendums. This requires a major effort in many areas and at various levels. It is anything but easy. Russian forces, which for months have been advancing on Ukrainian territory, suddenly find themselves in a situation where they have to abandon some areas which are now legally Russian land, populated by Russian citizens who just voted in the referendums and now face severe reprisals at the hands of the counter-attacking Ukrainians.

Next comes the need to rebuild the cities and villages ravaged in the war, repair damaged infrastructure, restart the economy, provide communal services, and re-organize public administration, health services, and education. Of paramount importance is socializing the millions of residents of the four regions who were automatically granted Russian citizenship, in the Russian national environment. Moscow has some experience of that from 2014 when Crimea and Sevastopol joined Russia, but doing this in a wartime situation is more challenging. A lot will depend, of course, on how the Russian forces cope on the frontline that passes very close to Donetsk and Kherson, and which still leaves the city of Zaporozhiye in Ukraine’s rear.

Even if the Ukrainian counter-offensive runs out of steam and the Russians resume their advance, none of these tasks can be accomplished quickly. This part of the new Russian national idea will keep the nation busy for a long time. Putin’s concept, however, doesn’t stop there. It is not so much about restoring the Soviet Union: in Putin’s words, such a restoration is not Moscow’s objective. The Baltics, the South Caucasus and Central Asia are probably not envisaged as part of the new construct. However, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hinted on the State Duma floor, in future other Ukrainian regions might be given the chance to follow Kherson and Zaporozhiye. To Putin, Greater Russia is a distinct civilization which opposes not only America’s hegemonic policies, but also the West’s projection of its values as universal.

This is an about-face not only from Gorbachev’s musings about a common European home, but also from Putin’s own travails in trying to forge a Greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, and his efforts to find a way for Russia to join NATO. A Greater Europe didn’t happen; a Greater Asia that includes Russia is de facto emerging. As to a Greater Russia, this requires more than a leader’s imagination. The Soviet Union, as the living generations remember it, was very much the product of the Great Patriotic War. The hybrid war with the West, of which Ukraine is only a small part, will doubtless reshape Russia. The question is, will it also transform it to fit the vision of a powerful economy and a vibrant society, faithful to its declared values – the substance, rather than the form of a Greater Russia.

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“A 2019 Pentagon-funded study from the RAND Corporation on how best to exploit “Russia’s economic, political and military vulnerabilities and anxieties” included a recommendation to “Reduce [Russian] Natural Gas Exports and Hinder Pipeline Expansions.”

US Media’s Intellectual No-Fly-Zone on Nord Stream (FAIR)

Any serious coverage of the Nord Stream attack should acknowledge that opposition to the pipeline has been a centerpiece of the US grand strategy in Europe. The long-term goal has been to keep Russia isolated and disjointed from Europe, and to keep the countries of Europe tied to US markets. Ever since German and Russian energy companies signed a deal to begin development on Nord Stream 2, the entire machinery of Washington has been working overtime to scuttle it. A 2019 Pentagon-funded study from the RAND Corporation on how best to exploit “Russia’s economic, political and military vulnerabilities and anxieties” included a recommendation to “Reduce [Russian] Natural Gas Exports and Hinder Pipeline Expansions.”

The study noted that a “first step would involve stopping Nord Stream 2,” and that natural gas “from the United States and Australia could provide a substitute.” This RAND study also prophetically recommended “providing more US military equipment and advice” to Ukraine in order to “lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it,” even though it acknowledged that “Russia might respond by mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory.” The Obama administration opposed the pipeline. As part of the major sanctions package against Russia in 2017, the Trump administration began sanctioning any company doing work on the pipeline. The move generated outrage in Germany, where many saw it as an attempt to meddle with European markets. In 2019, the US implemented more sanctions on the project.

Upon coming into office, President Joe Biden made opposition to the pipeline one of his administration’s top priorities. During his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Congress he was “determined to do whatever I can to prevent” Nord Stream 2 from being completed. Months later, the State Department reiterated that “any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks US sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline.” In July 2021, the sanctions were relaxed only after contentious negotiations with the German government. The New York Times (7/21/21) reported that the administration and Germany still had “profound disagreements” about the project.

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“We all remember how [Zelensky] declared in January Ukraine’s intention to acquire nuclear weapons. Apparently, this idea has long been stuck in his mind..”

Lavrov Explains Why Russia Sees Ukraine As A Threat (RT)

A call by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky for NATO members to deploy nuclear weapons against Russia is a reminder of why Moscow launched military action against his country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. “Yesterday, Zelensky called on his Western masters to deliver a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia,” Moscow’s top diplomat stated during a media conference on Wednesday. In doing so, the Ukrainian leader “showed to the entire world the latest proof of the threats that come from the Kiev regime.” Lavrov said Russia’s special military operation had been launched to neutralize those threats. He dismissed as “laughable” an attempt to downplay Zelensky’s words made by his press secretary, Sergey Nikoforov. “We all remember how [Zelensky] declared in January Ukraine’s intention to acquire nuclear weapons. Apparently, this idea has long been stuck in his mind,” the Russian minister said.


On Thursday, Zelensky told the Australian Lowy Institute that NATO must carry out preemptive strikes against Russia so that it “knows what to expect” if it uses its nuclear arsenal. He claimed that such action would “eliminate the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons,” before recalling how he urged other nations to preemptively punish Russia before it launched its military action against his country. “I once again appeal to the international community, as it was before February 24: Preemptive strikes so that [the Russians] know what will happen to them if they use it, and not the other way around,” he said. His spokesman then claimed that people interpreting Zelensky’s words as a call for a preemptive nuclear strike were wrong, and that Ukraine would never use such rhetoric.

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Cold and hunger and billions for Azov. A winning model.

EU Again Urged To Open Wallet For Kiev (RT)

Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, will urge member states to set aside more funds to cover enhanced military assistance for Ukraine. The top diplomat shared his plan with reporters at an informal EU summit in Prague on Friday. “I will ask the leaders to support the proposal for a new tranche for European Peace Facility to continue providing military support to Ukraine, also to the training mission,” Borrell said, as quoted by Reuters. Earlier this week Borrell expressed hope that at the next Foreign Affairs Council gathering on October 17, the EU will be able to “formally launch” its training mission for Ukrainian armed forces. Writing in his blog, the diplomat also claimed that the EU would “reinforce” its strategy of supporting Ukraine – “militarily, financially and politically.”

The European Peace Facility (EPF) that Borell referred to, is a mechanism created last year to enhance the EU’s ability to act as a global security provider. The EPF reimburses governments for military equipment supplied to Kiev, “including items designed to deliver lethal force for defensive purposes.” The latest round of funding for Ukraine under the EPF, worth €500 million, was agreed by the European Council in July. With this package, the total EU contribution for the country within this framework amounts to €2.5 billion. The EPF has a ceiling of about €6 billion and is supposed to support not only Ukraine but also other countries. As EU nations face an energy and cost-of-living crisis, exacerbated by anti-Russia sanctions and a reduction in Russian energy supplies, Borrell earlier urged people in the bloc to combat “the temptation to abandon Ukraine.”

Responding earlier this week to the EU’s plan of creating a training mission for Kiev’s armed forces, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that such a move would only “fix the EU in the status of a participant in the conflict.” In April, she accused the bloc of turning into “NATO’s economic relations department.” This followed Borrell’s tweet that “This war (in Ukraine) must be won on the battlefield.” Moscow has consistently warned Western countries against providing military support to Kiev. It argues that such assistance would only prolong the conflict and will lead to unnecessary casualties. Ukraine, in turn, has repeatedly claimed that the EU is too slow in its weapons supplies and that it doesn’t always provide what Kiev had requested.

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I found this strange. Macron wanted a new club, the European Political Community (EPC), which is EU plus some others?! Why? Betcha it’s so Ukraine can be part of some club too.

Belgium Fails To Support New Round Of Sanctions Against Russia (RT)

The Belgian government decided against endorsing a new round of EU anti-Russia trade restrictions, the local press reported on Thursday, citing remarks made by Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. Speaking on the sidelines of the European Political Community (EPC) summit in Prague, Czech Republic, the head of the Belgian government explained that “as the economic cost of sanctions becomes higher, it becomes difficult to show solidarity” with Ukraine. “The sanctions have worked very well so far,” the prime minister said, “but the further we go, the more we talk about sanctions that hurt our own economy more than Russia’s.” His country therefore declined to support the eighth package of sanctions when EU member states voted on it this week.

Belgium didn’t vote against it either, because “we do not want to break European solidarity,” De Croo was quoted as saying. A vote against the proposal any EU member state would have blocked the package from being approved. Belgium was reportedly the only nation to abstain. Earlier this week, Belgian MP Andre Flahaut, who represents the province of Walloon Brabant, expressed concerns about the impact of the upcoming sanctions on his constituents. Two factories owned by the Russian metals giant NLMK, which are located in the Belgian province, may have to shut down, the lawmaker warned. The EU ultimately allowed a transition period of two years to switch from semi-finished steel products originating in Russia to alternative supplies.

