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Debt Rattle September 14 2024

Sep 142024
 
 September 14, 2024  Posted by at 8:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  23 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Autumn landscape 1885

 

• No More Debates – Trump (RT)
• No More Debates, No More Mistakes (Quoth the Raven)
• What You Don’t Know Might Surprise You (Kunstler)
• The Trump-Kamala “Debate” Left Untouched What Is Really At Stake (PCR)
• Russia Warns NATO of ‘Direct War’ Over Ukraine (RT)
• Putin’s Warning Heard Loud And Clear – Kremlin (RT)
• War Is Upon Us or Will Putin Blink Again (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Musk Channels Star Wars Over WWIII Threat (RT)
• Ukraine a Non-Sovereign State Ruled by ‘Political Frankenstein’ Zelensky (Sp.)
• NATO Plans to Send Troops to Ukraine to Force Russia Into Talks – Moscow (Sp.)
• ‘Negotiation’ Only Way To End Ukraine, Gaza Conflicts – Beijing (RT)
• The Big Collapse Awaits (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Brazil Seizes Musk’s Money (RT)
• The Folly of Criminalizing “Hate” (Njoya)

 

 

 

 

He wants them all to see
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834372286184570982

 

 

Hat

 

 

Overtime

 

 

Bongino
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834350085909741738

 

 

Blumenthal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834436362046472646

 

 

Jesse

 

 

Girdusky

 

 

 

 

She/they sort of seemed to have a lead there for a fleeting second, but handed the baton right back to him. Now it’s his call, not theirs.

NOTE: They should have a debate on X.

• No More Debates – Trump (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has ruled out another debate with Kamala Harris, comparing the vice president to a boxer who lost a fight and wants a rematch. Harris, who rejected two earlier debate offers from Trump, said the two candidates “owe it to the voters” to face off again. Harris was widely regarded as winning Tuesday night’s ABC News debate against Trump, although subsequent polls have shown little change in voter attitudes and several informal surveys found undecided voters backing Trump after the primetime showdown. The vice president’s campaign immediately called for a second debate, and Trump appeared open to the idea, telling Fox News on Wednesday that he would take part, but only if the debate was hosted by “a fair network.” In a post to his Truth Social platform on Thursday, however, the Republican announced that he wouldn’t debate his Democratic rival again.

“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH’,” Trump wrote.“Polls clearly show that I won the debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ radical left candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a second debate.” “She was a no-show at the Fox Debate, and refused to do NBC and CBS,” Trump continued, concluding: “KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. “We owe it to the voters to have another debate,” Harris’ campaign wrote on X on Thursday. Trump initially asked Harris to agree to three debates: one hosted by Fox News on September 4, another hosted by ABC on September 10, and a third hosted by NBC News on an unconfirmed date.

Harris’ campaign only agreed to the ABC debate, although Trump wavered about committing to this showdown, accusing the network of “ridiculous and biased” coverage of him. Throughout the debate, Trump was repeatedly interrupted and fact-checked by ABC hosts David Muir and Linsey Davis, the latter of whom was a member of Harris’ sorority in Howard University in Washington. Harris was not subjected to the same fact-checking, despite both candidates making misleading claims. “So many things I said were debunked, like totally debunked,” Trump told Fox News on Wednesday. “But she could say anything she wanted. My stuff was right, but they would correct you,” he continued, calling the debate “totally rigged.”

Fact check

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“..news networks don’t deserve the ratings of another debate or the trust of the American people..”

• No More Debates, No More Mistakes (Quoth the Raven)

Strategically, I think the Trump campaign is making the right decision by saying there will not be a third debate. It could be strategy to get terms he wants for another debate, but I’m hoping it is what it appears to be on its face, closing the book on further debates. Trump didn’t “win” the first debate, but I don’t think that’s why he’s not agreeing to another debate. And I know a lot of people are going to write this off as Trump being scared to debate Kamala Harris again, but I think we all know that’s not the case. I believe this is the right move, likely being made for multiple strategic reasons which I want to explain. First, let’s not forget that Kamala Harris has had ample opportunity to agree to another debate already but has chosen not to do so. She declined offers from networks like NBC and Fox in advance of the first debate and only brought up the idea of another debate after the last one. Her lack of courage and indecision in not agreeing to another debate should rightfully come back to bite her in the ass. Harris wants another bite at the apple because she didn’t do as badly as everybody thought she would, and now she can’t have it because she didn’t believe in herself enough to agree to terms ahead of time. Tough rocks for her.

Second, not doing a debate pigeonholes Harris to the poor policy explanations and reasoning she put forth in the last debate. The entire world watched both candidates this week, and though Harris may have performed better artistically, she came up light on policy prescriptions and details on her plans are for crucial issues like the economy and immigration. This was reflected in several post-debate interviews, including ones from Reuters and CNN, where independent voters were not swayed to her side. She was given a chance to talk policy and thought it would be far more useful to take jabs at Donald Trump instead. As I noted the night of the debate, this may have been a short-term success, but as the hours turn to days after the last debate and independent-minded critical thinkers start looking for more substance, it’s going to backfire.

Third, Harris’s team was asking for provisions and rule changes up to the very last minute of the debate. Putting aside the fact that Trump already did another debate with an entirely different candidate before knocking him out of the race after agreeing to the rules set by the Democratic Party, Harris tried to change the rules of the ABC debate all the way up until the last minute, asking for mics to be live on the day of. As I’ve commented before, Democrats are obsessed with micromanaging every last detail of these debates and their candidate because they lack significant substance on policy. Harris’ appearance was more of a successful public relations event than it was an opportunity to explain her policy positions to the American people. Trump, so far, has done two debates on enemy territory, CNN and ABC, and has not been shy about taking interviews or holding press conferences throughout his entire campaign. Putting policy aside in favor of nitpicky tactics of trying to modify every last detail so the opposing airhead candidate has her best chance to deliver some type of catchphrase or polish on her flip flops is simply not something Republicans need to put up with again.

Fourth, the next debate will be the vice presidential debate, and JD Vance is far more articulate in explaining policy positions than Donald Trump is. If policy is going to rule the day, I’m certain Vance will out-joust Tim Walz. I’m basing this on watching both of their media appearances over the last month or so and common-sense policy prescriptions that I think most Americans in the middle are looking for. Not having another presidential debate shows the Republicans’ confidence in JD Vance, and frankly, I think he’s going to do a significantly better job than Trump did. It’ll make the vice presidential debate the official sendoff for both sides heading into the general election. Tim Walz can brush up on how best to spin his way through sounding like his administration actually has policy ideas, but I’m not sure there’s anything he can do to keep pace with Vance in a debate.

Finally, news networks don’t deserve the ratings of another debate or the trust of the American people, whether Democrats know it or not. The previous debate was so blindingly biased towards Harris, both in the lines of questioning and in how the moderators interjected on her behalf, that network news in general doesn’t deserve to be trusted with another debate. Megyn Kelly said it best in her post-debate analysis when she stated that Republicans should never agree to another debate after what took place this week. As I’ve noted, I think the American public will see the objective truth that this was an ambush on Donald Trump and not an objective forum for two candidates to debate each other on the merits.

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“Prepare to duck-and-cover, or possibly to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.”

• What You Don’t Know Might Surprise You (Kunstler)

Now, as for the Harris-Trump debate, otherwise, and given the rigged features of the exercise, it’s obvious that Mr. Trump muffed several major scoring opportunities. When Ms. Harris dredged up the notorious hoax about “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, Mr. Trump could have addressed the moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis and asked them why they did not “fact-check” the utterance, which had been thoroughly debunked by the Left-wing site Snopes.com, advertising itself as “the definitive Internet reference source for researching urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.” Nor did they fact check the likewise debunked “suckers and losers” hoax about US soldiers supposedly uttered by Mr. Trump at the Normandy D-Day cemetery. Actually, Muir and Davis “fact-checked” Mr. Trump over thirty times and Ms. Harris hardly at all.

In any case, Mr. Trump blew many other chances to pin Ms. Harris with her own lies and hypocrisies — like, failing to state plainly that in nearly four years she never actually visited the Mexican border (whatever her designated title was: “Border Czar,” “Root Causes Detective”) . . . failing to clarify that the president has been removed from the abortion debate altogether and has no role in telling women what to do with their own bodies under current law. . . that Ms. Harris’s voteless selection as nominee was a paradigmatic affront to “our democracy” that even her own fellow party members ought to recognize . . . that the War in Ukraine was actually started in early 2014 by Barack Obama, Victoria Nuland, and the CIA, not by Mr. Putin . . . and omitting to state that all — every last one — of the 2020 election lawsuits across the nation were dismissed on procedural grounds and not on the merits of their arguments, which were never heard in court.

That’s just a short list. It is also rumored that Ms. Harris got the debate questions beforehand, since her husband, Hollywood lawyer Doug Emhoff, is a close friend of Dana Walden, Co-chair of the Disney Corporation board of directors (Disney owns ABC-News.) Anyway, that much-awaited event is over now and we are into the homestretch of this election. Kamala Harris has still shown no disposition to meet the press, to answer any questions impromptu and unscripted. The voting public seems to be losing patience with that. Her poll numbers are sinking, despite her admirable ability to speak in declarative sentences and lead joyful laugh-fests.

What remains for our sore-beset country beyond that vortex of nefarious blobbery and balloting lawfare is the interesting development that our government is now pressing to commence World War Three before the election can happen. “Joe Biden,” of course, is lately as absent from the public consciousness as Rutherford B. Hayes, but whoever acts in the president’s name these days just gave permission for Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia with long-range missiles. So far, the UK and the Netherlands have officially jumped in on that decision. Note that the Ukrainians have no ability to actually do the targeting of said missile themselves, which involves satellite technology, meaning whatever missiles happen to get fired into Russia will be done by NATO personnel. Mr. Putin has made it clear that such action will have consequences. We might infer that means Russia will strike back at some NATO targets. I must imagine his primary target will be NATO headquarters in Brussels. Other targets would probably follow, perhaps even in the USA. Prepare to duck-and-cover, or possibly to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

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“It is about who controls the US government–the people or the ruling elites.”

• The Trump-Kamala “Debate” Left Untouched What Is Really At Stake (PCR)

What we need to understand about American presidential elections is that normally the candidates of both parties are chosen by the ruling elites. Therefore, it matters not to them who is elected. Trump is hated by the ruling elites because he took the nomination away from their list of approved Republican candidates in 2016, and they have been trying to get rid of him ever since. Trump is dangerous to the ruling establishment because he says he stands with the people against them. In other words, this is not an election contest between Republicans and Democrats. It is about who controls the US government–the people or the ruling elites.

I can say with complete confidence that for many decades the universities and law schools have undermined Americans’ beliefs in the US Constitution and in the belief system that is the basis of the United States. This undermining has had an effect on the American population. Democrat members of the population are convinced that white Americans, especially if they are southerners, are racists who have oppressed black Americans. They are also convinced that men oppress women. They are also convinced that the concept of sexual perversion is bigotry. The Democrats project all these alleged faults of white people not on their own white selves but onto Republican voters–“Trump deplorables” in Hillary Clinton’s words. So, Trump has two targets on his back. The ideological one of being a white male who oppresses blacks and women and the upstart who challenges the rule of the military/security complex, Wall Street, Big Pharma, and the other interest groups including the Israel Lobby whose money elects the members of the House and Senate.

Very few, including Trump, dare to admit the Israel Lobby’s control of the US government. That control is manifest in Netanyahu, a war criminal with a policy of genocide, being invited to address the House and Senate and being received with 53 standing ovations. The members of the House and Senate understand that they are in office due to the campaign contributions of their donors. Therefore, they are responsive to the donors whose money elects them, not to the people who vote. They understand that if they take issue with official narratives, they will lost office. As Kamala has not challenged the ruling establishment and as she is female and part black, she is immune to the ideological denunciation. Trump is at the disadvantage, because accused of being a racist and a misogynist, he proves the point when he attacks Kamala, who is free to sit there and gaslight the American public.

CNN’s “instant poll” following the Trump-Kamala “debate” assigns victory to Kamala by a 63% to 37% margin. In actual fact, there is no debate. There is a carefully constructed list of questions prepared by a partisan media that representatives of the presstitute media ask the candidates. The questions are artfully constructed to aid the preferred candidate. Sometimes the questioners even jump in and aid the favored candidate in “correcting” the unfavored candidate. It is likely that the favored candidate is provided with the questions in advance. The entire purpose of the “debate” is to aid the theft by boosting the image of the preferred candidate. The reason RINO Republicans such as Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell are opposed to Trump is that they prefer a candidate that is as acceptable to the ruling elites as the Democrat candidate. Be sure to understand that what you are seeing in the Trump-Kamala contest is the ruling elite’s determination to have its candidate in office, not the people’s candidate.

Of course, many American voters are too insouciant to understand the process and the stakes, and enough of them vote for the candidate of the ruling elite to keep the ruling elite in power and the people out of power. This is what Trump is up against. Possibly, Trump has gained more realization than voters of how elections are rigged whether or not votes are stolen. What is at stake is not a political party’s platform. What is at stake is who rules–the people or the elites. The answer is seldom the people. Even when the elite’s candidate loses, they continue to rule by filling up the winning candidate’s administration with their people, as they did Trump, and they continue to control majorities in the House and Senate, irrespective of party. Trump is not perfect. My view is that if the people do not support him, never again will a candidate of either party dare speak for the people. If Trump is again denied office, what has been done to Trump for the last eight years will be a lesson for all future political candidates: Get on the wrong side of the elite, and you will be crucified–and the people will not come to your aid.

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“If such a decision is made, that means NATO countries are starting an open war against Russia..”

• Russia Warns NATO of ‘Direct War’ Over Ukraine (RT)

Granting Kiev permission to use Western-supplied weapons would constitute direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict by NATO, Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said. Moscow will treat any such attack as coming from the US and its allies directly, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, explaining that long-range weapons rely on Western intelligence and targeting solutions, neither of which Ukraine is capable of. NATO countries would “start an open war” with Russia if they allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons, Nebenzia told the UN Security Council on Friday.

“If such a decision is made, that means NATO countries are starting an open war against Russia,” Moscow’s envoy said. “In that case, we will obviously be forced to make certain decisions, with all the attendant consequences for Western aggressors.” “Our Western colleagues will not be able to dodge responsibility and blame Kiev for everything,” Nebenzia added. “Only NATO troops can program the flight solutions for those missile systems. Ukraine doesn’t have that capability. This is not about allowing Kiev to strike Russia with long-range weapons, but about the West making the targeting decisions.”

Russia considers it irrelevant that Ukrainian nationalists would technically be the ones pulling the trigger, Nebenzia explained. “NATO would become directly involved in military action against a nuclear power. I don’t think I have to explain what consequences that would have,” he said. The US and its allies placed some restrictions on the use of their weapons, so they could claim not to be directly involved in the conflict with Russia, while arming Ukraine to the tune of $200 billion. Multiple Western outlets have reported that the limitations might be lifted this week, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Kiev. Russia has repeatedly warned the West against such a course of action.

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“..if the West allows Kiev to hit targets deep inside Russia, “this will mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries are fighting against Russia..”

• Putin’s Warning Heard Loud And Clear – Kremlin (RT)

The West has received and understood the latest warning by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. Putin stated earlier that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia would make these countries directly involved in the conflict. The UK was the first country to announce the shipment of its own long-range missiles to Ukraine in May 2023, followed by France several months later. Washington revealed that it had supplied Kiev with ATACMS missiles this spring. However, Kiev’s backers have publicly prohibited Ukraine from using the weapons against targets located deep inside internationally recognized Russian territory. Kiev has been demanding that these limitations be lifted since at least May. Several media outlets have suggested that Washington and London will soon do so, or secretly have already.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Peskov described Putin’s latest warning as “very important.” The Russian president’s statement was “clear, unequivocal, and doesn’t lend itself to multiple interpretations,” the spokesman said. He added that “we have no doubt that this statement has reached its recipients.” On Thursday, Putin explained that the Ukrainian military lacks the capabilities to use Western long-range systems and requires intelligence from NATO satellites and Western military personnel to operate them. In light of this, if the West allows Kiev to hit targets deep inside Russia, “this will mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries are fighting against Russia,” he said.

“Their direct participation [in the Ukraine conflict], of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature” of the hostilities, the president stressed. Putin added that Russia will “make the appropriate decisions based on the threats facing us.” Ahead of their visit to Kiev earlier this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy hinted that their countries could give Ukraine the green light for long-range strikes on Russian territory with British and American missiles.

Putin

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“The insane recklessness of Collective Biden..”

https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/the-insane-recklessness-of-collective

• War Is Upon Us or Will Putin Blink Again (Paul Craig Roberts)

Gilbert Doctorow, a cautious commentator, has arrived at a position similar to my own. On September 10, Doctorow wrote in his article, “The insane recklessness of Collective Biden,” that “I cannot say how close we are to midnight on the nuclear war watch. But a Third World War fought at least initially with conventional weapons is now just days, at most weeks away.” What has pushed the cautious Dr. Doctorow to my position “is the near certainty that the United States and Britain have just agreed to give the Zelensky regime permission to use the long-range missiles which have been delivered to Ukraine, certainly including Storm Shadow and likely also the 1500 km range stealth missile known as JASSM to strike deep into the Russian heartland, and so ‘to bring the war to Russia’ as the Zelensky gang put it.” Doctorow reasons that Russia’s destruction of Ukraine’s army has prompted the neoconned Biden regime into one last desperate and reckless act of trying to deprive Russia of its victory “by escalating the conflict to a world war.”

Simultaneously with this US idiocy of underwriting missile attacks deep into Russia, Doctorow believes that “the United States has given Israel the go-ahead to launch a full-blown war on Lebanon.” This despite the fact that Lebanon has Iran’s protection, and Iran has Russia’s protection. So, we have at hand two prospects for the outbreak of major wars that will go nuclear. Extraordinary, isn’t it, that there is no discussion whatsoever of this duel crisis in the Western media or in the “debate” between Trump and Kamala. It is as if the US has no foreign policy experts and no Russian experts, but only supporters of the official narrative. The controlled narrative world in which we live makes us blind to reality. Indeed, it does seem that we do live in The Matrix in which there are no explanations other than the fraudulent ones protected by “fact checkers” in the official narratives.

Doctorow concludes that “a presently localized conflict in the Middle East can in a flash become a regional war that in a further flash becomes a second front to the war between the United States and Russia which I foretold above when speaking about Ukraine.” Doctorow is a person with whom I can agree. But I have a doubt. Just as for eight years Putin was lost in his delusion about the Minsk Agreement and failed to prepare for the coming conflict, and just as Putin seems yet to realize that he is at war with NATO, not conducting a “limited military operation in Donbas,” and just as Putin has refused to realize that by conducting a never-ending war he has permitted the West to become totally involved, thus changing the character of the conflict and vastly expanding it, can it be that Putin is still in denial of reality and does not see the war that is unfolding, partly because of his own inaction?

With the Russian media itself reporting that the Chinese are cooperating with Washington’s sanctions against Russia and refusing to handle Russian/Chinese financial transactions, thus accepting Washington’s wedge into the purported Chinese-Russian alliance, perhaps Washington will prevail over those who challenged the American hegemonic order but were unwilling to move forward with their challenge. Putin’s problem is that he is a mid-20th century American liberal who believes in good will. His Western opponent is operating on the Marxist principle that violence is the only effective force in history.

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“..X account Wall Street Silver, which warned that the US is “expected to launch WW3 this weekend and authorize attacks deep in Russian territory.”

• Musk Channels Star Wars Over WWIII Threat (RT)

US entrepreneur Elon Musk has reacted with foreboding to President Vladimir Putin’s warning to NATO about the consequences of potential long-range strikes against Russia with weapons provided by the US-led military bloc. Putin said on Thursday that Ukraine would depend on satellite intelligence and programming by NATO specialists to enable long-range strikes deep into Russia. Any such attacks “will mean that NATO nations, the US and European countries, are at war with Russia,” he stated. Musk shared a video of Putin’s remarks posted by the popular X account Wall Street Silver, which warned that the US is “expected to launch WW3 this weekend and authorize attacks deep in Russian territory.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” the billionaire commented, using a catchphrase popularized by the Star Wars character Han Solo upon seeing the Death Star space station. Ukraine has been asking for the capability to strike targets deep inside Russia with Western weapons for months, claiming that the lack of permission to do so has undermined its positions on the front line. UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer is meeting with US President Joe Biden in Washington on Friday, where they will discuss relaxing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range Western weapons.

The meeting comes after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kiev with his British counterpart, David Lammy. Both NATO members have provided long-range weapons to Ukraine, which have been used against targets inside territories that Kiev claims, but not inside internationally-recognized Russian territory. The original post with Putin’s remarks attribute personal responsibility for a possible outbreak of a world war to Biden and US Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also the Democratic Party’s nominee in the upcoming presidential election. Musk is a supporter of Republican candidate Donald Trump. The former president has accused his opponents of putting the world at risk of a nuclear war during his campaign.

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The opposition. What’s left of it.

• Ukraine a Non-Sovereign State Ruled by ‘Political Frankenstein’ Zelensky (Sp.)

Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk gave an interview to EADaily on September 12 about the causes of the Ukrainian crisis, Russia’s mission and the destructive influence of the collective West. “For a long time an independent Ukraine has not been existing politically, economically, or legally,” Ukrainian opposition politician and Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk told EA Daily. “The country is ruled by an illegitimate president who has usurped power, becoming a dictator.” The Western-backed Euromaidan coup d’etat of 2014 dealt a heavy blow to Ukrainian sovereignty and legitimate power. For 30 years the West has fuelled anti-Russian sentiment, distorted history and facilitated the rise of Nazism in Ukraine.

The Minsk agreements of 2015 corresponded to EU interests, but the UK and US, who sought to start a war, deliberately disrupted the settlement process. Washington’s plan was “to destabilize the situation on Russia’s borders, and then inside Russia. The first step succeeded, the second did not. The US managed to break Ukraine and Europe, but not Russia.” In 2020 Ukraine got a chance to nullify the adverse consequences of the 2014 regime change through democratic means. “Our party ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’ won local elections in 2020, after we were ranked second in the 2019 parliamentary elections, and began to lead in polls across the country,” Medvedchuk said.

But in February 2021 the Zelensky regime illegally blocked broadcasting of opposition channels, slapped sanctions on Medvedchuk and his wife, groundlessly accused him of treason and arrested him in May 2021. Other Ukrainian opposition politicians were also subjected to persecution. The special military operation in Ukraine would not have begun if Zelensky had abandoned the idea of joining NATO.The situation in Ukraine and in the world will improve after the West stops pouring billions into propping up Zelensky, who is a “political Frankenstein”.

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They mean talks on Zelensky’s “peace plan.” Not going to happen.

But you just wait till the first German and French troops come home in body bags. That’ll change the mood at home.

• NATO Plans to Send Troops to Ukraine to Force Russia Into Talks – Moscow (Sp.)

NATO countries are making plans to send their troops to Ukraine in order to ensure conditions to force Russia to hold talks in line with Kiev’s formulas, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said at the opening of the 11th Xiangshan Security Forum in Beijing. “In order to ensure conditions for forcibly coercing Russia into negotiations in line with Kiev’s formulas, NATO countries are making plans to send their troops to Ukraine. This is a dangerous game that could lead to a direct military clash between nuclear powers,” Fomin said.

Russian weapons have proven their effectiveness in combat conditions, Alexander Fomin said. “Russian weapons have fully proven their effectiveness in combat conditions, while Western weapons systems, which allegedly have high tactical and technical characteristics… burn perfectly on the battlefield with no chance of recovery,” Fomin said. The United States is actively working on a new version of its nuclear doctrine, in which the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons can be significantly lowered, Fomin said.

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“..nations should “never interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, never violate other countries’ rights and interests.”

• ‘Negotiation’ Only Way To End Ukraine, Gaza Conflicts – Beijing (RT)

Negotiating is the only solution to the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun said at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Xiangshan Forum on defense and security. The annual event is hosting around 20 defense ministers and 700 delegates from around 100 countries this year, including representatives from Moscow and Kiev. The senior official called on world powers to promote peace through facilitating political settlements of conflicts. “To resolve hotspot issues such as the crisis in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, promoting peace and negotiation is the only way out. There is no winner in war and conflict, and confrontation leads nowhere,” Dong said, calling on all countries to promote “peaceful development and inclusive governance.”

The more acute the conflict, the more we cannot give up dialogue and consultation. The end of any conflict is reconciliation. According to Dong, in order to solve regional tensions, neighboring countries should “seek strength through unity,” and on the global scale, nations should “never interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, never violate other countries’ rights and interests.” “Major countries must take the lead in safeguarding global security, abandon a zero-sum mindset, and refrain from bullying the small and the weak,” he stated. China has repeatedly said that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine must be resolved through negotiations.

This May, along with BRICS partner Brazil, it presented a six-point proposal on a diplomatic settlement to the crisis. The plan highlighted diplomacy as the sole means to bring about peace and advocated for an international summit that both Russia and Ukraine would attend. A previous conference in Switzerland this summer was held without Russia and focused solely on Kiev’s demands, which Moscow has outright rejected. Russia, which has often expressed eagerness to resolve the Ukraine conflict diplomatically, had previously signaled that it would welcome the Chinese-Brazilian plan as a foundation for a potential peace settlement. Kiev, however, refused to consider the initiative. Speaking to Metropoles news outlet earlier this week, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky called the proposal “destructive,” and accused Beijing and Brasilia of “colluding” with Russia.

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“..the Federal Reserve, where there has never been any intelligence. Today there is no sign of intelligence anywhere in the US government..”

• The Big Collapse Awaits (Paul Craig Roberts)

In the 1970s when I served in the congressional staff and in the 1980s when I served in the executive branch, there was still some intelligence in the US government, with the exception of the Federal Reserve, where there has never been any intelligence. Today there is no sign of intelligence anywhere in the US government. That fact is documented every day on my website. As I recently reported, about 900,000 new jobs that had been claimed over the preceding year have just disappeared in a revision. A further downward revision could follow. These non-existent jobs were the Federal Reserve’s evidence for a hot inflation-prone economy justifying high interest rates. All the time the Fed was preaching inflation, the Fed was contracting the money supply, a contraction that has been underway for 2.5 years. This in itself is proof that the “inflation” was really higher prices caused by the shortages the senseless Covid lockdowns caused.

In other words, the higher prices were due to mandated shortages, not to inflation. A central bank too stupid to recognize this is too stupid to justify its existence. Whenever the Fed contracts the money supply recession follows. If the contraction is too large and lasts too long, as it was following the 1929 stock market crash, the result is a decade of depression and high unemployment. A contraction in the money supply means that the same level of economic activity and employment cannot be maintained at the same level of prices. Either economic activity and employment fall or prices fall. Historically, it has been economic activity and employment that fall first, and prices follow. Generally, that means profits fall. Now that it has dawned on the dummies at the Fed that they have set a recession in place, the talk is interest rate reductions. Wall Street is salivating over a possible half of one percent beginning.

For Wall Street, a reduction in interest rates means an increase in money, and it is liquidity increases that drive stock prices higher. What usually happens is that stock prices rise in expectation of the Fed loosening, but by the time the Fed loosens the economy is in a recession. So stock prices rise while profits fall, with the market banking on recovery to bring profits up to the level implied by the stock prices that have jumped the gun. Things, however, can go wrong. Expectations of lower interest rates is a signal to start up home building. But if a recession is in place, who is going to be purchasing homes? If the builders’ loans are due before the houses sell, the builder goes bust. In today’s immigrant-invader overrun America, there is a new consideration. According to even presstitute media reports, in blue cities immigrant invader gangs are seizing homes and apartment buildings, and soon, if not already, newly constructed homes.

If you are sufficiently stupid to live in a blue city, you can go to the grocery store and return to find your home occupied by immigrant-invaders. The police will not remove them. If you are stupid enough to live in a blue city, what this means is that you cannot risk going shopping, or to a medical appointment, or to pick up your kids from the school that indoctrinates them unless you hire a security service to occupy your home in your absence. You cannot possibly risk your home by going on a vacation. Builders will have to provide armed security for nearly finished homes, apartments, or any type of structure. No, I am not delusional. This is what is already happening. Keep in mind also my reports on The Great Dispossession. Federal regulators have taken away your ownership of your investments and bank account and given them, in the event that your depository institution enters financial difficulties, to the creditors of your depository institution.

This is what is meant by a “bail-in.” If you thought you didn’t need to read my articles, you made a mistake. Use the search feature and find them. To be clear, we already own nothing if there is another financial difficulty. Given the Federal Reserve’s record, such a difficulty is certain. Will it be this time, or the next time, or the one after?

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Theft.

“..He also froze Starlink’s assets, calling it part of a “de facto economic group” with X..”

• Brazil Seizes Musk’s Money (RT)

The Brazilian Supreme Court has unblocked the bank accounts of X and Starlink, only to withdraw $3.3 million from them in order to enforce a fine levied against Elon Musk’s social media platform. Judge Alexandre de Moraes banned X’s operations in Brazil at the end of August. He also froze Starlink’s assets, calling it part of a “de facto economic group” with X. “With the full payment of the amount due, [de Moraes] considered that there was no longer any need to keep the bank accounts blocked and ordered the immediate unblocking of the bank accounts/financial assets, motor vehicles and real estate of the aforementioned companies,” the court said in a statement on Friday. According to the court, a total of 18.35 million Brazilian reals (around $3.3 million) was withdrawn from both accounts, of which 11 million was from Starlink and the rest from X.

The companies were fined “for not removing content after an order from the [court] in ongoing investigations, in addition to having removed its legal representatives from Brazil,” the court said. Musk has not yet commented on the seizure of the funds. Earlier this month, he said the blocking of Starlink’s accounts was “absolutely illegal” since it was a separate company with different shareholders. The tech magnate also threatened to go after Brazilian state assets in retaliation. “Unless the Brazilian government returns the illegally seized property of X and SpaceX, we will seek reciprocal seizure of government assets too,” Musk wrote at the time. “Hope Lula enjoys flying commercial,” he added, referring to Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva. De Moraes has also threatened a fine of 50,000 Brazilian reals ($8,874) per day against anyone who used a virtual private network (VPN) to access X.

There have been no reports of the fine being enforced, however, and multiple prominent Brazilians – including several political parties – have continued posting on the platform. The dispute between the US entrepreneur and Brazilian authorities began in April, when de Moraes ordered X to delete the accounts of several supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, accusing them of spreading “disinformation” about himself and the court. Musk refused, saying this would violate Brazilian laws. X’s Global Government Affairs team has said that de Moraes had threatened their Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment and froze all of her bank accounts even after she resigned. The judge then cited lack of counsel as the reason for the fine and the ban on the platform’s operations. “Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders,” X said in a statement at the time.

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“..the only goal of these types of “hate” laws is to create a special category of crime based entirely on the identity of the victim. Identity politics is now part of criminal law…”

• The Folly of Criminalizing “Hate” (Njoya)

Many people were shocked when over 1,000 protesters were arrested in the UK and jailed for various offenses including “violent disorder” and stirring up racial hatred. Most shocking were the cases of those arrested for posting social media comments on the riots, despite not being present at the scene and there being no evidence that anybody who joined in the riots had read any of their comments.

In societies which uphold the value of individual liberty, the only purpose of the criminal law should be to restrain and punish those who commit acts of aggression against other people or their property. The criminal law should not be used to prevent people from “hating” others or to force them to “love” each other. In announcing yet another raft of laws “to expand the list of charges eligible to be prosecuted as hate crimes,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that “During these challenging times, we will continue to show up for each other. We are making it clear: love will always have the last word in New York.” To that end, she introduced “legislation to significantly expand eligibility for hate crime prosecution.”

Attempts to promote love between different racial or religious groups in society, for example, by charging people with stirring up “hate” when they protest against immigration, misunderstands the role of the criminal law. Threats to public order entail violating the person or property of others—as happens in a violent riot—not merely the exhibition of “hate” towards others. Yet increasingly, public order offenses are linked to hate speech or hate crimes.

Laws prohibiting hate speech and hate crimes typically define “hate” as hostility based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. Often, hostility is understood simply as words that offend others. For example, in the UK, the Communications Act 2003 prohibits sending “a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.” The Online Safety Act 2023 targets illegal content online including both “inciting violence” and the publication of “racially or religiously aggravated public order offenses.” Conduct online includes writing posts or publishing blogs or articles on websites.

Given that inciting violence is already a crime—“conduct, words, or other means that urge or naturally lead others to riot, violence, or insurrection”—there seems to be no discernible purpose in adding the concept of “hate” to such crimes. To give an example, writing “burn down the store” on social media might be seen as inciting violence, but writing “burn down the Muslim store” in the same circumstances would be categorized as a hate crime. Arson (actually burning down the store) is a crime, but based on the racial or religious identity of the store owner arson is deemed to be a “worse” crime—a hate crime—even though the harm in both cases and the loss suffered by store owners who are victims of arson does not vary based purely on their race or religion.

Therefore, no “hateful conduct” laws are needed to further “criminalize” what is already a crime. The conclusion is inescapable that the only goal of these types of “hate” laws is to create a special category of crime based entirely on the identity of the victim. Identity politics is now part of criminal law. “Hate” based on race or religion is now a priority in criminal law enforcement with resources increasingly diverted towards it. For example, New York has devoted a budget of $60 million to “fight hate.”

Events in the UK over the past week chillingly illustrate the consequences of an identity-based approach to law enforcement. In the ongoing police purge of rioters, those who wrote “hate speech” posts on social media platforms were charged with “inciting racial hatred” and sentenced to prison terms of up to two to three years. Far from fighting against “hate,” this is likely only to further fuel resentment and racial antagonism.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

RFK Gates

 

 

RFK portal

 

 

Top gear

 

 

Hug
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834471936270762494

 

 

Friday
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834466374594241022

 

 

Cub and pup

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 13 2024

Jul 132024
 
 July 13, 2024  Posted by at 8:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  76 Responses »


Henri Matisse Luxury, calm and pleasure 1904

 

• Trump, Orban, Putin: Why Are All The ‘Dictators’ Hellbent On Peace? (Bridge)
• Orban Meets Trump To Talk ‘Peace Mission’ (RT)
• Biden Sees ‘No Reason’ To Talk To Putin (RT)
• Zelensky Slams ‘Crazy’ Limits On Russia Strikes (RT)
• UK Disputes Zelensky’s Long-range Strikes Claim – Telegraph (RT)
• Ukrainian Strikes On Kremlin Would ‘Make No Sense’ – Biden (RT)
• Scott Ritter: Ukraine an ‘Open Target for Russia to Take Apart’ (Sp.)
• NATO’s Obsession Boosts Russia’s Role as Global Leader – Rasmussen (Sp.)
• Why Is the West Preparing for War? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• NATO Summit: Collectively Losing Their Mind (Lauria)
• The Warhead Evidence, Medical And Autopsy Reports Are Missing (Helmer)
• The Cover Your Ass Olympics (Kunstler)
• “The First Amendment is Out of Control” (Turley)
• EU Offered X Secret Censorship Deal – Musk (RT)

 

 

 

 

Roger Stone

 

 

Biden press

 

 

Fallon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1811809637836161076

 

 

Tucker Biden

 

 

Straight-faced no less.

 

 

PA

 

 

Jon Stewart fails painfully – for same reason they can’t meme

 

 

 

 

“The question remains, however, who will speak out on behalf of peace if not Trump, Putin, and Orban?”

Note: The others owe their careers to donations from the MIC.

• Trump, Orban, Putin: Why Are All The ‘Dictators’ Hellbent On Peace? (Bridge)

One of the greatest farces of these modern times is that those who scream the loudest about democracy and human rights are the very same people who violate international norms at every opportunity. In the June issue of The New Republic, a left-leaning US political journal, a scowling Donald Trump was featured on the cover sporting a Hitler moustache above a caption that read: “American fascism, what it would look like.” [..]

There’s just one problem with the journal’s nervous handwringing: Trump has already served a four-year term as US leader and there was no visible sign of fascist goosestepping down Main Street during that period. In fact, just the opposite is true. While Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, thus triggering World War II, Trump went down in the history books as the first American commander-in-chief in modern times to avoid a military conflict. Now on the campaign trail for the second time, with the insatiable defense industry licking its chops for more profits, the Republican frontrunner has declared he would end the Ukraine-Russia conflict in 24 hours if reelected. When it is considered that ‘democracy’ today primarily works on behalf of the military industrial complex and other associated business interests, it is easier to understand how Trump is described in the corporate-owned media as an existential threat to the American republic. Peace is the last thing on Washington’s mind, and Russia understands that better than any country.

Back in 2008, the “dictator” Vladimir Putin delivered his now-famous speech at the Munich Security Conference where he warned his Western colleagues on the dangers of military expansion. “NATO expansion… represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.” Despite Putin’s explicit warning, NATO went on to add an additional six members to the alliance, bringing the total number to 32, with Ukraine, ignoring Moscow’s major red line, scheming to be number 33. For anybody who asserts this is only a “defense alliance” would do well to consider what America’s response would be if all of Latin America and the border state of Mexico were joining a military alliance led by Moscow. Needless to say, we would be knee-deep in bloodshed by now. Yet Russia is supposed to accept an endless military incursion smack up against its border.

This was certainly not the last time Russia attempted to broker a peace deal with Washington. Almost eight years after the 2014 Maidan Revolution, and months before Moscow kicked off its special military operation in Ukraine, the Kremlin released its plan for peace on the continent. Among other things, the draft treaty called for the US and Russia to refrain from deploying troops in regions where they could be perceived as a threat to each other’s national security, as well as a ban on sending their troops and military hardware into areas where they could strike each other’s territory. The treaty was also designed to ban the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Had the Western powers consented to the plan – it barely made headlines in the NATO countries – it’s not difficult to imagine decades of peace between east and west, the very last thing that Washington wants.Instead, the US and its European puppets placed Russia in an impossible position with regards to the ongoing militarization and Nazification of Ukraine, forcing it to respond as any other country concerned about its national security would.

This leads us to the West’s third favorite bogeyman, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has dared to declare that his country is predominantly Christian and conservative and has every right to stay that way. Orban, whose country now holds the rotating EU Council presidency, went on a peace-making tour with stops in Moscow, Kiev, Beijing, and Washington (where he ruffled more than one hawk’s feathers by visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago instead of Biden in DC). The frustration on the part of Brussels as it watched the Hungarian “tyrant” speak out in favor of reducing weapons sales was laughable if not downright pathetic. “Hungary has presented the trips as a ‘peace mission’ to help negotiate a ceasefire for the war in Ukraine. Orban may consider himself as one of the few who can speak to both sides – but in reality he has no mandate to do so,” wrote Armida van Rij, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a European think tank. The question remains, however, who will speak out on behalf of peace if not Trump, Putin, and Orban? The answer thus far is nobody.While there are certainly other statesmen besides Trump, Putin, and Orban on the international stage who can make the case for peace, time is running out to hear those critical voices.

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“We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

“Thank you Viktor. There must be PEACE, and quickly. Too many people have died in a war that should never have started!”

• Orban Meets Trump To Talk ‘Peace Mission’ (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has met with GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump as part of the former’s effort to settle the Ukraine conflict. The Hungarian leader, who has repeatedly criticized the West’s approach to the hostilities and called for an immediate ceasefire, traveled to Russia, Ukraine, and China last week to discuss prospects for a peaceful settlement. He later attended NATO’s annual summit in Washington, but did not hold high-level talks with US President Joe Biden. Writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Orban said he visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as part of what he called “peace mission 5.0.” “We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!” the Hungarian Prime Minister noted, posting a photo of him standing next to Trump, with both smiling.

The GOP presidential frontrunner responded to Orban, writing on the Truth Social network: “Thank you Viktor. There must be PEACE, and quickly. Too many people have died in a war that should never have started!” Orban previously hailed Trump as “a man of peace,” under whose watch the US “did not initiate a single war.” The Republican has repeatedly vowed to end the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours if elected. While the details of this plan remain sketchy, last week Politico reported, citing sources, that Trump could strike a deal under which “NATO commits to no further eastward expansion,” specifically into Ukraine and Georgia while holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin “over how much Ukrainian territory Moscow can keep.”

During his visit to Kiev, the Hungarian leader called on Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire with Russia, a proposal the latter rejected. Zelensky also suggested that Orban does not have the clout required to negotiate an end to the conflict, noting that only the US, EU, or China could fill that role. Orban also traveled to Russia and met with Putin in an attempt to find, as he put it, “the shortest way out” of the Ukraine conflict. Numerous media reports suggested that this trip outraged many Western officials. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that Ukraine was right to be concerned by attempts to negotiate peace without its participation. “Whatever adventurism is being undertaken without Ukraine’s consent or support is not something that’s consistent with our policy, the foreign policy of the United States,” he stressed.

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“..The last phone call between Biden and Putin took place in late December 2021..”

• Biden Sees ‘No Reason’ To Talk To Putin (RT)

US President Joe Biden has said he has no reason to talk with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, including about the Ukraine conflict. However, he also said he would not refuse to engage with any world leader. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Biden was asked whether he would still be able to “deal” with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in a few years. “I’m ready to deal with them now,” he replied, noting that he maintains contact with Xi. However, when it comes to the Russian leader, Biden said he had “no good reason to talk to Putin” at the moment. “There’s not much that he is prepared to do in terms of accommodating any change in his behavior,” he added, referring to the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev. “I’m not ready to talk to Putin unless Putin is ready to change his behavior.”

