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Debt Rattle March 3 2026

Mar 032026
 
 March 3, 2026  Posted by at 11:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The first communion 1896 (he was 14/15 when he painted this!)


• Trump Claims ‘We Will Easily Prevail’ In Iran War (ZH)
• On The Brink Of Israeli Nuclear Attack On Iran — Trump Just Said So (Helmer)
• Fight or Flight: How Trump Boxed in Congress on War Powers (Turley)
• Ayatollah So (James Howard Kunstler)
• Trump Bit Off More Than He Can Chew With Iran – Ex-Pentagon Analyst (RT)
• Trump Responds to American Casualties in Iran, Predicts More (DS)
• U.S. Hits Iran With Iran’s Own Drone Design (Stephen Green)
• The Left’s Iran Meltdown: Outrage on Cue, Memory on Vacation (David Manney)
• Golden Dome for America (Joe Dodd)
• The UK’s New Grooming Gang Scandal (Fraser Myers)
• Tim Walz Is Stonewalling Congress to Protect Fraudsters, His Legacy (Margolis)
• Poland Plans Social Media Ban For Under-15s (ZH)
• Major League Pitcher Turns Down Padres $40 Million Due to State Taxes (Turley)

 


 

Prediction: US will lose

 


 


I don’t believe “easily”. And other than that, there are just so many -contradictory- accounts and opinions. Meet you halfway!

“.. delivering quick regime change and falling oil prices that cement Trumpism as a historic win, OR sparking Middle East chaos and global blowback..”

• Trump Claims ‘We Will Easily Prevail’ In Iran War (ZH)

President Trump opened Monday’s Medal of Honor ceremony in the White House East Wing with a carefully prepared, somewhat brief statement on Operation Epic Fury. Speaking deliberatively – but not quite with the level of his typically confident and energetic tone and demeanor – he spoke initially and broadly on the rationale for ordering the attack on Iran, which is now in day three and has taken at least four American troop lives at this point. Trump vowed to “crush” the “Iranian threat posed to the US,” claiming that “we will easily prevail”. He declared that already US forces have knocked out ten ships, and that the plan is to also ensure the Iranians “can’t fund armies beyond borders”.


But high on the minds of Congressional leaders and the American public is: what’s next? Trump gave a timeline of a “projected four to five weeks” for war with Iran, “but we can go longer” and this will involve “whatever it takes.” He vowed to continue the mission with “unyielding resolve” – even amid reports that US Gulf allies UAE and Qatar are now lobbying allies to persuade Trump to end the Iran war soon (as the Gulf continues to feel the impact of Iran’s retaliatory strikes). The President just committed the nation to another potentially open-ended war in the Middle East. * * *

Update(1015ET): The Pentagon has announced it has gained complete ‘local air superiority’ over Iran, and also that Israel continues working with the US to eliminate ‘common threats’. This came soon on the heels of the shocking news of three US F-15s downed over Kuwait. Iran is claiming to have shot down at least one US jet, while the US and Kuwait counter-claim that it was actually Kuwaiti ‘friendly fire’. Some six total US airmen parachuted down safely into Kuwaiti territory.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has meanwhile stated that at this point approximately 600 Iranian infrastructure sites have been dismantled in Iran using 2,500 munitions. These sites included “over 20 targets belonging to Iranian military leaders,” the IDF said. But as the conflict expands into Lebanon, and as many Gulf countries continue witnessing inbound Iranian missiles and drones, NATO command has distanced itself from the conflict, with Secretary General Mark Rutte stating Monday that the alliance “will not participate” in the joint US-Israeli mission. The Joint Chiefs say that more American service members are being added to the operation.

THE BIG WAR GAMBLE… or, Rabobank’s take paraphrased down to a single key sentence: The US strike on Iran is Trump’s high-risk gamble to choke China’s energy lifeline, flip Tehran to allied control, open the India-Middle East-Europe corridor, weaken Russia, and lock in 21st-century US hegemony—delivering quick regime change and falling oil prices that cement Trumpism as a historic win, OR sparking Middle East chaos and global blowback that hands Beijing the advantage in a new age of empires.