There were also concerns in Belgium that the EU would try to restrict trade in Russian diamonds, potentially impacting the jewelry businesses of Antwerp. Some news outlets reported that the country blocked the proposed inclusion of such sanctions in the package. When asked about Russian gemstones, Prime Minister De Croo said his government would not have opposed a ban, if it were necessary, but the European Commission decided against it because imports from Russia had fallen significantly without any formal restrictions. The EPC is a new political club proposed earlier this year by French President Emmanuel Macron. The forum is supposed to bring together EU member states and nations that aspire to become part of the economic bloc, plus its traditional allies like the UK and Norway. The meeting of EPC leaders in Prague is the first of its kind.

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Orban could soon walk out. They refuse to give him his money anyway. Why stay?

Orban Urges Changes To EU Sanctions Policy (RT)

Sanctions imposed by the EU on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine have failed, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday, urging Brussels to change its policy. “The sanctions didn’t fulfill the hopes that were pinned on them, the war hasn’t ended,” Orban wrote on Facebook. “Europe is slowly bleeding and Russia is making money in the meantime,” he pointed out. The Hungarian leader said that it was obvious to him that “the failed policy of Brussels must be changed.” The statement was made on the same day that the EU announced an eighth round of sanctions on Russia. The new curbs include an oil price cap, trade restrictions amounting to 7 billion euros and individual sanctions against 30 people and seven entities. The move comes after the official inclusion of Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions into Russia [..]


Orban has frequently criticized the EU’s sanctions on Russia, calling them counterproductive. Hungary, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy, has maintained a relatively neutral stance during the conflict in Ukraine, condemning the use of force by Moscow, but refusing to supply weapons to Kiev. Brussels expected that the unprecedented restrictions would cripple Russia’s economy and prevent it from funding its military operation. But Moscow was able to redirect its oil and gas to Asian markets, while also profiting from growing energy prices. The policy has also largely backfired for the EU, causing a spike in inflation, and putting Europe into an energy crisis. The situation deteriorated even further in late September when the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged.

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“Biden Threatening Nuclear Armageddon After Six Years of Media Freakout Over Trump Tweets”

Joe Biden Is Not A Real President (Scarry)

Did anyone else burst into a bout of uncontrollable, psychotic laughter upon reading the report that President Biden just told a room full of Democrat donors that the risk of nuclear “armageddon” has arrived? I can’t be the only one. Here are some headlines from the not-too-distant past that immediately came to mind: • We must Trump-proof the nuclear codes before 20243 NBC News, March 12, 2022 • Gen. Milley feared Trump might launch nuclear attack, made secret calls to China, new book says USA Today, Sept. 14, 2021 • Trump is leading us into nuclear war, says Daniel Ellsberg (and he should know, he used to plan them) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Feb. 1, 2018 • Donald Trump s Nuclear-War Threat The New Yorker, Aug. 9, 2017 • Clinton Says Trump Could Lead US Into Nuclear War Roll Call, June 2, 2016.

So, wait a second. You mean we just spent the last six years with all of Washington and the national media swearing to voters that Trump had us on the brink of nuclear annihilation, only for it to be Biden, their choice for president, to get us right up on the cliff’s edge? If that doesn’t have you pulling tufts of hair out of your scalp until it bleeds, check your pulse. This can’t be real. Biden has to be fake. This must be a computer simulation. For four years under Trump, gas was cheap, the stock market was booming, and a trip to the grocery store didn’t require customers to take out a second mortgage.

Now under Biden, OPEC is gratuitously choking the energy supply, basic necessities are scarce, and a major war has American taxpayers spending more than $67 billion (and counting) to a country that’s 5,000 miles away. Oh, and now we have to worry about a nuclear confrontation with a global superpower! sIf it were a movie script, not a single producer would find it believable. The writer would never work again. But this is real? We elected a president, in earnest, who is this incompetent and terrible? It’s nuclear war he’s warning of! This is the absolute worst-case scenario. The severity can’t be overstated. There aren’t enough mean Trump tweets in the world to excuse the state of things under this “president.” I refuse to believe it. Biden isn’t a real president.

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“..they 1) are not our friends, 2) do not care what we want, 3) do not take us seriously and 4) are not here to help us and/or Biden get re-elected by lowering prices..”

OPEC Humiliates President Biden On A Global Stage (QTR)

[..] yesterday OPEC humiliated President Biden on a global stage by cutting oil production after he specifically lobbied them not to. There’s no “nice” way of putting it – they straight-up snubbed the U.S. and have now, in my opinion, made it officially clear that they 1) are not our friends, 2) do not care what we want, 3) do not take us seriously and 4) are not here to help us and/or Biden get re-elected by lowering prices. To use Biden’s parlance, “Let me tell you something, Jack – we’re not in bed with the Saudis anymore. They are more allied with China and Russia than they have ever been, at arguably the most crucial moment in recent history for our global economy.”

As I pointed out last night on my podcast, there was nothing quite like the “fist bump heard round the world” a couple months ago when President Biden – who spends his time here domestically fighting for “equality” and human rights – decided to embrace the Saudis, and their track record of disapproving of gay rights, murdering journalists and multiple other human rights violations – instead of simply ramping up domestic oil production here in the U.S. Biden probably went into the meeting he had with MBS months ago thinking we had some type of leverage, like we have had decades ago. The sad reality is that we simply don’t anymore: the Saudis have the oil, they have gold, and now they have allies just as big and powerful as the U.S. when combined. And those allies provide financial and military support at a crucial juncture for geopolitics.

Meanwhile, our President remains tone deaf and while his supporters remain immune to what can only be described as blatantly obvious double standards. With the left hand, Biden was vilifying Exxon and Chevron here in the U.S., basically encouraging them to not bring more supply online, whilst blaming “gas station owners” and other people who don’t set the price of refined fuels. With the right hand, he was fist bumping a man who publicly disapproves of gay rights and ordered the murder of a critical journalist, in order to try and get him to unleash more oil on the global stage. And instead of him taking us seriously, he did the exact opposite of what Biden wanted yesterday – cut oil production, raising prices – and humiliated Biden on the global stage.

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“Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin has described the eighth package of anti-Russia penalties as the “first EU sanctions package” against Serbia.”

Luxembourg Raises Red Flag Over Energy Price Caps (RT)

The European Union may be left with no energy supplies after introducing gas price caps, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said as he arrived at the bloc’s summit in Prague on Friday. “Implementing a price cap is not the only thing,” Bettel said. “Because, after, maybe we can’t get energy. So then, maybe we have a price cap but no energy.” EU leaders are expected to discuss how to deal with gas prices to curb soaring energy bills during their informal summit in the Czech capital. The talks will include a proposal on a gas price cap. “We have to know we’re not the only customers in the world,” he added. “So, we have to be very careful about decisions that we take that sound good on paper but where consequences can be problematic.”


The issue has been hotly contested for weeks, with Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands in opposition to any form of cap due to concerns regarding security of supply. On Thursday, Brussels announced the eighth package of restrictions on Russia, which includes a price cap and “further restrictions” on the maritime transportation of Russian crude oil and petroleum products to third countries. The latest batch of penalties has been blasted by several EU nations, including Hungary and Serbia. Earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that anti-Russia sanctions had failed, adding that the bloc was “slowly bleeding” due to the drastic steps. Meanwhile, Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin has described the eighth package of anti-Russia penalties as the “first EU sanctions package” against Serbia.

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“The euro area is at risk of a financial meltdown on the same scale as the crisis it suffered a decade ago..”

They should be so lucky.

Citi: Financial Crisis May Surprise EU (RT)

The euro area is at risk of a financial meltdown on the same scale as the crisis it suffered a decade ago, Citi analysts have told CNBC. They cited Germany’s massive energy relief plan as the major threat to the bloc’s stability, the media outlet reports on Friday. According to the report, Wall Street bank analysts have raised concerns about the violent bond market moves and the European governments’ plans to borrow vast sums of money. They said that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s relief package, worth €200 billion ($195 billion) and aimed at tackling soaring energy prices, “may soften the coming recession but also poses risks.” Those risks relate to the question of how the package will be financed and what that could do to inflation, to Germany’s sovereign bond yields, to the ECB’s benchmark rate, and to the borrowing plans of other euro nations that may do the same.

“The risk is that others may follow that example,” Christian Schulz, deputy chief European economist at Citi, told CNBC, citing the UK’s recent bond market meltdown after unfunded tax cuts by the government. Schulz explained that Germany could “afford” any debt financing thanks to its low debt-to-GDP ratio and lower external funding needs, but the package could open the door for less fiscally prudent countries to want to borrow large amounts and issue new debt. That could potentially lead to trouble like that seen in Britain.