However, Biden then said he was open to engagement with “any leader who wants to talk,” including Putin. He recalled that the last time the pair had a direct conversation, they were discussing an arms control agreement relating to nuclear weapons in space. “That didn’t go very far,” he added. The last phone call between Biden and Putin took place in late December 2021, several weeks before the start of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, which resulted in bilateral relations plummeting to their lowest point since the Cold War.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month that Russia was ready to hold talks with the US but only if such dialogue is “comprehensive” and includes not only arms control issues but also the Ukraine conflict. “It is impossible to take out any individual segments from the general complex of accumulated problems,” he said, acknowledging that both sides need to engage to address mounting problems in the global security architecture. On Thursday, Putin’s name was again mentioned by Biden during a joint event in Washington when he confused Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky for the Russian leader, exacerbating concerns about his mental state, which have been mounting since his disastrous debate performance against GOP rival Donald Trump last month.

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“..unlimited long-range strikes inside Russia is crucial for “having Ukraine on the map” and not allowing Moscow to “attack half of the planet.”

• Zelensky Slams ‘Crazy’ Limits On Russia Strikes (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky on Thursday lashed out at Kiev’s foreign backers for their reluctance to lift the remaining limitations on the use of Western-supplied weapons for long-range strikes inside Russia. Kiev already has the greenlight from several Western states to hit “legitimate” targets inside Russia with their weapons, as well as a concession from Washington to strike beyond Russia’s border near the city of Kharkov. However, Zelensky has been pushing for the strike range to be extended – a prospect Moscow has warned would constitute an escalation of the conflict. Speaking at a press conference at the NATO summit in Washington, Zelensky claimed that allowing Kiev to launch unlimited long-range strikes inside Russia is crucial for “having Ukraine on the map” and not allowing Moscow to “attack half of the planet.”

“If we want to win, if we want to prevail, if we want to save our country and to defend it, we need to lift all the limitations,” Zelensky stated. He cited week’s tragedy at the Okhmatdet children’s hospital in Kiev, which Ukraine has claimed was hit by a Russian missile. Moscow has insisted that the facility was hit by a Ukrainian air-defense missile. “That is a crazy question why we can’t answer and attack these… military bases from where these guided bombs from jets or missiles came, targeted us and killed our children,” Zelensky argued. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Kiev is deliberately using tragedies in its PR campaigns ahead of important international events to demand more support from the West. Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, claimed that Kiev’s Western supporters saw the hospital tragedy as a “perfect gift” to justify escalation of the conflict.

US President Joe Biden on Thursday reaffirmed the limits on how Ukraine can use American-supplied weapons, arguing that it “wouldn’t make sense” to allow Zelensky to strike deep inside Russia.“We have allowed Zelensky to use American weapons in the near border regions of Russia. If he had the opportunity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense? No, it wouldn’t,” Biden said at a press briefing in Washington. The UK, which has a ban on using its long-range Storm Shadow missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia, has also apparently distanced itself from earlier statements by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The premier on Wednesday signaled he was loosening restrictions on how the missiles are used, saying “it is for Ukraine to decide how to deploy [them].” However, according to a report by The Telegraph citing Downing Street, UK government policy “had not changed” regarding the deployment of the long-range missiles, and the limitations remain in place.

Lavrov

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“..the Ukrainian leader announced that he had “learned about the permission to use Storm Shadow missiles against military targets in Russian territory.”

• UK Disputes Zelensky’s Long-range Strikes Claim – Telegraph (RT)

Claims by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky that the UK has cleared him to order attacks deep inside Russia with British-supplied weapons are not true, according to The Telegraph. After a meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday, the Ukrainian leader announced that he had “learned about the permission to use Storm Shadow missiles against military targets in Russian territory.” The two officials “had the opportunity to discuss the practical implementation of this decision” he added. The Telegraph reported on Thursday that the situation was “more nuanced,” according to a senior defense source. In fact, there has been no policy change regarding the weapons after the new Labour government came to power, the British newspaper explained.

The Ukrainian use of air-launched long-range cruise missiles produced jointly by the UK and France was the source of a diplomatic spat in May, when then-Foreign Secretary David Cameron expressed sympathy for Kiev’s desire to use them outside of what London recognizes as Ukrainian territory. Ukraine “has the right to defend itself,” he said at the time, which many observers as well as the Russian government interpreted as a permission to deliver such strikes. British officials later indicated that certain limitations remained in place for Storm Shadow systems. Starmer this week said it was “up for Ukraine to decide how to deploy” the missiles, prompting the Kremlin to call his remarks “irresponsible and escalatory.”

Sources told The Telegraph that Zelensky would have to “seek assurances elsewhere” before he could fire British weapons deep inside Russia. Three nations – presumably Ukraine, the UK, and France – would have to sign off on such attacks, and it was not a done deal that Kiev would get its way, the report suggested. A senior defense official told the newspaper: “It’s not going to happen.” Zelensky urged Western backers, particularly the US, to lift all limitations on how Kiev can use their arms, during this week’s NATO summit in Washington DC. US President Joe Biden indicated that there will be no policy change. “If he had the capacity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense?” Biden said of Zelensky at a joint press conference on Wednesday. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that should Western arms be used to strike targets deep inside Russia, Moscow could provide similar military capabilities to parties hostile to the US and its allies elsewhere in the world.

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About as much sense as strikes on the White House.

• Ukrainian Strikes On Kremlin Would ‘Make No Sense’ – Biden (RT)

The US sees no reason to allow Ukrainian strikes deeper inside Russian territory despite pleas from Kiev for permission to launch such attacks, President Joe Biden has said. Washington approved Ukrainian cross-border attacks using US-supplied weapons against Russian targets in late May, arguing that the shift in policy would help repel Moscow’s offensive in the border Kharkov Region. Biden said at the time that the US was permitting strikes “only in proximity to the border [with Russia] when [Russian weapons] are being used on the other side of the border to attack specific targets in Ukraine.” Russia launched its offensive in Kharkov Region in a bid to establish a so-called “cordon sanitaire” to shield its border areas from recurring Ukrainian attacks targeting civilians.

According to the Washington Post, Ukraine is allowed to strike some 100km inside Russian territory as recognized by the West, with officials in Kiev complaining that they were not authorized to attack some key airfields. Pentagon officials later also confirmed that Ukraine was allowed to strike targets beyond Kharkov Region. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, however, has insisted that all restrictions be lifted, calling it “crazy” that Kiev was being prevented from retaliating in response to some Russian strikes. Speaking at a press conference in Washington, DC on Thursday, Biden signaled that the US had no plans to loosen restrictions further.

“We’ve allowed Zelensky to use American weapons in the near term and the near abroad into Russia… If he had the capacity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense? It wouldn’t.” He added that Kiev and the West should ask itself “What’s the best use of the weaponry [Zelensky] has and the weaponry we’re getting to him?” President Vladimir Putin has said Ukrainian attacks inside Russian territory using Western-supplied weapons are “close to aggression,” while warning of an asymmetrical response.

Meanwhile, the US has essentially given Kiev carte blanche to use American-made weapons in attacks on Russian territories claimed by Ukraine. In late June, Moscow accused Kiev of launching a strike using long-range ATACMS missiles on Crimea, which killed four civilians and injured more than 150 on a beach in Sevastopol. Russia claimed that Washington was complicit in the attack, saying it had enabled a “premeditated terrorist missile attack.” Commenting on the tragedy, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller dismissed the accusations as “ridiculous.” He said that, while the US “regret[s] any civilian loss of life in this war,” it supplies Kiev with weapons “so it can defend its sovereign territory against armed aggression.”

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“Indeed, no issue has been resolved in favor of Ukraine. That’s the reality of NATO today..”

• Scott Ritter: Ukraine an ‘Open Target for Russia to Take Apart’ (Sp.)

No matter how many and what kind of air defense systems NATO plans to donate to the Kiev regime, Russia will continue to pursue its military objectives while grinding through those weapons, underscored Scott Ritter. Fueling the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine will leave the West facing depleted stocks of its own air defense systems. Russia is able to wipe out the military equipment provided to the Kiev regime, especially air defense, at a rate “far greater than the West can even replenish its own stocks,” former US marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik. “This is a losing equation. And without air defense, Ukraine is literally an open target for Russia to take apart as it best sees fit,” said Ritter. On the opening day of the recent NATO summit in Washington, US President Joe Biden pledged to provide Ukraine with five new strategic air defense systems and dozens of smaller, strategic anti-air batteries over the coming year.

In remarks delivered at the opening of the summit, Biden said that to donate the Patriot systems, the US would join forces with Germany, Romania, Italy, and the Netherlands. The announcement came two days after a missile strike hit a children’s hospital in Kiev, with the Zelensky-led neo-Nazi regime and its Western allies groundlessly accusing Russia of targeting the building. Indeed, the well-timed announcement from Washington comes as Ukraine seems to have “a particular desire” for the Patriot air defense system, noted Ritter, but “it’ll take whatever it can get.” According to the ex-marine intel officer, even after Ukraine gets the promised air defenses, it will face a big problem reconstructing an integrated air defense umbrella.

Back when Ukraine was initially provided with the NATO air defense systems such as the Patriots, NASAMs, IRIS-T, French (SAMP/T) Mamba – they had a Soviet era air defense umbrella that consisted primarily of the S-300 air defense system, the Buk, others, he explained. However, in the months of the proxy conflict this air defense umbrella became nonexistent, underscored Ritter, adding: “And when Ukraine brings in their air defense systems, they have to do so in a very makeshift, haphazard manner. They aren’t able to use them the way they were designed. This requires trickery, you know, turning on and off radars, firing missiles before radar lock is taking place. It’s a very inefficient way to use air defense systems. And because Russia is able to put an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance umbrella over Ukraine, anytime Ukraine uses air defense, it’s detected.”

Since Russia’s Armed Forces are able to in very short order locate and destroy the systems, Kiev is in “one of these vicious cycles where there simply isn’t enough weapon systems available to allow Ukraine to build the air defense umbrella it needs,” remarked the expert. “This is one of the detrimental consequences of the attritional warfare that’s being waged today in Ukraine… And it’s one of the issues that this NATO summit has not been able to resolve in favor of Ukraine. Indeed, no issue has been resolved in favor of Ukraine. That’s the reality of NATO today,” concluded Scott Ritter.

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“If anything Russia is acting more of a leader here and thus it may strengthen Russia’s hand..”

• NATO’s Obsession Boosts Russia’s Role as Global Leader – Rasmussen (Sp.)

The latest NATO joint declaration condemning Russia appears to be backfiring and instead establishing Moscow more than ever as the leader of the global resistance against US hegemony, retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and political consultant Earl Rasmussen, told Sputnik. “If anything Russia is acting more of a leader here and thus it may strengthen Russia’s hand,” former vice president of the Eurasia Foundation Rasmussen said. Russia was the central focus of the 32-nation Alliance declaration that was issued on Wednesday. The declaration stated that Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to the Allies’ security, and expressed profound concern over the deepening strategic partnership between Russia and China, which aims to undermine and reshape the rules-based international order. However, despite its hostile tone towards Russia and China, Rasmussen said he doubted the NATO summit had achieved any concrete results.

“I think in general the summit will accomplish very little. It will act as a cheerleader/pep-talk. Very little seems to have been accomplished thus far, with few exceptions.” he said. The declaration document itself showed a provocative mood towards Russia and China, Rasmussen observed.”It discusses expansion in Europe as well as stronger coordination in Asia and the Middle East in addition to funding contributions and weapon system modernization,” he added. NATO leaders in their declaration also displayed a clearly stated objective to increase the number of joint military exercises and to establish a security presence along their eastern borders with Russia, Rasmussen noted. The growing tensions expressed at the summit looked likely to endure, Rasmussen said, adding that China and Russia should react with patience but determination against the growing hostility they faced from the West.

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“European male ethnicities are so oppressed by their own governments and by immigrant-invaders favored by European governments, that the defense ministers of Europe are women. What does a white ethnic European male have to fight for?”

• Why Is the West Preparing for War? (Paul Craig Roberts)

One result of the just concluded NATO Summit is Germany’s decision to host US intermediate-range missiles. Prior to 2019 when Washington cancelled the INF Treaty, the treaty prevented such deployment. The INF Treaty was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev on December 8,1987, and the treaty was ratified on June 1, 1988. The treaty was part and parcel of ending the cold war. Reagan called the treaty a “step toward a safer world.” “The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty required the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate and permanently forswear all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. The treaty marked the first time the superpowers had agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals, eliminate an entire category of nuclear weapons, and employ extensive on-site inspections for verification. As a result of the INF Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union destroyed a total of 2,692 short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles by the treaty’s implementation deadline of June 1, 1991.”

Blaming Russia the Trump administration pulled out of the treaty. The consequence was to kill the nuclear disarmament that the INF Treaty began and to renew the arms race. If I had to bet I would say Washington’s withdrawal was a consequence of the US nuclear industry needing the source of profits that the arms race provided and the neoconservatives’ determination to revive US hegemony through the buildup of force. If Russia was truly out of compliance, Trump’s focus should have been to work to bring Russia into compliance, not terminate the treaty. The efforts of several American presidents and Soviet leaders in the 20th century to defuse tensions and to build trust were squandered by Washington in the 21st century. Regardless, what is clear is that Washington is pushing both Europe and Russia into preparing for war, and is itself preparing.

The US Senate has joined the House of Representatives in creating a draft registration system from which to field a conscripted army. The Senate’s version includes women in the draft, as equal treatment requires. Clearly, Washington sees the need for a larger army than a volunteer army can provide. Now that the Biden regime is supplying F-16s and long-range missiles to Ukraine, weapon systems that Biden said would never be given to the Ukrainians, along with targeting information, clearly Washington’s intent is to further widen the war by carrying it deep into civilian areas of Russia. Simultaneously, Washington is using its NGOs in Georgia to orchestrate a color revolution there in order to open a second front against Russia. Putin’s slow forever war in Ukraine has played directly into Washington’s hands.

China is the main focus of Washington’s strategy of isolating Russia. At the recent NATO Summit China was accused of being a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. By allegedly supplying armaments to Russia, China is accused of challenging “our interests, security and values.” I would have expected a different Chinese reply than was made. China should have said to Washington/NATO: “You started the conflict and your weapons systems and French troops are supporting and widening the conflict. You have blocked all efforts to end the conflict; yet you dare accuse us of responsibility for it.” Instead, the Chinese disavowed supplying Russia with any military support. This is an extremely weak response. It suggests that all the Russian-Chinese assurance of a “no-limits partnership” is just words. An appropriate response from China would have been: “We are considering sending 500,000 of our best soldiers to serve under Russian command in Ukraine and have called up another million men for military training.

A response such as this is what would end the conflict before the dumbshit hegemonic West puts us all in a war of annihilation. In recorded history one can find very few competent civilian and military leaders. Alexander the Great, Constantine, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, the Duke of Marlborough, Robert E. Lee. No such men exist today, but the weapons are far more terrible. Moreover, modern war targets civilians and civilian infrastructure, as the Israelis are doing in Gaza. The goal is less to defeat an opposing army than it is to foreclose an opponent’s ability to conduct war. In Europe a warrior class no longer exists. European male ethnicities are so oppressed by their own governments and by immigrant-invaders favored by European governments, that the defense ministers of Europe are women. What does a white ethnic European male have to fight for?

In the US the fighting force has always come from the southern states. But what have these traditional Americans, these military families, witnessed? They have seen all southern names struck from military bases. They have experienced their promotions on hold while homosexuals, black females, and transgendered people confused about their own gender are promoted. Taking orders from such people is not a southern man’s idea of the military. So recruitment has collapsed. There are so few people willing to fight for America that Congress entertains proposals to enroll immigrant-invaders, paid with citizenship for fighting for American hegemony. America has reached the point that Rome reached. Once the Roman military was German, the Germans became the emperors. The Germans did a fairly decent job compared to the decadent Romans, but the Empire was exhausted by its internal conflicts and collapsed. Perhaps it is the collapse of the West that Putin and XI are banking on. Why bother to fight people busy destroying themselves.

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“NATO’s aim is to regain control of Russian resources and finances as the West enjoyed in the 1990s, when it asset-stripped formerly state-owned industries, enriching themselves and a new class of oligarchs while impoverishing the Russian people. Putin is now standing in their way.”

• NATO Summit: Collectively Losing Their Mind (Lauria)

On March 7, 2022, two weeks after Moscow entered the civil war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS News from Moldova that the U.S. would give Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. Within days the Pentagon shot down the idea. Then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also supported the Polish planes scheme, but the Pentagon rejected it because it “could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO,” according to then Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. But yesterday Blinken told a public policy forum at the NATO summit in Washington: “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.”

It is not quite NATO declaring a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which was dismissed by President Joe Biden in March 2022 because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.” “President Biden’s been clear that … if you establish a no-fly zone, certainly in order to enforce that no-fly zone, you’ll have to engage Russian aircraft. And again, that would put us at war with Russia,” added Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the time. Though not declaring a no-fly zone, these are still NATO fighter jets leaving from NATO countries to operate with Ukrainian pilots against Russian aircraft in Ukrainian airspace. More dangerously, NATO is permitting Ukraine to fly the F-16s to attack inside Russian territory. So what changed since March 2022 to allow the U.S. and NATO to risk, in the previous words of Biden, “World War III?”

What’s changed is that back then the White House and the Pentagon still thought the strategy of economic and information warfare plus a proxy ground war would defeat Russia in Ukraine, and ultimately bring down Vladimir Putin in Moscow. But for more than a year now it’s been evident that the U.S. — and NATO — have lost the economic and information war, as well as the proxy fighting on the ground in Ukraine. One year into the war, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a dinner in February 2023 that he had to face facts: Ukraine would lose the war and should negotiate a settlement with Moscow. The Wall Street Journal quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.” Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported.

U.S.-led NATO could not launch its economic, information and proxy war against Russia without cause. That cause would be Russia invading Ukraine to defend ethnic Russians in a civil war that had raged since 2014, sparked when the U.S. helped to overthrow the democratically-elected government that year. The economic war, intended to spur Russians to overthrow their government, has failed spectacularly. The ruble did not collapse despite sanctions on the Russian central bank. Nor has the economy. Instead an alternative economic, commercial and financial system that excludes the West has arisen with China, India and Russia in the lead, and most of Asia, Africa and Latin America taking part in what appears to be the final chapter of Western colonialism. The sanctions instead backfired on the West, especially in Europe. The information war has failed across the world. Only the United States and Europe, which consider itself “the world,” believe their own “information.”

The proxy war is being lost on the ground, though more than $100 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine has created a bloodbath. There will either be a negotiated settlement in which Ukraine loses territory; a total Russian victory; or potentially the final war. The U.S. pushed Russia to the brink to provoke its intervention. It began with a 30-year NATO expansion eastward with NATO exercises on Russia’s borders while calling for Ukraine to become a member, a call reiterated at the summit yesterday. In December 2021 the West rejected Russian treaty proposals to roll back NATO troop deployments and missile installations in Eastern Europe, creating a new security architecture in Europe. NATO’s aim is to regain control of Russian resources and finances as the West enjoyed in the 1990s, when it asset-stripped formerly state-owned industries, enriching themselves and a new class of oligarchs while impoverishing the Russian people. Putin is now standing in their way.

Read more …

“In her presentation for the UN, Bell omitted the medical evidence. Her military expert went unnamed, his evidence unexamined. This is called hearsay in a British or American court..”

• The Warhead Evidence, Medical And Autopsy Reports Are Missing (Helmer)

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, the Okhmatdet hospital had been struck by a US-made, Norway-supplied NASAMS air defence missile, fired by a Ukrainian battery attempting to protect the Artyom (Artem) plant. “Many eyewitnesses and other sources have already confirmed that a Western-made NASAMS surface-to-air missile hit a building of the Okhmatdet Hospital for Children in Kiev. Officials on Bankovaya Street [Zelensky regime headquarters] immediately started blaming Russia for deliberately killing children. However, no one said that the Artyom Plant is located next to the affected clinic, and that Defense Ministry buildings and military warehouses are also located next door. Certainly, no one said that pro-Bandera supporters are deliberately deploying air defence systems in residential areas, using civilians as a human shield.

The Kiev junta has been using purely civilian enterprises for military purposes for a long time, either using them to assemble and repair military equipment or to store Western-made weapons and military equipment.” The Russian representative at the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, currently rotational president of the UN Security Council, told a special council session that the strike on the hospital had been a Ukrainian one, not a Russian one. He added: “The X-101 missile would have done a lot more damage to the building it hit [Min 6:52]…if it had been a Russian missile, there would have been nothing left of the building and the children and most of the adults would have been killed rather than wounded [Min 8:20]” Like Zakharova, Nebenzya identified military industrial targets. The two Russian officials have not identified the electric war targets.

They are not lying; they are telling less than the full truth. When that is understood from all the available evidence, there is no mens rea. No conviction in a western court of law. The prosecution’s case is dismissed. In war, especially in propaganda war, there is no such thing as independence. United Nations (UN) organizations from the UN Secretary-General and his office down the UN line, are not independent. In the current war they have taken the US-NATO side. In a briefing by Danielle Bell, a UN official in Kiev on Tuesday, the day after the air raid, she claimed “Analysis of the video footage and assessment made at the incident site indicates a high likelihood that the children’s hospital suffered a direct hit rather than receiving damages due to an intercepted weapons system. Of course, as was said earlier, this must be investigated. At the time of the attack, 670 child patients, mainly inpatients, were there together with more than a thousand medical staff.”

Bell, a Canadian national who has served beside US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, did not say what she meant by “direct hit” and did not distinguish between warhead detonation, shrapnel wounds, and blast impacts. When prompted for more evidence, Bell said: “We haven’t determined.” In a British or American courtroom, that is the end of proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The defence lawyer would then announce to judge and jury the prosecution has failed and move for summary dismissal. But the UN official announced differently, conclusively: “We’ve assessed the factors that suggest the likelihood that it was a direct hit of a KH-101 [X-101 is the Cyrillic acronym translated into English] missile launched by the Russian Federation. The factors suggesting that it was a direct hit are based on video footage, which shows the technical specification of the type of weapon that was used. It shows the weapon directly impacting the hospital rather than being intercepted in the air. And thirdly, my military, our military expert, visited the site yesterday and observed damages at the site that were consistent with a direct hit.”

To measure “consistent with a direct hit” in a homicide prosecution requires clinical and autopsy evidence of the cause of death or injury to individuals. In the Kiev hospital case, to date there is no evidence of fragmentation metal or cluster elements from the X-101 warhead causing either death or injury in the hospital. No comparison has been published openly by the Ukrainians of X-101 warhead fragmentation and NASAMS warhead fragmentation. The warhead payload of the X-101 has been reported at 400 kg of high explosive fragmentation of metal elements. The warhead of the NASAMS missile is 20 kg of explosive.

Physical wounding by flying glass or collapsing structures is consistent with blast from outside the hospital. Wounds by warhead shrapnel identified in the bodies of the casualties by X-ray or CT and MRI scans can be compared for the source of the metal to distinguish between the X-101 and the NASAMS. This has not been done by the Ukrainian side. Without such evidence – protected by chain of custody to prevent tampering, substitutions of metal, and fakery – the prosecution fails. In her presentation for the UN, Bell omitted the medical evidence. Her military expert went unnamed, his evidence unexamined. This is called hearsay in a British or American court. For proof of actus reus, the judge will direct the jury that without circumstantial corroboration and cross-examination, the expert’s testimony has next to no evidential value in a homicide prosecution.

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“..and direct a corporate looting operation of Russia’s oil and mineral riches. Ukraine was the doorway they had to go through to get that done.”

• The Cover Your Ass Olympics (Kunstler)

You can’t deny that “Joe Biden” did his goodest last night facing down a half-dozen pre-selected reporters representing blob-adjacent news orgs such as Reuters and NPR at the post-NATO meetup damage-control event billed as a “news conference.” Only a week after he declared himself to be the “first black woman vice-president,” he pivoted to correct the record, telling the DC press corps that he’d “picked Vice-president Trump to be vice-president. . .” and everyone in the room saw that they were back in that mortifying scene in The Caine Mutiny when the confused and incompetent Captain Queeg reaches for the ball bearings in his pocket. At the end of the harrowing hour, he minced his way offstage, leaving his Party of Chaos evermore sore perplexed as to how they might lever this burnt-out old hack out of the nomination they foolishly secured for him months ago.

It ain’t gonna be easy, as “JB” repeatedly insisted he had no intention of stepping aside, despite the forces mustering against him in Congress, the media, and Hollywood. Even CNN is turning on him. Meanwhile, the #VeepTrump clip went viral on social media. So much for damage control. You understand, don’t you, what a fiasco the 75th Anniversary DC NATO meetup itself was? Everyone in the room, including the key prime ministers and presidents, could sense how flimsy the alliance now appears, as led by our maundering near-zombie president. Like “Joe Biden,” NATO’s raison d’être has been exposed as badly out-of-date and dangerously unhinged. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg kicked things off declaring that “Ukraine is on an ‘irreversible’ path to NATO.” This controverts what everybody in NATO knows is Mr. Putin’s clearest red line, and is therefore either a jape or a bit of recklessly provocative idiocy.

The truth of the matter is this: following its transition out of the failed Soviet experiment thirty years ago, Russia was never a threat to its European neighbors. All the talk of Vladimir Putin seeking to reassemble the old USSR empire was knowingly false, as is the chatter now about Russia looking to invade Europe. What Russia actually sought was to be regarded, once again, as a normal European nation able to conduct normal business with the rest of Europe. The USA wouldn’t allow it. Exactly why remains partially mysterious. Surely, post-1991, it was in the interest of US military contractors to maintain their Cold War revenue streams. To do that, a foreign hobgoblin had to be invoked — and perhaps China was not the best candidate, since it had begun manufacturing everything on sale in the Walmart — so Russia, with practically no export economy, was cast in that role.

And the politicians, too, surely liked creaming off their share of that military-industrial revenue stream, so they went along policy-wise, with figures like John McCain and Lindsay Graham leading the charge. But the US intel blob and State Department had darker motives, driven by an animus that has slowly revealed itself to be insane — just as the Democratic Party has turned obviously insane, adopting a playbook that could have been written by Franz Kafka. Being likewise insane, the intel blob and the neocons at State harbored an unappeasable hatred toward Russia that, since the Soviet collapse, allowed no accommodation and gelled into a naked avarice for seizing the resources of Russia with a long-term plan to subvert the Russian state, break it up the way they broke up Serbia in the 1990s, and direct a corporate looting operation of Russia’s oil and mineral riches. Ukraine was the doorway they had to go through to get that done.

Read more …

Too much free speech? What does the 1st Amendment say about that?

• “The First Amendment is Out of Control” (Turley)

As I have laid out in testimony before Congress, Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over “critical infrastructure” to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” The resulting censorship efforts included combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” So, you can cite true facts but still be censored for misleading others. The media has been running an unrelenting line of anti-free speech columns. Recently, the New York Times ran a column by former Biden official and Columbia University law professor Tim Wu describing how the First Amendment was “out of control” in protecting too much speech. Wu insists that the First Amendment is now “beginning to threaten many of the essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.” He bizarrely claims that the First Amendment “now mostly protects corporate interests.”

So free speech not only threatens your life, your job, and your privacy, but serves corporate masters. Ready to sign your rights away? Wait, there is more. There is a movement afoot to rewrite the First Amendment through an amendment. George Washington University Law School Professor Mary Anne Franks believes that the First Amendment is “aggressively individualistic” and needs to be rewritten to “redo” the work of the Framers. Her new amendment suggestion replaces the clear statement in favor of a convoluted, ambiguous statement of free speech that will be “subject to responsibility for abuses.” It then adds that “all conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.” Franks has also dismissed objections to the censorship on social media and insisted that “the Internet model of free speech is little more than cacophony, where the loudest, most provocative, or most unlikeable voice dominates . . . If we want to protect free speech, we should not only resist the attempt to remake college campuses in the image of the Internet but consider the benefits of remaking the Internet in the image of the university.”

Franks is certainly correct that those “unlikeable voices” are rarely heard in academia today. As discussed in my book, faculties have largely purged conservative, Republican, libertarian, and dissenting professors. The discussion on most campuses now runs from the left to far left without that pesky “cacophony” of opposing viewpoints. Experts at leading universities were fired or stripped of positions for questioning COVID claims. Conservative faculty have been hounded from schools and conservative sites have been targeted by government-funded programs. Thousands have been banned from social media. What is particularly maddening for many in the free speech community is how the left has responded to opposition to censorship and blacklisting. Some are claiming to be victims by those who criticize their work to target individuals and groups as disinformation.

Others, like comedian Jon Stewart mock those who object to the erosion of free speech by noting that conservatives are making these objections on television or online. So, according to Stewart, how can there be a problem if you are able to still object? The suggestion is that there can be no threat to free speech unless people are completely silenced. Stewart insists that “we are surrounded by and inundated with more speech than has ever existed in the history of communication.” In other words, because people can still speak, the well-documented systems of censorship and blacklisting must not be so bad. It is not clear what Stewart would accept as sufficient censorship. In universities, polls show both faculty and students afraid to speak openly. The government has funded a host of programs to pressure the source of revenue of conservative sites and to target dissenting voices.

Yet, because we are raising objections to these trends, Stewart laughs at the very notion that free speech is under fire. After all, he is doing just fine. What appears to be a punchline to Stewart is a bit more serious for others who have their livelihoods threatened by the anti-free speech movement. Stewart has the benefit of being a liberal comedian on a liberal network. Try being a conservative comedian today getting air time on most cable outlets or college campuses. Like so many academics, everything seems just fine to them. With the purging of opposition viewpoints, those who remain have little to complain about. The effort to assure citizens that “there is nothing to see here” is belied by a massive censorship system described by one federal court as “Orwellian.” Conservatives face cancel campaigns and blacklisting in academic and media forums.

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“Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official, highlighted this to suggest the EU’s real motivation is to “use the DSA to force X to restaff the censorship squad fired when Elon took over.”

• EU Offered X Secret Censorship Deal – Musk (RT)

X (formerly Twitter) is facing persecution by the European Union because it rejected Brussels’ demand to secretly censor opinions on the platform, its owner Elon Musk has revealed. The EU announced on Friday that it considered X in violation of its Digital Services Act (DSA) and intended to levy massive fines against the company unless it changed its practices. “The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us,” Musk wrote in response. “The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not.” “We look forward to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth,” he added. Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, after voicing displeasure over widespread censorship on the social media platform. He has since unbanned most blocked accounts, including that of former President Donald Trump.

When Musk announced “the bird is freed,” one of the responses came from Thierry Breton, the EU Commissioner for Internal Market. “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” Breton said, with a reference to the DSA. On Friday, Breton explained the European Commission’s move against Musk by arguing that X violates the EU’s “transparency requirements” by denying access to “researchers,” among other things. “Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information. Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA,” Breton said. According to the Commission, allowing anyone to obtain verification in exchange for a subscription fee “negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with.”

The Commission also objected that X does not maintain “a searchable and reliable advertisement repository” that would “allow for the required supervision and research into emerging risks.” What most bothered the EU body was that X does not allow scraping its public data by “researchers” or grant access to its application programming interface (API), as DSA mandates. Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official, highlighted this to suggest the EU’s real motivation is to “use the DSA to force X to restaff the censorship squad fired when Elon took over.” He further alleged that people who present themselves as researchers are actually “censorship activities & political operatives.” Musk reposted Benz’s analysis with just one word of comment: “Exactly.” X is now expected to respond to the Commission in writing. If the EU upholds Breton’s preliminary findings, X could be fined “up to 6% of the total worldwide annual turnover” and ordered to address its “breach” under “enhanced supervision,” the body said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Magnetics

 

 

France fags

 

 

Doggo dive
https://twitter.com/i/status/1811515980280926540

 

 

Honey

 

 

 

 

Handstand
https://twitter.com/i/status/1811744486516461940

 

 

Kitty

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 12 2024

Jul 122024
 
 July 12, 2024  Posted by at 9:18 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  66 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The three dancers 1925

 

• Biden Will ‘Never Recover’ And Must Drop Out – Aides to NBC (RT)
• Biden Mixes Up Harris & Trump, Zelensky & Putin (Sp.)
• Comer Subpoenas Top Biden Handlers To Find Out Who’s Running The Country (ZH)
• NATO More Nervous About Biden Than Trump – Politico (RT)
• West Sees Zelensky As Cash Cow, to Keep Him in Power ‘For Now’ – Russia (Sp.)
• NATO Declaration Is Neoconservative Recommitment to US Hegemony – Sachs (Sp.)
• Either NATO or Ukraine -or Both- Must Go – Medvedev (RT)
• We are NATO. And We’re Comin’ To Get Ya (Pepe Escobar)
• Poland Preparing Military For Full-Scale Conflict, Army Chief Says (ZH)
• NATO Countries Closest to Russia Up Defense Spending (ET)
• Musk Announces X To Sue Those Behind Advertising Censorship Cartel (ZH)
• AOC Files Articles Of Impeachment Against Justices Alito, Thomas (Fox)
• LinkedIn, Google Openly Censor Conservatives – Again (Sellers)
• Can the West Survive Democracy? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• ‘My Life’s Work Melting Before My Eyes’ (Scott Ritter)

 

 

 

 

Joe VP
https://twitter.com/i/status/1811002365232755172

 

 

Obama report

 

 

HiMARS

 

 

Tesla

 

 

Eva

 

 

Elon drones

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..The last full cabinet meeting was on October 2 last year..”

• Biden Will ‘Never Recover’ And Must Drop Out – Aides to NBC (RT)

US President Joe Biden has no way to recover from the debate disaster and needs to drop out of the race, multiple campaign aides have told NBC News. The 81-year-old Democrat has been under increasing public pressure from the media, senior party members, donors, and celebrity sympathizers to step down after a catastrophic performance in the June 27 debate with Republican challenger Donald Trump. “No one is denying that the debate was a setback,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a memo to staff, leaked to NBC on Thursday. “But Joe Biden and this campaign have made it through setbacks before.” Others were more blunt. “He needs to drop out,” one Biden campaign official told NBC, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“He will never recover from this.” “No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path,” said a second campaign aide. Another campaign worker described Biden’s chances of winning the November election as “zero.” Multiple aides have raised concerns that the president’s performance might spill over to down-ballot races, costing Democrats seats in Congress. Biden called into a friendly MSNBC show on Monday and insisted he was “not going anywhere” and that he would be the party’s nominee. However, NBC’s sources said that it was a “widespread” feeling in both the campaign and the party that the Democrats should nominate someone else, such as Vice President Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, CNN has revealed that Biden’s aides have been scripting and orchestrating cabinet meetings in a sort of a stage production.

The last full cabinet meeting was on October 2 last year, according to the outlet. The White House responded by providing a statement from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who called the way the meetings have been run “standard practice for any administration.” CNN sources, however, said that this was definitely not the case under President Barack Obama, when Biden was his vice president. Last week, it was revealed that a Parkinson’s Disease expert has visited the White House at least eight times over the past year. If anyone dares question the president’s health or fitness, however, Biden’s aides “beat the s**t out of” them and insist they “stay on message,” a top Democrat close to Biden’s inner circle told CNN.

Read more …

No-one tells him anything apparently.

• Biden Mixes Up Harris & Trump, Zelensky & Putin (Sp.)

President Joe Biden said during a press conference after the NATO summit that he would take a neurological exam if his doctors recommended it but so far he has not received such suggestions from his medical team. “If they think I should have a neurological exam again, I’ll do it, [but] no one’s suggesting that to me now,” Biden said on Thursday. Earlier in the press conference, Biden referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as former US President, and his likely opponent, Donald Trump. “I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president [inaudible] if I think she’s not qualified to be president,” Biden said. When asked how he would respond to the gaffe, which former President Donald Trump had already posted about on social media, Biden would only reply “listen to him [Trump].”

Earlier in the day at a NATO event, Biden similarly mixed up Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “And now I want to hand it over to the President of Ukraine who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin,” Biden said to the confusion of the crowd. Biden has been facing calls to end his reelection campaign, including by members of his own party, after an embarrassing performance during a televised debate with Trump. Biden has since been insistent that he will remain in the race, despite a series of high-profile gaffes and disastrous interviews in the weeks since the debate. The press conference was Biden’s first in 2024. He said he will not leave the race unless his team tells him “There’s no way you can win,” but claimed “No one’s saying that. No poll says that.”

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“Key White House staff must come before our committee so we can provide the transparency and accountability that Americans deserve..”

• Comer Subpoenas Top Biden Handlers To Find Out Who’s Running The Country (ZH)

The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed three top White House aides on Wednesday, and has demanded that they sit for depositions concerning President Joe Biden’s health – and who’s actually running the country. As Axios reports, Oversight chair James Comer (R-KY) subpoenaed First Lady Jill Biden’s top aide Anthony Bernal, deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, and senior adviser Ashley Williams, who the outlet described as “low-profile but very influential” inside the White House. According to Wednesday letters, Comer cites Bernal and Tomasini’s access to the first family’s residence – which White House residence staff found ‘unusual,’ as ‘political staffers often don’t have such access.’

According to one former Biden aide, these three employees – Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, and Ashley Williams – have created “a protective bubble around” President Biden and he is “staffed so closely that he’s lost all independence.” -House Oversight Committee Comer also writes that the committee is “concerned” that each official is “one of several White House staffers who have taken it upon themselves to run the country while the President cannot.” In his letter to Bernal — whose influence extends well beyond the first lady’s office — Comer wrote: The “Committee seeks to understand the extent of Mr. Bernal’s influence over the President and his knowledge of whether the President is personally discharging the duties of his office.” -Axios

Tomasini, a close friend of the Biden family, maintained close relations with Hunter throughout the Obama administration – sometimes referring to him as her “brother,” and often ending emails with “LY” (Love You), according to emails dating from 2010 to 2016. “The White House has shielded three key aides from testifying about President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and now we’ve learned through reporting these same aides are also seeking to cover up President Biden’s declining cognitive state inside the White House. President Biden is clearly unfit for office, yet his staff are trying to hide the truth from the American people. Key White House staff must come before our committee so we can provide the transparency and accountability that Americans deserve,” said Comer in a statement.

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“..you’re more stressed about whether he will go off script than being excited to listen to the leader of the free world..”

• NATO More Nervous About Biden Than Trump – Politico (RT)

The frail state of US President Joe Biden seems to have worried NATO officials at the key Washington summit far more than how the bloc could be drastically changed if Republican frontrunner Donald Trump retakes the White House, Politico reported on Thursday, citing sources. Long-running concerns about the 81-year-old president’s mental state were exacerbated by his shaky debate performance against Trump two weeks ago. Numerous media outlets have described Biden – who often confused words and failed to finish sentences – as “fumbling” and “incoherent.” The debate disaster reportedly left some Democrats scrambling to find a replacement for him, although Biden himself has categorically stated he had no plans to drop out of the race.

Biden is also taking part in the key NATO summit in Washington this week. According to Politico, several European nations have been “alarmed” by the president’s apparent decline and increasingly concerned by or even resigned to the fact that he could lose the November election to Trump, who harbors much more “hostile” feelings towards NATO. Some NATO officials were upset that concerns about Biden had distracted the public from what was supposed to be a celebratory summit, according to the report. “It’s a very weird feeling to be in Europe listening to the president of the United States, and you’re more stressed about whether he will go off script than being excited to listen to the leader of the free world,” one Western official told the magazine. A Politico source noted that “everyone’s focusing on Biden’s appearance” rather than on Trump’s statements about NATO, recalling that the GOP candidate is not much younger than his rival. “We would prefer a more stable situation in the US,” the official added.

While Biden has championed NATO as “the bulwark of global security,” Trump has been much more critical of the bloc. The ex-president has repeatedly blasted NATO allies for failing to pay what he considers a “fair share” of common defense spending. In February, Trump claimed to have told fellow Western leaders that, unless they invest more in defense, when he was in office he “would encourage” the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want.” This prompted rebukes from both the Biden administration and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Earlier this month, Politico also reported that Trump was considering a deal with Russia not to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia if he is reelected.

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“..Washington and Brussels would prefer Zelensky to remain in power, as lucrative war profiteering schemes are tied to him. Zelensky’s opponents are advised to exercise restraint “for the time being.”

• West Sees Zelensky As Cash Cow, to Keep Him in Power ‘For Now’ – Russia (Sp.)

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has released information obtained from Russian covert operatives, shedding light on the direct involvement of the collective West in the proxy conflict in Ukraine. According to the declassified information, the US State Department and the European External Action Service are worried about the increasing distrust among Ukrainians towards the state institutions of the Kiev regime, as well as towards Volodymyr Zelensky’s rule, which they consider illegitimate. Despite this, Washington and Brussels would prefer Zelensky to remain in power, as lucrative war profiteering schemes are tied to him. Zelensky’s opponents are advised to exercise restraint “for the time being.”

The declassified information also unveils the search for an alternative to Zelensky that is currently underway, with ongoing contacts being maintained with key figures including ex-president Petro Poroshenko (leader of the European Solidarity party), Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko, former Ukrainian commander-in-chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, and Ukrainian aide Andriy Yermak. In a worst-case scenario, Zelensky may be made the ‘fall guy’ and replaced with one of these potential substitutes. According to the declassified information, the French Defense Ministry is worried about the increasing number of casualties among its citizens in Ukraine. This concern was highlighted by the recent incident in Kharkov on January 16 where ‘dozens’ of French nationals were killed when a temporary deployment point of foreign mercenaries was destroyed by the Russian armed forces. Despite this, a French contingent of 2,000 men is being prepared for deployment to Ukraine.

The FBI, US private military companies (PMCs), and the DEA have ramped up efforts to recruit imprisoned members of Mexican and Colombian drug cartels to fight in Ukraine in return for a full pardon. The first such group numbering several hundred people is to be dispatched to Ukraine in the summer. If the pilot project is successful, it may be extended to include other countries with a high crime rate, according to the declassified information. The declassified information indicates that the United States is attempting to steer the investigation into the May assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in a specific direction. Their objective is to present the incident as a lone wolf attack with no connections to foreign entities. This is being done to prevent it from being exposed as an act of targeting individuals with dissenting viewpoints, such as Fico and Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban.

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“..Article 10 of the Washington Treaty, which claims that Russia has no input if NATO expands to surround Russia..”

• NATO Declaration Is Neoconservative Recommitment to US Hegemony – Sachs (Sp.)

NATO’s latest joint declaration serves as a stark neoconservative recommitment to US hegemony, Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned economist and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, told Sputnik. “The NATO Declaration is a stark neoconservative recommitment to US hegemony. It calls for NATO to back the ‘rules-based order,’ which is actually the US-based order that is often directly contrary to the UN Charter,” Sachs said. On Wednesday, NATO released a joint Washington Summit Declaration, which outlines the alliance’s efforts to further isolate Russia, bolster the alliance’s security on its eastern flank, increase security assistance for Ukraine, and claim Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” into NATO, among other initiatives. “It describes NATO as a defensive force despite the fact that NATO is repeatedly engaged in offensive regime-change operations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Serbia, Libya, Ukraine, and others,” Sachs said.

Sachs explains that NATO’s declaration also restates Article 10 of the Washington Treaty, which claims that Russia has no input if NATO expands to surround Russia. Moreover, Sachs said NATO’s joint statement describes its commitment to advanced biotechnologies, which raises concerns of biowarfare. Sachs also pointed out that the declaration shows NATO’s intention to continue to deploy anti-ballistic missiles throughout Europe as it’s previously done in Poland, Romania, and Turkiye, which has directly destabilized the nuclear arms control architecture ever since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. The White House announced earlier that the United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026. Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said US plans to deploy intermediate- and shorter-range missiles to Germany pose a direct threat to international security and increase the risks of a missile arms race.

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“..make sure that the ‘irreversible path of Ukraine’ towards NATO ends with either the disappearance of Ukraine, or the disappearance of NATO. Better, both..”

• Either NATO or Ukraine -or Both- Must Go – Medvedev (RT)

NATO’s declaration that Ukraine’s eventual membership of the US-led military bloc is “irreversible” means that either the nation or the alliance – and preferably both – should disappear, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said. A joint statement adopted by the leaders of NATO states during a summit in Washington, DC this week expressed support for Ukraine’s “right to choose its own security arrangements,” and declared that it is on an “irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.” Russia has consistently said that Ukraine’s accession to NATO would cross a ‘red line’. It cited the expansion of the bloc in Europe as one of the key triggers of the current hostilities with Kiev. “The conclusion is obvious. We have to do everything to make sure that the ‘irreversible path of Ukraine’ towards NATO ends with either the disappearance of Ukraine, or the disappearance of NATO. Better, both,” Medvedev said on Thursday.

The wording of the joint statement, according to media reports, was intended to appease Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, who has claimed that his nation deserves to be fast-tracked into NATO in gratitude for fighting to supposedly “defend” the West from Russia. But member states, including the US, have made it clear that Ukraine will not be able to join them as a full participant while the conflict remains unresolved. Kiev has signed numerous bilateral security agreements with Western nations in recent months in lieu of guarantees provided for under the NATO Treaty. The most recent pact was finalized with Luxembourg this week. Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, previously called for caution in the event that Kiev made a U-turn and accepted Russia’s conditions for a negotiated peace.

He argued that such a deal, which would include Kiev’s renunciation of its NATO aspirations, could lead to a new coup in Ukraine and an even more radical government eventually seizing power. In that scenario, he said, hostilities would resume and Ukraine’s statehood would be lost for good. But “the enemies of Russia will not go anywhere” and will “gather strength for a new attempt to destroy our country,” Medvedev predicted.

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“..China “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputatio..”

• We are NATO. And We’re Comin’ To Get Ya (Pepe Escobar)

We are the world. We are the people. We are NATO. And we’re comin’ to get ya – wherever you are, whether you want it or not. Call it the latest pop iteration of the “rules-based international order” – duly christened at NATO’s 75th birthday in D.C. Well, the Global Majority had already been warned – but brains under techno-feudalism tend to be reduced to mush. So a gentle reminder is in order. This had already been stated in the first paragraph of the Joint Declaration on EU-NATO Cooperation, issued on January 9, 2023: “We will further mobilize the combined set of instruments at our disposal, be they political, economic, or military, (italics mine) to pursue our common objectives to the benefit of our one billion citizens.” Correction: barely one million, part of the 0.1% plutocracy. Certainly not one billion. Cut to the 2024 NATO Summit Declaration – obviously redacted, with stellar mediocrity, by the Americans, with the other 31 assorted vassal members duly assenting. So here’s the main 2024 NATO “strategic” trifecta:

• Extra tens of billions of dollars in “assistance” to the upcoming rump Ukraine; the overwhelming majority of these funds will be slushing around the industrial-military money laundering complex.
• Forceful imposition of extra military spending on all members.
• Massive hyping up of the “China threat”.

As for the theme song of the NATO 75 show, there are actually two. Apart from “China Threat” (closing credits), the other one (opening credits) is “Free Ukraine”. The lyrics go something like this: it looks like we are at war against Russia in Ukraine, but don’t be fooled: NATO is not a participant in the war. Well, they are even setting up a NATO office in Kiev, but that is just to coordinate production for a Netflix war series. The outgoing epileptic slab of Norwegian wood posing as NATO Secretary-General – before the arrival of his Dutch Gouda replacement – put on quite a performance. Highlights include his fierce denunciation of “the growing alliance between Russia and its authoritarian friends in Asia”, as in “authoritarian leaders in Iran, North Korea and China”. These malignant entities “all want NATO to fail”. So there’s much work to do “with our friends in the Indo-Pacific”.

“Indo-Pacific” is a crude “rules-based international order” invention. No one across Asia, anywhere, has ever used it; everyone refers to Asia-Pacific. The joint declaration directly blames China for fueling Russian “aggression” in Ukraine: Beijing is described as a “decisive enabler” of the Kremlin’s “war effort”. NATO script writers even directly threaten China: China “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation”. To counter-act such malignity, NATO will expand its “partnerships” with “Indo-Pacific” states. Even before the summit declaration, the Global Times was already losing their cool with these inanities: “Under the hype from the U.S. and NATO, it seems that China has become the ‘key’ to the survival of Europe, controlling the fate of the Russia-Ukraine conflict like a ‘decisive power.’”

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“..it cannot end, it must not end in the victory of Russia because if it happened that way, we will have another war soon because Russia will attack again..”

• Poland Preparing Military For Full-Scale Conflict, Army Chief Says (ZH)

NATO officials have announced several major moves which collectively mark a significant escalation with Russia at the annual NATO summit in Washington DC this week. First, President Biden on Tuesday unveiled that the US is sending dozens of anti-air defense systems to Ukraine forces amid stepped-up Russian aerial assaults. Next, a joint statement from Washington, the Hague and Copenhagen confirmed that an initial batch of US-made F-16 jet fighters are en route to Ukraine. This alone marks a massive escalation, given Moscow has already vowed it will target the jets. On Wednesday, yet another ultra-provocative announcement was made aimed at ‘deterring’ Moscow. Poland’s army chief of staff General Wieslaw Kukula called for his country to prepare its soldiers for all-out conflict. “Today, we need to prepare our forces for full-scale conflict, not an asymmetric-type conflict,” General Kukula told a press conference. “This forces us to find a good balance between the border mission and maintaining the intensity of training in the army,” he said.

His ‘border mission’ reference alludes to the ongoing tensions with Belarus, a close Russian ally which forms part of the ‘Union State’. Poland recently implemented its “East Shield” program, a $2.5 billion initiative to beef up defenses along the Poland-Belarus border. Going back to 2021, Belarus has been accused of intentionally flooding the Polish border with Middle East migrants as a form of hybrid warfare. The European Union has charged President Alexander Lukashenko with orchestrating a border crisis in order to bog down Polish troops and border guards. Another issue is that China’s military has kicked off exercises with Belarusian forces in Brest in recent days, which lies within miles of the Polish border. According to more of Wednesday’s Polish military announcement from Reuters,

“Speaking at the same event, deputy defense minister Pawel Bejda said that as of August, the number of troops guarding Poland’s eastern border would be increased to 8,000 from the current 6,000, with an additional rearguard of 9,000 able to step up within 48 hours notice.” Warsaw has also been on a major recruitment campaign toward rapidly increasing the size of its armed forces. This comes at a moment the NATO ‘eastern flank’ country is increasingly hitching its wagon to Ukraine’s fate. The current size of the Polish armed forces is commonly estimated at 190,000 personnel, but Warsaw wants to bolster it to 300,000 troops within a few years. On Monday, President Zelensky met with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw where the two signed an unprecedented military agreement. Zelensky subsequently highlighted a provision which allows Poland to intercept Russian missiles over Ukraine territory, if they are deemed a threat to Poland and its population.

Poland has throughout the Ukraine war maintained a muscular, hawkish posture toward Russia and has criticized efforts at peaceful settlement at the negotiating table. Just this week Polish President Andrzej Duda reiterated that Ukraine must not cede any territory to Russia in exchange for peace. He said Tuesday, “If there is anyone who wants to give to Russia a piece of Ukrainian land and they are not Ukrainian, then let them give a piece of their land to Russia because it is easy to give away a piece of somebody else’s land.” “I would like this war to end as soon as possible. However, it cannot end, it must not end in the victory of Russia because if it happened that way, we will have another war soon because Russia will attack again,” Duda added.

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“..transforming the fear to preparedness.”

• NATO Countries Closest to Russia Up Defense Spending (ET)

The nations on NATO’s easternmost flank are investing record amounts on defense in order to deter further Russian aggression against the region. Defense ministers from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania gathered on July 9 in Washington to express their dedication to the NATO alliance and encourage other allies to pull their weight when it came to defense contributions. Anything less, they warned, could encourage more violence in Eastern Europe and, possibly, the end of some nations outright. Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued targeting of civilians in Ukraine demonstrated a tolerance for “human loss.” Mr. Putin’s “absolute disregard of human life and human dignity,” he said, had to be taken into account when dealing with Russia.

“We are dealing with an aggressive country,” he said during a fireside chat hosted by Politico on the sidelines of NATO’s 75th annual summit. “Russia is an existential threat, and we should be ready for this existential threat for years.” To that end, he added, the international community should prepare to fend off Russian aggression for years to come. It was vital, he said, that NATO “not engage from positions of weakness and appeasement.”

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were all governed by the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. Now, Mr. Putin has implemented a foreign policy based on uniting the so-called Russian World, including substantial Russian-speaking communities in former Soviet states, which East European leaders fear will lead to conquests beyond Ukraine. As such, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have all exceeded NATO’s guideline of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense to ensure collective deterrence against foreign aggression. Lithuanian National Defense Minister Laurynas Kasciunas said the investments were about “transforming the fear to preparedness.”

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‘perpetrators and collaborators’

• Musk Announces X To Sue Those Behind Advertising Censorship Cartel (ZH)

Elon Musk announced on Thursday that social media platform X will sue ‘perpetrators and collaborators’ who have colluded to control online speech, as revealed on Wednesday by an interim staff report released by the House Judiciary Committee. “Having seen the evidence unearthed today by Congress, X has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket,” Musk wrote on his platform, adding “Hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution.” The House report details a coordinated effort by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative to demonetize and suppress disfavored content across the internet. As we noted on Wednesday, the WFA is a global association representing over 150 of the world’s biggest brands and over 60 national advertiser associations which created GARM in 2019.

This alliance quickly amassed significant market power, representing roughly 90% of global advertising spend, which amounts to nearly one trillion dollars annually. GARM’s Steer Team reads like a who’s who of corporate America, including heavyweights such as Unilever, Mars, Diageo, Procter & Gamble (P&G), GroupM, AB InBev, L’Oreal, Nestle, IBM, Mastercard, and PepsiCo. These corporations not only wield immense economic influence but are now revealed to be leveraging this power to control online discourse under the guise of “brand safety. The Committee report details multiple instances of GARM’s coordinated efforts to influence and censor online content.

Perhaps the most notable example is the recommendation for a boycott of Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition. GARM members, including Danish energy company Orsted, were advised to pull their advertising from Twitter, a move that significantly impacted Twitter’s revenue. Internal emails show GARM’s satisfaction with the result, with GARM leader Rob Rakowitz boasting about the impact on Twitter’s financials. “GARM recommended that its members ‘stop all paid advertisement’ on Twitter in response to Mr. Musk’s acquisition of the company. GARM’s internal documents show that GARM was asked by a member to ‘arrange a meeting and hear more about [GARM’s] perspectives about the Twitter situation and a possible boycott from many companies.” -House Judiciary Committee. And now, Musk is going to sue. Though he may want to quit GARM first.

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Way out of her league. It’s all about the immunity verdict.

• AOC Files Articles Of Impeachment Against Justices Alito, Thomas (Fox)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., filed articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas on Wednesday, alleging “unchecked corruption.” Ocasio-Cortez threatened to file the articles last week, raising arguments about undisclosed gifts Thomas has received from wealthy conservatives and recent controversies involving Alito’s home and personal politics. “The unchecked corruption crisis on the Supreme Court has now spiraled into a Constitutional crisis threatening American democracy writ large,” Cortez wrote in a statement. “Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito’s pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court in which they hold widely documented financial and personal entanglements constitutes a grave threat to American rule of law, the integrity of our democracy, and one of the clearest cases for which the tool of impeachment was designed.”

“Justice Thomas and Alito’s repeated failure over decades to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from individuals with business before the court is explicitly against the law. And their refusal to recuse from the specific matters and cases before the court in which their benefactors and spouses are implicated represents nothing less than a constitutional crisis. These failures alone would amount to a deep transgression worthy of standard removal in any lower court, and would disqualify any nominee to the highest court from confirmation in the first place,” she argued. Ocasio-Cortez’s Wednesday filing includes three articles of impeachment against Thomas and two against Alito. The charges against Thomas involve undisclosed gifts as well as his lack of recusal in cases allegedly involving his wife’s legal and financial interests. The charges against Alito also include failure to disclose gifts and his lack of recusal in cases in which he had “a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party” before the court.

Ocasio-Cortez first threatened an article of soft impeachment following the Supreme Court’s ruling in former President Trump’s immunity case. The ruling in question said a president has absolute immunity from prosecution for “actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” and “presumptive immunity” for official acts in general. The court said there is no immunity for unofficial acts. “The Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X following the decision. “Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture. I intend on filing articles of impeachment upon our return.” The lawmaker argues that Alito was biased in favor of Trump and participants in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. She and other critics base the accusation on Alito flying an “appeal to heaven” flag at his home. The flag has been a symbol associated with American independence since before the Revolutionary War.

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Amy Coney Barrett.

• LinkedIn, Google Openly Censor Conservatives – Again (Sellers)

Tech companies are once again colluding with Democrats to push disinformation and censor legitimate conservative opinions, this time with the imprimatur of legitimacy conferred by the U.S. Supreme Court that allows them to do so more shamelessly and aggressively than ever. Today’s censorship is being made possible by the letters A, C and B—as in Justice Amy Coney Barrett. While the court’s two other centrists, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, are equally culpable (along with its leftist bloc) in allowing the atrocity that is Murthy v. Missouri, it was Barrett’s name on the majority opinion. And, indeed, her support for the wrong side in several of the court’s other recent landmark cases has raised serious red flags. Pundit Mark Levin speculated recently that Barrrett has already gone the way of Harry Blackmun and David Souter—two Republican-appointed justices who had, by the end of their terms, become some of its most unabashedly left-leaning, likely due to what is sometimes dubbed the “Greenhouse effect” in honor of a former New York Times reporter fond of haranguing the court’s conservatives.

“I’m telling you that Barrett has decided she’s a politician, not a Justice,” Levin noted on a recent podcast, according to Newsweek. By the end of her term, the 52-year-old justice “will have flipped all the way to the left,” he added. With Democrats in Congress and the media exerting immense pressure on conservative justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, perhaps Barrett, the court’s youngest jurist—who replaced liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg—remains in survival mode, opting to pick her battles carefully. But in the process, she is throwing essential civil liberties, such as First Amendment free-speech rights, under the bus and severely undermining the safeguards that help preserve America’s democratic institutions.

Barrett’s maverick streak made no difference in the recent Fischer and Trump rulings—which sided in favor of conservatives by, respectively, tossing the Justice Department’s overreach on Jan. 6 “obstruction” cases and forcing the D.C. district court to adjudicate whether former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election challenges qualify for presidential immunity. However, the Murthy decision—which found the court’s “wet noodle” wing delivering a win for Big Tech and the Deep State by deciding that the plaintiffs lacked sufficient standing after years of alarming anti-conservative censorship and government collusion on social-media platforms—will continue to have chilling implications for free speech until the right case comes along to overturn it.It effectively gave sites like Google (and YouTube), Facebook (and Instagram), LinkedIn and countless other leftist dominated tech companies carte blanche to continue the sort of egregious suppression of views that many noted in the lead-up to the 2020 election, with Hunter Biden’s laptop becoming the most ignominious example.

In addition to the laptop, the case dealt with the aggressive suppression of COVID skepticism—much of which has borne out as valid, but which continues to be mischaracterized due to the stigma attached by government-backed propaganda that was designed to clear the paths for Big Pharma’s mRNA “vaccines” to get their emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Then there are the questions surrounding the irregularities in the 2020 election—questions that have fueled ongoing suspicions of massive vote fraud and a stolen election, since all of the major public and private institutions colluded to prevent any sort of meaningful presentation of evidence.

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“How can a democracy of morons succeed, even if once it was a world leader before intelligence and reason were schooled out of the American population?”

• Can the West Survive Democracy? (Paul Craig Roberts)

As our Founding Fathers knew, Democracy has many problems. One of the larger problems is that one person one vote is a poor way to make governing decisions. One reason is that intelligence is not equally distributed. Another is that interest in the affairs of state is not equally distributed. Some people want to know what is going on and others concentrate on sports and soap operas and scrolling their cell phones in search of entertainment. Yet another reason is that some have a financial or an ideological interest in controlling the explanations that reach the public and serve as a basis for their decisions placed in the ballot box. Still others focus on putting votes in the ballot boxes that the voters themselves did not put there. There is no doubt that democracy stinks. Founding Father John Adams gave us his view:

“Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true. Passions are the same in all men, under all forms of government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation.” Our Founding Fathers roped in democracy. They limited the vote to male property owners. They limited democracy to the House of Representatives and the suspect Representatives to two year terms.

The Senate was not elected by popular vote but by the vote of state legislatures who were assumed to be male property owners. Our Founding Fathers tried to protect us from democracy, which they regarded as the rule of the ignorant mob. And that is what it is. Nevertheless today it is all we have as a check on the tyranny of government. So today we are forced to defend democracy, which no Founding Father would do. Our Founding Fathers saw democracy as tyranny. But for us today democracy is the last and only check on the tyranny of the power of government institutions created by elites who are not interested in our opinions. From the standpoint of Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and Hillary Clinton, American citizens count for no more than Muammar Gaddafi. We are in the way of their power. They are committed to moving us out of their way. That is what the eight-year attack on Trump and his supporters is about. That is why there are 1,000 falsely convicted American patriots in prison and why President Trump faces multiple criminal and civil indictments.

The ruling American Establishment has has put a negative connotation on every explanation that is not the official narrative. Gradually, any challenge no matter how factual to an official explanation is becoming a criminal act. If the Democrats are reelected or can come close enough to being reelected to cover their theft of the election, by 2028 it will be impossible to speak a word of truth in America. The Ruling Elites will have removed Truth out of their way. It is absurd to think that Americans know this. Americans are so indoctrinated and brainwashed that they don’t know anything. A Rasmussen Poll of the American population reveals that despite the outpouring of reports from the world’s top medical scientists that the Covid-19 “vaccine” has killed far more people than the released Covid virus, only one-third of Americans believe that the Covid vaccines are killing people. In other words, Americans are so utterly stupid that they cannot tell the difference between medical science and media propaganda.

With reports coming in every day of only vaccinated athletes in the prime of life suddenly dropping dead on the playing field, with only vaccinated babies having heart attacks, with the new form of turbo-cancer appearing only among the vaccinated, with miscarriages of vaccinated women off the charts, with neurological problems of the vaccinated off the charts, with new forms of blood clots never seen before of the vaccinated, with new diseases never seen before afflicting only the vaccinated, with massive excess deaths in every Covid vaccinated population, with the admissions that the Covid “vaccines” were not protective, with the overwhelming evidence that the “vaccines” are a threat to life and health, still 69% of Americans have no regrets being jabbed. So, what we have is a population, 69% of which is too stupid to be functional in a one person one vote Democracy. These fools can outvote the 33% by two to one. How can a democracy of morons succeed, even if once it was a world leader before intelligence and reason were schooled out of the American population?

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“..official U.S. policy precludes even shaking hands with Russian diplomats..”

• ‘My Life’s Work Melting Before My Eyes’ (Scott Ritter)

July 16 will mark the 42nd anniversary of the famous “Walk in the Woods” conducted by Paul Nitze and Yuli Kvitsinsky, respectively the U.S. and Soviet lead negotiators for INF talks that, at the time, were stymied. Faced with a calcified recalcitrance on the part of U.S. hardliners, the two men took a walk in the woods outside Geneva, Switzerland, where they outlined possible ways to break the negotiation impasse. The ideas that Nitze and Kvitsinsky came up with never came to pass — neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union were ready to undertake such drastic actions. But their courageous stab at diplomacy at a time when neither side was talking to the other shook free the rust that had frozen their respective sides, lubricating the machinery of diplomacy, and set in motion the processes that led to Reagan and Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty some five and a half years later.

The key take-away from the Nitze-Kvitsinsky “Walk in the Woods” was that, when it comes to meaningful arms control, success is not immediate. The process of arms control must be seen in the long term. It was also clear that fear fueled consideration of positive outcomes that eventually led to an equitable solution in the form of the INF Treaty. There is no doubt in my mind that within the ranks of the Russian and U.S. diplomatic corps today are two men possessed of the vision and courage of Paul Nitze and Yuli Kvitsinsky who can, if given the opportunity, recreate the magic of the “Walk in the Woods.” That magic helped create the conditions for negotiations that helped pull the U.S. and Soviet Union from the nuclear abyss more than four decades ago. But two hurdles must be crossed first. It is difficult to imagine a U.S. and Russian diplomat walking and talking today when, as Professor Sergey Markedonev, a fellow participant at the Vienna round table pointed out, official U.S. policy precludes even shaking hands with Russian diplomats.

To cross that bridge the U.S. government needs a signal from the American people that such behavior is not acceptable. We need a modern-day version of the June 1982 Central Park million-person rally in support of nuclear disarmament and arms control and against nuclear war. America has an election coming up in November where issues of our collective existential survival as a people and nation are on the line. There is no more existential issue than that of nuclear war. As was the case in June 1982, we, the people of the United States, need to send a collective signal to all who seek to represent us in the highest office of the land, that we will not tolerate policies that lead toward nuclear war. That we insist on policies that promote nuclear disarmament and arms control. That we demand that our diplomats begin talking with their Russian counterparts. I’m tired of watching my life’s work melt before my very eyes. It’s time to rebuild the foundations of our collective survival. To make mainstream the cause of disarmament that once saved us from nuclear Armageddon.

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Frens

 

 

More Frens

 

 

Baby dolphin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1811470069823930406

 

 

 

 

Batteries

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 11 2024

Jul 112024
 
 July 11, 2024  Posted by at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  65 Responses »


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.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Dog stairs

 

 

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

 

 

Whales

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 10 2024

Jul 102024
 
 July 10, 2024  Posted by at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Family of Saltimbanques 1905

 

• Trump Makes Biden Election Prediction (RT)
• A Second Spousal Regency Is Now Underway (Stockman)
• Paul Krugman Urges Biden To Drop Out (RT)
• Senile, Drooling, but Mostly Fabulous (Luongo)
• The Crowning of Kamala Harris? (Les Leopold)
• Orban: “China Has A Peace Plan, America Has A War Policy” (SCF)
• The Big Picture behind Viktor The Mediator’s Peace Shuttle (Pepe Escobar)
• EU Might ‘End’ Hungary’s Presidency – Politico (RT)
• Kremlin Responds To Kiev Hospital Attack Allegations (RT)
• NATO Should Not Be Party To Ukraine Conflict – Erdogan (TASS)
• Netanyahu Goes for Broke (Patrick Lawrence)
• Israeli Gaza Campaign May Kill 186,000 or More – 8% of Population (Juan Cole)
• UK Finances Worst Since 1945 – New Chancellor (RT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaker Johnson

 

 

MEP
https://twitter.com/i/status/1810450168866635813

 

 

Rogan Dr. Phil

 

 

Orban Soros

 

 

Populists

 

 

 

 

“He has the delegates, he doesn’t have to get out. There’s nothing they can do to get him out.”

• Trump Makes Biden Election Prediction (RT)

US President Joe Biden “doesn’t want to quit” and “may very well stay” in the race for the White House, Republican rival Donald Trump has said. According to Trump, the Democratic Party will find it difficult to force Biden to quit. In the two weeks since he debated a visibly frail and confused Biden last month, Trump has stayed out of the public eye. Meanwhile, liberal media outlets have run articles questioning Biden’s mental health, as Democratic donors and lawmakers reportedly weigh their options for forcing the 81-year-old to suspend his reelection campaign. In a phone interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, Trump predicted that Biden will withstand the pressure to step down. “It looks to me like he may very well stay in,” Trump told Hannity.

“He’s got an ego and he doesn’t want to quit. This isn’t necessarily a very positive thing for our country, but I think he might very well stay in.” Biden himself has vowed to stay in the race, telling MSNBC on Monday that he is “not going anywhere.” In a letter to Democrats in Congress earlier that day, Biden insisted that he “wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.” Biden won the support of nearly 99% of Democratic delegates during the party’s largely symbolic primary elections this year. This victory gives the president “a lot of power,” Trump told Hannity, adding that removing him from office via a constitutional amendment could be the only option available to the Democrats. “Unless they use the 25th Amendment… he has all the power,” Trump explained. “He has the delegates, he doesn’t have to get out. There’s nothing they can do to get him out.”

Should this come to pass, Trump said that he would expect to face Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election. “I think that [the Democrats] are very concerned about the vote if it’s not her,” he said. “They are gun-shy, they don’t want to do it any other way. It seems that if he gets out for whatever reason – and I don’t think he wants to get out – but if he gets out then it will be her.” Trump offered a cruder assessment of Biden’s chances in the days after the debate. In leaked footage filmed at one of his golf courses in late June, Trump could be heard telling a small group of supporters that Biden would surely be “quitting the race,” calling the president an “old, broken-down pile of crap.” Turning to Harris, Trump said that while she would be a better opponent, she is “so pathetic” and “so f**king bad.”

Trump on Biden

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“..why Kamala Harris and the timorous men and woman of the Biden cabinet have not activated the 25th Amendment: They are scared to death of Jill Giacoppo!”

• A Second Spousal Regency Is Now Underway (Stockman)

As it turned out, the immobilization of the presidency during the last 18 months of Wilson’s term was one of history’s great serendipity’s. Absent Wilson’s tireless promotion, the abominable League of Nations Treaty died aborning. America was thus given one more chance to return to its ways as a peaceful Republic untroubled by the petty intrigues of nations beyond the great Atlantic and Pacific Ocean moats. Needless to say, that reprieve has long since been kicked away. America is now a dangerous Empire and its president is virtually the helmsman of the planet. So the fact that Jill Biden has apparently read and copied the entirety of professor Markel’s account of America’s first Spousal Regency is troubling indeed. It was evident beyond a shadow of a doubt last Thursday night that a second Spousal Regency is now underway.

“Joe Biden” would have received his gold watch from Washington’s grateful ruling apparatchiks long ago, save for the obvious fact that Jill Biden has said that absolutely “nyet means nyet”. At this point, of course, it would be helpful if Jill did speak a bit of Russian because the minions helping her conduct this unauthorized, unlawful and constitutionally- repugnant Regency have gotten her marooned in what amounts to an helacious Moscow Winter. Alas, however, it appears that her second language lies elsewhere. That is to say, Jill Jacobs Giacoppo’s tribal ferocity did not originate from the bucolic hills of Willow Grove Pennsylvania or the classrooms of Upper Moreland High School or even the instructors at Brandywine Junior College. Her father’s family had emigrated from the Sicilian village of Gesso, losing the “Giacoppo” part within days of passing Lady Liberty, but hanging on to the blood loyalty part even unto the present fraught hour.

That is to say, Edith Wilson Biden is a clear and present danger to the American Republic. She has spent the last 47 years marinating in the self-righteous hypocrisies, follies and evil-doings of the Washington ruling class—without ever once have been called to accountability by any kind of electorate at all. Like Edith Wilson, she was apparently an able spouse and hostess – who taught classes at Northern Virginia Community College on the side and was pleased to call herself “doctor” owing to a quasi-honorary degree from the Biden family’s political sinecure at the University of Delaware. And yet and yet. Jill Giacoppo is an utterly unqualified usurper, who has even less excuse for her blatant power grab than did Edith Wilson back in the day. At least in Edith’s time there was no 25th Amendment to regularize, organize and legitimize the transfer of power to the constitutionally prescribed role of Vice President.

To be specific, section 4 of the 25th Amendment addresses the precise case of a President unable to fulfill his constitutional role but who cannot or will not step aside. In that event, it provides both a decision-maker and a procedure. The deciding group is the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet. If this group declares a President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the Vice President immediately becomes Acting President; and he remains so unless a two-thirds majority of both chamber reinstate the former president. So why was “Joe Biden” still in the Oval Office last Thursday night making a spectacle of his very disabled self before a global audience of 51 million?

It’s plain as day that there is one reason and one reason alone as to why Kamala Harris and the timorous men and woman of the Biden cabinet have not activated the 25th Amendment: They are scared to death of Jill Giacoppo! Then again, this election is allegedly about saving constitutional democracy from the prospect of an illegal coup. And while the DNC and its megaphones in the MSM may resolutely deny it, that’s exactly what is now dangerously underway in their own backyard.

Read more …

Paul who?

• Paul Krugman Urges Biden To Drop Out (RT)

US President Joe Biden should “do the right thing” and drop out of the election race in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has said. Democrats and key party donors are growing increasingly concerned about their prospects for the vote in November after Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 debate against Republican rival Donald Trump. In a column on Monday, Krugman argued that Biden has been “ludicrously mistreated” by having his “every verbal or physical stumble” analyzed. Despite this, however, Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in economics, said Biden should stand aside as his party’s candidate for president.

Harris should “probably” be the one to take his place, he added. The televised debate last month gave Biden a “golden opportunity” to “be calm and reassuring” in the face of Trump’s “bizarre and menacing” behavior, but he “utterly failed the test,” Krugman wrote. ‘During the CNN-hosted showdown, Biden appeared visibly confused, slurring his words and struggling to finish his sentences. While the White House blamed Biden’s poor performance on a cold and his busy travel schedule earlier in the month, some Democratic donors and liberal pundits have called on the 46th president to suspend his campaign. Some formerly friendly media outlets have also demanded that Biden step aside.

The 81-year-old has refused to withdraw from the race, admitting only that he does not debate “as well as [he] used to.” Speaking to MSNBC on Monday, Biden said he is “not going anywhere” and vowed to continue his reelection campaign, insisting he is “the best candidate to beat Donald Trump.” A survey conducted by CBS News/YouGov in the wake of the presidential debate 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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“..Doug Emhoff, you know the ‘second gentleman’ was at a debate watch party with Rob Reiner and Jane Fonda. What did he do to deserve that? Meathead and Hanoi Jane?”

• Senile, Drooling, but Mostly Fabulous (Luongo)

Well, here we are. It’s a full blown panic. It is now obvious that President Biden lacks the mental faculties to carry on the office of the presidency. And the nervous mice are starting to tiptoe out on the ice and do the ‘noticing in public’ they have avoided the last three and a half years. The Democrats are now dividing themselves between the culpable and those with culpable deniability. Who knew? Who could have known? It’s time to call a lid on the whole damn thing, Jack. Now Republicans don’t want to hear that, they want to keep Biden in the race, for obvious reasons. That’s easy to understand and if he was just running as a candidate and not for reelection, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But, there is a country to run, every single day. And we do not know who is running it. That is beyond politics. And beyond unacceptable.

Democrats are nervous about Kamala. Who cares? She is the Vice President of the United States of America and her job is to step into the vacuum at moments like this. There will be plenty of time for a post-mortem later, but there can be no pretending that Biden is capable of finishing out his term. It’s nonsense and everyone knows it. But the Democrats have never met a rule or standard that they weren’t willing to politicize, and relativize, to their own ends. They can always screw over President Harris at the convention in six weeks, and give the nomination to someone else. They can fight the ballot issues at the state level. But I bet she winds up with the Senile Ice Cream Man’s superdelegates, so maybe everyone should stop worrying and learn to love the Kam…ala. How did we get here? According to some, it was because the right wing crankosphere has been too mean.

Calling out the obvious denied the establishment press their ability to do their jobs. They had to spend all their time doing counter-narrative against internet meanies, otherwise they would have noticed the president is unfit for office. Well, we’ve been calling him the Senile Ice Cream Man™ for over three years over here, so it must be our fault. We are deeply sorry about that. Sorry about being able to perceive reality. Meanwhile, the press is still getting their heads around the possibility of consequences. Give credit to the New York Times for being able to sniff a change in the zeitgeist and move quickly towards it. Even as they deserve heaps of scorn for carrying on the farce for so long, they’ve quickly put on their big girl pants and are out doing the journalism thing. It’s been cringeworthy to watch. So the press is doing the careful lane change. But we still have to watch all the Democrats pretend they didn’t know.

“Whip smart” Joe Biden is the best he’s ever been! That’s what they said on Morning Joe! You know the show where marriages, and credibility, goes to die. But, it wasn’t a lie, exactly. In some ways, Biden hasn’t changed at all. He was always an egotistical prick who said dumb stuff. Joe has always made up thinly believable lies based on his patronizing view of the world. He’s always been awkwardly sniffing people. Even if you believe “Corn Pop was a bad dude,” do you not remember Biden was the life insurance policy for the first black president? Obama thought “…I sure don’t want to get shot, who could I pick for VP that would make even an assassin think twice? Oh, I know, Joe Biden. No one wants that dumbass in charge!” Supposedly, poor Doug Emhoff, you know the ‘second gentleman’ was at a debate watch party with Rob Reiner and Jane Fonda. What did he do to deserve that? Meathead and Hanoi Jane?

In any case, five minutes in Reiner reportedly started screaming while Jane was crying. Awkward. Not as bad as listening to Kamala practice a speech, but pretty bad. Then you have the Hollywood elites, with their fake surprise and lamentations of betrayal. I can think of a lot of off-color compound words people might use to describe Ari Emmanuel. Dumbfuck is not on that list. He was so surprised to see Biden’s performance, shocked I tell you. Bitch, please.

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Dems are trying to turn disaster into a demonstration of democracy.

• The Crowning of Kamala Harris? (Les Leopold)

While we await President Biden’s talk with the Lord Almighty, the Democratic Party lords are planning the coronation of Vice President Kamala Harris. Is she the best Democratic Party nominee? Many party leaders are eager to shut down that discussion. For them, it’s game over. They say that Harris should be the nominee and anyone who opposes her will greatly offend key Democratic constituencies, starting with the Black women who have been the backbone of the party in key states. How would it look, for example, if a white woman like Governor Gretchen Whitmore, were chosen instead? After all, Harris is literally “next in line.” Picking anyone else, therefore, would be like cutting ahead of the line. Not fair and an insult to people of color. But that argument is a stretch. It’s not automatic that vice presidents get a free ride to the nomination. Sometimes they have to fight for it, as Hubert Humphrey did in 1968.

And Biden himself, of course, was pushed aside for Hillary Clinton in 2016, even after serving two terms as Obama’s VP. Party elites also point to the fact that Harris is well known and therefore has a big edge over newer candidates who have not yet been vetted through the national political grinder. But that also cuts the other way. While Harris is well known, that’s not necessarily a plus. As of July 5, 51.2 percent disapprove of the job the Veep is doing, with only 37.1 percent approving, according to ABC News’ 538 poll averages. And currently, she is trailing Trump in the latest poll, 47 to 42 percent. Her supporters will correctly point out, however, that the other, lesser-known Democratic hopefuls are currently polling even more poorly against Trump. Harris also has a stellar electoral record to be considered in California, where she served as Attorney General and then U.S. Senator. And, of course, she won the vice presidency in 2020, but that vote was largely about Biden and Trump.

As a national candidate for president in 2020, however, she did not do well. After one good debate in June 2020, her campaign faltered, as her poll numbers crashed from 15 percent to 3 percent in December. She then withdrew even before the primaries began. Some will write that off as old news that doesn’t tell us much about the current situation, but really, why exactly doesn’t that history matter? What concrete evidence do we have that she would do better now as a presidential candidate? What counts most today is who the Democratic rank-and-file really want as their presidential candidate when Biden has his come-to-Jesus moment and stands down. The party’s candidate this year needs to inspire and draw the broadest possible turnout to defeat Donald Trump in the battleground states.

The Democrat mantra is that “democracy is on the line” this fall. That same concern should guide their candidate selection process. Are they willing to open it up, so the base of the party has a say in who is nominated? If so, then the Democrats should seriously consider a reasonable process outlined by Jonathan Alter in the New York Times:

• Only those with a certain threshold of support in polls may take part in Democratic debates scheduled before the convention.
• Each qualifying candidate will be granted a half-hour address on the opening night of the convention, with the winner expanding on it in his or her acceptance speech.
• Delegates should take into consideration—though not be bound by—state and national polls showing the relative strengths of the candidates.
• The candidates should identify possible running mates.

Representative James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a Biden campaign co-chair no less, is suggesting a mini-primary before the August nominating convention. And James Carville argues for holding four regional town halls for new candidates selected by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who also would chair the meetings. It’s possible that Kamala Harris would come out of this process as the strongest contender, igniting and mobilizing many of the key Democratic Party constituencies. But it would be a grave error to use that untested assumption to eliminate rank-and-file Democrats from having a real say in the process.

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“China has a peace plan. America has a war policy. And Europe, instead of having its own strategic approach, is simply copying the American position..”

• Orban: “China Has A Peace Plan, America Has A War Policy” (SCF)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán continued his peace mission with a trip to China before moving on to the United States on Monday, July 8th. After visiting Kyiv and Moscow last week, he headed to the capitals of the two global powers, who—in the prime minister’s words—have the ability to influence the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Hungary assumed the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union on July 1st, and Orbán is using this role to promote his “peace mission,” an attempt to bring the war in Ukraine to an end. Though the prime minister made it clear that he is not mandated to hold talks on behalf of the other EU member states, he said he would like to find out how far Ukraine and Russia were willing to go—and update fellow EU member states on his findings.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hungary has been the only EU member state to call for a ceasefire and peace talks instead of prolonging the war by sending weapons to Ukraine. As we recently reported, Orbán visited both Kyiv and Moscow last week in an attempt to talk to both participants in the war that has now raged for almost two-and-a-half years. He was criticised by EU leaders for talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stating that “appeasement will not stop Putin.” However, Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political advisor (not related to Viktor Orbán) said in an interview on Sunday that Hungary’s EU presidency provides a good opportunity to open the communication channels between the parties of the war. Unveiling the agenda of the presidency in June, Hungarian EU Affairs Minister János Bóka said “the EU has to guarantee the security and peace of Europe, and every one of our priorities will be interpreted within this framework.”

In a short video uploaded to his X account after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, the prime minister said: “Of course, the warring parties have the last word in the war, but three world powers have a decisive influence: China, the United States and the European Union. They also influence when this war will end.” In Beijing, Orbán said he had discussed with Xi the Chinese peace plan, saying “China is the only world power that has been clearly committed to peace from the beginning.” China’s and Brazil’s road map states that “dialogue and negotiation are the only viable way out of the crisis.” China did not attend a Western-backed peace summit held in Switzerland last month, saying it is meaningless to hold such a conference without the participation of one of the warring factions, Russia. According to AP reporting, Xi followed his meeting with Orbán by calling on Russia and Ukraine to stop the fighting—and on other major powers to create an environment conducive to talks.

“China has a peace plan. America has a war policy. And Europe, instead of having its own strategic approach, is simply copying the American position,” Viktor Orbán told German daily Die Welt in an interview shortly before his trip to Beijing. After visiting Beijing, Orbán flew straight to Washington, D.C., where he is set to attend the summit of NATO leaders, which begins on Tuesday. Member states plan to pledge to keep pouring arms and ammunition into Ukraine at current levels for at least another year. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance’s 32 member countries have been spending around €40 billion each year on military equipment for Ukraine since the war began and that this should be “a minimum baseline” going forward.

Before the summit, it was rumoured Orbán would meet former President Donald Trump who has claimed he could end the war within 24 hours of moving back into the White House. Orbán openly supports Trump’s presidential candidacy, and has stated that the former president would bring back peace to Ukraine. “Prime Minister Orbán, like my father, wants to see PEACE brought back to the world. Enough of the constant wars and the endless sums of money to fund them. … Peace must be the ultimate goal,” Donald Trump Jr.—Trump’s son, who recently visited Budapest—posted on X.

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“All negotiations with him, he is always in a good mood – this is the first thing. Secondly, he is more than 100% rational. When he negotiates, when he begins to explain, when he makes an offer, saying yes or no, he is super, super rational..”

“..it is a real challenge to negotiate with him and be prepared to match his intellectual and political level.”