Citi analysts forecast that German debt financing could force tighter ECB policy, which could then also send yields surging in the euro area. “The risk is that this same dynamic [as seen in Britain] evolves on the continent as well now,”Schulz warned. Meanwhile, data by Saxo Bank show that an ECB stress indicator for the Eurozone’s financial system – which looks at tensions in bond, equity and money markets – has risen from below 0.1 at the start of the year to almost 0.5 so far. During the Eurozone debt crisis in 2009-2010, the index exceeded 0.6.


German producer prices. Past 2 years: up 60%. Past 40 years before that: up 60%.

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“His staff must be marinated in evidence of the RussiaGate misdeeds — reams of which have been independently documented in the public record..”

November Surprise? (Jim Kunstler)

Adults understand that politics is a crooked business, but through the whole of US history until now filters existed in the public arena that allowed for enough sorting out of truth from untruth to enable the formation of a reality-based consensus — which, in turn, allowed daily life to operate coherently. The Party of Chaos has thrown the kill-switch on that crucial function by corrupting the news business and subverting the new social media. The result is a public culture of pervasive and immersive lying, and a stupendous institutional failure of the courts to correct any of that behavior. Case-in-point: the John Durham Special Counsel Investigation on the origin of the RussiaGate fraud. It now apparently terminates in the prosecution of the tiniest minnow (Igor Danchenko) in that vast inland sea of corruption.

Some of the figures who carried out the perfidious seditions of RussiaGate are still employed in the Department of Justice and the FBI, and to this day are active in the continued cover-up of the crimes committed to overthrow President Trump, notably: Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and others. Mr. Durham is supposedly among the highest officers of the federal courts charged with enforcing a very particular region of criminality.

His staff must be marinated in evidence of the RussiaGate misdeeds — reams of which have been independently documented in the public record, ranging from (just for example) the nefarious activities of figures like Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ higher-up Bruce Ohr, working as go-between with Christopher Steele and the FBI, to the spectacular failures of Judge James Boasberg and his FISA court, not to mention the well-known machinations of Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Dana Boente, James Baker, Andrew Weissmann, Jeannie Rhee, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Robert Mueller, and other top officials who worked sedulously against the public interest. All these remain apparently off-the-hook for their sketchy activities.

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“Peskov told the Post that disagreement between Putin and his aides is “part of the usual working process.”

Washington Post Lying About Kremlin ‘Turmoil’ – Moscow (RT)

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that a Washington Post report alleging “turmoil” and confrontation in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle is “absolutely not true.” The report in question was attributed to anonymous US spies. “A member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle has voiced disagreement directly to the Russian president” over the conflict in Ukraine, the report stated, alleging that “the criticism marks the clearest indication yet of turmoil within Russia’s leadership.” No source was given for this report, which was attributed to “information obtained by US intelligence.” Peskov told the Post that disagreement between Putin and his aides is “part of the usual working process.”

“There are working arguments: about the economy, about the conduct of the military operation. There are arguments about the education system. This is part of the normal working process, and it is not a sign of any split,” he said, adding that the information supposedly obtained by American intelligence is “absolutely not true.” American officials have previously boasted about waging an “info war”against Russia by leaking false intelligence reports to the media, NBC News reported in April. Intelligence officials, for example, admitted to fabricating a warning that Russia was preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine in March, leaking the story to the Washington Post despite it being based on “low confidence” intelligence.

A report claiming that Putin was “being misled by his own advisers” was also reportedly made up or exaggerated by US spies. “There’s no way you can prove or disprove that stuff,” a retired intelligence operative told NBC. The Post’s latest report was also received with doubt by the US’ European allies. According to the newspaper, “senior security officials in Europe said they were not aware that anyone had dared to challenge Putin directly over the course of events in Ukraine,” and said that they hadn’t seen the supposed US intelligence report that the article was based on.

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Terrorists.

When Anti-Government Speech Becomes Sedition (Whitehead)

Anti-government speech has become a four-letter word. In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. Indeed, there is a long and growing list of the kinds of speech that the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation and prosecution: hate speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, extremist speech, etc.

Things are about to get even dicier for those who believe in fully exercising their right to political expression. Indeed, the government’s seditious conspiracy charges against Stewart Rhodes, the founder of Oath Keepers, and several of his associates for their alleged involvement in the January 6 Capitol riots puts the entire concept of anti-government political expression on trial. [..] In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.” The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American with an opinion about the government or who knows someone with an opinion about the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

You see, the government doesn’t care if you or someone you know has a legitimate grievance. It doesn’t care if your criticisms are well-founded. And it certainly doesn’t care if you have a First Amendment right to speak truth to power. What the government cares about is whether what you’re thinking or speaking or sharing or consuming as information has the potential to challenge its stranglehold on power. Why else would the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies be investing in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? Why else would the Biden Administration be likening those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists?

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3 weeks after the New England Journal of medicine said the vaccines destroy your immune system, the stupid circus just goes on.

CDC: Record Number Of Children Hospitalized With Weakened Immune Systems (ZH)

Official data suggests that more children and young adults than ever have been hospitalized with colds and respiratory issues, according to the Daily Mail, which notes that “experts have repeatedly warned lockdowns and measures used to contain Covid like face masks also suppressed the spread of germs which are crucial for building a strong immune system in children.” According to a retrospective report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), levels of common cold viruses hit their highest level among non-adults in August 2021 – when levels had been much lower in previous years during the same month. According to the data which sampled nearly 700 children, nearly 55% tested positive for RSV in August 2021. Of that, 450 were moved to emergency departments where nearly 35% had RSV – which is comparable to the winter months when over 30% of patients regularly have the virus, according to the report.


“The CDC samples random pediatric hospitals across the US and makes national estimates to gauge how prevalent viruses are. There were nearly 700 children in hospital sick with a respiratory virus across the seven wards studied in August last year, of which just over half had tested positive for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – which is normally benign. This was the highest levels ever recorded in summer, and came off the back of a year and a half of brutal pandemic restrictions forcing many to stay indoors. The record all-time high is in December, when 60 per cent of children on wards with respiratory illnesses were infected with RSV.” -Daily Mail

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Dance
https://twitter.com/i/status/1578392775367819264

 

 

 

 

Watters

 

 

Anthony Bourdain RIP

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 082022
 


Pablo Picasso Napping 1932

 

The Very Special Operation (Batiushka)
Biden Works to Prolong Ukraine War (Craig Murray)
The West and the Rest (Münchau)
‘I Don’t Blame Myself’: Merkel Defends Legacy On Russia And Ukraine (Pol.eu)
Studies Show Link Between Prion Brain Disease and Covid-19 Vaccine (GP)
This Is Why It Doesn’t Work (Denninger)
FBI Seizes Retired General’s Data Related To Qatar Lobbying (AP)
White House Refuses To Comment On Hunter Biden Pictures (Radar)
Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Bought $2.1M Worth Of Apple, Microsoft Shares (NYP)
Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Congress’s 1/6 Committee (Greenwald)
Peter Navarro: Jan. 6 Panel’s Tactics Designed to Stop Trump Before 2024 (NM)
Trafigura Warns Oil Prices Could Reach ‘Parabolic State’ In Threat To Economy (FT)
Is Our Time Together Running Out? (Stella Moris)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump

 

 

“When evil comes disguised as progress, celebrated in ignorance as righteous, when truth triggers vitriol & disgust, as the good are slandered & silenced, and when the sick are hailed as heroes, while the natural state of things is ridiculed, then truly we are in dangerous times”

 

 

“Either Russia is victorious in this Very Special Operation or else we shall enter a Dark Age..”

The Very Special Operation (Batiushka)

A Russian Orthodox priest and cultural historian, who has lived in several Western and Eastern European countries, including Russia and the Ukraine, I cannot fail to feel great sorrow at the events unfolding today. But I also feel great hope. The process of barbarous injustice that began in 1914 and ended the Old Europe and has been through all manner of fateful dates, 1917, 1929, 1939, 1945, 1968, 1989, 1991, 2014, to name but a few, is now further unfurling and reaching a global crescendo. As Nikolai Patrushev has stated, the Special Operation is not just a military event, it is far, far more profound than that, this is military, political, economic and cultural. This is why it took so long, eight years, to carry out the necessary painstaking preparations for the Operation, in view of the high probability that the West would refuse to get off its high horse of hubris and negotiate like reasonable people do.

Since the West did refuse to negotiate, the battleground is for now the ultra-militarised Eastern Ukraine. However, the War is not between brother Ukrainians and brother Russians, but between Washington with its NATO/EU vassals and Moscow with its Donbass Allies. There is no doubt that Russia will win in the Ukraine, as it has complete air and naval superiority. The Russian-speaking East and South of the Ukraine, Novorossija, part of Russia until 1922, is being liberated by a smallish expeditionary force of the Russian Army together with local troops. However, the Operation was never planned to be a short one, most knew that it would take months and perhaps, on account of possible NATO meddling, a year or more.

The War is longer because the Kiev Army has been preparing for it for eight long years. It has been building trenches and fortifications, arming itself with a huge amount of NATO training and weaponry, which the Russian Armed Forces are being forced to destroy, together with Ukrainian Nazis, Western mercenaries and NATO instructors. From this conflict a new Ukraine will be born. Perhaps it will once more be called Malorossija or perhaps it will keep its ‘Borderlands’ name. In any case it will be a smallish country, with a population of perhaps some 15 million, centred on Kiev. Whatever its name, it will effectively be the Kievan Protectorate, part of the Union State with the Russian Federation, Belarus and probably others.

[..] Let us be honest. Either Russia is victorious in this Very Special Operation or else we shall enter a Dark Age, from which there will be no end because it will be an Orwellian One World Government. Such One World Dictatorship will brook no opposition, all who challenge it will be repressed. This is our last chance to resist and strike back against the aggression that began in 1914, aggression that was military, political, economic and cultural, a totalitarian aggression that leads to total death, the death of body and soul. But according to all the military reports, let alone the prophecies, Russia will be victorious.

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“..it is actually blocked in by Ukraine’s own mines, which they currently refuse to allow Turkey to remove.”

Biden Works to Prolong Ukraine War (Craig Murray)

I was in Turkey to try to further peace talks, as an experienced diplomat with good contacts there, and as a peace activist. I was not there as a journalist and much of what I discussed was with the understanding of confidence. It will be probably be some years before I judge it reasonable and fair to reveal all that I know. But I can give some outline. Turkey continues to be the centre of diplomatic activity on resolving the Ukraine war. It is therefore particularly revealing, and a sign of Western priorities, that I did not come across a single western journalist there trying to follow and cover the diplomatic process. There are hundreds of Western journalists in Ukraine, effectively embedded with the Ukrainian authorities, producing war porn. There appear to be none seriously covering attempts to make peace.

There was a sea change two weeks ago when Ukraine shifted to a public stance that it would cede no territory at all in a peace deal. On 21 May, Zelensky’s office stated that “The war must end with the complete restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.” Previously while they had been emphatic that no territory in “the East” would be ceded, there had been studied ambiguity about whether that referred to Donbass alone or also the Crimea. The new Ukrainian stance, that there will be no peace deal without recovering the Crimea, has ended for now any hopes of an early ceasefire. It appears to be a militarily unachievable objective – I cannot think of any scenario in which Russia de facto loses Crimea, without the serious possibility of worldwide nuclear war.

This blow to the peace process was a setback in Ankara, and I should say that every source I spoke with believed the Ukrainians were acting on instructions conveyed from Washington to Zelensky by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, who openly stated he wanted the war to wear down Russian defence capabilities. A long war in Ukraine is of course massively in the interest of the US military industrial complex, whose dripping roasts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have gone rather off the heat. It also forwards the strategic objective of severely damaging the Russian economy, although much of that damage is mutual. Why we live in a world where the goal of nations is to damage the lives of inhabitants of other nations is a question which continues to puzzle me.

Turkey has for now turned towards the more limited goal of ensuring that grain supplies can be shipped out from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus. This is essential for developing nations and essential for world food supplies, which were already under pressure before this war began. Turkey is offering to clear sea lanes of mines and to police the ships carrying grain from the port of Odessa, which is still under Ukrainian control. Russia has agreed to the deal. Ukraine is objecting to this plan to export its own wheat, because it objects to the removal of the mines, which I should be clear were put down in the sea lanes by Ukraine to prevent amphibious attack on Odessa. There is monumental hypocrisy by the West on this, blaming Russia for preventing the export of the grain while it is actually blocked in by Ukraine’s own mines, which they currently refuse to allow Turkey to remove.

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“..did we think we can adequately address a global starvation crisis by pointing the finger at Putin?”

The West and the Rest (Münchau)

The pandemic and the war taught me something I sort of knew, but not really. It is a one thing to say that the world is interconnected, as a cliché. It is quite another to observe what actually happens on the ground when those connections get torn apart. The western sanctions were based on a formally correct but misleading premise, one that I believed myself at least up to a point: That Russia is more dependent on us than we are on Russia. Russia has more wheat than it can eat, and more oil than it can burn. Russia is a provider of primary and secondary commodities, on which the world has become dependent. Oil and gas are the biggest sources of Russian export revenues. But our dependency is most acute in other areas: food and also rare metals and rare earths.

Russia is not a monopolist in any of the categories. But when the largest exporters of those commodities disappears, the rest of the world experiences physical shortages and rising prices. Russia is the world largest exporter of gas, accounting for just under 20% of global exports. Russia is the largest exporter of oil, after Saudi Arabia, and accounts for 11% of world exports. It the largest exporter of fertilisers, and of wheat. Russia and Ukraine together account for almost a third of global wheat exports. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of palladium, a metal that is critical in the production of catalytic converters and fuel cells. Russia is also the largest world exporter of nickel, which is used in batteries, and in the production for hybrid cars. German industry is warning that it is reliant not only on Russian gas, but on other critical supplies from Russia.

Did we think this through? Did the foreign ministries that drew up the sanctions discuss at any point what we would do if Russia were to blockade the Black Sea and not allow Ukrainian wheat to leave the ports? Did we develop an agreed-upon response to Russian food blackmail? Or did we think we can adequately address a global starvation crisis by pointing the finger at Putin? The lockdown taught us a lot about our vulnerability to supply chain shocks. It has reminded Europeans that there have only two routes to ship goods en masse to Asia and back: either by container, or by rail through Russia. We had no plan for a pandemic, no plan for a war, and no plan for when both are happening at the same time. The containers are stuck in Shanghai. The railways closed because of the war.

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“..she said Ukraine “was not a democratically consolidated country” then, still strongly influenced by oligarchs and plagued by corruption..”

“Then”? But not now? What changed?

‘I Don’t Blame Myself’: Merkel Defends Legacy On Russia And Ukraine (Pol.eu)

Angela Merkel defended her diplomatic legacy as German chancellor Tuesday, rejecting accusations that her policies while leading Europe’s largest economy for 16 years were indirectly to blame for Russia’s ongoing attack on Ukraine. In her first public interview since leaving office in December, Merkel argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have fully invaded his neighboring country much earlier if she and other allies had not taken controversial decisions such as blocking Ukraine’s membership bid for the NATO military alliance in 2008, or negotiating the Minsk peace accords in 2014 and 2015, which Ukraine viewed as disadvantageous for its own security. “I don’t blame myself,” Merkel told an audience at the fully sold-out Berliner Ensemble theater in the German capital.

“I have tried to work in the direction of preventing mischief. And if diplomacy doesn’t succeed, this doesn’t mean that it was therefore wrong. Thus I don’t see why I should say: ‘That was wrong.’ And therefore I won’t apologize.” However, Merkel — who condemned Putin’s invasion as “a brutal assault in defiance of international law for which there is no excuse whatsoever” — also showed some cautious self-criticism: She said she had failed during her tenure “to create a security architecture that could have prevented this [war] from happening.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in April called out Merkel and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, arguing their longstanding policy of “concessions to Russia” and opposition to putting Ukraine and Georgia on a path toward NATO membership had encouraged Moscow to think “they are allowed to do anything they want” with Ukraine and commit “even the most horrific war crimes” such as in Bucha.

Yet Merkel on Tuesday defended her decision not to grant Ukraine the so-called NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) at the alliance’s Bucharest summit in 2008, citing two reasons: First, she said Ukraine “was not a democratically consolidated country” then, still strongly influenced by oligarchs and plagued by corruption. Second, Merkel said she was convinced taking such a step would have certainly led to war. “I was very sure that Putin would not just let [Ukraine’s NATO membership] happen. That would have been … a declaration of war for him,” she said, arguing that the Russian leader would have used the NATO accession process, during which Ukraine probably would not have yet benefitted from the alliance’s mutual security guarantees, to “do something.”

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It’s getting very scary.

Studies Show Link Between Prion Brain Disease and Covid-19 Vaccine (GP)

Two new clinical studies – one peer-reviewed by researchers in Turkey, and one pre-print by researchers in France – have begun to establish an alarming link between an incurable, degenerative brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and the experimental Covid-19 vaccine. CJD is a “rare” disease that is caused by abnormal infectious proteins in the brain called “prions,” according to NHS. Although the presence of prions is not necessarily dangerous or deadly, the proteins will cause degenerative brain damage if they become diseased or misfolded. Once this process begins, the malfunctioning prions will continue to corrupt other cells, leading to a prognosis that is always fatal.