• The Big Picture behind Viktor The Mediator’s Peace Shuttle (Pepe Escobar)

Viktor Orban is on a roll. And that has set out a riotous roller coaster. Everyone has been gripped by the extraordinary spectacle of pre-historic specimens wallowing in the Western geopolitical swamp reaching the depths of Hysteriastan at the sight of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s peace shuttle moving from Ukraine and Russia to China. And to do that on the eve of the 75th anniversary of warmongering Global Robocop NATO has got to be the ultimate affront. The 3-hour long Putin-Viktor The Mediator meeting in Moscow was quite something. These are arguably Putin’s three main points: 1.Kiev cannot allow the idea of a ceasefire because that would remove the pretext for extending martial law. 2.If Kiev ends martial law, it will need to hold presidential elections. The chances of the current Ukrainian authorities winning are close to zero. 3.There should not be a truce for additional Kiev weaponizing: Moscow wants a complete and final endgame.

By comparison, these are arguably Orban’s three main points: 1.The positions of Russia and Ukraine are very far from each other, much needs to be done. 2.The war in Ukraine has begun to have an impact on the European economy and its competitiveness (as much as the EU “leadership” may deny it). 3.“I heard what Putin thinks about the existing peace initiatives, the ceasefire and negotiations, and the vision of Europe after the war.” Orban also made a point of emphasizing the airtight pre-meeting secrecy, as “means of communication are under total surveillance by the Big Boys”. He described the search for a solution in Ukraine as his “Christian duty”. And he said he asked three direct questions to Putin: whether peace talks are possible; whether a ceasefire before they begin is realistic; and what Europe’s security architecture could look like.

Putin, said Orban, answered all three. The clincher – not for the warmongers, but for the Global Majority – was Orban’s description of Putin: “All negotiations with him, he is always in a good mood – this is the first thing. Secondly, he is more than 100% rational. When he negotiates, when he begins to explain, when he makes an offer, saying yes or no, he is super, super rational. How else can you say it in Hungarian? Cool headed, reserved, careful and punctual. He has discipline. So it is a real challenge to negotiate with him and be prepared to match his intellectual and political level.” All of the above ties up with the concept of a new Eurasia security system proposed last month by Putin – and a key theme of discussion at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Astana last week. Putin has emphasized the central role of the SCO in the process, stating that a “decision was made to turn the SCO regional anti-terrorist structure into a universal center tasked with responding to the entire range of security threats.”

In a nutshell: the SCO will be arguably the key node in the new Eurasia-wide indivisibility of security arrangement. This is as huge as it gets. It all started with the concept of Greater Eurasian Partnership, proposed by Putin in 2015 and conceptualized by Sergey Karaganov in 2018. Putin took it to another level in his meeting with key Russian diplomats in June; it’s time to set up serious bilateral and multilateral guarantees for collective Eurasian security. That should be a security architecture, according to Putin, open to “all Eurasian countries that wish to participate,” including “European and NATO countries.” And it should lead to “gradually phasing out” the military presence of “external powers in Eurasia”, side by side with “establishing alternatives to Western-controlled economic mechanisms, expanding the use of national currencies in settlements, and establishing independent payment systems.” In a nutshell: a complete geopolitical and technical-military revamp, as well as geoeconomic (the importance of developing alternative international transport corridors such as the INSTC).

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“With such a meeting the presidency ends before it has really begun.”

• EU Might ‘End’ Hungary’s Presidency – Politico (RT)

The European Union could revoke Hungary’s presidency of the bloc over Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s trip to Moscow, Politico EU has reported, citing diplomatic sources. Orban went to Ukraine last week, upon assuming the European Council presidency and vowing to “Make Europe great again.” He then went to Russia, triggering howls of outrage in Kiev and Brussels alike. “Member states were already irritated by the ‘MEGA’ motto. But a meeting with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will permanently overshadow the Hungarian presidency,” Politico reported on Monday evening, citing an unnamed EU diplomat. “With such a meeting the presidency ends before it has really begun.” Politico described Orban as having gone “rogue” and suggested the EU ambassadors “could move from public condemnations alone to concrete action to restrain” Budapest at their meeting on Wednesday.

There is “a very clear political disapproval” of Orban in Brussels, another anonymous diplomat said, adding that the ambassadors are “now discussing what exactly to do on Wednesday.” The bloc “can get rid of the Hungarian presidency within weeks,” argued Daniel Hegedus, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think-tank. He laid out a series of steps by which Brussels could move the start of Poland’s presidency to September 1, cutting Hungary’s term short, so as to “attach negative consequences to Orban’s behavior.” This would require a four-fifths majority in the European Council.

Orban has dismissed criticism that he does not have a mandate to represent the EU by saying that his peace missions are not classical negotiations and therefore do not require one. Bigger powers might be able to end the conflict, but Hungary can be “a good tool in the hands of God” to promote peace, the Hungarian leader said last Friday on national radio. Hungary has long been one of the few EU members critical of the bloc’s unqualified support for Ukraine, urging Brussels instead to push for peace. Budapest has blocked plans to finance Kiev’s weapons purchases, declined to participate in the program of training Ukrainian troops, and refused passage of weapons and equipment to Ukraine via its territory.

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“..used by the Ukrainian authorities to ensure continued funding and the continuation of the conflict.”

• Kremlin Responds To Kiev Hospital Attack Allegations (RT)

Moscow has vehemently denied responsibility for the tragedy at the Okhmatdet children’s hospital in Kiev, after a missile hit the facility on Monday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has insisted that the incident was caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Peskov stressed that Russia “does not strike civilian targets” and that all strikes carried out by the Russian military are exclusively aimed at “critical infrastructure facilities and military targets that are somehow related to the regime’s military potential.” Regarding Ukraine’s accusations that Moscow intentionally hit the hospital in Kiev, Peskov pointed to the official statement by the Russian Defense Ministry, which “absolutely rules out that there were strikes on any civilian targets. It states that we are talking about the fall of an anti-missile.”

The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Monday that it had conducted a large-scale attack using long-range high-precision weapons to strike Ukrainian military industry facilities and aviation bases. The attack was said to be in response to Kiev’s continued attempts to cause damage to Russian energy and economic facilities. The ministry stated that all the intended targets were hit and rejected Kiev’s claims of Russian missiles striking civilian facilities as “absolutely untrue.” “Numerous published photos and video footage from Kiev clearly confirm the fact of destruction due to the fall of a Ukrainian air defense missile launched from an anti-aircraft missile system within the city,” the ministry said. It also accused Kiev of attempting similar “hysterics” in the past, especially before large international summits, such as the NATO gathering in Washington that kicked off on Tuesday. The Russian Defense Ministry suggested that the incident at Okhmatdet is being used by the Ukrainian authorities to ensure continued funding and the continuation of the conflict.

Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, has also suggested that the hospital tragedy is seen by Kiev’s Western backers as a “perfect gift” to justify further escalation of the conflict and the continuation of hostilities. The Western press is “whipping up hysterics” and hiding relevant facts about the tragedy, Antonov claimed, including Moscow’s assessment that the incident was caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile. Pro-Kiev media outlets have claimed that the weapon that struck the hospital was a Russian air-launched Kh-101 cruise missile. However, others have argued that the projectile, which can apparently be seen in a video filmed from a distance by a witness, was probably an AIM120 fired by a NASAM missile system or an interceptor fired by the MIM-104 Patriot missile system. Western donors have provided Ukraine with this type of US-developed weapon.

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“They do not want to hear anything..”

• West Doesn’t Want To Listen – Kremlin (RT)

Russia will continue to “speak the truth” to the world, despite Western governments and media refusing to allow their citizens to hear what Moscow has to say, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Tuesday. Peskov was asked by the VGTRK broadcaster about Ukraine’s claims that Russia struck a children’s hospital in Kiev. Moscow has insisted that its forces targeted a nearby missile plant and that the hospital was actually hit by a stray Ukrainian air defense missile. Ukraine’s version of events was quickly backed by its Western supporters. Moscow and Kiev further traded accusations during an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday. “It is very difficult to get our point across to the Western world right now. They do not want to hear anything,” Peskov said. “We see the hysteria in [Western] newspapers, TV channels,” the Kremlin spokesman added. “This is likely due to the monopolistic dominance of Anglo-Saxon media there.”

Nevertheless, Moscow will 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,” Peskov stressed. Since 2022, the EU has banned several Russian news broadcasters, including RT, citing “systematic information manipulation and disinformation.” YouTube similarly began to crack down on Russian-linked content, removing more than 70,000 videos and 9,000 channels related to the Ukraine conflict, according to The Guardian. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has branded the sanctions “political censorship and a campaign to completely wipe out alternative viewpoints.”

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“..every day that weapons are being used [in Ukraine] confirms the rightness of Turkey’s position” on the issue..”

• NATO Should Not Be Party To Ukraine Conflict – Erdogan (TASS)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that during his participation in the NATO summit in the United States he intends to bring up the issues of counterterrorism, Gaza, and Ukraine, especially the fact that the alliance should not become a party to the conflict. “We expect an outcome from this summit that takes into account our national security interests and strengthens solidarity within the alliance. During our meetings [in Washington], we will draw attention to the growing threat of terrorism in the world and emphasize the need to intensify NATO’s efforts here. We maintain a principled position on the conflict in Ukraine. We support its territorial integrity and consider it unacceptable for NATO to become a party to the war in Ukraine,” Erdogan told reporters before departing for the United States, according to his administration’s X page.

He added that “every day that weapons are being used [in Ukraine] confirms the rightness of Turkey’s position” on the issue. Erdogan also said that he intends to “put Israel’s ongoing massacre against the Palestinian people on the agenda” at the summit. “We have not been able to achieve what we wanted from NATO regarding Israel and Palestine. The efforts of the international community are not yet enough to stop Israel. We will put these issues back on the agenda of our meetings in the US and expect to obtain the results we hope for. Serious talks were held in Doha. The head of Mossad also visited Qatar. Certain steps have been taken, but they have not been finalized yet,” the Turkish leader pointed out.

He also recalled that Turkey “is among five NATO countries that make up the backbone of the organization,” which other alliance members agree with. He said he will have a meeting with new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte during the summit. The new NATO summit, timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the organization, will be held in the US capital on July 9-11.

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Delusional.

• Netanyahu Goes for Broke (Patrick Lawrence)

It is a matter of record that the Zionist project has had extensive territorial designs on the lands known as Palestine since at least the early 20th century. As others have argued, the Israelis’ openly racist assault on the Palestinians of Gaza is to be understood not as a sudden eruption of violence, a departure, but as an especially savage continuation of Zionist conduct for more than a century. When history is brought to bear in this fashion, it becomes increasingly apparent that the invasion of Gaza since the events of last Oct. 7 ought not be seen in isolation. The more pathologically disturbed members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s freak-show regime — notably, but not only, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben–Givr, the finance and national security ministers — have never been shy on this point. They are entirely dedicated to the restoration of Eretz Yisrael, the mystical Land of Israel, which, variously interpreted through the ages, could extend at the extreme from the Red Sea all the way to the Euphrates Valley.

But the crazed ultras to whom Netanyahu owes his political survival have not yet got far enough to turn their visions into articulated policy. Is this changing? This is our question, along with another: Is the Biden regime — or at this point its successor — prepared to “stand with Israel,” as American leaders like to put it, if extremist dreams of violent conquest turn into real, live political and military plans?I have been convinced for some time, as I gather that many Palestinians are, that when the Israel Occupation Forces are done in Gaza they will next turn to the West Bank. On this point I now correct myself: In my interpretation the IOF, in close collaboration with brutish Israeli settlers, has already begun its assault in the West Bank. Of late the Israelis have also been openly threatening to launch a full-scale attack on Hezbollah, the political and military movement that controls southern Lebanon. This, too, bears interpretation.

Douglas Macgregor, the retired colonel and now an energetic commentator on politico- military affairs, has no trouble putting together the 2–and–2 of this moment. Here he is last week on “Judging Freedom,” Andrew Napolitano’s webcast program: “Whatever happened on the 7th of October, and I’m still not convinced that was not allowed to happen, … the decision then to attack had very little to do with what happened on the 7th of October and everything to do with a long-term strategic plan to begin the process of ethnically cleansing, expelling, or murdering, whatever you want to call it, the Arabs in Gaza and, ultimately, the Arabs on the West Bank.” This seems right but short of the emerging reality. A few minutes later in his exchange with Macgregor, Napolitano played a clip of Netanyahu addressing a table of officials, at least some of whom are American, last Friday:

“Iran is fighting us on a seven-front war. Obviously, Hamas and Hezbollah. The Houthis, militias in Iraq and Syria. Judea and Samaria on the West Bank. Iran itself. They’d like to topple Jordan. Their goal is to have a combined ground offensive from their various fronts, coupled with combined missile bombardments. We’ve been given the opportunity to scuttle it. And we will. The first requirement is to cut that hand [he gestures as if to cut through his right forearm], Hamas. People who do these things to us are not going to be there. We will have a long battle, I don’t think it’s that long, but we’ll get rid of them. We also have to deter the other elements of the Iran terror axis. We have to deal with the axis. The axis doesn’t threaten only us. It threatens you. It’s on the march to conquer the Middle East — conquer the Middle East — conquer. That means conquer Saudi Arabia, conquer the Arabian Peninsula, it’s just a question of time. And what’s standing in their way is a small Satan, that’s us, on the road to the middle-sized Satan, that’s the Europeans — they’re always offended when I tell them that — ‘You’re the great Satan!’ And we have to stop that.”

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“9 out of 10 children under 5 in Gaza are suffering from one or more infectious diseases. Levels of acute watery diarrhea are 20 times higher than typical.”

• Israeli Gaza Campaign May Kill 186,000 or More – 8% of Population (Juan Cole)

Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf, The Lancet calculate that 186,000 or more people may be killed* by the Israeli total war on Gaza, about 8% of the population. If you do not see this study reported on your cable “news” channel, you may conclude that the corporation that owns it is complicit in genocide. One of the paper’s authors, Martin McKee, “is a member of the editorial board of the Israel Journal of Health Policy Research and of the International Advisory Committee of the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research.” Although McKee says he is writing solely in a personal capacity, I think we may conclude that some members of the professional Israeli public health community have their hair on fire about the prosecution of the Gaza War. The Gaza Ministry of Health now says that over 38,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israelis. As The Lancet notes, the World Health Organization and even the Israeli intelligence services accept these figures.

Since the Israeli Air Force has dropped as many as five hundred two-thousand-pound bombs and by now has destroyed or damaged a majority of the buildings in the Gaza Strip, it is likely that at least 10,000 uncounted dead are under the rubble. The 38,000 dead are the result of what is called direct gathering of the figures. Initially the dead were identified and reported by hospitals. As Israel has reduced the ability of hospitals to function by its attacks on them, this direct reporting has continued, but hospitals began being unable in some cases to send along identification, though they could confirm the reception of the corpses. Some dishonest observers suggested that this inability to know the names of the dead somehow made the numbers less reliable, but the World Health Organization refuted this allegation. The dead are in makeshift morgues still gradually being identified.

Indirect counting of the dead attempts to calculate the missing people using statistical methods. Sometimes public health experts have attempted to interview people to collect data on dead family members and friends, and then projected totals based on these surveys. That method is not available in Gaza, where the Israeli authorities will not permit journalists and other observers, and where it is dangerous to be because there are no real safe zones, with those regions declared safe zones often having been bombed. Muhammad Jawad et al., in a survey of 118 unique armed conflicts affecting 102 countries from 1990 to 2017 found that they produced an average of 19.2 battle-related deaths per 100,000 population (54.7 for those in war as opposed to minor conflict). There were in addition an average of 311 excess deaths per 100,000 population from causes other than being immediately killed by a bomb or bullet. So, 16 civilians died of starvation, communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases and injuries, for every direct death in combat.

And this seems important, in the Jawad et al. study: “Effect estimates were disproportionately larger for children aged under 5 years, regardless of the cause of death. Gaza had some 350,000 children under 5. UNICEF reported in May, “9 out of 10 children under 5 in Gaza are suffering from one or more infectious diseases. Levels of acute watery diarrhea are 20 times higher than typical.” Already last March, 1 in 3 children under 2 were acutely malnourished, a condition that produces permanent cognitive and emotional damage. The Lancet authors used a much smaller multiplier, of four indirect deaths for each direct death. Based on the death toll known when the paper was written, they arrived at 186,000 dead for this war over the coming months. They admit that the estimate of four indirect deaths for every direct one is conservative, so the number could be substantially greater.

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“We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility..”

• UK Finances Worst Since 1945 – New Chancellor (RT)

The UK’s new Labour government has inherited the worst economy since the Second World War, the newly appointed chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has said. Reeves took charge of the country’s finances after Labour won 412 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons in last week’s general election, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule. “I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the Second World War,” Reeves said in a speech at the Treasury on Monday. “We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility,” she added, accusing her Tory predecessors of acting out of “political self-interest” as part of a “government that put party first, country second.”

“New Treasury analysis that I requested over the weekend shows that, had the UK economy grown at the average rate of other OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] economies this last 13 years, our economy would have been over £140 billion [$179 billion] larger,” Reeves said. She claimed that Tory policies effectively cost the UK budget £58 billion ($74 billion) in lost tax revenue in 2023 alone. “That’s money that could have revitalized our schools, our hospitals, and other public services,” the new chancellor said. “Growth requires difficult choices – choices that previous governments have shied away from.”

Reeves vowed to end “political timidity” in the UK’s “antiquated planning system,” and promised reform while staying committed not to “no increases in National Insurance, and the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.” According to The Guardian, the UK’s deficit has reached the highest level since the 1960s under more than a decade of Conservative governments, while the country was badly affected by “shocks including Brexit, the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis.” The International Monetary Fund projected in early July that the UK’s GDP will grow by 0.5% this year.

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Liberals

 

 

Celine

 

 

Malhotra

 

 

Giant squid

 

 

Leopard and lion

 

 

Mommy otter

 

 

Pump it

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle June 21 2024

Jun 212024
 
 June 21, 2024  Posted by at 8:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Claude Monet Water lilies 1904

 

• West Could Ditch Zelensky Early Next Year – Putin (RT)
• Zelensky Has No One Left to Turn to, Except Putin (DeMartino)
• Zelensky Bans Another Ukrainian Opposition Party (RT)
• Press Freedom ‘Shrinking’ In Ukraine – Reporters Without Borders (RT)
• Russia Fears a NATO Attack. Here’s Why. (Istomin)
• NATO ‘Moving Into Asia’ – Putin (RT)
• Russia Could Arm North Korea – Putin (RT)
• Western Property Could Be Seized – Zakharova (RT)
• “We Need Icebreakers” – And More Strategic Partnerships (Pepe Escobar)
• ‘Strategic Defeat’ Means End Of Russia – Putin (RT)
• Russia Will ‘Never’ Withdraw Troops – Putin (RT)
• Missouri AG Sues New York State Over Trump Lawfare (ZH)
• No Tax on Tips (RCW)
• UK PM Owns $7 Million Home In California – Politico (RT)
• French First Lady Transgender Libel Case Goes To Trial (RT)
• Key Evidence Missing In Assange Snooping Case (RT)

 

 

 

 

Bannon Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1803545732223303793

 

 

Sachs

 

 

Attack mode

 

 

More attack mode

 

 

Omarosa is selling a book

 

 

Tapper 2020
https://twitter.com/i/status/1803795912377942091

 

 

Maldonado

 

 

 

 

“Zelensky remains of use to foreign sponsors only as long as he can enforce policies that will help Kiev prolong hostilities with Russia..”

• West Could Ditch Zelensky Early Next Year – Putin (RT)

Ukraine’s supporters in the West will likely remove Vladimir Zelensky as soon as he outlives his usefulness, after pushing through all the necessary “unpopular decisions,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has predicted. Zelensky remains in power in Ukraine despite his term in office having officially expired on May 20. He opted not to hold a presidential election, citing martial law imposed due to the conflict with Russia. Putin has repeatedly stressed that the Ukrainian constitution does not provide for prolonging a president’s term, and explicitly states that elected lawmakers should retain their powers until a new parliament can be chosen by the Ukrainian people. On Thursday he reiterated, that the country’s laws clearly state that Zelensky’s “train has left” and that presidential power should be transferred to the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada.

“What are we even talking about? The West simply doesn’t want to replace him right now, the time has not come yet. I’ve already said it, but I think it’s obvious to anyone,” the Russian leader said at a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. “They will pin all unpopular decisions on him, including lowering the military age, and that’s it, then he will be replaced. I believe it will be sometime in the first half of next year,” he added. Putin echoed analysis shared by the Russian foreign intelligence service (SVR) earlier in the day, which claimed Zelensky will be scapegoated for the country’s inevitable military defeat. “It is becoming increasingly evident that the White House will soon shut down ‘Project Zelensky’,” the SVR stated on Thursday, noting that retired General Valery Zaluzhny, the former top commander of the armed forces, is a likely candidate to replace him.

Last week, Putin noted in a keynote speech on Russian foreign policy that Zelensky remains of use to foreign sponsors only as long as he can enforce policies that will help Kiev prolong hostilities with Russia. The Russian president also said any agreements signed by Zelensky with foreign nations after May 20, such as the recent bilateral ten-year security deal with the US, can be easily discarded by other parties, since he no longer has any legal authority to represent Ukraine.

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“..the armed forces, where they say approval of Zelensky has dropped to 17%…”

• Zelensky Has No One Left to Turn to, Except Putin (DeMartino)

With an increasing number of Ukrainians turning against Volodymyr Zelensky, no chance to win the war and a so-called “international community” abandoning him, Zelensky is finding himself without allies and with no escape from the hell he created for his country. While according to the pro-Ukrainian Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) a small majority of Ukrainians still say they support Zelensky, that number is rapidly dropping, from 77% in September 2023 to just 56% in May. The poll authors, of the dystopian-named MOBILISE Project, speculated that the decrease in popularity could stem from the new mobilization law. “Zelensky’s approval rating fell throughout winter 2023/2024. This fall occurred in tandem with the introduction of new mobilization law,” it noted. It also notes that only 34% of Ukrainians said they support the mobilization law, while 52% disagreed with it. Rumors of an additional mobilization law lowering the age even more are likely to make the situation worse for Zelensky.

Keep in mind that these poll results are the work of the KIIS and MOBILISE, pro-Zelensky-regime organizations. Additionally, a different poll by another pro-Ukrainian organization, the Razumkov Centre, found that 64.5% of Ukrainians stated “You have to be very careful with people” when asked if most people can be trusted. Considering respondents are living in a war-torn country under martial law and full-scale mobilization, it is reasonable to question if every respondent felt safe giving anti-regime answers to pollsters. Nevertheless, the trend is too difficult for even pro-Ukrainian sources to spin convincingly into an endorsement of Zelensky. And the SVR said that the situation is even worse within the armed forces, where they say approval of Zelensky has dropped to 17%.

“[Ukrainians] are without electricity 80% of the day, rolling blackouts major cities… are being bombed. Infrastructure, valuable infrastructure being bombed,” explained documentarian Regis Tremblay on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour. “They’ve lost over 600,000, according to Douglas MacGregor and Scott Ritter, over 600,000 dead with a million wounded who cannot return to the front… This guy is a dead man walking. It’s only a matter of time now before he is no longer useful to the United States and they throw him under the bus.” The United States has a long history of supporting and then abandoning allies once they are no longer useful to them. Just a partial list reveals the grim possibilities that result from accepting US arms. Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Ngo Dinh Diem, all received US arms and all ended up dead at the hands of the US government. “Zelensky is no longer the president of Ukraine. His term ended and now he is an illegal president,” noted Tremblay.

With his military dwindling and dissatisfied, his people turning against him, and his allies shunning him, Zelensky might want to think about what he can do to achieve peace. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out his terms to begin negotiations, while Zelensky’s NATO benefactors rejected it outright; it was an olive branch he should strongly consider grabbing. “We are ready to continue our dialogue with the Ukrainian side. And it doesn’t matter where they take place – in Minsk, Istanbul or Switzerland,” Putin said at a press conference on Thursday while visiting Vietnam. “I do not think that such nihilism [by Ukraine and the West] regarding our proposals will remain forever. For sure, something will change, including our conditions, depending on the situation on the ground,” Putin added.

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There was still one left?

• Zelensky Bans Another Ukrainian Opposition Party (RT)

A Ukrainian court has banned the Nash Krai (Our Land) political party and ordered the seizure of its assets at the request of the Ministry of Justice. The move is the latest in a crackdown on the opposition under Vladimir Zelensky’s administration. A panel of judges from the Eighth Administrative Court of Appeal issued the ruling on Wednesday, according to a statement. “The court satisfied the claims of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine: the activities of the political party Nash Krai were banned; the property, funds and other assets of the party, its regional, city, district organizations, primary cells and other structural units were transferred to the state,” the statement read.

The party was registered in August 2011 as the ‘Bloc Party’ and was renamed ‘Nash Krai’ in 2014. From 2015, the party positioned itself as a “group of local leaders and businessmen” who aimed to avoid political games and intrigue, according to RBK Ukraine. Only three of its members were elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) as independents in 2019, but the party gained some 1,694 seats in regional administrations during local elections in 2020. Following the escalation with Russia in February 2022, Zelensky banned major political competition, including Opposition Platform – For Life (OPZZh), the second biggest party in terms of seats in the Verkhovna Rada. He also cracked down on the media, shutting down multiple television channels associated with his political opponents and consolidating nine of the largest TV networks into a single 24-hour state-run broadcast dubbed ‘Telemarathon’.

Zelensky’s presidential term expired on May 20, although he chose not to hold elections under the pretext of martial law imposed after the beginning of the conflict with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has noted the Ukrainian constitution has no provision for prolonging a president’s term in this way. It forbids holding elections during a period of emergency, and explicitly states lawmakers should retain their powers until a new parliament can be elected by the people, Putin said, calling the current Ukrainian political situation a “usurpation of power.”

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A joke.

• Press Freedom ‘Shrinking’ In Ukraine – Reporters Without Borders (RT)

Independent media outlets are being subjected to growing pressure in Ukraine, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has warned. The non-profit group urged the government in Kiev to combat impunity for violent crimes against reporters and to end arbitrary restrictions regarding coverage of the conflict with Russia. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a law in 2022 that significantly expanded the government’s media regulation powers, allowing for outlets to be temporarily banned. The legislation came under fire both domestically and in the West at the time. On Wednesday, RSF released a report titled ‘Shrinking press freedom in Ukraine: urgent need to implement a roadmap for the right to information’, which claimed that “political pressure and obstacles are mounting on the Ukrainian media.”

“Since the beginning of 2024, at least five journalists have been under surveillance or threatened because of publications on corruption,” the group estimated. The document details in particular how the threat of forcible enlistment into the Ukrainian armed forces has been used to silence reporters. Moreover, it accused Ukrainian authorities of directly interfering in the work of some media outlets. RSF cited the case of Ukrinform, which had a military representative installed at its helm last month. Around the same time, the existence of ‘stop lists’ of guests banned from being invited on air by the same media outlet was revealed, the report wrote. RSF went on to denounce a decree passed earlier this month that obliged journalists to submit any quotes and interviews with military personnel to a special center for strategic military communications for clearing.

“The pressure, threats and interference must stop… the Ukrainian media landscape remains fragile,” Jeanne Cavelier, head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, emphasized. Citing Ukrainian journalists and monitoring groups, the New York Times reported on Tuesday that the government in Kiev has increasingly been curtailing press freedoms, in a manner that cannot be justified by wartime security needs. According to the article, the authorities in Kiev are trying to ensure that the opposition, especially the party of former president Petro Poroshenko, does not receive positive coverage in the press, and that the government and the military are never criticized. The newspaper claimed that the Ukrainian government has also had “tense relationships” with Western media throughout the conflict, temporarily revoking military press passes for journalists from several outlets, following reports criticizing the military.

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“The belief that their situation will deteriorate over time leads states to take increasingly adventurous steps..”

• Russia Fears a NATO Attack. Here’s Why. (Istomin)

A recent admission by US President Joe Biden is telling: “If we ever let Ukraine fail, mark my words, you will see Poland go, and you will see all these countries along Russia’s actual border negotiate on their own.” Thus, the good old ‘domino theory’ is back in the minds of Western strategists. The growing bitterness of Western countries towards Russia is consistent with the way in which they look at armed conflicts in terms of the logic of preventive war. Rather than linking interstate clashes to aggressive opportunism, this model sees escalation as a product of fears about the future. The belief that their situation will deteriorate over time leads states to take increasingly adventurous steps, up to and including the use of force. Throughout history, major wars have usually been the product of this preemptive logic – the desire to strike before an expected weakening.

For example, the collapse of the continental blockade system led Napoleon to attack Russia. German fears about the prospects for modernization of the Russian army were the trigger for the First World War. A similar dynamic can be seen today in the policy of the West, which has invested considerable resources in confronting Russia. The fact that Moscow doesn’t countenance losing in any way, but, on the contrary, is gradually moving towards achieving its goals, can only lead to frustration on the part of the US and its allies. This does not lead to reconciliation, but to the search for more effective means to hinder Russia. Having failed in its plans to destroy the Russian economy with restrictive measures and to inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow at the hands of Kiev, the West is moving ever closer to the brink of direct military confrontation. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly insensitive to the possible consequences of such a scenario.

Like casino players, the US and its allies are raising the stakes with each successive bet. The growing adventurism is clearly visible in the debate over the deployment of Western troops in Ukraine. Moreover, not only hysterical Western European leaders, but also seemingly more responsible American generals have begun to speak out on the issue. For example, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Brown, has concluded that the deployment of NATO troops to the country is inevitable. The West’s willingness to take risks is reinforced by its contradictory, if not schizophrenic, view of Russia. Public figures never tire of claiming that Moscow’s potential was greatly overestimated in the past and has been further weakened by the Ukraine operation. At the same time, without being aware of the dissonance, they justify the build-up of their own armed forces on the grounds of an increased Russian threat.

An Irish writer once labelled this sort of thinking as “Russophrenia.” The inconsistency is also evident in the portrayal of Russia as an insatiable expansionist intent on invading its neighbours, combined with a belief in its reverence for Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which guarantees that NATO members will provide mutual assistance in the event of an attack on one of them. The portrayal of Russia as a ‘paper tiger’ – an aggressive but weak actor – lays the groundwork for pre-emptive escalations to reverse the trends of confrontation unfavorable to the West. And they can be carried out not only in Ukraine. The idea of restricting Moscow’s access to the Baltic Sea, which ignores the inevitable response to threats to Kaliningrad, is evidence of this, and is regularly introduced into Western discussions.

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“..the Chinese Foreign Ministry also denounced NATO as a “walking war machine that causes chaos wherever it goes.”

• NATO ‘Moving Into Asia’ – Putin (RT)

The US-led military bloc is increasingly shifting its focus on the Asia-Pacific, creating security threats not only to all countries in the region, but Russia as well, President Vladimir Putin said in Vietnam a day after signing a strategic partnership treaty with DPRK leader Kim Jong-un. Following a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart To Lam on Thursday, Putin announced that the sides “showed mutual interest in building a reliable and adequate regional security architecture based on the principles of the non-use of force and a peaceful settlement of disputes, in which there will be no place for selective military-political blocs.” “The positions of Russia and Vietnam on these issues largely coincide or are close to each other,” Putin said. At a press conference later in the day, the Russian leader noted that the situation in the world is developing in such a way that requires strengthening cooperation with partners, “especially in those areas that we consider important, including taking into account what is happening in Asia.”

“We see what’s happening in Asia, right? A block system is being put together… NATO is already moving there as if to a permanent place of residence. This, of course, poses a threat to all countries in the region, including the Russian Federation. We are obliged to respond to this and we will do so,” he insisted. Russia reserves the right to provide arms to allies, as the West claims it can arm Ukraine with impunity, and could send long-range weapons to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and other countries, Putin added. Last month, in a thinly veiled reference to NATO and other Western-dominated organizations, Putin warned that the Asia-Pacific region is “no place for closed military and political alliances,” adding that both China and Russia deem the establishment of such blocs as “harmful and counterproductive.”

Back in 2021, the US, UK and Australia established the so-called AUKUS security partnership, which seeks to help Canberra acquire nuclear-powered submarines. Washington is reportedly attempting to fast-track Canada and Japan’s membership. Beijing has condemned the AUKUS pact as an attempt to build an “Asia-Pacific version of NATO,” with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin arguing last year that it is based on a “Cold War mentality which will only motivate an arms race, damage the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, and harm regional stability and peace.” Earlier this year, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also denounced NATO as a “walking war machine that causes chaos wherever it goes.” Beijing has accused NATO of meddling in Asian affairs, saying the bloc is a “terrible monster” and has extended a “black hand” toward the region.

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“We don’t need a first strike..” [..] “Because our return strike is guaranteed to destroy any attacker.”

• Russia Could Arm North Korea – Putin (RT)

Since the West claims it has the right to arm Ukraine with impunity, Russia reserves the same right and might send long-range precision weapons to the DPRK and other countries, President Vladimir Putin has said. Putin spoke with reporters in Hanoi following his meetings with the leadership of Vietnam on Thursday. One of the questions related to his previous suggestion that Moscow could send missiles to the adversaries of the West, in response to the US and its allies greenlighting Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia. ”We do not rule out supplying weapons to other countries, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Putin said. “Let the West think where they might end up.”

Western countries that have supplied long-range and other weapons to Ukraine have said they can’t be held responsible for how Kiev uses them, and insist that it does not make them parties to the conflict, Putin elaborated, adding that Russia therefore reserves the same right for itself. The Russian president also noted that Moscow is considering modifications to its doctrine on the use of atomic weapons, as the West appears to be working on low-yield weapons to lower the nuclear threshold. “We don’t need a first strike,” he said in response to another question. “Because our return strike is guaranteed to destroy any attacker.”

When asked about the peace terms he offered Ukraine last week, Putin said that Russia has always been willing to negotiate, while Kiev and its Western backers sabotaged both the Minsk process and the Istanbul talks. However, the terms he outlined will not be valid forever, Putin cautioned. ”Our terms will change depending on the situation on the ground,” the Russian president said. Putin arrived in Hanoi on Wednesday evening from Pyongyang, where he signed a strategic partnership treaty with DPRK leader Kim Jong-un. His trip to Vietnam has involved the strengthening of bilateral ties with Hanoi, including trade and nuclear energy cooperation.

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Euroclear.

• Western Property Could Be Seized – Zakharova (RT)

Russia has a “wide arsenal” of political and economic countermeasures to respond to the potential confiscation of its sovereign assets, including a tit-for-tat seizure of Western property in Russia, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. The leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations agreed at last week’s summit in Apulia, Italy, to use interest from frozen Russian assets to secure a $50 billion loan for Kiev. Zakharova pointed out that Russia has a “significant” amount of Western funds and property under its jurisdiction. “All of it may be subject to Russian retaliatory policy and retaliatory actions. The arsenal of political and economic countermeasures is wide,” she told reporters at a regular press briefing on Wednesday. Russia, however, will not disclose the nature of the retaliatory actions, Zakharova added.

G7 countries have approved in principle a US plan to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan issued against frozen Russian assets, to help Kiev buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure. The idea is to use nearly $300 billion in Russian sovereign funds frozen in the West in the wake of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, as the basis for the loan. G7 countries would use profits from the assets to cover the debt interest. Most of the frozen assets are being held in the EU. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said recently that the profits earned from the immobilized Russian assets amounts to around $3-$5 billion per year. The G7 intends to disburse the funds through multiple channels, directing them to Ukraine’s military, general budget, and reconstruction needs. Disagreements, however, remain among the US and its allies as to who will carry the loan risks if Western governments lose control over the Russian assets. Moscow has repeatedly said it will treat any attempt to tap into them as theft, and will retaliate.

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“..the high quality of life in Murmansk..”

• “We Need Icebreakers” – And More Strategic Partnerships (Pepe Escobar)

The St. Petersburg forum offered a wealth of crucial sessions discussing connectivity corridors. One of the key ones was on the Northern Sea Route (NSR) – or, in Chinese terminology, the Arctic Silk Road: the number one future alternative to the Suez canal. With an array of main corporate actors in the room – for instance, from Rosneft, Novatek, Norilsk Nickel – as well as governors and ministers, the stage was set for a comprehensive debate. Top Putin adviser Igor Levitin set the tone: to facilitate seamless container transport, the federal government needs to invest in seaports and icebreakers; a comparison was made – in terms of technological challenge – to the building of the Trans-Siberian railway; and Levitin also stressed the endless expansion possibilities for city hubs such as Murmansk, Archangelsk and Vladivostok. Add to it that the NSR will connect with another fast-growing trans-Eurasia connectivity corridor: the INSTC (International North South Transportation Corridor), whose main actors are BRICS members Russia, Iran and India.

Alexey Chekunkov, minister for development of the Far East and the Arctic, plugged a trial run of the NSR, which costs the same as railway shipping without the bottlenecks. He praised the NSR as a “service” and coined the ultimate motto: “We need icebreakers!” Russia of course will be the leading player in the whole project, benefitting 2.5 million people who live in the North. Sultan Sulayem, CEO of Dubai-based cargo logistics and maritime services powerhouse DP World, confirmed that “the current supply chains are not reliable anymore”, as well as being inefficient; the NSR is “faster, more reliable and cheaper”. From Tokyo to London, the route runs for 24k km; via the NSR, it’s only 13k km. Sulayem is adamant: the NSR is a game-changer and “needs to be implemented now”.

Vladimir Panov, the special representative for the Arctic from Rosatom, confirmed that the Arctic is “a treasure chest”, and the NSR “will unlock it”. Rosatom will have all the necessary infrastructure in place “in five years or so”. He credited the fast pace of developments to the high-level Putin-Xi strategic dialogue – complete with the creation of a Russia-China working group.

Andrey Chibis, the governor of Murmansk, noted that this deep, key port for the NSR – the main container hub in the Arctic – “does not freeze”. He acknowledged the enormity of the logistical challenges – but at the same time that will attract a lot of skilled workers, considering the high quality of life in Murmansk. The building of the NSR indeed can be interpreted as a 21st century, accelerated version of the building of the Trans-Siberian railway in the late 19th/early 20th century. Under the overarching framework of Eurasia integration, the interconnections with other corridors will be endless – from the INSTC to BRI projects part of the Chinese New Silk Roads, the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and ASEAN. In a session focused on the Greater Eurasia Partnership (GEP) Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Pankin praised this concept of Eurasia “without dividing lines, uniting ancient civilizations, transportation corridors and a unified common space of 5 billion people”.

Inevitable connections were drawn – from GEP to the EAEU and the SCO, with the proliferation of multimodal transport and alternative payment systems. Khan Sohail, the deputy secretary-general of the SCO, remarked how virtually “everyday there are new announcements by China” – a long way “since the SCO was established 21 years ago”, then based exclusively on security. Big developments are expected at the SCO summit next month in Astana. Sergey Glazyev, the minister of macroeconomics at the Eurasia Economic Commission, part of the EAEU, praised the EAEU-SCO progressive integration and fast-developing transactions in baskets of national currencies, something “that was unchallengeable 10 years ago”. He admitted that even if GEP has not been formalized yet, facts on the ground are proving that Eurasia can be self-sufficient. GEP may be on the initial stage, but it’s fast advancing the process to “harmonize free trade”.

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1,000 years.

• ‘Strategic Defeat’ Means End Of Russia – Putin (RT)

The West must realize that defeating Russia is not only unlikely, but impossible due to the unity of its people who understand that it would spell the end of the country’s thousand-year history, President Vladimir Putin has argued. Speaking at a press conference in Hanoi following his meetings with the leadership of Vietnam on Thursday, Putin addressed the issue of Western powers “raising the temperature” of the Ukraine conflict through gradual escalation. “Apparently, they expect us to get scared at some point. But at the same time, they also say that they want to achieve a strategic defeat of Russia on the battlefield. What does this mean for Russia? For Russia, this means the end of its statehood. This means the end of the thousand-year history of the Russian state. I think this is understandable for everyone,” Putin noted. And then the question arises: Why should we be afraid? Wouldn’t it be better to go all the way then? This is elementary logic.

Even though Putin repeatedly admitted that any conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons would have dire consequences for humanity, he has maintained that Moscow would be forced to defend itself using all available means if the country’s very existence was at stake. Back in 2018, he famously said that “as a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state I must ask myself: Why would we want a world without Russia?” The US and its allies have funneled weapons, ammunition, and equipment to Ukraine over the past two years, while insisting they are not a party to the conflict but want to inflict “a strategic defeat” on Moscow. In recent months, Washington, London, and other NATO members announced they were lifting restrictions on Kiev’s use of their weapons against Russia.

Citing the need to send the West a message, last month the Kremlin ordered the military to carry out drills in deploying non-strategic nuclear weapons. Asked on Thursday whether Russia could change its nuclear doctrine to include a clause on the possibility of launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike, Putin emphasized there was no need for that. “We do not need a preventive strike yet, because the enemy is guaranteed to be destroyed in a retaliatory strike,” he said.

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“..Kiev has an interest in our troops remaining there, because they don’t want to hold elections.”

• Russia Will ‘Never’ Withdraw Troops – Putin (RT)

Ukraine’s demand for the withdrawal of Russian troops is only designed to perpetuate the conflict, because that’s the only way the current Kiev government can stay in power, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Putin was speaking at a press conference in Hanoi following his meetings with the leadership of Vietnam on Thursday. Among other topics, he addressed the Ukraine conflict. “If negotiations are linked to the withdrawal of our troops, about which the Kiev regime dreams, then this will never happen,” Putin told reporters. “Because the Kiev regime does not want to relinquish power, does not want to hold normal elections according to the Ukrainian constitution, they will forever drag out the ceasefire talks,” the Russian president added. “This means that Kiev has an interest in our troops remaining there, because they don’t want to hold elections.”