As of right now, CJD is uncurable. There are zero treatment options available. The diagnosis is essentially a death sentence, but symptoms are traditionally dormant for several years before manifesting into a deadly complication. Unfortunately, with the new cases of CJD that have been linked to the vaccine, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The disease is progressing at an alarming and unprecedented rate. So much so that the team of French researchers highlighted their concerns of the experimental mRNA vaccines contributing directly to creating a new, more aggressive type of CJD. According to the French study, a total of 26 cases of vaccine-linked CJD were included in the research.

At the time of the study’s publication, a whopping 20 out of the 26 CJD patients had already passed away from the disease. Additionally, researchers found that there were “more than 50 cases” of the fatal disease that appeared after taking the experimental vaccines. Despite traditionally taking as much as a decade to manifest with symptoms, the study found symptoms in these new cases began appearing just 11.38 days post-vaccination. In these cases, the disease is killing the affected individuals in under 5 months’ time (4.76 months).

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Everything “green” is falling apart.

This Is Why It Doesn’t Work (Denninger)

Folks, right here: “To meet the nation’s clean energy goals, the US must develop a robust manufacturing capability to produce solar energy panels and components. It can do that by providing financial incentives to US manufacturers to help offset higher domestic production costs, which have been estimated to be 30% to 40% more than imports.” That is the problem. Congress handing out money will not solve it; forcing Americans to pay that 30-40% more simply bankrupts Americans but through a different way. There are many things we can do but they don’t make any sense to do. The only reason someone does it is that there’s a boot on someone’s neck (they’re a slave), the environment is destroyed without care (remediation costs money) and similar.


That’s the beginning and end of it, when you get down to facts. This is not just limited to solar panels. Its also true for EVs; you have to dig half a million pounds of earth up to make just one battery, and there is no economically viable means of recycling them either. Yes, technically they can be recycled, but then you get to pay even more. If the industry will collapse if the 30-40% has to be paid by the end consumer of the product then whatever you’re proposing does not work. Why would you pay 30 cents/kwh for power you can have for 10? Do you understand that this is exactly what we’re talking about here? At 30-40% more the panels are non-economic to put in and use; they’re simply not competitive. At 300% more than what you pay now for electric power you can’t heat or cool your house and eat at the same time.

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Craziest story of the day?! The head of the Brookings Institution.

FBI Seizes Retired General’s Data Related To Qatar Lobbying (AP)

The FBI has seized the electronic data of a retired four-star general who authorities say made false statements and withheld “incriminating” documents about his role in an illegal foreign lobbying campaign on behalf of the wealthy Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. New federal court filings obtained Tuesday outlined a potential criminal case against former Marine Gen. John R. Allen, who led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan before being tapped in 2017 to lead the influential Brookings Institution think tank. It’s part of an expanding investigation that has ensnared Richard G. Olson, a former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan who pleaded guilty to federal charges last week, and Imaad Zuberi, a prolific political donor now serving a 12-year prison sentence on corruption charges.


Several members of Congress have been interviewed as part of the investigation. The court filings detail Allen’s behind-the scenes efforts to help Qatar influence U.S. policy in 2017 when a diplomatic crisis erupted between the gas-rich Persian Gulf monarchy and its neighbors. “There is substantial evidence that these FARA violations were willful,” FBI agent Babak Adib wrote in a search warrant application, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Allen also misrepresented his role in the lobbying campaign to U.S. officials, Adib wrote, and failed to disclose “that he was simultaneously pursuing multimillion-dollar business deals with the government of Qatar.” The FBI says Allen gave a “false version of events” about his work for Qatar during a 2020 interview with law enforcement officials and failed to produce relevant email messages in response to an earlier grand jury subpoena.

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Just keep publishing them. Hunter will have to resurface at some point.

White House Refuses To Comment On Hunter Biden Pictures (Radar)

White House officials and representatives of Hunter Biden remained mum in the wake of Radar Online reports showing President Joe Biden’s son naked with an illegally obtained gun. Officials from the White House, Hunter’s criminal attorney Christopher Clark and Hunter’s lover, Hallie Biden, all ignored requests to comment after the Radar report. Hours after being asked, all three had yet to respond about the pictures or possible legal charges in the case. A White House press office representative told Radar to email its request for comment, but that email has gone unanswered. On Monday, Radar published a series of stories about new photos. The images showed a naked Hunter Biden in October 2018. They also showed him holding a gun, including his finger on the trigger.

The gun was illegally obtained as Hunter lied on an application about his past drug use. His substance abuse addiction has long been documented and he has spoken about it, but he put “no” on a form when asked if he had an issue. The photos also showed apparent drug use and a prostitute as Hunter Biden engages in sex games. Making a false statement on a federal criminal background check, known as ATF Form 4473, is a violation of federal law under Section 922(a)(6) of the U.S. criminal code. It also could violate Section 922(g)(3), which prohibits a drug user from possessing a firearm with ammunition. Hunter was discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2014 after he tested positive for cocaine.

Eleven days after Hunter illegally purchased the weapon, his lover Hallie, the widow of his late brother Beau Biden, threw the gun into a supermarket garbage can, triggering a Secret Service, FBI, and Delaware State Police investigation. The photos are the latest in a string of wild behavior for the President’s son, including questions on his business dealings. His current partner, Hallie, is the widow of Hunter’s brother Beau, who died years ago. The newest gun pictures also come at a time when the White House is calling for new gun control measures after a series of mass shootings across the country.

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Infallible stock tip. Your chance to do some insider trading.

Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Bought $2.1M Worth Of Apple, Microsoft Shares (NYP)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband bought up to $1.5 million worth of Apple stock as well as up to $600,000 in Microsoft shares, according to recent financial disclosures submitted by the powerful Democratic lawmaker. The periodic transaction report, which was posted on the House of Representatives’ website, indicates that Paul Pelosi bought Apple call options between $500,001 and $1 million on May 13. Eleven days later, the venture capitalist bought additional Apple call options worth an amount between $250,001 and $500,000, according to the disclosure forms. That same day, Paul Pelosi also purchased Microsoft call options worth as much as $600,000.


A call option, or “call,” is a financial contract that gives the option buyer the right to purchase the stock at a certain price. In December, Nancy Pelosi, 82, revealed in filings that she and her husband made as much as $30 million in stock trades involving Big Tech firms. The financial windfall spurred lawmakers from both parties to push forward legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading in stocks. The latest disclosures come just days after it was learned that Paul Pelosi, 82, crashed a new Porsche just five miles from their multimillion-dollar Napa home and vineyard while allegedly under the influence of alcohol. Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, has been accused of profiting off companies which she is responsible for regulating.

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The circus starts tomorrow.

Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Congress’s 1/6 Committee (Greenwald)

[..] ever since the pro-Trump crowd was dispersed at the Capitol after a few hours of protests and riots, the same repressive climate that arose after 9/11 has prevailed. Mainstream political and media sectors instantly consecrated the narrative, fully endorsed by the U.S. security state, that the United States was attacked on 1/6 by domestic terrorists bent on insurrection and a coup. They also claimed in unison that the ideology driving those right-wing domestic terrorists now poses the single most dangerous threat to the American homeland, a claim which the intelligence community was making even before 1/6 to argue for a new War on Terror (just as neocons wanted to invade and engineer regime change in Iraq prior to 9/11 and then exploited 9/11 to achieve that long-held goal).

With those extremist and alarming premises fully implanted, there has been little tolerance for questions about whether proposed responses for dealing with the 1/6 “domestic terrorists” and their incomparably dangerous ideology are excessive, illegal, unethical, or unconstitutional. Even before Joe Biden was inaugurated, his senior advisers made clear that one of their top priorities was to enact a bill from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — now a member of the Select Committee on 1/6 — to import the first War on Terror onto domestic soil. Even without enactment of a new law, there is no doubt that a second War on Terror, this one domestic, has begun and is growing, all in the name of the 1/6 “Insurrection” and with little dissent or even public debate.

Following the post-9/11 script, anyone voicing such concerns about responses to 1/6 is reflexively accused of minimizing the gravity of the Capitol riot and, worse, of harboring sympathy for the plotters and their insurrectionary cause. Questions or doubts about the proportionality or legality of government actions in the name of 1/6 are depicted as insincere, proof that those voicing such doubts are acting not in defense of constitutional or legal principles but out of clandestine camaraderie with the right-wing domestic terrorists and their evil cause.

When it comes to 1/6 and those who were at the Capitol, there is no middle ground. That playbook is not new. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” was the rigidly binary choice which President George W. Bush presented to Americans and the world when addressing Congress shortly after the 9/11 attack. With that framework in place, anything short of unquestioning support for the Bush/Cheney administration and all of its policies was, by definition, tantamount to providing aid and comfort to the terrorists and their allies. There was no middle ground, no third option, no such thing as ambivalence or reluctance: all of that uncertainty or doubt, insisted the new war president, was to be understood as standing with the terrorists.

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“..no senior White House official has ever been put in leg irons for a contempt-of-Congress charge.”

Peter Navarro: Jan. 6 Panel’s Tactics Designed to Stop Trump Before 2024 (NM)

Peter Navarro, former trade adviser to former President Donald Trump, had some choice words for the federal government Tuesday on Newsmax in terms of its conduct with his arrest from last week and subsequent indictment on contempt-of-Congress charges, after defying a subpoena from the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. On “Eric Bolling The Balance,” Navarro characterized last week’s arrest and indictment experience as “beyond appalling,” before sharing a daily timeline of pre-arrest events with host Eric Bolling: On Tuesday of last week, Navarro said, he filed a lawsuit against the Jan. 6 House panel, which he called a “kangaroo committee.”

The rationale for the lawsuit: Navarro says the committee’s “illegal and unenforceable subpoenas” should never carry more weight than a senior White House official’s right of executive privilege. Also, Navarro bluntly says the Jan. 6 committee’s primary purpose isn’t to investigate the events leading up to the Capitol attack. Instead, their “No. 1 job is to stop Trump from running” for president in 2024. On Wednesday, Navarro says he penned a letter to the Jan. 6 panel’s deputy attorney, explaining that his executive-privilege rights would preclude him from speaking formally to the “witch hunt” committee. Later in the day, Navarro called the same FBI agent who visited his home the previous week, and said he’d be willing to surrender under “peaceful” circumstances.

Fast-forward to Friday morning: The feds apparently allowed Navarro to eat breakfast and pack for a quick domestic plane trip before making a “showy” arrest at the airport — with five FBI officials apparently taking Navarro down in public. After the arrest, Navarro said, federal officials didn’t let him make a phone call. Law enforcement officials also put Navarro in leg irons, strip-searched him, and provided no food or water, he said. Navarro’s perspective: This was akin to being in “solitary confinement.” In American history, Navarro said, “no senior White House official has ever been put in leg irons for a contempt-of-Congress charge.” He then added: “I remember thinking, while being held up in the cell, ‘This feels like Stalin’s Russia.'”

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We’re not done.

Trafigura Warns Oil Prices Could Reach ‘Parabolic State’ In Threat To Economy (FT)

The head of Trafigura has warned that the oil market could reach a “parabolic state” this year with prices surging to record highs and triggering a slowdown in economic growth. Jeremy Weir, chief executive of the commodity trader, said that energy markets were in a “critical” state as sanctions on Russia’s oil exports following its invasion of Ukraine had exacerbated already tight supplies created by years of under-investment. “We have got a critical situation,” Weir told the FT Global Boardroom conference on Tuesday. “I really think we have a problem for the next six months…once it gets to these parabolic states, markets can move and they can spike quite a lot.” A parabolic move in markets is generally defined as when a price that has been rising suddenly surges to hitherto unseen levels, mimicking the right side of a parabolic curve.

Weir added it was highly probable that oil prices could rise to $150 a barrel or higher in the coming months, with supply chains strained as Russia tries to redirect its oil exports away from Europe. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, which is trading near $120 a barrel, hit an all-time peak of $147 on the eve of the financial crisis in 2008. The Trafigura executive was the latest to warn that the economy has not yet seen the worst of the energy crisis, with little way of lowering prices as already-squeezed global supplies are likely to get scarcer if Russian production falls further. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, warned last week that prices could reach $150 or $175 a barrel this year. Analysts at Goldman Sachs are forecasting oil could average more than $140 a barrel in the third quarter, when the US summer driving season is at its peak.

Weir said the rising price of other commodities, including metals such as copper and lithium, was also likely to weigh on global economic growth and could ultimately trigger a slowdown to curb demand. “If we see very high energy prices for a period of time we will eventually see demand destruction,” he said. “It will be problematic to sustain these levels and continue global growth.” Russian oil production had already declined by as much as 1.3mn barrels a day — or more than 1 per cent of global demand — with the country’s output of refined products of diesel and gasoline also falling by a similar amount, Weir said.

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Moving. I don’t think we can afford to lose Julian Assange. Because we will lose ourselves.

Is Our Time Together Running Out? (Stella Moris)

When Julian is taken from his cell to the prison yard he tilts his head up so his eyes can focus on the distance. If he narrows his eyes, the double razor wire above becomes a blur. Beyond is the open sky. Julian recently discovered a family of nesting magpies. He spotted their home subversively nestled between the razor wire. I think our family is like those magpies. When we are together, we are always a few metres from their nest. Our children — Gabriel, who is five, and Max, three — only have memories of their father within the brutal surroundings of Belmarsh prison. We don’t know how long our children have left with their father. We don’t know if we can visit him or even talk to him on the phone. If the extradition goes ahead, US authorities retain the right to put Julian in conditions so cruel that no one in his position is likely to survive.

It is impossible for Julian and me to escape a feeling that he is on death row. Our weekly visits may be the only time we have left together. But for how much longer? A few months more, a few weeks, a few days and then only a few hours? I fear in the end we will count the minutes and the seconds. Were it not for our children, this approaching catastrophe would be all-consuming. But Julian and I know these may be the only memories that our children will have of their father. We make our visits as joyous as possible. I don’t need to explain to Gabriel and Max the reality of this place where we go to visit their father. They live it. The children walk under razor wire and past layers and layers of security to reach their daddy.

Guards search inside their mouths, behind their ears and under their feet. The prison dogs sniff them head to toe, front and back. Last week, Gabriel slipped some daisies he had picked by the prison walls into his pocket to give to his father. After he passed through the metal detector his daisies were confiscated during the pat-down search by one of the guards, albeit reluctantly. During visits, our family is allowed to embrace at the beginning and end. We can hold each others’ hands across the table. Julian and I are not allowed to kiss. But Julian would rather kiss his wife and be penalised than have that taken away from him too. So, we kiss.

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George Webb

 

 

 

 

Norm McDonald

 

 


Secretary bird

 

 

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

 

 

 

Dec 032021
 
 December 3, 2021  Posted by at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Joseph Mallord William Turner The Sun Rising over Water 1825-30

 

Leaked Pfizer Post-Marketing Safety Report (Mathew Crawford)
First Batch Of Pfizer Documents: Over 1,200 Vaccine Deaths In First 90 Days (GP)
Fourth Dose May Be Required To Tackle Pandemic – Greek Expert (K.)
AstraZeneca Uncovers What’s Triggering Blood Clots After Its Jab (DM)
Vaccine Mandates: Unscientific, Divisive, and Enormously Costly (BI)
CMS Suspends Vaccine Mandate Enforcement (ET)
Germany: Mandatory Covid Jabs A Step Closer As Unvaccinated Face Lockdown (G.)
Researchers Shoot Holes In Study Touted For Confirming ‘Masks Work’ (JTN)
300,000 Brits Face Heart Problems Due To Post-Pandemic Stress Disorder (ES)
Russia Warns About Nightmare Scenario Of Military Confrontation In Europe (RT)
Assange Judge Is 40-Year ‘Good Friend’ Of Minister Who Set Up Arrest (DUK)

 

 

 

 

Horse dewormer is 438 times safer than the vaccines.

 

 

 

“..69 cases of confirmed (57) or probable (12) cases of acute kidney injury and renal failure, but that includes none at all in the U.S., strangely. A third of the cases (23) were fatal at the time of the report with only 10 of the cases resolved.”

Leaked Pfizer Post-Marketing Safety Report (Mathew Crawford)

Late yesterday, I received a purportedly leaked copy of a Pfizer post-marketing safety report, marked confidential and dated April 30, 2021 and tracks adverse events through February 28, 2021 of a cohort of 42,086 case reports of patients who suffered post-injection adverse events. The 38-page report, if validated, contains Pfizer’s internal knowledge of an extremely serious number of illnesses, injuries, and deaths associated with its injectable product recipients (call them “vaccines” if you like). Note: I cannot yet vouch for the authenticity of the document, but in my opinion, it looks legitimate. Before we dig into the details, let’s take the conservative approach and note that this purported internal study does not involve investigations of causal associations. I will discuss some basic computations along the way, but take them with an appropriate grain of salt. There are a lot of missing details from which to make important leaps. As such, consider my computations to be “envelope math”, if soberly performed. The crux of the report is the table on page 7:

It appears that roughly half of the reported AEs are serious AEs (SAEs).

Vaccine Associated Enhanced Disease (VAED). I am inclined for the moment to take as face-value the lack of detection of VAED as my opinion has veered further and further toward the belief that these injectable products simply don’t interact much with the virus in most individuals (perhaps in the immunocompromised who can carry the virus for months, we see evolutionary pressures that may lead to variants of interest).

In Table 7, there are 69 cases of confirmed (57) or probable (12) cases of acute kidney injury and renal failure, but that includes none at all in the U.S., strangely. A third of the cases (23) were fatal at the time of the report with only 10 of the cases resolved. The lack of cases for these SAEs is entirely unlike the rest of the report where U.S. cases are the most or second-most common. Are these cases being hidden in the U.S.? On the other hand, the U.S. topped the charts in medical errors, and by a wide margin [also unlike the rest of the report]. Huh.