As for attempts to “beat back” Russian troops from Kharkov, Putin said that Kiev’s orders to achieve a victory on the battlefield “at all costs” will mean it is Ukraine that will suffer. Kharkov, he said, is a tactical operation, which Ukraine is trying to portray as strategic. When asked about the Western rejection of the peace terms he offered Ukraine last week, Putin said that it was true to form. “I expected just such a reaction, at first,” he said. “What happens later, time will tell. It all depends on how the situation develops on the ground.” Russia has always been willing to negotiate, while Ukraine and its Western backers sabotaged the Minsk process and the Istanbul talks, Putin said, noting that the terms he outlined will not be valid forever.

According to the Russian president, Ukraine has to recognize Russian sovereignty over the entire territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, “as defined by their administrative borders at the time they joined Ukraine [in August 1991].” Kiev must withdraw its military from the four regions and inform Moscow in writing that it no longer plans to join NATO, before any ceasefire talks can begin, Putin said last Friday. Vladimir Zelensky has denounced the proposal as an “ultimatum,” insisting that the only way to end the conflict is based on his “peace formula,” which amounts to a Russian surrender. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claimed that Putin’s offer was not “made in good faith,” and would cost Kiev “significantly more land,” while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it a “classic land grab” and an attempt to influence the ‘peace conference’ in Switzerland.

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This could have teeth.

• Missouri AG Sues New York State Over Trump Lawfare (ZH)

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey on Thursday announced that he’s suing the State of New York over what he called a “direct attack on our democratic process through unconstitutional lawfare against President Trump.” “We have to fight back against a rogue prosecutor who is trying to take a presidential candidate off the campaign trail,” Bailey posted on X, adding “Stay tuned.” While Bailey didn’t elaborate, last month he accused the Biden DOJ of colluding with prosecutors in various Trump cases, filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in connection with his investigation.

“The investigations and subsequent prosecutions of former President Donald J. Trump appear to have been conducted in coordination with the United States Department of Justice,” Bailey posted in a lengthy thread on X. “This is demonstrated by the move of the third-highest ranking member of the Department of Justice, Matthew Colangelo, to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in order to prosecute President Trump in December 2022,” Bailey continues.What’s more, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg worked hand-in-hand with NY Attorney General Letitia James in pursuing civil litigation against Trump, which he used to campaign on. Is Bailey about to become Trump’s Attorney General?

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” That signal says to lower-income workers across the country, “I understand your struggles, and I’m with you.”

• No Tax on Tips (RCW)

Donald Trump is a master showman and marketer. He demonstrated those skills once again with his proposal to kill the tax on tips. It’s more than shrewd. It’s brilliant. After the hoorays from waiters and other service workers died down, political analysts weighed in. Their conclusion: this is a very smart way to gain an edge in Nevada, where the presidential race is close. That’s certainly true. But Trump’s proposal is much smarter and will have a bigger impact, not because of its impact on tips, as such, but because of the larger signal it sends. That signal says to lower-income workers across the country, “I understand your struggles, and I’m with you.” Trump’s proposal says that loud and clear. It is both a blow to the IRS (who doesn’t like that?) and a tangible demonstration of how the former president connects to everyday working people. That’s a much broader cohort than the folks who rely on tips.

President Biden has emphasized his own connection to working people. He does it every time he calls himself “Scranton Joe,” and says he was raised by every group in town except the Hmong and Aboriginal Australians. (Those groups surely would be included if they had enough voters in swing states.) This contest for the allegiance of the working class is central to American politics and has been since the days of Andrew Jackson. They have been central to the Democratic Party’s coalition since Franklin Roosevelt’s reelection in 1936. FDR solidified the party’s coalition. Every successful Democrat on the national level since then has counted on the working-class vote – and the ones who didn’t (most notably Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and George McGovern in 1972) lost in landslides.

Ronald Reagan, who’d been a New Deal Democrat as a young man mounted a frontal assault against the FDR alliance and launched a long-term shift in the process. Donald Trump has gone further. He has captured that constituency among whites, competes for them among Hispanics, and is eroding it, at least slightly, among black men. That shift in all three groups could have a huge impact in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada, and Arizona. This year’s election may well hinge on them, and even slight changes could alter the outcome. Trump’s challenge to the heart of the old Democratic coalition is part of a larger realignment in American voting patterns. That realignment is obvious in the wealthy suburbs, which have gradually switched from moderate Republican to moderate Democrat. The wedge issue there is the Republican Party’s social conservatism, which alienates more than it resonates in those areas.

The suburbs are up for grabs this year because of weak economic performance, persistent problems with public schools (which are linked to Democrats because of the party’s bond with teachers’ unions), and the Democratic Party’s move much further left. No matter how the suburbs vote this year, though, their longer-term shift is clear. An equally clear shift in the opposite direction is happening in working-class neighborhoods. Chicagoans call them the “bungalow belt.” They were once occupied by immigrants from Eastern Europe. They are now the home of second- and third-generation Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and pilgrims from Central America. Trump is emerging as an unlikely champion of that constituency. He knows they don’t want ideological indoctrination in public schools or control by teachers’ unions instead of parents. They want cheaper energy a lot more than they want electric vehicles, which are too expensive. And they damn sure don’t want some bureaucrat in Bethesda telling them they can’t cook on a gas stove. They recoil at the idea of non-elected officials pushing that agenda down their throats.

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After the worst election defeat in history he might want to move.

• UK PM Owns $7 Million Home In California – Politico (RT)

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak owns a $7.2 million beach home in Santa Monica, California, where his opponents say he could move if he loses the general election next month, Politico reported on Wednesday. The UK Conservative Party is on course for a historic defeat in the upcoming vote, which would end its 14-year run in government, according to three major polls released on Wednesday. The polls predict an all-time low for the Tories and amid indicators that Sunak’s unpopularity has reached record levels. The prime minister called a snap election last month, claiming that his decision to call the vote was primarily motivated by economic factors such as a historic decline in British living standards, a rise in energy costs, and inflation.

The predicted landslide Labour victory has sparked speculation that Sunak could relocate to California if he finds himself “out of the top job,” the outlet said. “The Golden State has become an issue in the election campaign, so much so that ‘sending Sunak to California’ is political shorthand for ousting him from office,” Politico wrote. Sunak’s beach home overlooking the Pacific Ocean is located in a luxury apartment building in an elite area of Santa Monica, the outlet said. The outlet claimed that Sunak’s children would likely enroll in elite schools in the area, “rubbing shoulders with the children of celebrities” if Sunak opts to move straight after the election. The British prime minister has made no secret of his love for California, saying that living in the US had helped shape his mindset as a leader. After studying at Oxford, Sunak took an MBA at Stanford University in California, where he met his wife, Akshata Murty, the daughter of India’s sixth-richest man, and ran a hedge fund in Santa Monica.

US President Joe Biden even joked about Rishi Sunak’s home in California during a meeting in San Diego last year. “I want to welcome you back to California – he’s a Stanford man, and he still has a home here in California. That’s why I’m being very nice to you, maybe you can invite me to your home in California.” Sunak, however, has denied rumors that he is planning a move to California after a potential election defeat, pledging to stay in the UK regardless of the outcome. “It’s simply not true. I mean, it’s just simply not true,” Sunak said in an interview last month. He also dismissed claims that the early election had been arranged to suit his daughters’ schooling in the US.

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What a story.

• French First Lady Transgender Libel Case Goes To Trial (RT)

Two women have gone on trial for defamation in France after claiming that President Emmauel Macron’s wife, Brigitte, was a man once named “Jean-Michel,” France24 reported on Thursday. Amandine Roy, a self-proclaimed spiritual medium, was questioned in a Paris court on Wednesday, while the second defendant, independent journalist Natacha Rey, cited illness and was absent. In a 2021 interview, Roy quizzed Rey on her YouTube channel, where the journalist aired the theory that Brigitte Macron was actually the transgender identity of her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux. The interview was followed by a social media storm of claims that the French first lady, formerly named Brigitte Trogneux, was Jean-Michel under a new identity. Brigitte Macron filed lawsuits in 2022 after the video was posted, alleging it defamed her, invaded her and her brother’s privacy, and violated her public image.

The judge ruled there was no case for invasion of privacy or violation of image. The public defamation case had been pending since January 2022. Brigitte Macron’s lawyer, Jean Ennochi, is demanding €10,000 ($10,750) in compensation for both the first lady and her brother, according to France24. Neither President Macron nor his wife were present at the proceedings, the network noted. France’s first lady was born Brigitte Marie-Claude Trogneux to a family of chocolatiers from Amiens. She married banker Andre-Louis Auziere in 1974, and the couple had three children together. She met Emmanuel Macron when he was 15 and she was teaching literature at La Providence Jesuit high school in her hometown. She divorced Auziere in 2006 and married Macron – 24 years her junior – in 2007.

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“..Spanish police had not provided the complete files from a Samsung phone, which Morales apparently used to keep in touch with American intelligence…”

• Key Evidence Missing In Assange Snooping Case (RT)

The Spanish case against a man whose firm allegedly snooped on Julian Assange for the US government has hit a roadblock over key evidence which has reportedly gone missing, according to the El Pais newspaper. The defendant, David Morales, is the owner of UC Global SL – a company hired to provide security at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the Wikileaks founder was holed up between 2012 and 2019. The company is accused of abusing its position by installing secret recording devices in the building, and reporting confidential details about Assange and his meetings to the CIA. An expose by the newspaper El Pais revealed the arrangement in 2019, leading to the businessman’s arrest.

On Wednesday, the outlet reported that Spanish police had not provided the complete files from a Samsung phone, which Morales apparently used to keep in touch with American intelligence. The absent data includes records of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Proton Mail and Skype communications. The device was seized in September 2019, when police searched Morales’ home in the Spanish city of Jerez de la Frontera, and its contents were supposedly copied on the spot. The police provided the Spanish High Court with a derivative Universal Forensic Data Report (UFDR) from the device, but not the complete original Universal Forensic Data Exchange (UFDX), El Pais said.

”It is extremely striking that the police unit has delivered the UFDR and UFDX files from the other devices and has not done so precisely from this one,” the public prosecutor’s office said. Judge Santiago Pedraz has ordered the police Cybercrime Unit to immediately recover the full data from the phone in his presence, and establish who was responsible for the situation. The abridged profile was shared through a cloud service used for storing evidence. Spanish authorities are aware of the importance of the phone records thanks to a protected witness, a former employee of UC Global SL. The UFDR reportedly includes some circumstantial evidence in the form of words recorded by the keyboard app Swiftkey.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Wayans Wade

 

 

SNL

 

 

Elon genuine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1803691601169903906

 

 

X news
https://twitter.com/i/status/1803634740538609717

 

 

Corbyn
https://twitter.com/i/status/1803705328124547222

 

 

Donziger

 

 

Honey
https://twitter.com/i/status/1803758343715959086

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle June 5 2024

Jun 052024
 
 June 5, 2024  Posted by at 8:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  81 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh The good Samaritan (after Delacroix) 1890

 

• Trump Calls For Supreme Court To Intervene Before Sentencing (MN)
• Dershowitz: Trump Could Fast-Track His Appeal To Supreme Court (ZH)
• Republicans Vow To Scorch the Earth After Trump Conviction (RCW)
• The Fake Conviction (Newt Gingrich)
• Joe Biden’s Health Is About To Be Put To A Severe Test (Sadygzade)
• Biden Does ‘We Gotta Secure The Border!’ Routine (ZH)
• “A Blatant Lie” (Turley)
• Freedom of Speech in the USA? Think again! (Gilbert Doctorow)
• Swiss Senate Votes Against Aid For Kiev (RT)
• NATO Member Turkiye Would Like to Join BRICS – Top Diplomat (Sp.)
• NATO Preparing Troop Plans For Potential Russia Conflict – Telegraph (RT)
• Punish Hungary To Ensure EU’s Future – Bloc Presidency Holder Belgium (RT)
• Orban Believes Trump, EU Could End Ukrainian Conflict In 24 Hours (TASS)
• People are Not Reading Your Stuff: Publisher Drops Truth Bomb at WaPo (Turley)
• The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All (Vine/Arriola)
• Musk Corrects “Liar” CNBC Journo Over Nvidia Report (ZH)
• Pakistan Overturns Imran Khan’s Treason Conviction (RT)

 

 

 

 

“He’s polling right up there with fungal infections!”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798001509697032668

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1797758238215016770

 

 

 

 

Hunter jurors

 

 

 

 

Border poll

 

 

Gaetz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798004447362343011

 

 

O’Leary Musk
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798142196753048004

 

 

 

 

Before July 11th.

• Trump Calls For Supreme Court To Intervene Before Sentencing (MN)

Donald Trump has called for the Supreme Court to step in before he is sentenced in the ‘falsified business documents’ case on July 11th. In a Truth Social post, Trump said he has not done anything wrong and referred to the prosecutors as “Fascists.” He added “A Radical Left Soros backed D.A., who ran on a platform of ‘I will get Trump,’ reporting to an ‘Acting’ Local Judge, appointed by the Democrats, who is HIGHLY CONFLICTED, will make a decision which will determine the future of our Nation?” “The United States Supreme Court MUST DECIDE!” Trump asserted. The sentencing date has been set a few days before the RNC Convention in Wisconsin. Trump is currently at the mercy of Judge Merchan, with the potential sentence being up to four years in jail for each of the 34 charges.

Merchan is a Columbian immigrant whose daughter is president of a political consulting firm that works closely with Democratic candidates. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was literally funded into office by George and Alex Soros’ Open Society, with the latter gloating about the verdict last week and calling for Democrats to repeatedly label Trump a “convicted felon.” “Repetition is the key to a successful message,” Soros declared. In the wake of the verdict, there was a massive spike in Google searches for how to donate to Trump, and he has raised over $200 million and counting since. It is an unprecedented amount for a candidate. Despite Trump being convicted on 34 counts, there has been no negative impact on his support and even a slight increase in favorability, especially amongst independent voters.

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“..the Supreme Court has an obligation to review the case before the election so that the American public has resolution..”

• Dershowitz: Trump Could Fast-Track His Appeal To Supreme Court (ZH)

In a Friday interview with Megyn Kelly, Dershowitz suggested that Trump’s legal team should immediately push to get their appeal heard before the New York Court of Appeals, asking them to bypass the Appellate Division – which, Dershowitz suggested, are elected and more likely to work against Trump. “The Appellate Division or Manhattan judges that are elected and they don’t want to have to face their families and say you were the judge who allowed Trump to become the next President of the United States. They don’t want to be Dershowitz’ed,” he said, referring to the fact that he defended Trump during his first impeachment trial in the Senate. “They don’t want to be treated in New York, the way I have been treated in Martha’s Vineyard and Harvard and New York because I defended Donald Trump, so they should skip the Appellate Division.”

And so, to avoid the politicized Appellate Division, Trump’s attorneys should ask the Court of Appeals for an expedited appeal while preparing to argue in front of the US Supreme Court that the Manhattan case was rushed to try and get a verdict before the election. Dershowitz further suggested that the Supreme Court has an obligation to review the case before the election so that the American public has resolution. As Tom Ozimek of the Epoch Times notes further, Dershowitz has in the past accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of unfairly building the case against the former president by using a novel legal theory to elevate misdemeanor business falsification charges into a felony by alleging that the records fraud was carried out to conceal an underlying crime. In the Trump case, the underlying crime that was alleged was seeking to interfere in the 2016 election by using non-disclosure agreements to prevent unfavorable media coverage about an alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels that the former president has denied.

Mr. Dershowitz said that Trump attorneys should consider supporting their petition to the New York Court of Appeals by highlighting two issues, with the first relating to the fact that the state’s highest court recently reversed Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction because the trial judge prejudicially allowed testimony on allegations unrelated to the case. The retired law professor alleged that Judge Juan Merchan “improperly” allowed irrelevant salacious details of President Trump’s alleged tryst with Ms. Daniels to be admitted into the record, while also raising the so-called “missing witness” issue. The second point that Mr. Dershowitz said would bolster a petition for an expedited review to the New York Court of Appeals is that the judge allegedly didn’t instruct the jury properly on why prosecutors didn’t call former Trump Organization CFO Alan Weisselberg to testify in the case. The judge was open to having Mr. Weisselberg testify but the prosecution didn’t call him, framing him as an unreliable witness due to earlier perjury charges in an unrelated case, while the defense also didn’t call him, citing the fact that prosecutors had undermined his credibility.

Mr. Dershowitz argued that failure to call Mr. Weisselberg left a hole in proving the case because it was expected that his testimony would have undermined some of the claims from another witness, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who testified against the former president. “Number two, I think would be the failure to give an instruction on the missing witness,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “The way the judge and the prosecution handled Allen Weisselberg really denied the defendant the right to a presumption that the only reason he wasn’t called was because he would not have corroborated the very important testimony, lying testimony of Michael Cohen.” Mr. Dershowitz said those two issues are what Trump attorneys should highlight in their request for an expedited appeal. “This is a winnable appeal,” he insisted.

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“They’ve broken a seal,” Lee said of the Trump conviction. “I don’t know that it can be contained.”

• Republicans Vow To Scorch the Earth After Trump Conviction (RCW)

Spurred by the volcanic temper of their base, Republicans are now preparing to scorch the earth in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s conviction, potentially setting off a chain reaction that could fundamentally alter the American political system entirely. No one knows exactly how far they will go in their response. What is clear is that conservatives have no patience for President Biden’s argument Friday morning that justice was served in Manhattan, that “the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.” They see the conviction instead as unprecedented “lawfare” meant to interfere with the coming election and, some say, an unprecedented response is now in order. “The good guys must be as tough as the villains or freedom is doomed,” senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller told RealClearPolitics without offering exact details. Rep. Mike Collins, meanwhile, was explicit. “Time for Red State AGs and DAs to get busy,” the Georgia Republican said Thursday, floating the idea that Republicans should begin using the courts to pursue their political enemies.

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign-funded Steele dossier is a good start,” Collins continued, referencing how the former Secretary of State’s presidential campaign misreported their spending on the infamous opposition research document. Clinton was later fined $11,000 by the Federal Election Commission. No criminal charges were brought. “The statute of limitations expired but I’m told that’s not a thing anymore,” Collins said. Republicans on Capitol Hill are preparing a more traditional counter-offensive, one within established parliamentary rules. Led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, eight Republicans have vowed to oppose all major legislation “not directly relevant to the safety of the American people” and blockade all judicial nominees in protest of Trump’s conviction. “We can’t pretend that our political world didn’t change yesterday pretty dramatically and for the worse,” Lee told RCP. The Utah Republican admitted that legislation normally slows ahead of an election but White House efforts to get anything through the Senate “just got a lot harder for them.”

A legislative blockade alone may not satisfy a conservative base hell-bent on retribution. “I don’t want to hear elected Republicans complaining. I don’t need to see their tweets and statements condemning the verdict. The only thing I want to hear from these people is which Democrats they will have arrested. Don’t tell us that you’re sad about the verdict. We don’t give a shit about your feelings. We want to see corrupt Democrats frog marched on camera in handcuffs. If you won’t do that, then shut up,” Matt Walsh, a Daily Wire columnist with a following in the millions, wrote on the social media website X. Replied conservative influencer Chaya Raichik: “Exactly. Where’s the list! Here’s a start: Obama Hillary Joe Biden Hunter Biden.”

Mike Davis, a longtime Republican strategist floated as a potential Trump attorney general, told Axios he wants prosecutors in red states like Georgia and Florida to open criminal probes into Democrats for allegedly conspiring to interfere in the election by indicting the former president. For his part, Lee stopped short of endorsing those efforts. He likened it to some campaigns on the left to pack the Supreme Court, an initiative he has long opposed, warning that it would lead to “lawlessness” and “politicization.” “I think this is an analogous circumstance,” the senator said of the prosecution of a major presidential candidate, something that the Department of Justice has long avoided. “They’ve broken a seal,” Lee said of the Trump conviction. “I don’t know that it can be contained.”

He held out one remote possibility: If Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team experience a change of heart during the appeals process. “They could confess error on appeal,” Lee said. “Other instances of lawfare, wherever they exist, could be dropped. You could put this genie back in the bottle still, but not for very much longer.”

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“..You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.”

• The Fake Conviction (Newt Gingrich)

Americans are now being forced to think through the first fake conviction in the history of presidential politics. As an historian, I am really bothered when I hear lawyers on television describe these proceedings as though they were somehow related to the rule of law and the normal legal process. It is clear that what happened to President Donald J. Trump in Judge Juan Merchan’s court was not a legitimate conviction. Nearly every element of the prosecution was false. Therefore, the outcome is false. To say President Trump is now a convicted felon – as the left and its propaganda media allies are practically singing – is to legitimize the most corrupt judicial event in American presidential history. The burden of proof is not on President Trump. He remains an innocent citizen framed by an astonishingly corrupt district attorney, judge, and Biden Justice Department. Don’t take my word for it alone. Consider what a host of experts have to say.

Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard, sat through much of the trial and condemned it with strong language in his newsletter: “I have observed and participated in trials throughout the world. I have seen justice and injustice in China, Russia, Ukraine, England, France, Italy, Israel, as well as in nearly 40 of our 50 states. But in my 60 years as a lawyer and law professor, I have never seen a spectacle such as the one I observed sitting in the front row of the courthouse yesterday. “The judge in Donald Trump’s trial was an absolute tyrant, though he appeared to the jury to be a benevolent despot. He seemed automatically to be ruling against the defendant at every turn.” George Washington Law professor and legal analyst Jonathan Turley said, “Before jurors left, however, Judge Juan Merchan framed their deliberations in a way that seemed less like a jury deliberation than a canned hunt.” Attorney Mike Davis on the Just the News “No Noise” TV show said: “I would say the first one is there is no crime here. They waited until after this multi-week trial to even tell the criminal defendant what the legal allegations he was supposed to defend himself in that prior trial. He had no opportunity to defend himself.”

An innocent citizen being “hunted,” in Turley’s language, cannot be honestly convicted. That is why I argue this is a fake conviction. Again, I’m not the only one who thinks this. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is hardly a fan of President Trump, said, “These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.” House Speaker Mike Johnson called it “a shameful day in American history,” and continued, “Alvin Bragg targeted a political opponent, made up unprecedented charges, and denied him his Constitutional right to a fair trial.” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik summarized the corruption and dishonesty brilliantly: “The facts are clear: this was a zombie case illegally brought forward by a corrupt prosecutor doing Joe Biden’s political bidding in a desperate attempt to save Joe Biden’s failing campaign. She pointed out that the case hinged on the word of Michael Cohen, who has a history of perjury and an axe to grind with Trump.

She pointed out that Judge Merchan’s own family members benefited financially from the case, that he levied unconstitutional gag orders on Trump, and repeatedly sided with the prosecution throughout the case. Mark Steyn captured why we must insist that the conviction is fake and reject any effort to suggest that Trump is guilty. As Steyn wrote: “pretending that there is anything ‘great’ about this that should command our ‘respect,’ is making evil and corruption respectable and bi-partisan.” Ironically, in a Senate hearing involving smears and sexually salacious accusations chaired by then-Sen. Joe Biden 33 years ago, we were taught how to stand up to outrageous, corrupt, and disgusting behavior by then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas. After being repeatedly slandered by senators on Biden’s committee, on Oct. 11, 1991, Thomas said:

“This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.” A generation later, President Trump, is learning what Justice Thomas learned in 1991: Challenge the establishment, and it will go all out to destroy you. Every time you talk with someone who says President Trump is a convicted felon, point out it is a fake conviction. Challenge them to defend the dishonest, corrupt people who are putting the nation through this mess – starting with President Biden, the leader of the corrupt and dishonest.

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“Biden is described as a “healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander-in-Chief.”

• Joe Biden’s Health Is About To Be Put To A Severe Test (Sadygzade)

The Biden administration managed to keep the discourse surrounding his health out of the mainstream political discussion, and all stumbles and falls were attributed to fatigue and a heavy schedule, or written off as commonplace. However, the situation changed with the publication of Robert Hur’s report in February 2024, where the special prosecutor responsible for investigating a scandal involving Biden’s handling of secret documents commented on his health. Hur’s report states that during his investigation “evidence was found that President Biden intentionally retained and disclosed secret materials after the end of his vice-presidency when he was a private individual.” However, Hur concluded that “the evidence does not support guilt beyond reasonable doubt.” He reasoned that “in court, Mr. Biden would likely appear before the jurors just as he was during our interview with him – a charming, affable elderly man with poor memory.”

In Hur’s opinion, “it would be difficult to convince jurors that they should convict him – the by then former president, deep into his eighties – for a serious criminal offense requiring intent.” The widespread resonance of Hur’s report required immediate action by the Biden administration to mitigate the damage caused by its publication. This response was the publication of the president’s current health report on February 28, 2024. The examination was conducted by the president’s physician Kevin O’Connor from The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. According to the document, addressed to the president’s assistant and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden is described as a “healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander-in-Chief.”

This triggered an additional flurry of discussions about Biden’s health. Questions also arose about the position of the Democratic administration members regarding their support for Biden’s nomination for another presidential term, as Robert Hur is a subordinate of US Attorney General Merrick Garland, a very influential person in the structure of the Democratic party. Given the realities of political life in the US, it is fair to say that a new presidential campaign begins on the day of the inauguration of the elected president. However, the last year, especially the last six months before federal elections, are the most challenging for the candidate. This stage is characterized by frequent trips to undecided states, public appearances at rallies, and participation in debates. All this requires the candidate to have robust health and a significant amount of energy. For the incumbent president, this stage is even more challenging, as he is forced to combine election campaigning with the duties of the President of the United States.

In April of this year, Biden stated in an interview on “The Howard Stern Show” that he plans to participate in debates with the likely candidate from the Republican party, Donald Trump. “I’m happy to debate him,” Biden said, dispelling doubts about his participation in presidential debates, which traditionally take place in three different states. Later, in May, Biden’s team agreed to participate in debates organized by CNN, which are tentatively scheduled for June 27. Biden’s decision to participate in the debates pursues two important goals: to change the public narrative that Biden avoids direct discussion with his Republican opponent, and to improve his standing in the polls (according to most voter surveys, Biden is either trailing Trump or is on par).

If, in order to solve the first task, Biden simply needs to appear on stage at the appointed time; the second task may prove to be more challenging. The incumbent president, like any politician defending his position through participation in debates, needs to be persuasive, logical, and demonstrate mental agility. And all this in the conditions of a 90-minute live broadcast with a very strong debater – Donald Trump. Predicting the possible consequences of Joe Biden’s health on the upcoming elections is mere speculation and guesses. The analysis of possible scenarios directly depends on the actual state of health of the president and his diagnoses, which are unknown to the general public. But undoubtedly, Joe Biden’s health will become one of the main elements of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric, including during the first face-to-face debates scheduled for June. However, how convincing these arguments will be will depend on Biden’s public appearance during the main summer-autumn phase of the 2024 presidential race.

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40-odd months of open borders later, and 10-20 million illegals, the story will now be: see, we secured the border, as the GOP refused. And half the population will buy that.

• Biden Does ‘We Gotta Secure The Border!’ Routine (ZH)

After shredding Donald Trump’s ‘xenophobic’ Executive Orders on border security his first day in office more than three years ago, resulting in what some estimate to be upwards of 20 million illegal migrants pouring into the United States (which Trump plans to deport), President Joe Biden is quietly signing an executive order on Tuesday aimed at slowing migrant crossings. As we noted on Friday, the EO would slash asylum claims by roughly two-thirds of where they stand today – and would cap the number of daily encounters at an average of 2,500 crossings per day (or 912k per year), however Biden would allow mass asylum claims to resume once border encounters fall to around 1,500 per day. US Border Patrol recorded approximately 4,300 daily encounters in April – which of course doesn’t include ‘gotaways’ – those who enter the US without notice. The move comes three months after the White House said Biden was no longer considering using executive action to secure the border.

According to Bloomberg, lawmakers and others have been invited to a Tuesday afternoon event at the White House. The order is Biden’s most aggressive move yet to address the crisis on the US-Mexico border, which has seen record levels of migrants and taxed communities across the country struggling to deal with the influx of new arrivals. A bipartisan Senate plan that would have given Biden similar powers was blocked by Republicans at Trump’s behest earlier this year, denying the president a political win and prompting him to act unilaterally. Tuesday’s order is politically risky. It will invite criticism from Biden’s left flank, which has blasted moves to ramp up deportations as an inhumane approach to the crisis. That has the potential to stymie his efforts to shore up an electoral coalition already riven by divisions over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war and overarching concerns over his age and fitness to serve a second term. -Bloomberg

The Biden administration’s move underscores how the administration has been compelled to act just months before the 2024 US election – as it’s become a centerpiece issue for Republicans on the campaign trail. Donald Trump has been constantly hammering Biden over the border as polls continue to show that voters think the border and immigration are critical issues. The Executive Order is also timed to reflect an effort to deter a seasonal increase in crossings that typically occurs each summer and early fall (right before the election), and comes as Mexico welcomes a new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who was elected on Sunday. She doesn’t take office until Oct. 1, and it’s unknown what actions she will take on the border situation.

In recent weeks the Biden administration has taken other steps to tighten immigration rules. Last month, they proposed a rule that would allow the US to expedite the expulsion of certain undocumented migrants trying to claim asylum. According to the report, Biden will use Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act – which Trump invoked – which are anticipated to invite legal challenges. House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News Sunday that the move is “too little too late,” adding “The only reason he’s doing that is because the polls say that it’s the biggest issue in America.”

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It’s a pattern: taking credit for other people’s achievements. And again: half the population will buy that.

• “A Blatant Lie” (Turley)

Winston Churchill once said that “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” It often seems like the Biden White House and campaign has embraced that warning as an operating principle. The most recent target was the veteran Fox news anchor John Roberts, who was accused of airing “a blatant lie” in questioning Biden’s claim that he was the first president to push through a cap of $35 on insulin treatments. Roberts was entirely correct, but the campaign has still not removed the false attack on his integrity and accuracy. In the interests of full disclosure, I am a legal analyst for Fox News and I have known Roberts for decades. There is no one who I hold in higher regard for his integrity or his intellect than John Roberts. We have known and worked with each other at different networks through the years. Roberts is an old-school journalist with impeccable credentials.

Yesterday, the Biden campaign launched the attack on Roberts for his questioning of the claim of President Joe Biden that he solely secured the insulin cap. Roberts remarked that he had a recollection that it was former President Donald Trump who pushed the cap. “I seem to remember that back in May of 2020, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid said that President Trump had signed an executive order to cap the price of insulin for Medicare recipients at 35 bucks. Now, maybe I’m misremembering that, but I think it kind of already happened.” The Biden campaign then called it “a blatant lie” in a posting on X that has reached over a million people. Contrary to the Biden campaign’s claims, Roberts’s recollection was entirely correct. Under the Trump Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in May 2020 that the Part D Senior Savings Model participating plans would cap insulin copays to $35 per month’s supply, and over 1,750 Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans applied to offer lower insulin costs.

Trump praised the new policy, which was widely covered by the press. There was a Rose Garden event where Trump was praised for his actions: Trump later, in July 2020, signed four executive orders aimed at lowering the cost of insulin. That included Executive Order 13937, which required Federally Qualified Health Centers to pass 340B discounts on to patients. Notably, Biden later reversed Executive Order 13937 before those cost-saving measures could take effect.

This is obviously not the first false statement from the President. However, it is notable that his campaign spread obvious disinformation that was picked up by over a million people but then declined to take down the false claim. The campaign is now in a worse position. To take down the posting is to acknowledge not just that it has lied about Roberts, but that the President lied in taking sole credit for this cap. This is the same administration supporting the banning, blacklisting, and throttling of those responsible for disinformation. I would not support such censorship of the campaign. This and other columns refuting the false account is sufficient to combat a “blatant lie” by the Biden campaign. Whether it is his uncle being eaten by cannibals or insulin caps, free speech can correct false claims without government regulation. However, President Biden and his administration continue to push for censorship of others accused for false or misleading statements. The fact that John Roberts was right is hardly surprising. However, there remains a “blatant lie” on the Biden campaign’s social media that must still be corrected.

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Not only Scott Ritter was pulled off that plane to St Petersburg, so was Judge Nap(olitano).

• Freedom of Speech in the USA? Think again! (Gilbert Doctorow)

First there was the news that Scott Ritter, a former U.S. military intelligence officer, was pulled off his plane which, with further flight connections would have taken him to St Petersburg, Russia where he was designated as a high level invited guest and would speak at the International Economic Forum that opens tomorrow. Upon being removed from the plane, his documents were taken from him. He was eventually released but his U.S. passport was kept by officials. Clearly Scott is not headed anywhere for some time. For those of you who have not been paying close attention to the U.S. “dissident movement,” allow me to explain that Scott Ritter has been a very active and widely listened to critic of American foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Russia and the Ukraine war. The weight of his messaging has been reinforced by his having been an insider and implementer of U.S. policies a couple of decades ago. Scott was one of the few U.S. inspectors of Iraq’s alleged programs of weapons of mass destruction. When snippets from his interviews are aired by Russian state television, they never fail to remind audiences of his past in U.S. intelligence.

Following his visit to Russia a year ago to promote a book he had just published, Scott became especially warm to the Putin ‘regime,’ as they would say in Washington. My first reaction upon hearing about this blatantly political act by the Biden Administration to knee-cap its critics and stifle free speech, was to look for an explanation in Ritter’s past military service. This viciousness of powers-that-be against one of their own sounded like what happened in Canada in the year before the onset of Covid to a very widely read and authoritative blogger, Patrick Armstrong. He was a former diplomat and had served in the Canadian embassy in Russia. Armstrong was visited by Justin Trudeau’s storm troopers who advised him to close his blog lest he lose not only his state pension but all of his savings. Patrick understood where things stood and fell silent. However, the follow-up news on the Yandex-Dzen website regarding events in Scott Ritter’s plane yesterday is still more damaging to my vision of free speech in the U.S.A. at present.

One other passenger was taken off the plane by U.S. government officials to prevent his appearing at the St Petersburg Economic Forum: Judge Andrew Napolitano. Judge Napolitano is the moderator of the very widely watched interview program “Judging Freedom” which is disseminated on youtube as well as on the main social media. He is a very responsible and informative critic of U.S. foreign policy, as are his regular guests. He is at the higher level of intellectual discourse a peer to the journalist Tucker Carlson who caters to the hoi polloi. He also is known for defending Donald Trump’s positions on a variety of issues. The deprivation of travel rights served on Judge Napolitano is a gross infringement of freedom of speech that the Biden administration cannot live down. All talk from the Oval Office of defending American democracy is shown through actions like these to be crass lies and utter hypocrisy. It is a long way to the November elections, but hopefully American voters will ‘throw the bums out’ and save what is left of freedom of speech.

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“..Lavrov argued that Switzerland was no longer a neutral party and had “turned from neutral to openly hostile.”

• Swiss Senate Votes Against Aid For Kiev (RT)

Switzerland’s upper house of parliament rejected a 5 billion Swiss franc ($5.58 billion) aid package to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine on Monday. Lawmakers cited concerns that it would violate borrowing restrictions in the neutral country, Reuters has reported. The proposed aid was part of a wider package that also included additional funding for the Swiss military, the outlet said. The Council of States, one of Switzerland’s two houses of parliament, announced plans to set up a special 15-billion-franc ($16.7 billion) fund in April, proposing to allocate 10.1 billion francs to the Swiss Army and send the rest to Ukraine to support its economic development and reconstruction. The fund, despite initially being backed by a Swiss parliamentary committee, had faced opposition from right-wing lawmakers and was widely expected to be defeated, the report noted.

With 28 votes against and 15 in favor, the House rejected both the additional funding for the Swiss Army and the reconstruction aid for Ukraine. Opposition came from the conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and the liberals from the Free Democratic Party (FDP), as well as from left-wing parties. According to the report, lawmakers argued that the package would breach a so-called “debt brake” provision in Switzerland, and would result in budget restrictions.In May, the Federal Council indicated that neither the funding for the Swiss military nor the aid for Ukraine met the “statutory requirements for extraordinary expenditure.” “The contribution amount can be controlled, which is why this expenditure cannot be recognized as extraordinary,” the government said.

The Council noted that the creation of such a fund under special legislation would have to be properly financed, whether through savings or additional revenue. The latest funding was rejected two weeks before the Swiss government is due to host a summit on the Ukraine crisis. The so-called ‘peace conference’ is scheduled to take place on June 15 and 16 at the Burgenstock Resort near Lucerne. Russia has not been invited to the summit. Switzerland has been under increased pressure from Western countries urging Bern to provide more help to Kiev. While refusing to supply Ukraine with military aid, citing its long-term neutrality policy, Bern has provided economic and humanitarian funding worth over $3 billion since the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, according to Swiss government data. In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that Switzerland was no longer a neutral party and had “turned from neutral to openly hostile.”

Mearsheimer

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Might not go smooth.

• NATO Member Turkiye Would Like to Join BRICS – Top Diplomat (Sp.)

BRICS was established in 2009 as a cooperation platform for the world’s largest emerging economies, bringing together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. On January 1, 2024, the bloc was expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkiye would like to become a member of BRICS and will monitor the developments in the organization, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Tuesday. “Certainly, we would like to become a member of BRICS. So we’ll see how it goes this year,” Fidan said during an event at the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG) in Beijing, as quoted by the South China Morning Post newspaper. The BRICS bloc outperformed the G7 – the conglomerate of wealthy industrialized nations – in GDP in 2022. According to a forecast, BRICS economies will account for more than 50 percent of global GDP by 2030. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have become key pillars in the emerging multipolar world.

Economic experts stress that BRICS is also a locomotive of de-dollarization of the global economy since members of this bloc are increasingly switching to national currencies in trade relations – for instance, 90% of settlements between Russian and Chinese companies are now made in rubles and yuans The BRICS doubled its membership last year, becoming the BRICS+ after including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on January 1, 2024. Russia welcomes Turkiye’s interest towards BRICS, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on uesday. “We, of course, all welcome this increased interest in BRICS on the part of our neighboring states, including our important partners such as Turkiye. Of course, the topic of this interest will be on the agenda of the BRICS summit, which will be chaired by Russia,” Peskov told reporters.

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“..training exercises have exposed red tape and infrastructure bottlenecks that prevent the rapid transfer of personnel and materiel across the continent.”

• NATO Preparing Troop Plans For Potential Russia Conflict – Telegraph (RT)

NATO is working on plans to rush tens of thousands of US troops along “land corridors” in Europe in the event of war with Russia, a senior strategist has told The Telegraph. Last year, members of the US-led military bloc agreed to keep 300,000 troops ready for deployment, purportedly in response to a potential Russian attack. However, training exercises have exposed red tape and infrastructure bottlenecks that prevent the rapid transfer of personnel and materiel across the continent. NATO military leadership is therefore working to ensure that the flow of troops would not be stopped by likely Russian strikes on ports used by the US military to unload its cargos, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

“It is clear that huge logistics bases, as we know it from Afghanistan and Iraq, are no longer possible because they will be attacked and destroyed very early on in a conflict situation,” Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, head of NATO’s JSEC logistics command, told the newspaper. The primary route for American troops in the event of war with Russia would be via the Dutch port of Rotterdam to Germany and Poland, the report said. Alternative corridors would start in Italy, Greece, and Türkiye, and would respectively run through Slovenia and Croatia to Hungary and through Bulgaria and Romania. There are also plans to involve Norway, Sweden, and Finland for backup logistics.

The US and its allies have claimed that Moscow could attack NATO, and that sending arms to Ukraine to fight Russia will help stall or prevent that outcome. Moscow has denied having any such intentions, and has accused Western governments of creating false threats to deceive their populations over the Ukraine conflict. Russian officials have described the hostilities with Ukraine as a US-initiated proxy war aimed at undermining Russian development, in which Ukrainian soldiers serve as “cannon fodder” while weapons, intelligence, training, and planning is contributed by the West. A direct conflict with NATO would be an existential threat to Russia, according to Moscow, considering the bloc’s superiority in conventional forces. Consequently, any such clash would warrant the deployment of nuclear weapons under Russian nuclear doctrine, it has warned.

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“If we go all the way with this mechanism, it must work. If it doesn’t work, we have to reform it. That’s the future of the European Union.”

• Punish Hungary To Ensure EU’s Future – Bloc Presidency Holder Belgium (RT)

The EU should strip Hungary of its voting rights to safeguard the union’s future, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib has argued. Budapest is scheduled to take over the EU Council’s rotating presidency in July. Belgium, the current holder, is in a group of countries voicing frustration over Hungary’s opposition to key EU plans – including support for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia. “I think we need to have the courage to make decisions: go right to the end of Article 7, activate Article 7 right to the end, which provides for the end of the right of veto,” the Belgian diplomat told Politico on Sunday. Article 7, which involves a suspension of voting rights, is often referred to as a “nuclear option” against member states considered to have breached the EU’s values.

The European Parliament voted to launch the procedure against Hungary in 2018, accusing Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government of undermining the rule of law through alleged attacks on the media and judiciary – but the process stalled due to disagreements between member states. Orban is a vocal critic of the Western stance on the Ukraine crisis. He has argued that the arming of Kiev against Moscow has failed to stop the hostilities, and that sanctions have inflicted more harm on the EU than on Russia. Budapest has repeatedly used its veto power to block trade restrictions on Russia that it views as a threat to Hungarian interests, and to restrict funding for Ukraine. Lahbib accused the Orban government of “increasingly adopting a transactional, blocking and veto attitude” to the bloc’s affairs.

“This is a moment of truth,” she said of the Article 7 threat. “If we go all the way with this mechanism, it must work. If it doesn’t work, we have to reform it. That’s the future of the European Union.” Hungary is the only EU member currently facing such proceedings. In May, Brussels dropped a similar inquiry into Poland’s domestic policies. Warsaw aligns with Brussels on Ukraine, but until recently had a conservative government that opposed it on other matters, including refugees and LGBT rights. This changed last December, when Donald Tusk – a longtime EU supporter and former president of the European Council – returned to office as Polish prime minister. “You can do anything as long as you’re one of them, as long you’re part of the Brussels mainstream,” Polish MEP Radoslaw Fogiel said at the time, in an interview with the news outlet Hungarian Conservative.

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The man that Belgium thinks should be punished:

“We must not forget that the war is waged by people, and these very people, if they are willing, have every opportunity to make peace..”

• Orban Believes Trump, EU Could End Ukrainian Conflict In 24 Hours (TASS)

Donald Trump, the potential Republican candidate in the US presidential election, and the European Union could put an end to the conflict in Ukraine in 24 hours, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said. “If Trump and the EU wanted to end the war [in Ukraine], they could have done it in 24 hours. We must not forget that the war is waged by people, and these very people, if they are willing, have every opportunity to make peace. I think that if Trump became president, he could achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine in one day, and then start talks,” the prime minister told the Il Giornale newspaper. According to him, the EU strategy on the Ukrainian issue has failed even from a tactical point of view. “We don’t understand that we are playing with fire. We should ask ourselves what are Europe’s strategic interests and demand a ceasefire. Our citizens want peace, not war, which could be a political game,” Orban added.

The prime minister said that he expects a new right-wing majority in the European Parliament after the elections scheduled for June 8-9. “The current European Commission has failed on the agricultural issue, on the conflicts, on the migration issue, on the economy, and now its leadership must go. Strengthening democracy means electing a new commission, different from the current one, which was the worst in my memory,” Orban said. At the same time, he hinted that much depended on the decision of his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the European conservatives, and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French National Rally party’s parliamentary group. “The right-wing parties must cooperate, we are in the hands of two women who must come to an agreement,” the Hungarian prime minister concluded.

Read more …

“..you need to return to being reporters and not advocates; you need to start reaching an audience larger than yourself and your friends.”

• People are Not Reading Your Stuff: Publisher Drops Truth Bomb at WaPo (Turley)

Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis is being denounced this week after the end of the short-lived tenure of Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and delivering a truth bomb to the staff. Lewis told them that they have lost their audience and “people are not reading your stuff.” It was a shot of reality in the echo chambered news outlet and the response was predictable. However, Lewis just might save this venerable newspaper if he follows his frank talk with meaningful reforms to bring balance back to the Post. As someone who once wrote for the Washington Post regularly, I have long lamented the decline of the paper following a pronounced shift toward partisan and advocacy journalism. There was a time when the Post valued diversity of thought and steadfastly demanded staff write not as advocates but reporters. That began to change rapidly in the first Trump term.

Suddenly, I found editors would slow walk copy, contest every line of your column, and make unfounded claims. In the meantime, they were increasingly running unsupported legal columns and even false statements from authors on the left. When confronted about columnists with demonstrably false statements, the Post simply shrugged. One of the most striking examples was after its columnist Philip Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden laptop and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.

The decline of the Post has followed a familiar pattern. The editors and reporters simply wrote off half of their audience and became a publication for largely liberal and Democratic readers. In these difficult economic times with limited revenue sources, it is a lethal decision. Yet, for editors and reporters, it is still professionally beneficial to embrace advocacy journalism even if it is reducing the readership of your own newspaper. Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake: “We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” Other staffers could not get beyond the gender and race of those who would be overseeing them. One staffer complained “we now have four White men running three newsrooms.”

The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around. The question is whether, after years of creating a culture of advocacy journalism and woke reporting, the Post is still capable of reaching a larger audience. If you want to read about certain stories, you are not likely to go to the Post, NPR or other outlets. Likewise, with reporters referring to the January 6th riot as an “insurrection,” there is little doubt for the reader that the coverage is a form of advocacy. Again, such stories can affirm the bona fides for reporters, but they also affirm the bias for readers. I truly do hope that the Washington Post can recover. The newspaper has played a critical role in our history and a towering example of journalism at its very best from the Pentagon Papers to Watergate. If you want people to “read your stuff,” you need to return to being reporters and not advocates; you need to start reaching an audience larger than yourself and your friends.

Read more …

“Americans should pray it never actually has to defend the United States..”

• The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All (Vine/Arriola)

The Emergence of a Monster: To face what it would take to dismantle the MIC, it’s first necessary to understand how it was born and what it looks like today. Given its startling size and intricacy, we and a team of colleagues created a series of graphics to help visualize the MIC and the harm it inflicts, which we’re sharing publicly for the first time.

The MIC was born after World War II from, as Eisenhower explained, the “conjunction of an immense military establishment” — the Pentagon, the armed forces, intelligence agencies, and others — “and a large arms industry.” Those two forces, the military and the industrial, united with Congress to form an unholy “Iron Triangle” or what some scholars believe Eisenhower initially and more accurately called the military-industrial–congressional complex. To this day those three have remained the heart of the MIC, locked in a self-perpetuating cycle of legalized corruption (that also features all too many illegalities). The basic system works like this: First, Congress takes exorbitant sums of money from us taxpayers every year and gives it to the Pentagon. Second, the Pentagon, at Congress’s direction, turns huge chunks of that money over to weapons makers and other corporations via all too lucrative contracts, gifting them tens of billions of dollars in profits. Third, those contractors then use a portion of the profits to lobby Congress for yet more Pentagon contracts, which Congress is generally thrilled to provide, perpetuating a seemingly endless cycle.

But the MIC is more complicated and insidious than that. In what’s effectively a system of legalized bribery, campaign donations regularly help boost Pentagon budgets and ensure the awarding of yet more lucrative contracts, often benefiting a small number of contractors in a congressional district or state. Such contractors make their case with the help of a virtual army of more than 900 Washington-based lobbyists. Many of them are former Pentagon officials, or former members of Congress or congressional staffers, hired through a “revolving door” that takes advantage of their ability to lobby former colleagues. Such contractors also donate to think tanks and university centers willing to support increased Pentagon spending, weapons programs, and a hyper-militarized foreign policy. Ads are another way to push weapons programs on elected officials.

Such weapons makers also spread their manufacturing among as many Congressional districts as possible, allowing senators and representatives to claim credit for jobs created. MIC jobs, in turn, often create cycles of dependency in low-income communities that have few other economic drivers, effectively buying the support of locals. For their part, contractors regularly engage in legalized price gouging, overcharging taxpayers for all manner of weapons and equipment. In other cases, contractor fraud literally steals taxpayer money. The Pentagon is the only government agency that has never passed an audit — meaning it literally can’t keep track of its money and assets — yet it still receives more from Congress than every other government agency combined.

As a system, the MIC ensures that Pentagon spending and military policy are driven by contractors’ search for ever-higher profits and the reelection desires of members of Congress, not by any assessment of how to best defend the country. The resulting military is unsurprisingly shoddy, especially given the money spent. Americans should pray it never actually has to defend the United States. No other industry — not even Big Pharma or Big Oil — can match the power of the MIC in shaping national policy and dominating spending. Military spending is, in fact, now larger (adjusting for inflation) than at the height of the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, or, in fact, at any time since World War II, despite the absence of a threat remotely justifying such spending. Many now realize that the primary beneficiary of more than 22 years of endless U.S. wars in this century has been the industrial part of the MIC, which has made hundreds of billions of dollars since 2001. “Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors” was the Wall Street Journal‘s all too apt headline in 2021.

Read more …

Musk: on X: “Laura “Liar” Kolodny”.

The move makes a lot of sense.

• Musk Corrects “Liar” CNBC Journo Over Nvidia Report (ZH)

Another day, another Tesla report to take with a big grain of salt until further notice. In the latest report from CNBC, citing “emails written by Nvidia senior staff” and “correspondence from Nvidia staffers” that “Musk presented an exaggerated picture of Tesla’s procurement” of Nvidia’s flagship artificial intelligence chip, the H100, diverting “a sizable shipment of AI processors” from Tesla to X and xAI. Update: Further notice has occurred… the salt was wise. In a Tuesday morning post on X, Musk said: “Tesla had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on, so they would have just sat in a warehouse,” adding “The south extension of Giga Texas is almost complete. This will house 50k H100s for FSD training.” According to Musk, “Of the roughly $10B in AI-related expenditures I said Tesla would make this year, about half is internal, primarily the Tesla-designed AI inference computer and sensors present in all of our cars, plus Dojo,” adding that Nvidia hardware “is about 2/3 of the cost.”

Musk estimated that Tesla purchases of Nvidia hardware will be “$3B to $4B this year.” As CNBC continues; By ordering Nvidia to let privately held X jump the line ahead of Tesla, Musk pushed back the automaker’s receipt of more than $500 million in graphics processing units, or GPUs, by months, likely adding to delays in setting up the supercomputers Tesla says it needs to develop autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. “Elon prioritizing X H100 GPU cluster deployment at X versus Tesla by redirecting 12k of shipped H100 GPUs originally slated for Tesla to X instead,” an Nvidia memo from December said. “In exchange, original X orders of 12k H100 slated for Jan and June to be redirected to Tesla.”

A more recent Nvidia email, from late April, said Musk’s comment on the first-quarter Tesla call “conflicts with bookings” and that his April post on X about $10 billion in AI spending also “conflicts with bookings and FY 2025 forecasts.” The email referenced news about Tesla’s ongoing, drastic layoffs and warned that headcount reductions could cause further delays with an “H100 project” at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory. The new information from the emails, read by CNBC, highlights an escalating conflict between Musk and some agitated Tesla shareholders who question whether the billionaire CEO is fulfilling his obligations to Tesla while also running a collection of other companies that require his attention, resources and hefty amounts of capital. Really? Does it highlight the escalating conflict?

Read more …

But he will remain in jail because of all the other indictments.

• Pakistan Overturns Imran Khan’s Treason Conviction (RT)

The Islamabad High Court on Monday vacated the former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s conviction for leaking state secrets. He remains behind bars, however, for allegedly violating Islamic tradition with his marriage. Khan, 71, was ousted in April 2022. Since then, he has faced over 100 indictments, which his party has denounced as politically motivated. The state secrets case saw him sentenced to ten years in prison in February, just ahead of the national elections. “Thank God, the sentence is overturned,” Naeem Panjutha, a spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, said after the court announced its decision. Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi (2018-2022) was also acquitted of the charges. Khan has cited a classified cable as proof that the Pakistani military conspired with the US to overthrow his government after he visited Russia. The US has denied the accusation.

The government in Islamabad has claimed that by revealing the contents of the cable, Khan violated the state secrets law. “It is a fact that a national security document was used for political purposes,” government spokesman for legal issues Aqeel Malik said at a press conference on Monday, noting that PM Shehbaz Sharif’s government might appeal Khan’s acquittal to the Supreme Court. Two other convictions against Khan, handed out just days before the February 8 vote, have been stayed pending appeal. In one case, he and his wife Bushra were sentenced to 14 years for illegally selling state gifts. Khan remains in prison because of the seven-year conviction for allegedly violating Islamic tradition by marrying Bushra too soon after her divorce. According to his party, the case has no leg to stand on, as Bushra herself had the sole right to decide on the timing of the marriage.

Multiple convictions have been used to bar Khan and PTI from running for office in the February election. The party’s candidates still got 93 out of the 266 directly elected seats in the legislature, but were kept from power by a coalition of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which won 54 and 73 seats, respectively. While Monday’s acquittal is a “huge political and legal victory” for Khan, the cricket-star-turned-politician won’t be released any time soon, journalist and political analyst Mazhar Abbas told Reuters.

Read more …

 

 

From Jim Kunstler’s site. Obviously, we have the same issues. Credit card expiration is a point that warrants attention. Our Patreon revenue is down 25%. So is Paypal.

“Note to Readers: We’ve just come through the time of year when credit cards expire. My Patreon revenue is down and I doubt it is because you’re disappointed in this blog’s content. Plus, it comes to you absolutely reliably twice-a-week, without fail. You can continue reading it for free — there’s no pay-wall — but just know that I depend on this support to make a living. Back in the day, a newspaper would pay me a salary, but this is no longer that day and now public voices like mine must perform like buskers on the street. Acknowledging that times are tough and getting tougher, if you are a regular reader here, please consider kicking in maybe two bucks a month for the eight blog-columns you’ll get and probably appreciate, just as I will be grateful to get paid for the work I do putting them out there. Just sayin’. . . .”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orca
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797838232970834430

 

 

Hug
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798046998677115057

 

 

Excavator

 

 

Owl head
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797883246233231396

 

 

Mom
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797738846701969634

 

 

Pick up
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797671289047703651

 

 

Dog toys

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle June 1 2024

Jun 012024
 
 June 1, 2024  Posted by at 8:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


John French Sloan South Beach Bathers 1908

 

• Trump is Convicted: What Comes Next? (Turley)
• “This Is A Scam”: Trump Rails Against Judge Following Guilty Verdict (ZH)
• Questioning Trump’s Guilt Is ‘Dangerous’ – Biden (RT)
• Reuters: Trump Supporters Want RIOTS, Violent Retribution After Verdict (MN)
• Trump Raises $53 Million in 24 Hours After Conviction (Sp.)
• X To Host Town Halls With Trump, RFK Jr. (ZH)
• Musk To Host Trump Town Hall After Slamming NY Verdict (RT)
• Gloat While You Still Can (Kunstler)
• Paul Craig Roberts: Western Involvement Escalates Ukraine Conflict (Sp.)
• Zelensky’s Illegitimacy Deliberately Created – Constitution Author (Sp.)
• “A Full-Scale War Isn’t A Foregone Conclusion” – Timofeev (ZH)
• Medvedev Warns NATO of Nuclear ‘Miscalculation’ (RT)
• Nordic Countries Greenlight Long-Range Ukrainian Strikes On Russia (RT)
• Moscow Has Right to Take Proxy War With NATO Global (Sp.)
• First French Troops En Route To Ukraine (RT)
• Scott Ritter: Georgian ‘Foreign Agents’ Law Exposes Western Influence (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Trump July 4th

 

 

“This article by Elie Honig, the CNN legal commentator who followed every twist and turn of the Trump Trial, and formerly worked with Alvin Bragg in the Manhattan DA’s office, is totally devastating as to the due process violations of this prosecution — particularly this stunner:”

 

 

RFK Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796334429847052677

 

 

Maddow

 

 

Schiff

 

 

Never President
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796349789530972592

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only the Supreme Court can make this whole. Turley doesn’t think they will. So we’ll have a circus.

• Trump is Convicted: What Comes Next? (Turley)

This morning, many of us are emerging from the late coverage last night after the conviction of former President Donald Trump on 34 felonies. I was in the courtroom for the verdict, which hit like a thunderclap (particularly after a strange snafu with the judge). The question that everyone is asking: what happens next? The scene in the court was a madhouse. Judge Juan Merchan told the court that the jury had not reached a verdict and would be dismissed for the day. Many reporters in the overflow courtroom were leaving when Merchan suddenly said that there was a verdict. People came running back into the courtroom. That was followed by 34 guilty verdicts. I am obviously saddened by the verdict, but not surprised. Until the very end, I was hopeful that there would be a hung jury, a result that could restore some integrity to the New York criminal justice system. However, I previously noted that the jury instructions made conviction much more likely. I referred to the deliberations as a legal “canned hunt” due to instructions that made conviction a near certainty.

[..] So what happens next? Obviously, appeals will be taken. As I said last night, we must keep the faith. Indeed, moments like this require us to take a leap of faith in a nation that remains committed to the rule of law. Manhattan is neither the entirety of the country nor the legal system. I believe that these convictions will be overturned, but it will take time. Judge Merchan committed, in my view, layers of reversible error. Eventually, this case may reach the United States Supreme Court. It has been suggested that an appeal could be taken directly to the Supreme Court. I find that doubtful after the Supreme Court rejected an expedited process for Special Counsel Jack Smith in his federal prosecutions. It will work first through the New York appellate system.

As for the criminal process, Trump will have to meet with a probation officer for an interview. That officer will make recommendations to the court. There is a possibility of a jail sentence for felonies that come with up to four years for each offense. Any jail sentences would almost certainly run concurrently. However, any jail sentence would be ridiculous in Manhattan for an elderly first-offender in a non-violent offense. Consistent with his past commentary, MSNBC legal analyst and former Mueller aide Andrew Weissmann predicted that Merchan will give Trump jail time. He is not alone as legal analysts seemed to get caught up in a thrill-kill conviction.

It is much more likely that Merchan will impose a sentence without a jail sentence, though with fines. The most appropriate, in my view, would be a conditional discharge that requires Trump not to commit a new crime or face potential imprisonment. Merchan could also tailor a sentence to require home confinement or even weekend jailing. Those options would raise serious conflicts with his campaigning and obviously, if elected, serving as president. Even the probation process will be awkward since a convicted defendant ordinarily has to get approval for any travel outside of the state from his probation officer. Sentences can also include community service, counseling and other requirements. After his ruling in this trial, it is impossible to rule anything out. However, any jail sentence would add even more outrage to an abuse of the criminal law system.

Read more …

“I’m the leading person for president, and I’m under a gag order by a man that can’t put two sentences together.”

• “This Is A Scam”: Trump Rails Against Judge Following Guilty Verdict (ZH)

President Trump is giving a live press conference following Thursday’s guilty verdict in his ‘hush money’ trial, in which he was convicted on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. “I paid a lawyer, totally legal. I paid a lawyer, a legal expense,” Trump said in reference to the payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels by convicted liar and former Trump fixer Michael Cohen. “It’s not sheetrock construction, or any other thing. It’s a legal expense. Think of that. This is what the falsification of business records were. And I said, what else are you going to call it?” Trump said he would have testified during the trial, and wanted to, but “The theory is you never testify because as soon as you testify … they’ll get you on something that you said slightly wrong, and then they sue you for perjury, but I didn’t care about that. I wanted to.” “This is a scam. There’s a rigged trial. It shouldn’t have been in that venue. We shouldn’t have had that judge,” he continued. “As far as the trial itself, it was very unfair. We weren’t allowed to use our election expert under any circumstances.”

According to Trump, witnesses on his side “were literally crucified” by judge Juan Merchan. “You saw what happened to some of the witnesses that were on our side. They were literally crucified by this man, who looks like an angel, but he’s really a devil,” Trump said, referring to Merchan. A crowd of Trump Organization employees cheered the former president as he walked to the podium, passing by the escalator he descended nine years ago to announce what would become a successful 2016 presidential bid. The former president rehashed many of the complaints he’s raised for months. He bemoaned that his request for a venue change was denied, and his push for Merchan to recuse himself was dismissed. -The Hill. Trump also slammed Merchan’s gag order that prohibited him from talking about witnesses in the case, along with court staff and their family members. “Think of it: I’m the leading candidate. I’m leading Biden by a lot, and I’m leading the Republicans to the point where that’s over,” Trump said. “So I’m the leading person for president, and I’m under a gag order by a man that can’t put two sentences together.”

Following the verdict, several notable Trump supporters and prospective running mates condemned the verdict. “Massively conflicted, Biden donor and Liberal judge + stacked jury with unconstitutional jury instructions + radical leftist prosecutor = wrongful conviction,” said South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem in a statement posted to X. “No doubt Trump will be easily vindicated soon as the case will obviously be overturned on appeal.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) weighed in as well, posting “The verdict in New York is a complete travesty that makes a mockery of our system of justice,” adding that it was a “jury from the most liberal county in America.” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) called the verdict “a disgrace to the rule of law and our Constitution.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that he believes Supreme Court justices are “deeply concerned,” and urged the court to step in when the case is appealed. Johnson told “Fox and Friends” that the conviction was “totally unprecedented” and “dangerous to our system” because it ruins people’s faith in the criminal process and the courts. “People have to believe that justice is fair, that there’s equal justice under law. They don’t see that right now,” he said. “And I think that the justices on the court, I know many of them personally, I think they’re deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight but it’s going to take a while.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called the outcome “the culmination of a legal process that has been bent to the political will of the actors involved.”

“Today’s verdict represents the culmination of a legal process that has been bent to the political will of the actors involved: a leftist prosecutor, a partisan judge and a jury reflective of one of the most liberal enclaves in America—all in an effort to “get” Donald Trump. That this case—involving alleged misdemeanor business records violations from nearly a decade ago—was even brought is a testament to the political debasement of the justice system in places like New York City. This is especially true considering this same district attorney routinely excuses criminal conduct in a way that has endangered law-abiding citizens in his jurisdiction. It is often said that no one is above the law, but it is also true that no one is below the law. If the defendant were not Donald Trump, this case would never have been brought, the judge would have never issued similar rulings, and the jury would have never returned a guilty verdict. In America, the rule of law should be applied in a dispassionate, even-handed manner, not become captive to the political agenda of some kangaroo court. -Ron DeSantis.

Bragg

Read more …

A “political prisoner” is exactly what he is.

• Questioning Trump’s Guilt Is ‘Dangerous’ – Biden (RT)

US President Joe Biden has called on Americans to accept the guilty verdict handed down to his political rival, Donald Trump. Biden argued that his presidential predecessor was “reckless” and “irresponsible” to suggest that the trial was orchestrated by the White House. Trump, currently the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge Biden in this November’s presidential election, was found guilty on Thursday of 34 counts of falsifying business records. New York prosecutors successfully argued that Trump concealed the payments – made to porn star Stormy Daniels – in order to influence the 2016 election.

“The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed,” Biden said on Friday, in his first public remarks since the conviction. “Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself,” the president continued, adding that Trump was judged “by a jury of 12 citizens” and can now appeal the conviction “like anyone else.” Trump has long maintained that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, brought the case on Biden’s orders, and that judge Juan Merchan, whose family fundraises for Democrats, was too “conflicted” to oversee the trial fairly. The former president also complained that a jury in New York, which overwhelmingly votes Democrat, would be inherently biased against him.

“They’re in total conjunction with the White House and [Department of Justice],” Trump told reporters outside his Trump Tower property earlier on Friday. “This is all done by Biden and his people. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.” Trump said that he intends to appeal the “scam” judgment, and called November’s election date “the most important day in the history of our country.” “It’s my honor to be doing this, but it’s a really unpleasant thing, to be honest,” he said, reiterating that he considered the trial “rigged.” “It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict,” Biden shot back. Asked after the speech whether Trump was right to call himself a “political prisoner” and blame Biden for his conviction, the president paused, said nothing, and grinned at reporters. The Republican Party has described Biden’s grin as “pure evil.”

Freckless

Read more …

Jan 6 revisited.

• Reuters: Trump Supporters Want RIOTS, Violent Retribution After Verdict (MN)

Reuters has published an article claiming that Trump supporters have called for “riots and violent retribution” after the GOP nominee was convicted in the New York Trial Thursday. Here’s a screenshot of the article (in case they change it):

Reuters says that it has conducted a “review of comments on three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.” The piece continues, “Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.” The article then quoted one comment that stated “Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” referring to the judge, and adding “Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete.” The piece quotes another comment on Gateway Pundit, that states “Time to start capping some leftys. This cannot be fixed by voting.” The article quotes several more comments calling for violence, but admits that some have since been removed.

Reuters also charges that since the 2020 election Trump “loyalists have responded with a campaign of threats and intimidation targeting judges and court officials.” The article also quotes Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has recently published a book on “far right terrorism.” Ware charges that Trump has an “ironclad ability to mobilize more extreme supporters to action, both at the ballot box and through violence.” “Until and unless he accepts the process, the extremist reaction to his legal troubles will be militant,” Ware added. This all comes after Joe Biden labelled violent BLM protests “peaceful” and contrasted them to January 6th protesters “storming” the capitol. Wow. They really are going all out on in their attack on Trump and his supporters.

Read more …

“In the 24 hours since Crooked Joe Biden and his New York henchmen got their sham trial verdict, the Trump Campaign has raised $52.8 million through the online digital fundraising platform..”

The platform was so busy it crashed multiple times..

• Trump Raises $53Mln in 24 Hours After Conviction (Sp.)

Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said in a press release that it raised a record $53 million in the span of 24 hours following his New York conviction. “In the 24 hours since Crooked Joe Biden and his New York henchmen got their sham trial verdict, the Trump Campaign has raised $52.8 million through the online digital fundraising platform,” the release said on Friday The new total means Trump’s campaign is receiving an average of $2 million in donations each hour, according to the release. More than one third of these contributions are from new donors to the campaign, the release said, adding that it showcases a growing opposition to the jury’s decision.

On Thursday, a New York jury found Trump guilty on all 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump said the verdict was a disgrace and part of a sham trial pushed by the Biden administration via a weaponized judicial system and a partisan judge in order to interfere in the 2024 presidential election. Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential candidate. Trump also said he will appeal the verdict while his campaign and various legal scholars noted that it does not affect his right to run for president of the United States.

Read more …

“Today they said, ‘We’d like to set up tables so you sit down.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to sit down for a debate. Let’s go,'” Trump told the crowd..”

• X To Host Town Halls With Trump, RFK Jr. (ZH)

Former President Donald Trump and independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will participate in live town halls hosted by X and cable news network NewsNation, Axios reports. The events have yet to be scheduled, nor moderators picked – however, X users will be able to ask questions of the candidates during the events, called “The People’s Town Hall,” according to the report. The Biden campaign has declined to participate. In a Wednesday evening appearance on News Nation, Kennedy confirmed his plans to participate, adding that X owner Elon Musk offered use of his platform. The moderators, which will likely include at least one NewsNation host, will have final say over the questions asked.

Axios reports that X CEO Linda Yaccarino approached NewsNation parent Nextar with the idea. NewsNation notably hosted the fourth GOP presidential primary debate last December, which was watched by over 4 million people across NewsNation and sister network CW. Meanwhile, Biden and Trump have agreed to a June 27 debate hosted by CNN – over which RFK Jr. has filed a FEC complaint over the criteria required to participate. On Thursday, CNN announced that it plans to run commercials during the event – which has been ad-free for many years under the management of the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates, Variety reports. CNN’s plan to include commercials was noted in rules for access that were recently issued to members of the DC Television News Pool and subscribers of its feed as well as to CNN’s affiliates.

What’s more, networks will have the option of selling their own commercials instead of running the ones that air on CNN. CNN has yet to offer information about how many ad breaks the debate will contain and how long they will be, according to one of these people. Last week Trump announced during a rally in the Bronx that one of his conditions for debating will be that they stand up. “Today they said, ‘We’d like to set up tables so you sit down.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to sit down for a debate. Let’s go,'” Trump told the crowd. “So we’re not sitting down. We’re gonna be standing up for the debate.” “If crooked Joe Biden makes it through the debate, which I think he will, [the media are] going to say it was one of the great debate performances in history,” Trump added.

Trump Musk

Read more …

“If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter – motivated by politics, rather than justice – then anyone is at risk of a similar fate,” Musk wrote on X..”

• Musk To Host Trump Town Hall After Slamming NY Verdict (RT)

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has confirmed reports that he will host a live town hall event with presidential candidate Donald Trump, after criticizing his felony conviction as politically motivated. X (formerly Twitter), which Musk owns, has partnered with the TV network NewsNation to live-stream town halls with presidential candidates on both platforms, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an individual familiar with the matter. “This will be interesting,” Musk said on X Friday, linking to a New York Post story about the town halls. The idea is reportedly the brainchild of X CEO Linda Yaccarino. Musk apparently extended the town hall invitations to Trump, President Joe Biden, and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Biden’s campaign reportedly declined, however.

According to the reports, X users will get to submit questions for the town hall, which will then be curated by moderators, who will include at least one NewsNation host. The date, location and moderators for the events have not yet been announced. Earlier this month, the Biden campaign sent a debate offer to Trump to appear on two legacy TV outlets – CNN and ABC News, and with no audience in the studio. The Trump campaign accepted and the debates were scheduled for June 27 and September 10. The arrangement completely bypassed the Presidential Debates Commission. On Thursday, however, a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on 34 charges of “falsifying business records,” related to his reimbursement of then-lawyer Michael Cohen for the alleged hush money payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump has denounced the trial and the verdict as politically motivated – as has Musk. “If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter – motivated by politics, rather than justice – then anyone is at risk of a similar fate,” Musk wrote on X, adding that the verdict did “great damage” to the Americans’ faith in their legal system. The day before, the Wall Street Journal reported a rumor that Musk might become a White House adviser should Trump win the November election. The alleged connection has been widely interpreted as a sign that some Silicon Valley moguls were moving away from the Democrats.

Trump was a prolific user of Twitter and leveraged the platform to get his message out in 2016, when he beat the legacy media favorite Hillary Clinton. The company “permanently suspended” his account while he was still the sitting president in January 2021, following the US Capitol riot over the alleged irregularities in the 2020 election. Trump had called on his supporters to stand down, not break any laws and go home, but Democrats accused him of “inciting an insurrection” and he was banned by all major social media shortly thereafter. Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 and restored Trump’s account last year, but the former president has chosen not to actively post on the platform.

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“..Ukraine’s military lacks the know-how to actually launch the missiles, so American military “advisors” will have to be on hand to do it..”

• Gloat While You Still Can (Kunstler)

Of course, the Alvin Bragg victory in the artfully constructed “Stormy Daniels Payoff Case” decided late Thursday calls to question how come the Mueller Special Counsel Probe into 2016 election interference (actually run by Mr. Weissmann, due to Mr. Mueller’s declining cognitive ability) failed to spot the same web of evidence — hard as they toiled, and they had a good two years and millions of taxpayer dollars to git’er done? My guess: too many white lawyers on the Mueller staff. Everybody knows now from watching the latest crop of television commercials that white people are unusually stupid and helpless and cannot cope with common problems without assistance from helpful people of color (POCs). So, God bless Alvin Bragg for finally fixing what Bob Mueller’s fifteen bloodhounds led by a pitbull somehow botched.

The former president is now convicted on thirty-four counts of book-keeping errors in furtherance of an alleged 2016 federal election violation that the Federal Election Commission declined to charge — that is, paying a porn star to sign a non-disclosure agreement about a sexual liaison — because it is not a crime under federal election law, and about which the head of the FEC, James E. “Trey” Trainor III, was barred by Judge Merchan from testifying on during the course of the trial for reasons yet unknown. Of course, that is but one of a great many points of law that will merit appeal in what everybody — even some white people (people of non-color, PONCs) — knows was a case so crookedly contrived that it is fated to get tossed in the higher courts, and probably with harsh remonstrance to the degenerate officers of the court who brought it and adjudicated it. But you will have to wait on that because the mills of the law grind slowly.


Joshua Lisec

Now, in the radiance of the full Woke gloat, we await Judge Merchan’s sentence, to be announced a mere few days before the Republican Convention in Milwaukee in early July. Jail time at Rikers? Home confinement (with ankle bracelet)? Severe travel restrictions? Reporting to a parole officer? Drug tests? Hey, No one is above the law! It is hard to imagine that the judge will demur from inflicting maximum humiliation on this wanton repeat violator (thirty-four times!) of book-keeping errors. It would tend to interfere with the presidential candidate’s campaign schedule, but so what? Where does it say in the Constitution that an election must be fair? Or Judge Merchan could suspend all that pending appeal and just allow Mr. Trump to go about his election business free on bail. But why would he? After all the trouble he went to. And all the glory he’s reaping for it. “Joe Biden’s” party has Mr. Trump exactly where they want him, they think: pinned down like a moth in a shadow-box, inert and pathetic. (But, in reality, more like King Kong, chained in the rank basement below the stage of a Broadway theater before busting loose in midtown and upending subway cars so as to devour the little humans tumbling out like so many tic-tacs.)

Expect Mr. Trump’s lawyers to file writs to the SCOTUS requesting expedited attention to the denial of due process issues and the election interference question. The situation is comparable to the year 2000 presidential race, where the SCOTUS stepped in on probable cause that the lower court (in Florida that time) had violated the Equal Protection clause of the constitution. In the meantime, through the luminescent fog of gloat, perhaps you did not notice that “Joe Biden” took a giant step yesterday toward commencing World War Three. The move was framed as the US gives Ukraine permission to use American missiles to strike deep within Russia. That was a bit disingenuous, you see, because Ukraine’s military lacks the know-how to actually launch the missiles, so American military “advisors” will have to be on hand to do it, meaning US military personnel will commit an act of aggression upon Russia.

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“Long-range missiles are not battlefront weapons, Roberts asserted. “If the missiles are not intended to be used for their purpose, why give them to Ukraine?”

• Paul Craig Roberts: Western Involvement Escalates Ukraine Conflict (Sp.)

The West is thoroughly involved in the ongoing Ukraine conflict and is also widening it, former US Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan administration Paul Craig Roberts told Sputnik commenting on the latest US announcement that President Joe Biden allowed Ukraine to use its weapons near Kharkov. Roberts pointed out that the Ukraine conflict has been widening ever since it started with the West sending every weapon to Ukraine that initially it said it would not. “Troops would never be sent, but the French Foreign Legion is now sent, and the NATO consensus is building to send NATO troops,” he said. A State Department spokesperson told Sputnik that Biden has greenlighted Ukrainian strikes using US-supplied weapons inside the Russian territory for counter-fire purposes in the Kharkov region of Ukraine, but has not authorized the use of long-range missiles, including ATACMS, inside Russia. “There is no reason for long-range missiles supplied to Ukraine by Washington except to hit distant targets. Long-range missiles are not battlefront weapons, Roberts asserted.

“If the missiles are not intended to be used for their purpose, why give them to Ukraine?” Roberts went on to say that although Russia has won in its stated goal of liberating Donbas, that region is not the endgame for the West.
“Putin has won his version of the war – the liberation of Donbas – but Washington’s version of the war is not limited to Donbas,” he said. “If Putin doesn’t quickly use the necessary force to bring the conflict to a quick end, he will be faced with NATO troops in Western Ukraine and the incorporation of Ukraine west of the Dnieper into NATO with nuclear missile bases on Russia’s expanded border.” Ukraine has received billions of dollars in donations and loans from its allies since Russia launched its special military operation in February 2022. The United States alone has provided more than $100 billion in military, economic and humanitarian aid. Russia has repeatedly warned countries supplying weapons to Ukraine that it sees military shipments as legitimate targets.

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“..The illegitimacy of Volodymyr Zelensky’s rule was intentionally set up to make negotiations with Russia impossible..”

• Zelensky’s Illegitimacy Deliberately Created – Constitution Author (Sp.)

The presidential term of Volodymyr Zelensky expired on May 20. The 2024 presidential election in Ukraine has been canceled citing martial law and general mobilization. Zelensky said that the election was now “untimely”. The illegitimacy of Volodymyr Zelensky’s rule was intentionally set up to make negotiations with Russia impossible, one of the Ukrainian constitution’s authors tells Sputnik. The current constitution was adopted in 1996. Dmytro Tabachnik, then head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, was one of the members of the constitutional commission that drafted the charter. “Knowing the constitutional norms, I can say that according to Article 103 of the Constitution and the explanation of the Constitutional Court, which clearly states that the terms of the president’s powers are determined solely by the articles of the Constitution, it can be said that after May 20, Zelensky is not the legitimate leader of Ukraine,” Tabachnik said.

“According to the constitution, there can be no other interpretation — Zelensky is an illegitimate leader of Ukraine, this clearly follows from the norms of the constitution,” he underlined. Tabachnik argued that Zelensky’s illegitimacy was “specially created.” “There are various interested parties in the bloody conflict in Ukraine. One of the most devious and cynical is Britain,” Tabachnik noted. “Over the past few years, Britain has been trying to play its own separate game. Britain is primarily interested in prolonging the military actions and their escalation.” “Britain absolutely does not care about Zelensky’s illegitimacy,” the constitutional expert said. “They need to solve a task to prolong hostilities as long as possible and exhaust and not only Russia, but also their favorite senior ally, in the past younger brother [the US],” Tabachnik argued. As evidence of this, he recalled that London has already repeatedly interfered in events in Ukraine.

“The Istanbul agreements were destroyed by the direct, brazen interference of the former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. All the initial statements on the use of heavy and long-range weapons usually came from Britain as well,” Tabachnik said. “Creating stalemates between different great powers is Britain’s typical method. To bring the great powers together along the lines of their immediate neighbors,” he pointed out. “This is how they tried to shake up the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19th century, this is how they made mischief along the entire perimeter of the Russian Empire.” He noted that the “British model of prolonging” the conflict in Ukraine has several aspects. “The first is the gradual escalation of hostilities. Notice that British politicians are always the actors and promoters of this escalation,” Tabachnik explained. “The second is the complication of negotiations. A special Jesuitical formula was designed to complicate negotiations, consisting of three points.”

“First, the so-called ‘Zelensky formula’ was promoted, repeatedly assessed by leaders of various countries as completely unrealistic and not based on the real situation. The second point of delay was when Zelensky himself issued a decree banning any negotiations with Russia. And the third was moving towards artificial illegitimacy,” he continued. According to Tabachnkik, London is well aware that Russia, represented by its top leadership and Foreign Ministry, relies on the impeccable purity of legal formulas in international relations, so it will not negotiate with an illegitimate president. However, if negotiations with Kiev are impossible, there remains only one solution — Kiev’s capitulation.

“In the case of accepting capitulation, [legitimacy] becomes secondary,” Tabachnik argued. For instance, after Adolf Hitler’s suicide, the Third Reich was headed by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, solely based on Hitler’s will — Dönitz was neither elected nor approved by the German parliament. “Nevertheless, the delegation formed was recognized by all allies and agreed in Potsdam on the night of May 8-9 that these individuals would sign the capitulation,” Tabachnik recalled. Russian President Vladimir Putin, following Russian-Belarusian talks on May 24, stated that Russia assumes Zelensky’s presidential mandate has ended.

Zel

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“..these “dividing lines between” Russia and the West “may be there for decades.”

• “A Full-Scale War Isn’t A Foregone Conclusion” – Timofeev (ZH)

Ahead of the “Russia and China: Cooperation in a New Era” conference in Moscow on Thursday, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) Director General Ivan Timofeev told Russian state-owned news agency Tass about the increasing likelihood of a full-scale war between Russia and the West. “A full-scale war is not is not a foregone conclusion, but unfortunately, its likelihood is growing,” Timofeev said in an interview with Tass. He said, “One option is that there will be a great rise in confrontation between us. At the root of this is the Ukraine issue, as the West continues to provide large-scale military assistance to Kyiv.” At a separate meeting on Thursday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg told foreign ministers about the need to allow Ukraine to use Western weapons to penetrate deep inside Russia.

Timofeev warned about the rising possibility of a direct conflict with NATO: “A number of officials, particularly in France and the United Kingdom, have said that individual military units from NATO countries may be deployed to Ukraine. If they take part in military operations against Russian forces, they will become a legitimate target for our army. “Let’s hope this possible escalation involves conventional arms and not nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, NATO is spending ten times as much as Russia – if not more – on defense. It’s certainly a dangerous scenario. The RIAC director general continued: “The NATO leadership has made statements that no troops will be sent to Ukraine, and a number of EU politicians have said that this is counterproductive. That means they aren’t united on the issue.”

Timofeev added: “As for Russia, we must take every possible scenario into account. We have the capacity to deter these threats. “However, such a scenario will cause irreparable damage to everyone.” He concluded that the West will likely continue assisting Ukraine through weapons and equipment supplies, indicating these “dividing lines between” Russia and the West “may be there for decades.” Daniel Blake, Asia and emerging market equity strategist at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note to clients in April that the shift towards a multipolar world has been underway for the last five years. With that comes a war cycle, and, as we’ve penned before, a splurge in defense spending is bullish for defense companies.

Mearsheimer

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“This is not some kind of ‘military assistance, this is taking part in a war against us.”

• Medvedev Warns NATO of Nuclear ‘Miscalculation’ (RT)

The West is bringing the Ukraine conflict to a stage in which it could spiral into uncontrolled escalation with potentially global repercussions, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said. This comes amid reports that many Western countries have allowed Ukraine to use foreign-made weapons to strike deep into Russia. Writing on Telegram on Friday, Medvedev, who serves as the deputy chief of Russia’s Security Council, stated that Western countries, which are said to have signed off on long-range strikes, must understand that their military equipment and personnel either operating in Ukraine or carrying out attacks on Russia from other countries, “will be destroyed.” He stressed that Russia considers all long-range systems used by Ukraine to be directly controlled by NATO personnel. “This is not some kind of ‘military assistance, this is taking part in a war against us.”

Medvedev said NATO wants Western involvement in the conflict to be seen as the independent initiative of certain countries, hoping to avoid the need to invoke the collective defense clause. The former president dismissed this narrative as a “dangerous and harmful delusion.” According to him, actions such as sending troops to Ukraine or guiding long-range weapons are a “serious escalation of the conflict.” While the US-led military bloc wants to believe that Russia would never use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine or NATO, “life could be much worse than their frivolous reasoning” allows, Medvedev warned. He went on to say that the West risks miscalculating the chances of nuclear weapons being used, just as it failed to anticipate the start of Russia’s Ukraine operation. This is not intimidation or nuclear bluff. The current military conflict with the West is developing according to the worst possible scenario. The power of the deployed NATO-made weapons is constantly escalating. That is why today no one can exclude the transition of the conflict to its final stage.

Russia has repeatedly said that a nuclear war must never be fought, ruling out the use of any nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Some Western countries have supported NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s call last week to the bloc’s members to consider lifting “some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons” sent to Ukraine. Several Western media outlets also reported this week that the US, Kiev’s key backer, has allowed Ukraine to conduct “limited” long-range strikes deep into Russia. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s office confirmed the reports, saying Kiev will now have a better chance of “countering Russian attempts to mass across the border.” Moscow has warned that the actions Kiev’s Western backers could lead to an escalation and serious consequences.

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The hunger for war is palpable.