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“Elon will make it to Mars way before the documents would be fully released ..”

First Batch Of Pfizer Documents: Over 1,200 Vaccine Deaths In First 90 Days (GP)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released the first batch of documents related to Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine after a federal judge ordered that they must comply with a massive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was filed by a government accountability group called Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency. The esteemed group of more than 30 professors and scientists asked the federal government to share any and all data that factored into the agency’s hasty decision to grant Pfizer’s experimental mRNA vaccine an emergency use authorization (EUA) – which amounts to a trove of over 329,000 documents.

In a shameless effort to bury the information, the FDA challenged the FOIA request in court. After the agency was told that it must turn over the documents, Justice Department lawyers representing the FDA asked a federal judge to allow them an unthinkable 55 years to process the request, saying that they would be able to release just 500 pages a month. In other words, Elon will make it to Mars way before the documents would be fully released – in the year 2076. A motion that was also filed by the same group of doctors and scientists is currently pending in federal court that would force the FDA to expedite processing and releasing these documents. Meanwhile, the FDA still has to comply with the original order to begin turning over documents. Lo and behold, the first release is a bombshell.

According to an official Pfizer document that is titled Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Records Reports, in just the first 90 days of the vaccine’s roll out under the FDA’s EUA – from December 1st. 2020 – February 28th, 2021 – there were TENS OF THOUSANDS of reported adverse reactions, including OVER 1200 DEATHS. The report only included adverse events to the vaccine that researchers considered “serious cases,” there were thousands more submissions that were left out of this data. Any cases deemed “non-serious” would be processed within 90 days, but this report was released before 90 days of Pfizer’s vaccine being available had even passed.

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More! Faster!

Fourth Dose May Be Required To Tackle Pandemic – Greek Expert (K.)

A fourth dose of vaccine against Covid-19 may be needed later on in the pandemic to protect the general public from the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus, according to Athanasios Tsakris, professor of microbiology and member of the Health Ministry’s committee of experts on the pandemic. Tsakris said the issue is being discussed among pharmaceutical companies but much more data will be required to know how the variant will behave. “The specially formulated vaccine, if needed, can be prepared in a short time. However, clinical data is needed in order to give the green light in time for its administration.


“The information we have is that this whole process will take 2-3 months,” he told Skai. Asked about the third dose of the vaccine that has been rolled out in Greece, Tsakris said he is in favour of speeding up its administration to five months from the current six. Health Minister Thanos Plevris announced Thursday that health authorities had identified the first case of Covid-19 caused by the Omicron variant, in a Greek national who returned from South Africa to Crete.

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Please stop saying “extremely rare”, or we’re going to be extremely mad.

AstraZeneca Uncovers What’s Triggering Blood Clots After Its Jab (DM)

Scientists believe they have solved the mystery behind the extremely rare blood clots caused by the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. A team of international experts, involving researchers from AstraZeneca, say that in a very small number of cases — about one in 100,000 in the UK — the vaccine can set off a chain reaction which leads to the body confusing its own blood platelets for fragments of virus. The British-made vaccine is thought to have saved about a million lives from Covid and was the backbone of the UK’s initial rollout earlier in the year, helping it to become the most vaccinated country in the West.

But concerns about clots saw its restriction in under-40s in the UK in spring and led Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines being favoured for young adults and as boosters. It was outright banned in many European countries and the US decided not to purchase a single dose. The UK Government gave an emergency grant to a team of scientists led by Cardiff University to investigate the clotting phenomenon. They found that the shell of the vector vaccine — the weakened cold virus used to teach cells how to neutralise Covid — sometimes acts like a magnet and attracts platelets, a protein found in the blood.

For reasons the scientists are still probing, the body then mistakes these platelets as a threat and produces antibodies to fight them. The combination of the platelets and the antibodies clumping together leads to the formation of dangerous blood clots. But they stress this is extremely rare, with only 426 cases in the UK recorded the cases so far out of about 50million doses of the vaccine, equivalent to less than one in 100,000. The side effect has been linked to 73 deaths in the UK. Researchers are now doing further work to learn more about the process that causes these clots and if the vaccine can be tweaked to reduce this risk.

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“Unscientific” would have been enough.

Vaccine Mandates: Unscientific, Divisive, and Enormously Costly (BI)

[..] the most relevant study endpoint is not death from COVID-19 but all-cause mortality, which counts every death that occurred during the study period. All-cause mortality is the key outcome of interest not simply because it circumvents the oftentimes subjective decision as to why someone died but also because it balances all the possible effects of a COVID-19 vaccine, both good and bad, that could influence risk of death. In other words, it allows us to quantify lives saved by the COVID-19 vaccine while taking into account potential lives lost from vaccine-related heart disease, blood clots, severe allergic reactions, and perhaps other causes.

Because results from the two trials were so similar regardless of the type of vaccine used it is helpful to merge the results. Following a combined total of 74,580 individuals, half given the COVID-19 vaccination and half given a placebo shot, over six to seven months, the two studies reported that thirty-seven people who were vaccinated died as compared to thirty-three people who received placebo. Simply put, the very best scientific evidence currently available to mankind does not support the widely held contention that COVID-19 vaccination using the Pfizer or Moderna brands lowers risk of death, at least over the first half-year after vaccination. Interestingly, these striking findings were not reported in the main body of the papers but in supplemental sections. There are several additional points to consider.

First, the studies’ findings were limited by the fact that their design did not take into consideration previous infection leading to subsequent immunity from COVID-19 infection, which could very well have lowered risk of death in one or both study groups. Second, there are serious concerns over falsification of data and other data integrity issues in the Pfizer trial so this could also have influenced results. Importantly, because both trials mostly excluded groups at highest risk of dying from COVID-19 such as the frail elderly, the very obese, or those with serious chronic illnesses, we cannot assume that the vaccines do not protect against death in these populations. Based on my clinical judgment and lesser quality supportive evidence, I generally assume when treating such patients that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh its risks and so advocate for their use, though I cannot be absolutely certain they offer protection against death because of the lack of randomized controlled evidence.

Finally, the very low rates of death from COVID-19 observed in both studies should serve to remind us of how minimal this risk is in the general population.the most relevant study endpoint is not death from COVID-19 but all-cause mortality, which counts every death that occurred during the study period. All-cause mortality is the key outcome of interest not simply because it circumvents the oftentimes subjective decision as to why someone died but also because it balances all the possible effects of a COVID-19 vaccine, both good and bad, that could influence risk of death. In other words, it allows us to quantify lives saved by the COVID-19 vaccine while taking into account potential lives lost from vaccine-related heart disease, blood clots, severe allergic reactions, and perhaps other causes.

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Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The federal mandates are dead. They’re feeding you the info a little every day, so Biden doesn’t look so bad.

CMS Suspends Vaccine Mandate Enforcement (ET)

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) suspended enforcement of its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers after two court orders earlier this week. A memo issued by the agency, posted by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Twitter Thursday, said that CMS “remains confident” it will prevail in court but is “suspending activities related to the implementation and enforcement of this rule pending future development in the litigation.” “While these preliminary injunctions are in effect,” it continues to say, “CMS surveyors must not survey providers for compliance with the requirements” with the rule. The memo is referring to federal government officials conducting checks of whether Medicare- or Medicaid-funded facilities are complying with the Biden administration’s mandate that healthcare staff gets fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by Jan. 4.

The CMS rule allows for religious and medical exemptions to the vaccine. Schmitt, a Republican who is running for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat, hailed CMS’s memo as a victory in a Twitter post. This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued preliminary injunctions against the CMS vaccine rule, which was unveiled on Nov. 4 alongside federal rules that mandate either testing or vaccines for employers with 100 or more workers. “Between the two of them, these injunctions cover all states” as well as Washington, D.C. and U.S. territories, the memo said. CMS has appealed the two federal court decisions.

The rule for private businesses, which is being enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, was dealt a blow last month when a U.S. Fifth Court of Appeals issued an injunction that blocked its enforcement. The same court affirmed its previous decision several days later, which is currently being challenged by the Biden administration.

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I don’t believe Merkel doesn’t know the Nuremberg Code.

Germany: Mandatory Covid Jabs A Step Closer As Unvaccinated Face Lockdown (G.)

Vaccination could become mandatory in Germany from February, Angela Merkel has said, as she announced what her successor as chancellor, Olaf Scholz, described as “a lockdown of the unvaccinated”. As more EU countries confirmed cases of the Omicron variant, which the bloc’s health agency said could make up more than half of all infections on the continent within months, Merkel described the situation as “very serious”. Meeting with Scholz and Germany’s 16 state leaders for emergency talks on Thursday on tougher measures to stem rocketing Covid cases, the outgoing chancellor said an “act of national solidarity” was required.

“We have understood that the situation is very serious and that we want to take further measures in addition to those already taken,” she said. “To do this, the fourth wave must be broken, and this has not yet been achieved.” Daily new infections in Germany have broken records in recent weeks, with many hospitals operating at or over capacity. Authorities said 73,209 new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours. Deaths have surged from a rolling seven-day average of just over 10 a day in August to nearly 300 this week. Merkel said Germany’s ethics council would issue formal guidance on a vaccine mandate, and the Bundestag would vote on the legislation by the end of the year. If passed, the rule would come into force from February.

“Given the situation, I think it is appropriate to adopt compulsory vaccination,” said Merkel, who is due hand over to Scholz next week. The move would follow the example of neighbouring Austria, which is planning mandatory vaccinations from February. Greece also announced mandatory jabs for the over-60s, with unvaccinated people facing fines if they fail to comply. Merkel also announced a blanket ban on people who have not been vaccinated or recovered from Covid entering bars, restaurants, theatres, cinemas and other leisure venues, as well as non-essential shops and Christmas markets. In areas where the incidence rate exceeds 350 per 100,000 people, discos and nightclubs will close.

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The one study cited everywhere, gone. Masks gone, too?!

Researchers Shoot Holes In Study Touted For Confirming ‘Masks Work’ (JTN)

An acclaimed study on the effectiveness of masks in reducing symptomatic COVID-19 is facing new scrutiny after a researcher highlighted the minuscule infection differences between “treatment” and control groups randomized across 600 Bangladeshi villages. Accused of design flaws and overstating its findings when it was released in late August, the study’s newly released data show only 20 more symptomatic COVID cases in the villages that didn’t receive masks and related education, reminders and “role modeling by community leaders.” In a total study population of 342,126 adults, 1,106 people in the control group tested positive, compared to 1,086 in the treatment group. The latter group represented 52% of the study population.

“I have a hard time going from these numbers to the assured conclusions that ‘masks work’ that was promulgated by the media or the authors after this preprint [not yet peer reviewed] appeared,” University of California Berkeley professor Ben Recht, who studies machine learning, wrote in an essay last week. He said he was frustrated that the “raw number of seropositive cases” was left out of the preprint by researchers led by Yale University economists Jason Abaluck and Ahmed Mobarak, preventing him from “computing standard statistical analyses of their results.” The researchers posted the replication code and data in early November, long after media coverage touting “the largest randomized trial to demonstrate the effectiveness of surgical masks, in particular, to curb transmission of the coronavirus.”

In light of the full release, “a complex intervention including an educational program, free masks, encouraged mask wearing, and surveillance in a poor country with low population immunity and no vaccination showed at best modest reduction in infection,” Recht said. The newly provided raw numbers exacerbate other weaknesses of the study, according to Recht, who was also initially skeptical of the research because of its “statistical ambiguity.” The study was not blinded, did not exclude pre-intervention infections, and was “highly complex” because of the mixed interventions, he said.

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Ha ha ha. You sure it’s not the vaccines?

300,000 Brits Face Heart Problems Due To Post-Pandemic Stress Disorder (ES)

Up to 300,000 people in the UK are facing heart-related illnesses due to post-pandemic stress disorder (PPSD), two London physicians have warned. This could result in a 4.5 per cent rise in cardiovascular cases nationally because of the effects of PPSD, with those aged between 30 to 45 most at-risk, they claim. Mark Rayner, a former senior NHS psychological therapist and founder of EASE Wellbeing CIC, said that as many as three million people in Britain are already suffering from PPSD, thanks to stress and anxiety caused by the effects of Covid-19. He fears this could result in a dramatic rise in physical health issues, such as coronary heart failure, if cases are not detected or treated early.

Mr Rayner said: “PPSD is a very real problem on a massive scale. As well as the condition itself with all its immediate problems, one of the biggest collateral issues is the affect it can have on heart health. “It is widely recognised that reducing stress and mental health problems is crucial to the prevention and recovery of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes. “We are talking about as many as 300,000 new patients with heart issues.” Mr Rayner warned that without at least doubling the current funding, the NHS will not be able to tackle the “trauma timebomb”, which could have potentially fatal consequences for those suffering with long-term PPSD.

Meanwhile, Tahir Hussain, a senior vascular surgeon at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, said he has seen a significant rise in cases where he works. He said: “I’ve seen a big increase in thrombotic-related vascular conditions in my practice. Far younger patients are being admitted and requiring surgical and medical intervention than prior to the pandemic. “I believe many of these cases are a direct result of the increased stress and anxiety levels caused from the effects of PPSD. “We also have evidence that some patients have died at home from conditions such as pulmonary embolism and myocardial infarction. I believe this is related to many people self-isolating at home with no contact with the outside world and dying without getting the help they needed.”

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NATO faking relevance.

Russia Warns About Nightmare Scenario Of Military Confrontation In Europe (RT)

Europe may be returning to a situation of military confrontation, and NATO is completely refusing to listen to all Russian proposals to de-escalate tensions, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed on Thursday. Speaking in Stockholm, which is currently hosting a meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council, Lavrov emphasized that Moscow wants to improve “strategic stability” on the continent, which he said is “rapidly eroding.” “NATO refuses to consider our proposals on de-escalation of tensions and prevention of dangerous incidents,” Lavrov said, accusing the US-led bloc of rejecting constructive discussion. “On the contrary, the alliance’s military infrastructure is moving closer to Russia’s borders… The nightmarish scenario of military confrontation is returning.”


Lavrov’s comments come amid increasing fears over an alleged military buildup on the Russian border with Ukraine. Since the start of November, some Western media outlets have claimed that Moscow is planning an “invasion” of its neighbor, an allegation strongly denied by the Kremlin. Last month, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg asked Russia to be transparent about its military activities, calling the purported troop buildup “large” and “unusual.” “We have to be clear-eyed, we need to be realistic about the challenges we face,” he said. “We know that Russia has been willing to use these types of military capabilities before to conduct aggressive actions against Ukraine.”

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“Duncan reported he gave Moreno “a beautiful porcelain plate from the Buckingham Palace gift shop.” “Job done,” he added.”

Assange Judge Is 40-Year ‘Good Friend’ Of Minister Who Set Up Arrest (DUK)

Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett, the judge that will soon decide Julian Assange’s fate, is a close personal friend of Sir Alan Duncan, who as foreign minister arranged Assange’s eviction from the Ecuadorian embassy. The two have known each other since their student days at Oxford in the 1970s, when Duncan called Burnett “the Judge”. Burnett and his wife attended Duncan’s birthday dinner at a members-only London club in 2017, when Burnett was a judge at the court of appeal. Now the most powerful judge in England and Wales, Burnett will soon rule on Assange’s extradition case. The founder of WikiLeaks faces life imprisonment in the US. In his recently published diaries, In The Thick of It, Duncan wrote in July 2017: “My good friend and Oxford contemporary Ian Burnett is announced as the next Lord Chief Justice.”

He continued: “At Oxford we always called him ‘the Judge’ and they always called me ‘Prime Minister’, but Ian’s the one who’s got there.” In an emailed response to Declassified, Lord Chief Justice Burnett confirmed he and Duncan have been “friends since university days”. Duncan studied politics and economics at St John’s College, Oxford from 1976-79, while Burnett studied jurisprudence at Pembroke College in the same period. “At Oxford we always called him ‘the Judge’ and they always called me ‘Prime Minister’” Duncan’s diaries also show that as foreign minister he spoke privately to Lord Chief Justice Burnett in May 2019, a conversation that was not logged in government records. Burnett briefed him on a dinner he’d had with then prime minister Theresa May two days before.

But Duncan told Declassified: “There was nothing that was required to be ‘logged in government records’.” He and Burnett both said nothing related to their roles as a minister or judge was discussed. Duncan served as foreign minister for Europe and the Americas from 2016-19. He was the key official in the UK government campaign to force Assange from the embassy. As minister, Duncan did not hide his opposition to Julian Assange, calling him a “miserable little worm” in parliament in March 2018. In his diaries, Duncan refers to the “supposed human rights of Julian Assange”. He admits to arranging a Daily Mail hit piece on Assange that was published the day after the journalist’s arrest in April 2019.

Duncan watched UK police pulling the WikiLeaks publisher from the Ecuadorian embassy via a live-feed in the Operations Room at the top of the Foreign Office. He later admitted he was “trying to keep the smirk off [his] face”, and hosted drinks at his parliamentary office for the team involved in the eviction. Duncan then flew to Ecuador to meet President Lenín Moreno in order to “say thank you” for handing over Assange. Duncan reported he gave Moreno “a beautiful porcelain plate from the Buckingham Palace gift shop.” “Job done,” he added.

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Oz haircuts

 

 

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