• Nordic Countries Greenlight Long-Range Ukrainian Strikes On Russia (RT)

NATO members Norway and Finland have said Ukraine can carry out long-range strikes against Russia using Western weapons provided by the US-led military bloc. The statement came after US President Joe Biden reportedly gave Kiev permission to use American weapons to hit targets in the part of Russia bordering Ukraine’s Kharkov Region. On Thursday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg called on member states to permit Ukraine to use weapons for striking targets inside Russian territory. Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has said there should be no restrictions on the use of weapons provided to Ukraine by Western countries.

“We also believe that Ukraine has an absolutely clear international right to attack Russia on its territory as part of its defense of its own territory,” Eide said in an interview with Norwegian broadcaster NRK.In an interview with Japanese media on Thursday, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said there was no problem with Ukraine striking Russian territory with weapons provided by the West, as long as it complies with international law.“There is no problem with using the weapons provided to attack Russia in self-defense. It would be hypocritical to send weapons that cannot be used,” he said, as quoted by Nikkei news agency.The Ukrainian leadership has been demanding for NATO to permit the use of its weapons to attack targets deep inside Russia.

Latvia and Poland earlier said they were in favor of such strikes. However, Italy and Hungary have voiced their opposition to the idea. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reportedly made a U-turn on the issue, saying on Wednesday that he now supports Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia, despite earlier concerns about escalation with Moscow, according to Politico. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Kiev’s Western backers need to understand that long-range strikes on Russian territory using weaponry they have supplied would represent a conflict escalation and lead to “serious consequences.”

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“Medvedev said Friday that Russia would “proceed from the fact” that all long-range weapons used by Ukraine “are directly controlled by military personnel of NATO country..”

• Moscow Has Right to Take Proxy War With NATO Global (Sp.)

The Biden administration joined with the leaders of Germany, Nordic countries and the Baltic states on Thursday by lifting formal restrictions on the use of NATO long-range strike systems sent to Ukraine to target areas deep inside Russia. Sputnik asked a leading European defense commentator about the move’s political and strategic implications.Russian officials blasted Washington and its allies on Friday over the escalation of the Ukrainian proxy war through NATO countries’ decision to approve long-range attacks on Russia, with both the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry pointing out that the alliance never shied away from allowing its proxies in Kiev to target the Russian hinterland.“We are aware that attempts to strike Russian territory with American-made weapons are already being made. This is sufficient for us, and it clearly demonstrates the extent of the United States’ involvement in this conflict,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

Separately on Friday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed that allies had approved long-range strike weapons’ deployment, and said the bloc expects Kiev to use these arms “in a responsible way” in line with international law. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed Stoltenberg, saying in a Telegram post that it was “obvious that NATO was lying and creating a smokescreen, inventing a story that they supposedly had not yet decided to allow or not allow the Kiev regime to carry out strikes using Western weapons on Russian territory.” Former Russian president and deputy Security Council head Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that Russia would “proceed from the fact” that all long-range weapons used by Ukraine “are directly controlled by military personnel of NATO country,” and emphasized that “this is not ‘military assistance’, but participation in a war against us” which constitutes a possible “casus belli.”

[..] “The Russian offensive near Kharkov has been used as a reason to change Western policy,” Mikael Valtersson, a former Swedish Armed Forces officer and military observer specializing in air defense, told Sputnik. “The reasoning in Western circles was that Ukraine must be able to answer if attacks come from the Russian side of the 1991 border. From a military point of view this might be understandable, but it is still another huge step towards escalation from the West toward Russia,” the observer said. Valtersson expects the military consequences of NATO’s green light for Kiev to be “minor,” since Ukraine’s military has a limited number of long-range strike systems.

Then there’s the experience Russian Air Defense Forces have amassed over the past two years in fine-tuning their equipment specifically to target projectiles like the ATACMS and Storm Shadow. Still, the threat posed by the long-range missiles is not insignificant, particularly given Kiev’s willingness to use them in the past to target civilian areas in the Donbass and the Russian city of Belgorod. The “big question,” according to Valtersson, is “how involved the Western powers will be in targeting and other preparations for the attacks.”

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Western military personnel are already active in Ukraine and “have been there for a long time,” President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. “They are [foreign] specialists under the guise of mercenaries..”

• First French Troops En Route To Ukraine (RT)

The first group of French military instructors are coming to Ukraine, high-profile Ukrainian politician Aleksey Goncharenko said on Friday. His statement comes just days after Ukraine’s top commander Aleksandr Syrsky announced that had authorized the presence of the French personnel in the country. “My sources informed me that the first group of French instructors is already on its way to Ukraine,” Goncharenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday evening. NATO boots on the ground is a contentious issue inside the US-led alliance, whose members maintain that they are not parties to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Moscow, meanwhile, has said that it views Ukraine’s Western backers as direct participants, stressing that Western-supplied weapons are being used to strike targets on Russian soil. In February, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he could not rule out the possibility of NATO member states sending troops to Ukraine in the future, although French officials soon clarified that he meant non-combat personnel. Macron later argued that NATO should adopt a policy of “strategic ambiguity” towards Russia. The French leader has been working behind the scenes to forge a coalition of countries willing to dispatch trainers to Kiev, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

Syrsky, who was made Ukraine’s top general in February, said on Monday that he had signed the papers allowing instructors from France to visit Kiev’s training facilities and “familiarize themselves with their infrastructure and personnel,” and had notified French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu. Moscow has warned that any additional military aid to Kiev amounts to serious escalation. Western military personnel are already active in Ukraine and “have been there for a long time,” President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. “They are [foreign] specialists under the guise of mercenaries,” he told the press. He said that the deployment of Western forces to Ukraine would be “another step towards a serious conflict in Europe and a global conflict.”

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“In Georgia today, as we speak, there are 27,000 Western-funded NGOs..”

• Scott Ritter: Georgian ‘Foreign Agents’ Law Exposes Western Influence (Sp.)

The new “foreign agents” law will help Georgians tell right from wrong and real friends from fake ones, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik, arguing that the legislation should be called the “transparency law.”Georgia’s “foreign agents bill,” which designates non-governmental organizations (NGOs) receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power,” became law on May 28. The US immediately announced sanctions against Georgian politicians backing the legislation, while the EU threatened to freeze the country’s candidate status. One might wonder as to why the law, which resembles the US’ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), has been received with such animosity in the West. The crux of the matter is that the legislation is aimed at exposing the West’s deep disrespect of Georgia’s sovereignty, according to former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter.

“In Georgia today, as we speak, there are 27,000 Western-funded NGOs. What are these non-governmental organizations doing? It’s about buying a generation of Georgian citizens, a young generation, a generation that has lost touch with who they are and what they are as Georgians, a generation that is out of touch with the reality of what happened to Georgia in the 1990s,” Ritter told Sputnik.Over the past several decades, Georgians have experienced what the “European choice” really entails, Ritter continued, referring to US-backed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s aggression against South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers in August 2008, which was quickly repelled by Moscow. Following Saakashvili’s botched invasion, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which had declared their independence from Tbilisi in the early 1990s. Currently, the Western-backed Georgian opposition wants to create a “second front” against Russia, something that would be nothing short of suicidal, according to Ritter.

This policy of confronting Russia is part and parcel of an overall package that includes Georgia becoming a member of the European Union and member of NATO, which would also mean ceding Georgia’s sovereignty to the West, the military expert warned. “Georgian Dream has the best interests of Georgia in mind,” said Ritter. “The EU wants Georgia to participate in the economic sanctioning of Russia. The Georgian Dream Party so far has said no. Look what happened to Europe when they sanctioned Russia, it boomeranged, backfired. What about Georgia? By not participating in the economic sanction of Russia, the Georgian economy has grown more than 10% over the course of the last two years and is on pace to continue this level of growth.

That’s called looking out for Georgia first.” When it comes to Georgian NATO membership, many of the nation’s seasoned military officers, who participated in NATO’s Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo campaigns and brought home the dead bodies of Georgian soldiers, are no longer enthusiastic about joining the alliance, the expert remarked. Ritter explained that territorial disputes with South Ossetia and Abkhazia will not allow Georgia to join NATO any time soon, adding that the irony is that the two breakaway republics will not start settling their disagreements with Tbilisi until the latter gives up its NATO aspirations.

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Bird flu
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796193970097172641

 

 

Coyote
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796116009058746450

 

 

Emanuel is back

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle May 28 2024

May 282024
 
 May 28, 2024  Posted by at 8:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Edward Hopper Second Story Sunlight 1960

 

• Saving our Democracy This Memorial Day (Jim Kunstler)
• Why the Trump Trial Could End With a Hung Jury (Turley)
• Trumpophobia Is Cresting With His Polls (Victor Davis Hanson)
• NATO Falling Into ‘Wartime Ecstasy’ – Kremlin (RT)
• ECB Tells Banks To ‘Get Out Of Russia’ (RT)
• Russia Producing Shells at 25% Price of NATO Countries, 3x Faster (RT)
• NATO To ‘Institutionalize’ Arms Support For Kiev At US Summit (TASS)
• Ukraine Conference is Propaganda to Cover Up Zelensky’s Illegitimacy (Sp.)
• The Small Baltic States Lead The EU In Insanity (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Estonian President Pledges To Bring Russia ‘To Its Knees’ (RT)
• Zelensky Bodyguard Told His Men To Surrender – The Times (RT)
• The Brink Of Dissolution: Neurosis In West As Levee Breaks (Alastair Crooke)
• Canada Afraid To Prosecute Colonel For Saying Ukrainian War Is Lost (Helmer)
• Biden’s Tariffs Are Another Nail in the Dollar’s Coffin (Ron Paul)
• Raisi’s Legacy is a Beacon For Posterity (Bhadrakumar)
• Blinken’s Blunders Epitomize The Bankruptcy Of US Power And Diplomacy (SCF)

 

 

 

 

“Israel must accept that it cannot exist without a Palestinian state.”

 

 

US bases
https://twitter.com/i/status/1794832164913365037

 

 

Elon Obama

 

 

SpaceX booster
https://twitter.com/i/status/1794931625815617897

 

 

 

 

Hard choice what to open with today. Both Kunstler and Turley are excellent.

“..Legal experts at MSNBC, Andrew Weissmann (of the Mueller Special Counsel office) and Andy McCabe (former Deputy Director of the FBI), have already found this Trump guilty, and they know about these matters better than anybody..”

• Saving our Democracy This Memorial Day (Jim Kunstler)

Surely it was the right thing to do for President “Joe Biden” to remind the nation of the tragic loss of George Floyd four years ago this Memorial Day weekend. At the time, the man known as “the Black Thomas Edison” was rumored to be this close to achieving an economically viable system for producing electricity via atomic fusion using the fentanyl molecule (C22H28N2O) combined with the nuclei of alcohol (C2H6O), releasing enough energy from one gram to power a city the size of Minneapolis for a day. The math he left behind on his chalkboard spells it out:

You see how that works? Alas, Dr. Floyd had apparently ingested a small amount of these experimental substances accidently before leaving his lab May 25, 2020, when he encountered the white supremacist police officer Derek Chauvin outside a Cup Foods convenience store in Minneapolis’s “Powderhorn” neighborhood. For reasons never understood, despite manifold judicial inquiries, the officer dragged the Great Man out of his car — where he was polishing some of the requisite algebra in his notebook — and for no reason at all placed one knee, and all his weight, on Dr. Floyd’s neck, constricting his airway and causing his death. The nation erupted in violence, and you know the rest of the story: no cheap energy for you, you nation of white supremacist asswipes!

And so it has gone since that fateful day: one darn thing after another. Luckily though — and with a little help from Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) — the vigilant “Joe Biden” presides in the White House, keeping America safe for democracy, by democracy, and of democracy. The country has never experienced so much democracy. The Brookings Institution even warns that the country might be close to a democracy overload, in which the popular will is so immense that everyone in all fifty states thinks the same morally correct thoughts all day long without giving offense or making any space unsafe or dis-including any diverse category of human (except white supremacists) from his, her, or they’s share of the nation’s limitless wealth.

“Joe Biden” has been especially effective at containing the Grand Golem of all white supremacists, Trump, from deconstructing our utopian democracy. This Trump uttered perfidious misinformation that the 2020 election was less than fair and upright. He is under indictment in Fulton County, GA, for conspiring to transmit this incorrect thinking to other white supremacists and creating an unsafe space for GA Sec’y of State Brad Raffensperger by asking him to “find” additional votes. What log was Bradraff supposed to look under, anyway (ha ha!)?

The case is being guided by Fulton County DA, the indomitable Fani Willis, at least for now, as she awaits a process known as getting the bidness from a white supremacist so-called ethics committee in the Georgia State Senate, where she has been falsely accused of mis-spending state money on vacations with erstwhile special prosecutor Nathan Wade. These trips were, of course, fact-finding efforts. One fact found is that the white supremacist cruise ship directors attempt to kill black people by luring them into all-you-can-eat buffets at sea, from which escape is impossible.

“Joe Biden” also got Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint Lawfare paladin Jack Smith to prosecute this nefarious Trump in the most upright of all federal court districts, Washington, DC, for instigating what “Joe Biden” recently called an “erection” against our democracy. Trump, you see, told a gigantic mob of white supremacists to penetrate our nation’s capitol building so as to obstruct certification of the 2020 electoral vote and murder then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, if possible, along with all congresspersons of color. Legal experts at MSNBC, Andrew Weissmann (of the Mueller Special Counsel office) and Andy McCabe (former Deputy Director of the FBI), have already found this Trump guilty, and they know about these matters better than anybody, so the trial under Judge Tanya Chutkan may be unnecessary.

Things are not going quite so well for SC Smith in the Martin County Federal Court of Judge Aileen Cannon, where this Trump stands accused of fobbing off with classified government documents, claiming some fabricated sort of presidential privilege — unlike “Joe Biden” who got his classified docs before he was president and therefore does not have to claim any such privilege (and was understandably “forgetful” when asked about the docs by the other SC Robert Hur). In any case, AG Garland can always dispatch an FBI SWAT team to Judge Cannon’s home to spur an attitude adjustment on the bench, if required.

Hopes really rest, though, on the current case against the Grand Golem Trump in Judge Juan Merchan’s Manhattan courtroom, where the most supreme of all white supremacists stands accused of book-keeping irregularities in furtherance of federal crimes so unspeakable that they have never actually been spoken. The case, engineered by veteran DC Golem hunters Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Lisa Monaco, and Matthew Colangelo, fronted by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, goes to the jury after final arguments this week.

Judge Merchan is expected to instruct the jury to vote guilty because no other conclusion is possible. Thus, Judge Merchan will be celebrated far and wide for saving our democracy. But that’s not all. After the most excellent verdict of guilty X-23-Plus, he will have the pleasure of sentencing this Trump to life in the Rikers Island prison complex, where it will be difficult for the Grand Golem to organize any white supremacist activities and will be relegated to a diet of baloney sandwiches for the duration of his term.

The only downside for this scenario is that Trump might get elected President of the USA despite conviction, and on January 20, 2025, commence operations to put “Joe Biden” and all the others in his train of officials in jail for the rest of their natural lives. You have to wonder if they’re thinking about that this holiday weekend.

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“..the only thing worse in New York than being a Trump supporter is being a chump..”

• Why the Trump Trial Could End With a Hung Jury (Turley)

Abstract artist Jackson Pollock once said that his paintings have no objective meaning, so the best way for people to enjoy them is to stop looking for it. For many of us, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has created a new school of abstract law where there is no need for objective meaning. The jury is simply supposed to enjoy it for what it is: a chance to convict Donald Trump. Pollock was famous for his painting drips on large canvases. Bragg has achieved the same effect by regenerating a dead misdemeanor on falsifying business records as 34 felony counts. To achieve that extraordinary goal, he has alleged that the document violations (which expired long ago under the statute of limitations) were committed to hide some other crime. Originally, Bragg vaguely referenced four crimes and there have been months of confusion as to what he was specifically alleging as his criminal theories. Even legal analysts on CNN and MSNBC have continued to question the specific allegations against Trump as we head into closing arguments.

As it stands, there are three crimes that have been referenced by prosecutors: state and federal election violations and taxation violations. Bragg’s legal vision for non-objective indictments was greatly advanced by Judge Juan Merchan, who will allow the jury to reach different rulings on what crime is actually evident in Bragg’s paint splatters. Merchan has ruled that the jurors can disagree on what actually occurred in terms of the second crime. This means there could be three groups of four jurors, with one believing that there was a conspiracy to conceal a state election violation, another believing there was a federal election violation (which Bragg cannot enforce), and a third believing there was a tax violation, respectively. Nonetheless, Merchan will treat that as a unanimous verdict. In other words, they could look at the indictment and see vastly different shapes, but still send Trump to prison on their interpretations.

Moreover, Michael Cohen is the sole witness even to address the elements of any of these crimes. Cohen is a convicted serial perjurer and disbarred attorney who appears to have lied again during the trial. Even if they consider his testimony, there is no direct corroboration in evidence on Trump’s intent or knowledge. As a result, the prosecutors will rely on circumstantial evidence to support whichever interpretation the jurors will buy. Faced with charges that can mean different things to different jurors, Trump’s team will have to focus on the spaces between the paint drips; the canvas itself. All of this case is based on the payment for a non-disclosure agreement that is perfectly legal and indeed common in business and politics. The Trump team needs to stop dancing around the NDA.

The jury likely believes that Trump knew of the NDA and supported it. The defense has to emphasize the testimony of David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Inquirer, that he killed stories for a variety of celebrities and politicians, including Rahm Emmanuel and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He also said that he killed stories for Trump for years before he even thought of running for president. They need to emphasize the testimony of multiple witnesses that Trump seemed to want to avoid embarrassment to his family. He was also the host of a popular television show and an international businessman. The payment of a couple hundred thousand to kill stories is considered a cost of doing business for most celebrities, particularly those who have television contracts with provisions allowing cancellation for scandals. In the instructions, the court will tell the jurors that payments cannot be campaign contributions if they would have been made anyway regardless of the campaign.

They also need to point out other gaps. It was not Trump who listed payments as legal expenses or retainer payments. Witnesses said that payments to lawyers are routinely recorded as legal expenses. Indeed, it is not clear how the money should have been denominated but the decision was being made by others in the Trump organization and by Cohen himself. Moreover, on the characterization of payments as part of a “retainer,” the other party to that characterization was former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. He is currently in prison in New York, but was not called by the prosecution. The prosecutors elected to rely entirely on Michael Cohen with various witnesses, including Cohen, referencing Weisselberg’s decision on how to pay the money.

That made the canvas itself largely Michael Cohen. All of this is held together by a witness who admitted that he has lied to banks, Congress, prosecutors, business associates, and virtually every creature that has ever walked or crawled on the face of the Earth. He also lied in front of the jury about the critical call where he said that he told Trump about the NDA payment. The defense showed that that 96-second-long call was to Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, in late October 2016. It was preceded and followed by text messages that indicated that their conversation was actually about a teenager harassing Cohen.

Moreover, Cohen admitted to making millions by bashing Trump, and that he has a personal interest in his conviction. You can throw paint on Cohen all day, but it will not cover up the fact that he is a pathological liar and grifter. That is why I still believe that a hung jury might even be the most likely possibility. That may change when we see Judge Merchan’s final instructions. However, the only thing worse in New York than being a Trump supporter is being a chump. To rely solely on Cohen and not even call someone like Weisselberg is to play these jurors as chumps.

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“The public increasingly agrees that the Democrat Party is the party of the very rich, the bicoastal privileged, and the subsidized poor..”

• Trumpophobia Is Cresting With His Polls (Victor Davis Hanson)

So, what is Trumpophobia? The syndrome displays a number of symptoms. One, the left always projects its sins onto its opponents. It accuses Trump of doing precisely what it has done, as a way of avoiding blame for its self-inflicted disasters. And the left so vehemently projects because it knows what it would do if it were Trump and was treated as he has been by them. Two, desperate Democrats are scrambling to find some bizarre way to depose both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, especially should Biden have a disastrous, historic preconvention June presidential debate. As a result, the 2024 campaign has never been about comparison of 2017-2020 to 2021-2024. But rather, it has already descended into the Democratic de facto smear that “Trump is even worse than Biden.”

And that fixation instills fears of what Trump might do rather than what he actually has done. Three, the left feels Biden may do more than just lose the Democrats the presidency, Senate, and its close margin in the House. His hyperinflation seriously damaged the middle class. He turns them off with his arrogance, screaming speeches, loud, obnoxious gibberish, compulsive lying, and generally impotent appearance. His racial condescension and pandering fool no one. As a result, Biden may well redefine the two parties as race is replaced by shared class concerns. Wealthy blacks may vote for Biden because they are black and wealthy, but more and more middle-class blacks may vote for Trump because they feel his policies benefit the middle class like themselves.

The public increasingly agrees that the Democrat Party is the party of the very rich, the bicoastal privileged, and the subsidized poor, while the lower and middle classes feel far more confident and secure with Republicans. Four, the left fears a more organized, savvier Trump second term might hit the ground running‚ and thus rapidly and professionally instill a conservative agenda to stop the current neo-socialist revolution. Given all that, 2024 for the left is little more than “Fear Trump or Bust.”

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“NATO is increasing the degree of escalation, NATO is flirting with warlike rhetoric, falling into “wartime ecstasy.” This is the reality we have to continue to deal with,” Peskov stated.”

• NATO Falling Into ‘Wartime Ecstasy’ – Kremlin (RT)

The US-led NATO bloc has not only been directly involved in a confrontation with Russia but is now falling into “wartime ecstasy,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He was speaking in response to the military bloc’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg advocating the removal of restrictions on use of Western weaponry by Ukraine. Stoltenberg’s remarks can be only considered as the official stance of the entire US-led military bloc and Russia will respond accordingly, Peskov told the Izvestia newspaper on Monday. “This cannot be his personal opinion. He is an official, he is the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and that is how we perceive it. NATO is increasing the degree of escalation, NATO is flirting with warlike rhetoric, falling into “wartime ecstasy.” This is the reality we have to continue to deal with,” Peskov stated.

Subsequent remarks by Stoltenberg that NATO “will not become part of the conflict” were rather “contradictory,” Peskov noted, given that the military bloc has de-facto long been a party to the hostilities and had entered into a direct confrontation with Russia. NATO is directly involved into the conflict. On Friday, Stoltenberg urged NATO allies to lift restrictions on Kiev’s use of Western-supplied weaponry against Russia. “To deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves,” he argued. “The time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with The Economist.

However, Stoltenberg insisted on Sunday that “NATO will not become part of the conflict.” The bloc has no plans to send in troops or to protect Kiev through extending “NATO’s air-defense shield to Ukraine,” the NATO chief told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag. Moscow has long rejected NATO’s rhetoric about its role in the conflict and the supposed restrictions on the use of Western-supplied munitions for striking deep into Russian territory. Such talk is merely designed to maintain the illusion that the West is not part of the conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. “We proceed from the fact that American and other Western weaponry strikes targets on the territory of Russia, primarily civilian infrastructure and residential areas,” the top diplomat told reporters on Friday.

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The only things these banks still do in Russia are either essential for survival or highly profitable. And that may be the same thing. The ECB is trying to kill off the banks.

• ECB Tells Banks To ‘Get Out Of Russia’ (RT)

A senior official at the European Central Bank (ECB) has urged Italian banks with operations in Russia to pull out, amid the threat of harsher US sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine. Italy’s UniCredit currently has the second largest exposure to the Russian market among EU-based banks, after Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI). Another lender, Intesa Sanpaolo, is working to dispose of its business in the country. ”From there (Russia) you have to get out,” ECB policymaker Fabio Panetta said at a press conference following a G7 finance meeting in Italy, as quoted by Reuters. ”There are objective difficulties because getting out of Russia is complicated… however, you have to get out because there is a reputational problem,” said Panetta, who is also the governor of the Bank of Italy.

The G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in the Italian lakeside town of Stresa was also attended by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. In an interview with Reuters, Yellen warned that European banks operating in Russia face growing risks, as the US is looking at “potentially a tougher stepping-up” of secondary sanctions on lenders that do business in the country. Sanctions related to banks’ dealings in Russia would only be imposed “if there was a reason to do so, but operating in Russia creates an awful lot of risk,” Yellen stressed. The risk of a US crackdown has reportedly spurred the ECB to up the pressure on European financial institutions still working in Russia.

Apart from RBI, UniCredit, and Intesa Sanpaolo, a number of other EU banks – notably the Dutch lender ING, Germany’s Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, Hungary’s OTP Bank, and Sweden’s SEB –maintain a presence on the Russian market despite Western sanctions. According to the Financial Times, the regulator has sent letters to lenders with a request for an “action plan” to fold their business in Russia as early as June. Earlier this month Reuters reported that the US Treasury had threatened to cut off Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI)’s access to the American financial system due to its activities in Russia. RBI said it would start withdrawing in the third quarter of this year following pressure from the ECB.

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“..the production of ammunition in the country has increased 14-fold, drone manufacturing has increased four-fold, and the assembly of tanks and armored vehicles has increased 3.5-fold..”

• Russia Producing Shells at 25% Price of NATO Countries, 3x Faster (RT)

Russia is able to produce artillery shells much faster and cheaper than Ukraine’s backers in the US and Europe, Sky News has reported, citing a study by the consulting firm Bain & Company. According to the research, based on publicly available data, Russian factories are projected to make or refurbish approximately 4.5 million rounds this year, compared to the West’s combined production of about 1.3 million rounds, the broadcaster reported on Sunday. This means that Moscow currently generates more than three times more artillery shells than the NATO members. The figures given by Bain & Company suggest that the average production cost of a Russian 152mm shell is $1,000, which is one quarter the price of the 155mm rounds used by NATO, which are priced at $4,000. The fact that the output of shells in the US and EU “lags behind” Russia poses “a major challenge” for the Ukrainian military amid the conflict with Moscow, Sky News stressed.

According to the broadcaster, Ukraine’s frontline troops are complaining that they can only fire one round for every five shells launched from the Russian side. The Pentagon said last fall that it plans to increase its output of 155mm rounds from 28,000 to 100,000 per month by the end of 2025. The EU announced in March that its goal is to ramp ammunition production capacity to 2 million shells per year during the same period. During a meeting with the leadership of Russia’s defense industry enterprises on Saturday, President Vladimir Putin said that the production of ammunition in the country has increased 14-fold, drone manufacturing has increased four-fold, and the assembly of tanks and armored vehicles has increased 3.5-fold since the launch of the military operation in Ukraine in February 2022.

“It’s a good pace, a large volume,” the president stressed, adding that the output of the country’s military-industrial complex continues to grow. “I want to thank you and your teams for dealing with such large-scale tasks,” he told the industry leaders. Moscow has warned repeatedly that deliveries of weapons and ammunition to Kiev by the US and its allies will not prevent it from achieving its military goals, adding that it will merely prolong the fighting and could increase the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. According to officials, the provision of arms, the sharing of intelligence, and the training of Ukrainian troops obviate that Western nations have already become de-facto parties to the conflict.

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Trump wants peace. NATO does not. So they try to come up with something he cannot touch when elected.

“..a permanent NATO military fund for Ukraine worth $100 bln a year..”

• NATO To ‘Institutionalize’ Arms Support For Kiev At US Summit (TASS)

NATO will establish a permanent entity at July’s summit in Washington to organize mandatory arms supplies to Ukraine and their financing, with the amount to be determined later, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, speaking at a NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting. “Support must start to flow in again, but delays and also the fact that not everything is delivered as promised, has caused serious consequences. That’s also the reason why I have suggested that at the summit we agree a bigger NATO role in coordinating and providing security assistance and training for Ukraine. Because I strongly believe that we need a firmer, stronger institutionalized structure for the support. Ad hoc, short-term, voluntary announcements are good, but in the long term we need more predictable, stronger support for Ukraine,” he emphasized. According to Stoltenberg, the budget has not been agreed yet. The secretary general said earlier that it was necessary to create a permanent NATO military fund for Ukraine worth $100 bln a year.

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Switzerland just sold out its long lasting status of neutrality.

“Under these circumstances, Switzerland cannot be a neutral host by definition, let alone a mediator..”

• Ukraine Conference is Propaganda to Cover Up Zelensky’s Illegitimacy (Sp.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin “is correct” when he states that the goal of the upcoming Ukraine ‘peace’ conference in Switzerland is to try to confirm Volodymyr Zelensky’s legitimacy to the Western community, Christopher C. Black, an international criminal lawyer with 20 years of experience in war crimes and international relations and a commentator on international affairs, told Sputnik. “It is a propaganda exercise to try to cover up the fact the Kiev regime is not legitimate. Of course legitimacy cannot be assured by statements by supporters of an illegitimate regime and those who arranged the coup d’etat of 2014,” Black pointed out.He was echoed by Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois’ College of Law, who said in an interview with Sputnik that “everyone knows that the conference in Switzerland is a joke and a fraud that is based upon Zelensky’s peace program.”

“[The] Switzerland [summit] will just be an anti-Russian propaganda stunt designed to further vilify Russia in the eyes of the world. I am surprised the Swiss government is going along with it. But, of course, Switzerland is a member of NATO’s Partnership For Peace (PFP) and is no longer truly neutral — I have lectured there against this and told the Swiss they should pull out of NATO/PFP,” Boyle noted. As for Zelensky, he “has never been a legitimate president of Ukraine,” Black argued. According to him, the last legitimate president of Ukraine was Viktor Yanukovich, “who was overthrown in the NATO orchestrated coup d’etat of 2014” and who “has never served out his complete term.” “So when the Kiev coup regime conducted subsequent elections they could not be considered free and fair by any standards in the world. They were all rigged to maintain the coup regime in power under different figures or puppets,” the analyst noted.

In this vein, he referred to the people of eastern Ukraine who “have never accepted the legitimacy of the regime installed by NATO in the coup of 2014 for two reasons – it was a regime that still regards them as enemies and their democratic choice was denied” and “their chosen president [Yanukovich] was overthrown.” The remarks come after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that discussing security issues at the Switzerland conference will be “absolutely futile” without the participation of Russia. “Most likely, it will be just empty scholasticism with no prospect of getting at least some tangible result,” Peskov added. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier confirmed that Russia was not planning to participate in the summit due to be held in Buergenstock, Switzerland, on June 15-16. She also said that Russia had no confidence in Bern, a supporter of the Ukrainian government in Kiev that has implemented several rounds of EU sanctions against Russia. “Under these circumstances, Switzerland cannot be a neutral host by definition, let alone a mediator,” the spokeswoman underscored.

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“We should not be afraid of our own strength,” she declares..”

• The Small Baltic States Lead The EU In Insanity (Paul Craig Roberts)

The president of Estonia (population 1,319,000 million) pledges to bring Russia “to its knees.” The prime minister of Estonia says she is not afraid of Russia and favors sending troops to Ukraine. “We should not be afraid of our own strength,” she declares. Lithuania (population 2,696,000) also thinks it is a good idea. The prime minister of Latvia (population 1,883,000) says she supports sending troops to Ukraine. The population of one Russian City, St. Petersburg is 5,600,000.

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“We will do everything possible to bring Russia and Putin to their knees,” Karis stressed. “Then it will be possible to start serious negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine.”

• Estonian President Pledges To Bring Russia ‘To Its Knees’ (RT)

Estonian President Alar Karis has claimed that meaningful discussions on ending the Ukraine conflict can only take place when Moscow is fully subdued. The head of state also called on Western nations to attempt to force political change in Russia. In an interview with the news website Yle on Sunday – ahead of Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s state visit to Tallinn on Monday – Karis expressed skepticism over whether Russia can “change” quickly enough to “respond to our [Western] understanding of democracy.” He urged Western powers to intensify the pressure on Moscow – referring to sanctions imposed by the EU and US since the start of the conflict – with the goal of fueling public discontent among ordinary Russians. “We will do everything possible to bring Russia and Putin to their knees,” Karis stressed. “Then it will be possible to start serious negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine.”

Russia had a “chance” when the USSR ended, but then something went “wrong,” and now even regime change and the removal of President Vladimir Putin would not have the effect desired by the West, he argued. “Maybe you have to wait a little longer, many similar leaders, before change occurs,” he continued. Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, the Estonian leadership has adopted a hawkish stance towards Moscow, regularly referring to the country as “an aggressor” and an “existential threat” to the Baltic states.

Last week Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas suggested that the conflict between Moscow and Kiev should end with the breakup of the Russian Federation into separate states, arguing that it would bring “a change in society.” She repeatedly urged NATO nations to keep “all options on the table” to ensure that Moscow “loses the war.” The Kremlin has consistently decried Western involvement in the conflict, accusing NATO of waging a proxy war against Russia. Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said that “the acute phase of the military-political confrontation with the West” is currently in “full swing,” with no end in sight, claiming that “many facts” indicate that “Europe as a partner” will remain irrelevant for at least another generation.

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“..the arrests were likely connected to Zelensky’s attempts to purge all people he does not trust, as his popularity dwindles..”

• Zelensky Bodyguard Told His Men To Surrender – The Times (RT)

One of the Ukrainian officers arrested earlier this month for allegedly trying to assassinate the country’s leaders told his men to lay down their arms after the conflict with Russia erupted over two years ago, The Times has claimed. The SBU, Kiev’s security agency and successor to the Soviet KGB, has arrested two colonels serving in the State Security Administration, which is responsible for the personal protection of senior officials. On Sunday, the British newspaper reported new details about their alleged activities. The SBU claims Andrey Guk and a subordinate named Derkach were willing to assist Russia in executing a coordinated missile strike, which would have killed Vladimir Zelensky and other senior figures in the Ukrainian government sometime in early May. The Times spoke to an SBU insider, who claimed on condition of anonymity that Guk had become a traitor right after the Ukraine conflict erupted, when he instructed presidential bodyguards not to resist Russian forces.

“He told them: ‘We are not the armed forces, we don’t have a particular task to defend Ukraine and I’m not paid enough to organize Brest Fortress here,’” the officer said, referring to an outpost in Belarus, which heroically stood against a Nazi onslaught during Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. According to the report, Guk retained his position because his words were dismissed as an emotional outburst. The Times said his men had “realized he was acting under orders from” the Russian intelligence, which came as a shock. The colonel’s alleged betrayal could be explained by the fact that he was born in Russia, the newspaper suggested. The SBU claims that Guk also received some $3,000 a month plus expenses while working for Moscow.

After the Ukrainian agency first claimed that it had thwarted an assassination plot involving the two colonels, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no statements coming from the SBU “can be treated as truthful.” The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said last week that the arrests were likely connected to Zelensky’s attempts to purge all people he does not trust, as his popularity dwindles. Zelensky’s five-year term in office has expired, and he has postponed elections under the martial law that remains in force in Ukraine. Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of the national parliament, declared last Thursday that only “enemies of Ukraine” express doubts regarding Zelensky’s claim to the presidency.

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“Just for clarity, this (i.e. Ukraine) is Russia’s existential war which it will fight, no matter what it takes..”

• The Brink Of Dissolution: Neurosis In West As Levee Breaks (Alastair Crooke)

[..] how and why can the West be said to be accelerating its own dissolution? The NY Times gives the clue to the ‘why’: The old ‘Anglo’ obsession with a defiant Russia that the West has never been able to bend to their will. And now, Russia and China have signed a joint statement somewhat similar to the ‘no limits’ friendship declared in February 2022 but reaching further. It portrays their relationship as “superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era. Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation … ”. Put starkly, this breaches the long-standing western rule of triangulation: the U.S. must stand with either the one, Russia or China, against the other; but never should China and Russia be permitted to band together versus the U.S.! – a doctrine sanctified in western ‘canon law’ since Mackinder’s time in the 19th Century. Yet, that ‘two versus one’ is precisely what Team Biden inadvertently have ‘done’.

What then, constitutes the ‘how’? The problem with the western solutions to any geo-political problem is that they invariably comprise more of the same. The combination of this deep disdain for Russia – subsumed into the undercurrent fear of Russia as a putative geo-strategic competitor – invites a western recourse to repeating the same triangulation approach, without due reflection on whether circumstances have changed, or not. This is the case here and now – making for a ‘clear and present’ risk of unintended and damaging escalation: A prospect that might midwife the very thing that the West most fears – a loss of control, spiralling the system down into freefall. The Mistake: Ray McGovern, a former U.S. Presidential briefer, has chronicled how as “Biden took office in 2021, his advisers assured him that he could play on Russia’s fear (sic) of China – and drive a wedge between them. This represents the ‘mother of all errors’ of judgement, because it brings about the circumstances in which the western ‘Order’ may dissolve”.

“This [presumption of Russian weakness] became embarrassingly clear when Biden said to Putin during their Geneva summit … let me ask a rhetorical question: ‘You got a multi-thousand-mile border with China. China is seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world and the largest and the most powerful military in the world’.” McGovern observes that this meeting gave Putin clear confirmation that Biden and his advisers were stuck in a woefully outdated appraisal of Russia-China relations. Here is the bizarre way Biden described his approach to Putin on China: At the airport after the summit, Biden’s aides did their best to whisk him onto the plane but failed to stop him from sharing more ‘wisdom’ on China: “Russia is in a very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China”. ‘Yes’: More of the same! Biden was trying, on the advice of his experts, to insert the ubiquitous western ‘wedge’ between Russia and an ‘BIG’ China.

After these remarks, Putin and Xi spent the rest of 2021 trying to disabuse Biden of the “China squeeze” meme: This mutual effort culminated in the Xi-Putin ‘no limits’ friendship summit of that year. If the advisers had been paying attention however, they would have threaded a long history of Russo-Chinese rapprochement. But no, they were ideologically frozen in the view that the two were destined to be eternal enemies. Doubling Down on the Mistake. It gets worse: Then, in a 30 December 2021 telephone conversation, Biden assured Putin that “Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine”. However, Foreign Minister Lavrov has revealed that when he met Blinken in Geneva in January 2022, the U.S. Secretary of State pretended he had not heard of Biden’s undertaking to Putin on 30 December 2021. Rather, Blinken insisted that U.S. medium-range missiles could be deployed in Ukraine, and that the U.S. might be willing to consider limiting their number.

In August 2019, when the U.S. withdrew from the treaty banning intermediate-range missiles in Europe, the U.S. had already deployed missiles in Romania and Poland (saying their purpose was ostensibly ‘to defend against Iran’). However, the tubes installed are deliberately configured to accommodate nuclear warhead equipped, cruise and ballistic missiles; but here is the rub: it is not possible to determine which missile is loaded, as the tubes have lids to them. The time for these missiles to reach Moscow would be 9 minutes from Poland, and 10 from Romania. But if, as Blinken threatened, missiles might be installed in Ukraine, it would drop to only 7 minutes (and were it to be a hypersonic missile, which the U.S. does not yet possess, it would be a mere 2-3 minutes). Just for clarity, this (i.e. Ukraine) is Russia’s existential war which it will fight, no matter what it takes. Beijing is fully aware of the high stakes involved for Russia (and ultimately for China, too).

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“A reporter named David Pugliese, who works for the Ottawa Citizen, has been the single source of the publicity against Kearney..”

• Canada Afraid To Prosecute Colonel For Saying Ukrainian War Is Lost (Helmer)

A new press release in Ottawa reports that the court martial announced for Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) Colonel Robert Kearney for his disagreement with Canadian, American, and British military planners of Ukrainian battlefield operations against Russia may not proceed. The Canadian government news slip reveals the allegations of disloyalty against Kearney announced publicly last month are now likely to be abandoned. On April 29 a CAF press release was issued in Ottawa claiming that as a senior planning officer based in the UK and in Romania for Ukraine war operations, Kearney had made “derogatory and disloyal comments about Senior CAF [[Canadian] and NATO [US, UK] members. The first offence allegedly occurred in December of 2021 and four subsequent offences ranged from January 2023 to November 2023. The offences are alleged to have taken place in the United Kingdom and in Romania.”

Kearney was at the time of his “disloyal comments” the assistant chief of staff at the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) in Innsworth, United Kingdom. In this role, Kearney supervised more than 400 staff officers from the armies of the UK, US, Canada, Italy, Denmark, and other NATO states. ARRC and NATO press releases claim Kearney’s unit has been operating against Russia in Estonia and in Romania “in its primary role as a war fighting Corps Headquarters.” Under Section 129 of Canada’s Defence Act – the provision of military law reportedly being applied against Kearney — prosecution of soldiers is allowed for an undefined “act, conduct, disorder, or neglect to the prejudice of discipline”. The penalty for conviction is “dismissal with disgrace”, which includes loss of pension. This law has not been tested — no officer of Kearney’s rank has been charged and prosecuted for a Section 129 offence in a court martial before.

Canadian military sources believe Kearney is being threatened with court martial now because the Canadian government’s policy to finance, arm, train, plan, and direct Ukrainian operations against Russia is being defeated; and that the military collapse east of Kiev now risks loss of more territory and the lives of Canadians currently working in the Ukraine and at cross-border bases in Poland and Romania. At least one thousand Canadians have been counted by the Russian Defense Ministry on the battlefield since the start of the Special Military Operation; by March of this year, 422 had been confirmed killed in action. Loss of confidence in the Ukraine war has become increasingly public in the military staffs of the US, France and Germany, but this is being kept secret in the UK and Canada.

On May 15, a new press Canadian government release was issued acknowledging that, in fact, no charges have been filed against Kearney, and that the “military [have] yet to decide on court martial for colonel accused of making derogatory comments about Canadian Forces leaders”. The new press release, issued ten days ago in an email to an Ottawa journalist, reversed the meaning of the earlier government announcement. The new message divulges that Kearney has been accused by officers he had criticized for their professional incompetence, but he has not been charged with a military offence. “National Defence spokeswoman Andrée-Anne Poulin noted the charges against Kearney have now been referred to the Director of Military Prosecutions. ‘The prosecutor assigned to review the case will first complete the post-charge analysis,’ she explained in an email.

If the prosecutor prefers charges, and once the counsel for the accused indicates they are ready to proceed, the case will be brought before the Chief Military Judge, at a scheduling conference.’ Once the dates for the trial have been identified, the court martial administrator will issue a convening order, and a summons to the accused, which will specify the date for the court martial, Poulin added.” Canadian lawyers point out that the conditional “if” and “once” in this defence ministry statement are a new sign that the political costs of prosecuting Kearney have become too high to proceed against him. A reporter named David Pugliese, who works for the Ottawa Citizen, has been the single source of the publicity against Kearney. According to his newspaper, Pugliese is “an award-winning journalist covering Canadian Forces and military issues in Canada.”

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“This will not just end the US military and financial empire abroad. It will also end the welfare state at home.”

• Biden’s Tariffs Are Another Nail in the Dollar’s Coffin (Ron Paul)

President Biden recently raised taxes on American consumers and businesses and may have hastened the end of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. President Biden did this by increasing tariffs on Chinese imports. Specifically, President Biden raised tariffs on products including Chinese-produced steel and aluminum and many components imported from China for use in manufacturing electric vehicle batteries. Tariffs on Chinese-made semiconductors are rising from 25 to 50 percent while tariffs on Chinese-made electronic vehicles are rising from 25 percent to an astounding 100 percent. Of course, the costs of these tariffs will be borne by Americans wishing to purchase electric cars and American electric car manufacturers that use material imported from China. These new tariffs thus undercut Biden’s goal of getting more Americans to drive electric cars.

The tariffs on Chinese goods give China even greater Inventive to challenge the dollar’s world reserve currency status. The same week Biden imposed these tariffs, China President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced they were strengthening their alliance in order to better challenge US military and economic hegemony. This is a reaction to US foreign policy of the post-Cold War era which has reversed the Richard Nixon-Henry Kissinger strategy of pursuing good relations with China.

A part of the announcement recognized use of the Chinese yuan and Russian ruble for over 90 percent of the trade between the two countries. This is only the latest challenge to the dollar’s world reserve currency status. China’s share of the global economy has more than doubled in the last twenty years from 8.9 percent to 18.5 percent while the US share of the global economy has fallen from 20.1 percent to 15.5 percent. China’s rise is one reason why the US currency held by foreign central banks has dropped from over 70 percent in the early 2000s to under 60 percent today.

Last year, China and Saudi Arabia agreed to expand their use of their own currencies in trade between the two countries. This is the first time the Saudis have agreed to use a currency other than the dollar for the oil trade since Henry Kissinger negotiated a deal where the Saudis would trade exclusively in dollars in return for US support for the Saudi regime. The “petrodollar” is a major reason why the dollar retained the world reserve currency status after President Nixon severed the last link between the dollar and gold.

If the dollar loses its world reserve currency status, the US government would lose the ability to “weaponize the dollar.” Other countries would then have less incentive to abide by US demands, including related to regime changes. It would also reduce other countries’ interest in purchasing US debt instruments. This would increase pressure on the Federal Reserve to monetize the debt, creating more price inflation and leading to a major economic crisis. This will not just end the US military and financial empire abroad. It will also end the welfare state at home.

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Raisi was not “just some kind of butcher..”

• Raisi’s Legacy is a Beacon For Posterity (Bhadrakumar)

Raisi’s three-year term stands out for his non-involvement in the bickering endemic to Iran’s various powers and institutions, including parliament, judiciary, Revolutionary Guard Corps, military, intelligence services, the police agencies, clerical elite, the ubiquitous bazaar, the Friday prayer leaders, and so on. Having been a cleric who spent his entire public life in the judiciary, he acquired a deep understanding of Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision of velayat-e faqih as crucial to the Islamic government. Hence, his total submission to the Supreme Leader was anchored on the conviction that it is essential for the harmonious functioning of the system. Arguably, in the past three years, the presidency and the government showed a rare unity of purpose, even in the face of the concerted fueling of protests by western powers.

Raisi openly attributed his actions and policies to the Supreme Leader’s instructions. This meant that the government’s paralysis due to incessant factional feuds disappeared. The breakneck speed with which Tehran could advance its nuclear program, resisting pressure from Washington and Brussels, testified to this. When Raisi came to power, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by the previous government had reached a cul-de-sac. Raisi’s administration tried to negotiate with the US through European intermediaries to revive the nuclear deal. However, the Biden administration ultimately refused to re-enter the JCPOA, and the EU proved ineffective as a mediator. As things stand, Iran is a nuclear threshold state. Equally, last October, the UN arms embargo on missile transfers to Iran ended, as the European members of the Security Council decided not to instigate the snapback mechanism. Iran can now legally supply the missiles, and sanctioning such arms transfers is voluntary. This has been a tremendous diplomatic victory.

From a longer-term perspective, another big shift in the situation around Iran is Washington’s tacit recognition that Tehran can be a factor of regional stability and security in the West Asian quagmire. The New York Times reported on 18 May that talks took place between senior officials of the US and Iran in the past week, the first such conversations after the Iran–Israel “tit-for-tat” missile strikes. Brett McGurk, the top White House official on West Asia policy, and Abram Paley, the deputy special envoy for Iran, attended the talks in Oman alongside Iran’s newly appointed interim Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, who has played an active role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the US and European powers over the years.

[..] The Iranian news agency Nour News coined an apt description of the vital link between Iran’s diplomatic strategies and the battlefield needs of the Axis of Resistance under Raisi’s watch – “rational resistance.” At any rate, the geostrategic reality is that if Israel feels boxed in today, Iran is responsible for it. Raisi realized that hard power alone could not solve the looming crisis and understood the importance of soft power embodied in Iran’s culture and values through which it could generate trust and mobilize the regional and international audience around forward agendas that looked beyond the military and political problems. Abhorrence of war has become axiomatic in Raisi’s approach, which in turn has transmuted Iran’s “soft power.” That became possible only because Raisi understood deeply that power is nothing more than the ability to affect others to get what you want.

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“Even more cringe-making was his choice of song, Neil Young’s ‘Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World’. Not only was Blinken tone deaf to the horror of war, but he was oblivious to the fact that the song is an explicit condemnation of American imperialist barbarity…”

• Blinken’s Blunders Epitomize The Bankruptcy Of US Power And Diplomacy (SCF)

As the Iranian nation mourned the tragic death of President Ebrahim Raisi this week, the United States could not even muster a respectful offer of condolence. The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, officially that country’s top diplomat, made a crass remark that the Iranian people would be “better off”. This as the Islamic Republic had declared five days of mourning for the late president whose funeral in the city of Mashhad was attended by millions of Iranians. President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash along with the country’s much-respected Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and several other dignitaries who were also on board the aircraft. The fatal crash happened in treacherous weather over a mountainous region in northwest Iran as the president’s entourage returned from a visit to Azerbaijan. Most of the world expressed shock and grief over the loss. The UN General Assembly held a minute’s silence and at the funeral, 68 nations were represented including officials from Russia and China.

The United States and Iran have been staunch adversaries for more than half a century following the Iranian revolution in 1979. Nevertheless, it is a basic matter of diplomacy and etiquette for countries to show a token of sympathy at such a time of national mourning. The disgraceful and cheap comments about the death of Iran’s president show how inadequate Blinken is as the supposed U.S. primary diplomat. But the failure is not merely a personal matter, it epitomizes the general collapse of Washington’s political quality and international standing. The United States presumes to be a world leader but it evidently has no class. Biden, the president and Blinken’s boss, is a foul-mouthed crank who regularly insults other leaders with ignorant prejudice.

On Blinken’s insult over the Iranian president’s death, Russia’s presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed the disgust of many observers around the world when he said: “It is hard to believe that a diplomat — let alone a high-ranking official of a country such as the United States — would make such a clumsy remark, to say the least. In essence, it was an insult directed at an entire nation.” Apart from the lack of human decency, there is a total lack of politics. Blinken’s offensive comment comes at a moment of extreme tension in the Middle East amid a genocide perpetrated by the Israeli regime with support from the United States. The powder-keg situation could explode at any time into an international war engulfing the entire region. Israel and Iran have already exchanged military blows. All diplomats worth their salt should be trying to calm tensions, not inflame them. Blinken’s contemptible insult to the Iranian people is a reckless provocation.

But such sensibility and respect are too much to expect from Blinken who has shown himself to be way out of his depth as a diplomat. Last week, the “top diplomat” embarrassed his office by playing guitar on stage in a bar during an official visit to Kiev. Blinken was in the Ukrainian capital promising billions of dollars more in military aid to prolong a bloody and futile proxy war against Russia. Reliable estimates put the Ukrainian military death toll at over 500,000 in over two years of combat. Yet, here was Blinken strumming electric guitar with a local rock band. Even more cringe-making was his choice of song, Neil Young’s ‘Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World’. Not only was Blinken tone deaf to the horror of war, but he was oblivious to the fact that the song is an explicit condemnation of American imperialist barbarity. How could anyone be so stupid and insensitive? That is the measure of Antony Blinken right there.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

“Be Careful What You Eat”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1795036516042891708

 

 

Egbert

 

 

Mongoose

 

 

Steel

 

 

Fence

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle May 25 2024

May 252024
 
 May 25, 2024  Posted by at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  37 Responses »


Thomas Cole Prometheus Bound 1847

 

• Zelensky’s Legitimacy Has Expired – Putin (RT)
• Betting on Armageddon: What is Zelensky’s Plan Now That His Term is Over? (Amar)
• NATO Forming Network of Cyber Labs Along Russia’s Borders (Sp.)
• NATO ‘Preparing For War’ With Russia – Orban (RT)
• Ukraine Enforces Desperate Conscription Laws, Russia Closes In On Kharkiv (ZH)
• Speaker Johnson: Ukraine Should Use US Weapons on Russian Territory (Antiwar)
• Let Ukraine Freely Strike Russia With Western Arms – NATO Chief (RT)
• US Should Quit Sending Money to Ukraine, Try to Negotiate Peace – Massie (Sp.)
• Will the Trump Jury Exercise Blind Justice or Willful Blindness? (Turley)
• Trump Says Bronx Residents Being Left Behind By Biden Policies (ZH)
• Biden Admin Is Hiring A ‘Meme Manager’; Hilarity Ensues (MN)
• Boeing Sued Over Deaths Of US Marines (RT)
• The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media (ZH)
• Kevin Morris Reportedly Protected by CIA in Hunter Biden Investigation (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Schumer

 

 

Prince
https://twitter.com/i/status/1794124029646844108

 

 

 

 

Comey

 

 

FBI at my door

 

 

 

 

Who can Russia have talks with for peace? Not Zelensky…

“..Russia must be absolutely sure it’s dealing with the legitimate Ukrainian authorities before it can engage in meaningful and legally binding talks..”

“..one of the goals of this conference for the Western community, the sponsors of today’s Kiev regime is to confirm the legitimacy of the current – albeit no longer valid – head of state,” he suggested, adding that “such PR moves are meaningless for legal documents.”

“The Biden administration has yet to comment on the issue of Zelensky’s status publicly. However, the European Commission and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock assured on Tuesday that he is legitimate..”

He is not legitimate just because he says so, or Brussels or Berlin do…

Any deal with Zelensky is meaningless.

• Zelensky’s Legitimacy Has Expired – Putin (RT)

Russia must be absolutely sure it’s dealing with the legitimate Ukrainian authorities before it can engage in meaningful and legally binding talks to conclude the conflict between the two nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday. He noted that Vladimir Zelensky’s term in office has expired. The president made the remarks in Minsk on Friday during a joint press conference with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko. Putin was asked for comment on Zelensky’s presidential term running out earlier this month and the impact of this development on potential talks. Putin reiterated Russia’s readiness to engage in talks with Ukraine to end the hostilities, stating that negotiations must be based on “common sense” and acknowledge “realties on the ground,” while using the preliminary agreement reached in the early days of the conflict as the foundation.

“But with whom to negotiate? That’s a peculiar question, I agree. We realize that the legitimacy of the incumbent head of the [Ukrainian] state has expired,” the Russian leader stated. The upcoming “peace summit,” scheduled to take place in Switzerland next month and actively promoted by Kiev is designed, among other things, to prop up Zelensky in his role, Putin said. “I think one of the goals of this conference for the Western community, the sponsors of today’s Kiev regime is to confirm the legitimacy of the current – albeit no longer valid – head of state,” he suggested, adding that “such PR moves are meaningless for legal documents.”

It’s up to Ukraine’s legal system, its “parliament, constitutional court and some other governing bodies” to determine whether Zelensky is now a legitimate leader or not, according to Putin. As for Russia, in order to engage in any meaningful talks with Kiev, it must be absolutely sure it’s dealing with the country’s legitimate authorities, the president stressed. Zelensky’s term expired on Monday, while no elections were held under the pretext of the martial law introduced by Kiev early in the conflict with Russia. The Ukrainian Constitution explicitly prohibits holding parliamentary elections under such circumstances, yet does not mention presidential elections. However, while setting the length of the presidential term, it also specifies that power is transferred the moment a new president is sworn in.

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“Legitimate or not, the Ukrainian leader is a national catastrophe hell-bent on going global..”

• Betting on Armageddon: What is Zelensky’s Plan Now That His Term is Over? (Amar)

On 20 May, something important changed for Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. On that day, the five-year presidential term for which he had been elected in 2019 came to an end. He remains in office, however, without having to face fresh elections. Zelensky’s critics, including within Ukraine, argue that he is now illegitimate in a strict, constitutional sense – in effect, a usurper. His followers and defenders, including in the West, insist that Zelensky legally remains president under martial law. What is clear is that, according to the Ukrainian constitution, presidential elections can be held during wartime (unlike parliamentary ones, which are ruled out), even if a lack of clarity would require amendments, as Ukrainian experts have explained in national media. Even the New York Times acknowledged as much as recently as last October. At that point, however, Zelensky himself had not yet ruled out elections and American super hawk Senator Lindsey Graham was demanding them in his usual imperious tone.

Wartime elections in Ukraine would have posed practical challenges, although these could have been overcome. For instance, back in October, Zelensky himself stated that online voting was a possibility. Western media, including the BBC, which now claim Zelensky had no legal or practical option of standing for reelection, are misinforming their audiences by simply reproducing his regime’s current talking points. Not, obviously, for the first time. No doubt, the legal legitimacy of a president is a critical issue, especially one as high-handed and authoritarian as Zelensky has been for years and since well before the escalation of the war in February 2022. Yet what is more important are the political meaning and effects of Zelensky’s transition to past-due-date status.

In this respect, the first point to note is that is Zelensky is evading the basic accountability of an election that would inevitably increase public scrutiny of his record. Even more disturbing, however, is to see one of his closest associates turning unquestioning compliance with this move into a de facto loyalty test, complete with ominous threats. The speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, a key magnate in Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party, has reportedly even called all those who doubt the president’s continuing legitimacy “enemies of the people” and “political lice.” Of course, this rhetoric – ironically reminiscent of Stalinism – comes with the usual tired smears: Anyone who dares doubt the Zelensky regime is routinely accused of doing so at the behest of Russian agitators. Perish the thought – in Zelensky’s post-“Revolution of Dignity” and “free world” showcase Ukraine – that citizens could genuinely disagree with their superiors!

Verbal brutality of the Stefanchuk kind is especially intriguing because a reasonably reliable and recent (February) poll shows that almost 70% of Ukrainians agree that Zelensky should remain president until “the end of the state of war.” For better or worse, Zelensky’s decision to avoid elections – whatever his reasons – is not unpopular. But a closer look at the same poll reveals why the Zelenskyites are so touchy and aggressive: Widespread consent with postponing presidential elections does not translate into the same amount of popularity for Zelensky personally, or, for that matter, for his regime. For instance, in December 2023, 34% of respondents believed that he should not stand for another election (whenever the latter were to take place). By February of this year, only three months later, that share had risen to 43%. Clearly, Ukrainians who believe that this is not the right time for presidential elections and, at the same time, that Zelensky should never be a candidate again, don’t consider elections unnecessary because they are happy with his rule.

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“..carry out acts of electronic sabotage under the close tutelage of NATO supervisors..”

• NATO Forming Network of Cyber Labs Along Russia’s Borders (Sp.)

NATO is forming a network of cyber laboratories along the perimeter of Russia’s borders in Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Romania, Artur Lyukmanov, the special presidential representative for international cooperation in information security of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in an interview with Sputnik. “Washington has long been practicing methods of hybrid warfare against Russia in the information sphere. Ukraine is used as the main training ground, whose hackers, including from the much-touted ‘IT army,’ carry out acts of electronic sabotage under the close tutelage of NATO supervisors,” he said. Lyukmanov said entire units of Western security services and armed forces have been sent to Kiev.

“It’s no secret that the alliance is forming an entire network of cyber laboratories along the perimeter of the Russian borders in Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Romania, and in the future – in Georgia and Moldova. Under the auspices of the Pentagon, cyber exercises are being carried out on a systematic basis (the Cyber Flag exercises recently ended in the US), during which scenarios of confrontation with us in the digital sphere are tested,” the diplomat said. Western countries, led by the United States, are building up offensive potentials in the field of information technology to conduct computer operations against Russia and China, Artur Lyukmanov said. “Indeed, Western countries, led by Washington, continue to build up offensive ICT potentials to conduct computer operations against their geopolitical opponents, that is, Russia, China and other independent states,” he said

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“Orban noted that the bloc was created with the purpose of defending member states against aggressors, not waging wars outside its territory..”

• NATO ‘Preparing For War’ With Russia – Orban (RT)

Hungary is reevaluating its role in NATO, as it has no intention to take part in actions that could involve member states in the Ukraine conflict and lead to a direct clash with Russia, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday. Speaking on local Kossuth Radio, Orban stated that his country has already been relegated to the role of a non-participant within the US-led military bloc due to its stance on Ukraine, and Budapest is now working on legal ways to retain its membership but reserve the right to abstain from joining NATO operations it disagrees with. “Hungary’s position must be redefined, our lawyers and officials are working on ways to allow Hungary to continue to exist as a NATO member without participating in NATO activities outside the bloc’s territory. We need to create a new approach, a new definition for our position as a pro-peace force within NATO,” Orban said.

According to the prime minister, there are “alarming similarities” between the emotionally charged media publications and statements by Western politicians regarding the Ukraine conflict and the atmosphere preceding the First and Second World Wars. “What is happening today in Brussels and Washington… looks like warming up for a possible direct military conflict. We can safely call it the preparation of Europe’s entry into the war,” Orban said, adding that there are working groups within NATO that are assessing the best ways for the bloc to further boost its participation in the conflict. He warned that the end result of these actions could be a direct conflict between the EU, NATO, and Russia – a “grim prospect,” as the conflict would involve nuclear powers.

Someone tell me why instead of isolating this conflict – because it is a war between two Slavic peoples, despite all the arguments on the side of Ukraine – we choose to jump into this war? Orban noted that the bloc was created with the purpose of defending member states against aggressors, not waging wars outside its territory. Commenting on Western claims that Russia could attack Europe if it defeats Ukraine, Orban said the chances of this happening are extremely slim, and these warnings only serve as an excuse to become directly involved in the Ukraine conflict. Hungary has opposed NATO funding and arming of Ukraine from the outset of the conflict in February 2022. The country has not sent any weapons to Kiev, and has not allowed its territory to be used for their delivery, despite pressure from both Brussels and Washington. Budapest has called for a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

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“If only the media was as energetic about promoting peace negotiations as it has been about promoting war. ”

• Ukraine Enforces Desperate Conscription Laws, Russia Closes In On Kharkiv (ZH)

Ukraine is now enforcing a new mobilization law which is being called ‘divisive’ among many Ukrainian citizens and some political leaders. The law requires men ages 18-60 to carry their military paperwork at all times to be presented to authorities on demand. It lowers the minimum draft age from 27 to 25 (Ukraine has a demographic shortage of men ages 18-25). And, all military age Ukrainian men abroad must come back to Ukraine to renew their passports, including refugees driven from their homes in the early days of the war. Conscripts must update their address, contact information, and military records within 60 days through government institutions or a mobile application. This is in preparation for a national draft database containing information on every fighting age male in the country. The conscription measures are expected to greatly reduce Ukraine’s labor pool, forcing many businesses to shut down. Essential workers are not exempt from the draft.

Vladimir Zelensky signed two other bills into effect, one allowing prisoners to be deployed to the front lines (the western media criticized Russia last year for implementing a similar measure), the other bill quintuples fines for people caught trying to evade the draft. Early versions of the law allowed for concessions on pay and better rotation for soldiers, including a policy which would relieve soldiers serving for 36 months or more. All demobilization concessions were removed from the final version; Ukraine’s military leadership argued that they needed the most experienced soldiers to remain at the front. Kyiv has offered cash bonuses to troops towards purchases of housing and cars as an incentive to join the war effort, however, critics argue that the Ukrainian treasury does not actually have the funds to fulfill the promises Zelinsky is making. To counter charges of undermining soldier morale, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry says it is working on a separate demobilization bill, but massive manpower shortages make any demobilization action highly unlikely.

Front line soldiers have repeatedly complained about the lack of rotation, with some rarely getting a chance to leave the trenches in the past two years. These desperate conscription laws arrive just as Russian forces close in on Kharkiv, the second largest city in the nation. Bombardment of the city’s defenses and infrastructure is already underway in preparation for a possible offensive. Some analysts argue that Russia does not have enough troops to take Kharkiv and that this is a distraction. Russia may open a new front near Sumy which is 100 miles away, or they may plan to full envelope Kharkiv because they know Ukraine’s troop strength is at a minimum. The western media has been an avid mouthpiece for the Ukrainian government over the past couple years with many pundits shaming Ukrainian citizens who have tried to leave to avoid being involuntarily mobilized. Seeing the complete lack of organization and the habitual embezzlement of funds among Ukraine’s leadership it’s not surprising that many citizens do not want to fight for them. If only the media was as energetic about promoting peace negotiations as it has been about promoting war.

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“Moscow recently warned the UK that if Ukraine used British weapons on Russian territory, Russian forces would target UK military sites in Ukraine “and beyond.”

• Speaker Johnson: Ukraine Should Use US Weapons on Russian Territory (Antiwar)

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expressed support for Ukraine using US-provided weapons on Russian territory, a step that would risk a major response from Russia. Ukraine has been lobbying the US to allow the use of US-provided missile systems on Russian territory in the wake of Russia’s Kharkiv offensive, and the idea is gaining support in Congress. A group of bipartisan members of the House sent a letter to President Biden on Monday urging him to lift any restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US weapons. “It is essential the Biden administration allows Ukraine’s military leaders to conduct a full spectrum of operations necessary to respond to Russia’s unprovoked attack on their sovereign land,” the lawmakers said. Johnson was asked if he supported the idea of Ukraine hitting Russian territory with US weapons and replied that the US needs “to allow Ukraine to prosecute the war in the way they see fit.”

“They [Ukraine] need[s] to be able to fight back. And I think us trying to micromanage the effort there is not a good policy for us,” he told Voice of America. Moscow recently warned the UK that if Ukraine used British weapons on Russian territory, Russian forces would target UK military sites in Ukraine “and beyond.” The warning came after British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Ukraine had the “right” to use British arms in attacks on Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is asking NATO to take another step that could lead to a catastrophic escalation. In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, he pleaded for the Western alliance to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine, which would mean direct NATO involvement in the conflict, raising the risk of nuclear war.

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You’re located in Brussels, right?

• Let Ukraine Freely Strike Russia With Western Arms – NATO Chief (RT)

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has argued that members of the Western military bloc should let Ukraine freely use their weapons to launch strikes deeper into Russian territory. “The time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said on Friday in an interview with The Economist. “Especially now when a lot of the fighting is going on in Kharkov, close to the border, to deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves.” Stoltenberg noted that some NATO members have already lifted restrictions on using their weapons to attack targets in Russian territory.

Asked whether he was referring to the US as the one major holdout, he said, “I think what we see now demonstrates the need to reconsider those restrictions, not least because we have fighting going on along the border between Russia and Ukraine.” However, according to Moscow, the rhetoric about restrictions on the use of US munitions are false and designed to maintain the illusion that the West is not part of the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that US weapons, such as ATACMS missiles armed with cluster warheads, have already been used on attacks inside Russia, including strikes against civilian targets. “We proceed from the fact that American and other Western weaponry strikes targets on the territory of Russia, primarily civilian infrastructure and residential areas,” he told reporters on Friday.

The NATO chief’s comments come at a time when Western leaders are making increasingly bold statements about attacks on Russian territory. US President Joe Biden held back on sending long-range weapons to Ukraine in the early days of the conflict with Russia, citing concern over the possibility of triggering a wider conflict. When more advanced weaponry was later approved, it came with strings attached, including a prohibition on hitting Russian territory. However, as the New York Times reported on Thursday, views on those restrictions have shifted as Russian forces make battlefield gains. After making a “sobering” visit to Kiev earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly began urging the administration to let the former Soviet republic use American weapons as it sees fit. A group of US lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin earlier this week, pressing him to give the Ukrainians the permissions they have requested.

Stoltenberg said he believes NATO members can thread the geopolitical needle by supporting Ukraine’s defense without becoming direct parties to the conflict. “We provide training, we provide weapons, ammunition to Ukraine, but we will not be directly involved from NATO territory in combat operations over or in Ukraine,” he said. “So, that’s a different thing.”

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A lonely voice..

• US Should Quit Sending Money to Ukraine, Try to Negotiate Peace – Massie (Sp.)

The United States should stop sending money to Ukraine and attempt to negotiate peace as soon as possible, US Congressman Thomas Massie told Sputnik on Friday. “I think we should quit sending money there. I think we should try to negotiate peace as soon as possible,” Massie said on the sidelines of the 2024 Libertarian National Convention. US lawmakers are showing dwindling support for sending military aid to Ukraine each time the matter comes to a vote, Massie highlighted. “The support for sending weapons to Ukraine is weakening in the US Congress, as you can see with each subsequent vote,” the congressman emphasized. There should be some effort made to bring both Ukraine and Russia to the upcoming conference in Switzerland as it is hard to imagine negotiations without Russia, Massie stressed “This sounds kind of hard to negotiate a peace if they don’t have Russia at the table. So I think there should be some effort to have Ukraine and Russia there,” the congressman said.

Talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden could help solve the conflict in Ukraine, and even lower-level discussions between top diplomats could help achieve progress, Massie highlighted. “I think it could help,” Massie said when asked whether talks between Biden and Putin could help solve the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. “Although, even lower-level negotiations would help as well, I think.” When asked at what level such discussion should be held, the congressman said, “Maybe at the secretary of state level, for instance.” Massie expressed his view that it is “wrong” that communications between the US and Russia are limited. “I think there should be talks,” he said. The US government freezing of foreign assets, including those of Russia, is a very short-sighted policy and sends a message to the international community that the United States may stop honoring transactions, the congressman emphasized.

“I think it’s very short sighted of our government to freeze for instance, Treasury assets, that are held by other countries, such as Russia, because it sends a message to the world that if you buy our debt, then we may not honor the transaction at some point,” Massie explained. The representative added that US moves to freeze foreign assets are “extremely dangerous” because they will increase the price that Washington has to pay to finance its debt. “I’m sure that our closest allies will still trust that we’ll be good on our word, but other sovereign funds will have a diminished appetite for financing our debt,” Massie said. “So, I think it’s very short-sighted of us to do that.” Moscow has maintained that any attempt to confiscate its frozen assets would violate international law, with the Russian Foreign Ministry labeling such an action as theft. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has also said that Moscow is willing to issue a “symmetrical” response to this form of Western financial aggression.

The congressman argued that he opposes the US government sending more money to Ukraine unless such assistance achieves peace. “I told our own speaker – if you want to send $60 billion and the goal is to achieve some kind of peace, I might be compelled to vote for it. But I’m not voting for $60 billion that will then only necessitate another $60 billion,” the representative clarified. Massie also said that both sides to the conflict in Ukraine will eventually run out of people if fighting continues. “I think it’s immoral to grind up people in this war on both sides,” Massie added. Earlier on Friday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced that the United States was providing a new weapons package for Ukraine worth $275 million. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday the United States has already delivered many of Ukraine’s “top-priority requirements” and much more assistance is on the way.
Austin added that he expects a steady flow of US assistance for Ukraine on a weekly basis.

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“Bragg is expected to finally state with clarity what he is alleging … at the closing arguments of the case.”

• Will the Trump Jury Exercise Blind Justice or Willful Blindness? (Turley)

With closing arguments scheduled for Tuesday, May 28, the prosecution of former President Donald Trump will finally head to a jury. Judge Juan Merchan has refused every opportunity to bring an end to this politically manufactured prosecution. Now it will be up to 12 New Yorkers to do what neither the court nor the prosecutors were willing to do: adhere to the rule of law regardless of the identity of the defendant. Merchan has allowed the government to bring back into life a dead misdemeanor and convert it into 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. To accomplish this legal regeneration, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has vaguely referenced a variety of crimes that Trump allegedly was trying to conceal through the business record violations. The problem is that he has left the secondary crime mired in uncertainty to the point that experts on various networks are still debating what the underlying theory is in the case.

Indeed, Bragg is expected to finally state with clarity what he is alleging … at the closing arguments of the case. In the meantime, the prosecution is pushing to make it easier for the jury to convict. First, they have vaguely referenced a variety of possible offenses from tax to election violations. Bragg initially laid out four possible predicate crimes. It is down to three – a tax crime and violations of state or federal election law. Merchan has ruled that the jury does not have to agree on what crimes were being covered up so the jury could literally have three different views of what happened in the case and still convict Trump. Prosecutors are also seeking to effectively shorten the playing field by allowing the jurors to convict on a lower standard of proof for the key term in using “unlawful means.” The defense wants the jury instructed that it must find that such use of “unlawful means” was done with willful intent.

The prosecutors do not want to use that higher standard. For the defense, it is effectively reducing the field to the end zone to make it easier for the prosecution to score. In the last few days, the Bragg strategy has come into sharper focus in one respect. Bragg is not counting on the evidence or the law. He is counting on the jury. Call it the Lawrence O’Donnell factor. After Michael Cohen imploded on the stand in the trial, even experts and hosts on MSNBC and CNN stated that his admissions and contradictions were devastating. Cohen is not only accused of committing perjury in his testimony, but he matter-of-factly detailed how he stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump organization. After being disbarred and convicted as a serial perjurer, Cohen waited for the statute of limitations to run on larceny to admit that he stole as much as $50,000 by pocketing money intended for a contractor.

Liberal commentators acknowledged the fact that Cohen had committed a far more serious offense than the converted misdemeanor against Trump (but was never charged). Yet, one figure stepped forward to assure the public that all was well. MSNBC host O’Donnell said that he watched the testimony and that Cohen did wonderfully. Keep in mind that Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche asked Cohen point blank: “So you stole from the Trump organization, right?” Cohen answered unequivocably: “Yes, sir.”O’Donnell, however, rushed outside to declare that Cohen was merely acquiring a bonus that he thought that he deserved as a type of “self-help”: “Cohen [was trying] to rebalance the bonus he thought he deserved. And it still came out as less than the bonus he thought he deserved and the bonus he had gotten the year before.”

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25,000 is not a “large-scale campaign” either. Not for Trump. Not even in NY.

• Trump Says Bronx Residents Being Left Behind By Biden Policies (ZH)

Former President Donald Trump took aim at President Joe Biden over a range of issues while vowing to turn New York City around “very quickly” at a rally in the South Bronx on Thursday. President Trump made the comments in front of a crowd estimated at 25,000 supporters in one of the most Democratic counties in the nation. His appearance at Crotona Park, which comes as he is on trial in New York, marked his first large-scale campaign in the state since 2016, when he held two events at the Times Union Center in Albany and another in Buffalo. As Axios (of all people) reported, the Thursday night drew a crowd that looked very different than the typical MAGA flock. The unusual sight of Trump speaking to several thousand people in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in deep blue New York is a sign of the realignment happening between the two parties.

Trump’s GOP is becoming more working class and a little more multiracial. Democrats are gaining with more well-educated voters in the suburbs. The thousands of people gathered to see the former president were a diverse group of people, including what Fox News Digital noted were Black, Hispanic, White, Asian and Muslim supporters. Ahead of Trump’s rally yesterday, both the Biden and Trump campaigns rushed to paint their opponents as racist and a worse choice for Black voters. The Biden campaign put out a digital and television ad that begins: “Trump disrespecting Black folk is nothing new.” The campaign posted on X: “Let’s remember that Trump is a lifelong racist.” The Trump campaign responded with a reminder that Biden helped pass the 1994 Crime Bill that led to mass incarceration disproportionately impacting minorities.

As Katabella Roberts reports via The Epoch Times, President Trump used the rally to criticize his Democratic rival and his immigration policies amid the ongoing crisis at the southern border, telling the crowd of attendees that his rival was failing to “get the job done” for those living in the Bronx. He also described his rival as “grossly incompetent.” President Trump said that under President Biden’s watch, impoverished communities and minorities have been hit the hardest. He said President Biden’s policies have seen inflation, crime, and illegal immigration rise. “African Americans are getting slaughtered, Hispanic Americans are getting slaughtered,” President Trump said. “These millions and millions of people that are coming into our country—the biggest impact and the biggest negative impact is against our black population and our Hispanic population who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose.”

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It’s an entire language they fail to understand..

• Biden Admin Is Hiring A ‘Meme Manager’; Hilarity Ensues (MN)

The Biden campaign has posted a job listing seeking a ‘meme manager’ prompting many to submit examples of their finest Biden meme manager memes. The listing, seeking a ‘Partner Manager, Content and Meme Pages’, was posted on Daybook. It states, “In this role, you will initiate and manage day-to-day operations in engaging the internet’s top content and meme pages.” “The ideal candidate for this role is passionate about bringing political content to voters where they already are on the internet,” it adds.

Responsibilities in the post include a need to “cultivate and manage relationships with top digital media companies, podcasters, and meme pages across a number of social media platforms” as well as to “identify and land engagement opportunities.” The listing betrays the fact that Biden is haemorrhaging support among young voters, and the campaign, in its infinite ignorance, believes that a few well executed memes might turn that around. The problem is, the left can’t meme. Leftist memes routinely include walls of text explaining what they mean, rendering the meme itself pointless and absurd.

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Now the military arm of Boeing gets its turn.

• Boeing Sued Over Deaths Of US Marines (RT)

The families of US servicemen killed in a V-22 Osprey crash in California in 2022 have brought a lawsuit against Boeing, Bell Textron, and Rolls-Royce, accusing them of hiding and failing to correct known reliability issues in their aircraft. Filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of California, the suit alleges that the three corporations “intentionally, recklessly and/or negligently provided false information about the safety, airworthiness, and reliability of V-22 Osprey aircraft,” its engines, systems, and component parts, according to the court documents. “The aircraft, as fielded, has failed and continues to fail to meet the government’s safety and reliability specifications and requirements and the aircraft is not safe,” the lawsuit reads.

The incident at issue occurred in southern California on June 8, “on a training mission during the day with good weather,” when a V-22 suffered catastrophic mechanical failure and crashed, killing all five Marines aboard. The subsequent investigation by the US Marine Corps found that “there was no error on the part of the pilots and aircrew and nothing they could have done to anticipate or prevent this mishap,” nor any “maintenance error” from the ground crew. The V-22 Osprey, a relatively recent addition to the US aircraft fleet, is capable of vertical take off and landing using its tilting twin proprotors, acting as both airplane-style propellers and helicopter-style rotors, depending on which flight mode the craft is using.

There have been 58 accidents involving Ospreys since 1991, with at least 20 being lost beyond repair and leading to more than 60 fatalities, according to the Flight Safety Foundation statistics. The V-22 gained the nickname ‘widow maker’, having led to 30 deaths before it even entered service in 2007. The US military temporarily ceased all flights of the aircraft for an investigation in November last year, after a V-22 crashed near Yakushima, Japan, killing eight. Two months prior, Boeing was ordered to pay $8.1 million to settle allegations that it failed to adhere to critical manufacturing specifications in its V-22 parts production. The claims were brought against the aerospace giant by three whistleblowers who worked at its Ridley Park, Pennsylvania facility.

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New “Twitter Files”.

• The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media (ZH)

While the CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil, a bombshell new “Twitter Files” report reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of InQtel – the CIA’s mission-driving venture capital firm, along with “former” intelligence community (IC) and CIA analysts, were involved in a massive effort in 2021-2022 to take over Twitter’s content management system, as Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag report over at Shellenberger’s Public. According to “thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents,” these efforts were part of a broader strategy to manage how information is disseminated and consumed on social media under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ and foreign propaganda efforts – as this complex of government-linked individuals and organizations has gone to great lengths to suggest that narrative control is a national security issue.

According to the report, the effort also involved; • a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers; • the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe; • Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden. Jankowicz (aka ‘Scary Poppins’), previously tipped to lead the DHS’s now-aborted Disinformation Governance Board, has been a vocal advocate for more stringent regulation of online speech to counteract ‘rampant disinformation.’ Jim Baker, in his capacity as FBI General Counsel and later as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, advocated for and implemented policies that would restrict certain types of speech on the platform, including decisions that affected the visibility of politically sensitive content.

Furthermore, companies like PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and GoDaddy were mentioned as part of a concerted effort to de-platform and financially de-incentivize individuals and organizations deemed threats by the IC. This approach represents a significant escalation in the use of corporate cooperation to achieve what might essentially be considered censorship under the guise of national security. Nina Jankowicz And The Alethea Group: Remember Nina? A huge fan of Christopher Steele – architect of the infamous Clinton-funded Dossier which underpinned the Trump-Russia hoax, and who joined the chorus of disinformation agents that downplayed the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell, Jankowicz previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. She also oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.

Jankowicz compares the lack of regulation of speech on social media to the lack of government regulation of automobiles in the 1960s. She calls for a “cross-platform” and public-private approach, so whatever actions are taken are taken by Google, Facebook, and Twitter, simultaneously. Jankowicz points to Europe as the model for regulating speech. “Germany’s NetzDG law requires social media companies and other content hosts to remove ‘obviously illegal’ speech within twenty-four hours,” she says, “or face a fine of up to $50 million.” By contrast, in the US, she laments, “Congress has yet to pass a bill imposing even the most basic of regulations related to social media and election advertising.” -Public.

In a 2020 book, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, Jankowicz praises a NATO cyber security expert for having created a “Center of Excellence,” a concept promoted by Renée Diresta of the Stanford Internet Observatory, in which she made the case for the (now failed) Disinformation Governance Board that Jankowicz would briefly head up. One year later, Jankowicz began working with ‘anti-disinformation’ consulting firm, Althea Group, staffed by “former” IC analysts. Althea notably came after ZeroHedge at one point, shopping a ‘dossier’ around which suggested we were allegedly contributing to “increased online panic” amid the monumental collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The outlets they peddled said dossier to included Bloomberg – which elected to exclude ZeroHedge from their report following a brief email exchange. Eventually, one of their operatives dropped the dossier on Twitter, only to be mocked as a propagandist.

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“..they were summoned to the CIA in Langley concerning Mr. Morris, and that because of the information provided there, he could not be a witness for the investigation. AUSA Wolf proudly referenced a CIA mug and stated that she purchased some CIA “swag” at the gift shop..”

• Kevin Morris Reportedly Protected by CIA in Hunter Biden Investigation (Turley)

Recently, it became public that Kevin Morris, the entertainment lawyer who has subsidized the expenses and bought the art of Hunter Biden, had stopped his funding of Biden. Morris has paid off Hunter’s IRS debts and reportedly lent him a total of $4.9 million for housing, car payments, legal fees, and other possible costs. The so-called “sugar bro” is “tapped out” according to media reports. (For full disclosure, Morris previously threatened me with a defamation lawsuit over my writing about his representation of Hunter). Now the House has confirmed prior stories that whistleblower records indicate that the CIA prevented the Justice Department from questioning Kevin Morris as a witness in its probe of Hunter Biden. Morris has maintained that he lent Hunter millions for “no ulterior motive” and continued to support him out of friendship. Yet, when investigators started to look into the payments and the relationship, they were told that Morris had some relationship with the CIA in August 2021. According to previously unreleased information, IRS special agent and current whistleblower Gary Shapley documented the bizarre intervention of the spy agency.

In a sworn affidavit in May, Shapley declared: “During a recurring prosecution team conference call in or around late August 2021, Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Lesley Wolf told the team that she and DOJ Tax Attorney Jack Morgan had recently returned from the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where they had been summoned to discuss Kevin Morris. AUSA Wolf stated that they were provided a classified briefing in relation to Mr. Morris and as a result we could no longer pursue him as a witness. Investigators probed AUSA Wolf, but since her briefing was classified and she was apparently sanitizing it to an unclassified form to share over an open phone line, she did not elaborate with more information. She reiterated more than once that they were summoned to the CIA in Langley concerning Mr. Morris, and that because of the information provided there, he could not be a witness for the investigation. AUSA Wolf proudly referenced a CIA mug and stated that she purchased some CIA “swag” at the gift shop while she was there. It is unclear how the CIA became aware that Mr. Morris was a potential witness in the Hunter Biden investigation and why agents were not told about the meeting in advance or invited to participate. It is a deviation of normal investigative processes for prosecutors to exclude investigators from substantive meetings such as this.”

It is a testament to the level of bias in the mainstream media that this story is not the sole focus of every media outlet in America. Imagine if the CIA intervened to stop an investigation into a donor maintaining one of the Trump children and supporting his effort to blunt any investigation into corruption. MSNBC would make it ongoing special programming with its own time slot. This is an agency that is supposed to avoid domestic interventions into politics as well as other areas. It is accused of pulling in a prosecutor to tell her to close part of a criminal investigation involving the financial supporter of the president’s son. Even if Morris was an asset, the question is why shut down the inquiry into his payments to Hunter Biden. The work of Morris with the CIA could be protected or redacted. Instead, the line of inquiry was shut off and Wolf reportedly left Langley with CIA swag and an empty bag of evidence.

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Vivek
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