In the meantime, War Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared on the defensive in a Pentagon briefing early Monday. He confirmed there are as yet no US boots on the ground, while also seeking to assure the American public this is not an “endless war”. And yet, reporters were still left frustrated by lack of a clear timeline, or laying out of specific objectives which must be accomplished before Operation Epic Fury is declared over. There was a moment where Hegseth erupted at a reporter’s question, revealing that tensions are high at the Pentagon:But worrisomely for the prospect of escalation, NBC observes that Hegseth did not rule out boots on the ground:

Asked whether U.S. boots are on the ground, Hegseth said no, but said he would not lay out what the U.S. could do as the operation continueHegseth said that Trump ensures that the country’s enemies know that the U.S. will go as far as it needs to in order to advance the U.S.’ interests. Time will tell if this firm pledge becomes a reality or not: U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday that military operations against Iran would not lead to an “endless war” and that the aim was to destroy Tehran’s missiles, Navy and other security infrastructure. “We’re hitting them surgically, overwhelmingly and unapologetically,” Hegseth said during a press conference at the Pentagon.

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Russia and China knew the attack was coming-before it happened. Putin and Xi both decided to stay silent. “The Russians and Chinese have known all of this. They have concluded that if they tried to deter militarily the US-Israeli attack, it would go ahead anyway, and with nuclear weapons.”

• On The Brink Of Israeli Nuclear Attack On Iran — Trump Just Said So (Helmer)

In investigating war and peace, life and death, truth and lies, innocence and guilt, there is hindsight bias and there is confirmation bias. Hindsight bias occurs when, with the evidence of what has just happened, the investigator is sure he anticipated the outcome from the beginning and is convinced he knew it all along. Confirmation bias operates forward in time, and also retrospectively, as new evidence is searched for in an investigation, interpreted when found, even fabricated, to prove what the investigator already suspected or believed to be the truth. These are the biases you the reader, and I the investigator, must beware of, especially now, if to believe the following reconstruction of the war which has just begun.
• Iran had agreed in the negotiations to the nuclear warhead and enrichment conditions, and probably also the agreement to stop backing Hezbollah, the Iraqis and the Houthis. Evidence: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17Bepid5iL/?sfnsn=mo


• The sticking point was the Iranian missile programme — and plainly that was non-negotiable for the Iranians.

• Israel sees the missile threat from Iran as existential — it certainly is, according to the maps by Theodore Postol of a 500-missile Iranian raid on Israel (lead image).

• Therefore, it doesn’t take Chabadniki like Benjamin Netanyahu and Jared Kushner reading their holy books to conclude that Iran must be destroyed before they destroy Israel, no matter what international law, the articles of the United Nations Charter, or the rest of the world thinks.

• General Daniel Caine and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) told President Donald Trump that there was no certainty that a conventional attack on Iran would either achieve decapitation and regime change, or destroy the Iranian underground missile stocks and systems for overground retaliation against Israel. He advised a “balancing act”.

• The Israelis have been emphatic in Netanyahu’s meetings with Trump in Miami and Washington that they have no choice but to attack and will go nuclear if they judge it necessary — with or without Trump’s say-so.

• The Americans replied that they would agree to attack and try to head off nuclear attack.

• The Russians and Chinese have known all of this. They have concluded that if they tried to deter militarily the US-Israeli attack, it would go ahead anyway, and with nuclear weapons. Whether that was a Netanyahu bluff or not, President Putin believed there was reason not to issue an advance warning. We don’t know what President Xi Jinping thought of the nuclear war risk and what he thought of the reason for not issuing an advance warning. We know he didn’t.

• We also know that the Russians and Chinese have been at loggerheads over something so strategic and important that they have been repeatedly hinting at it without disclosing the details since last December.

So here we are on the evidence, on the brink, and Trump has said so. The US and Israel will press their attack until they are confident that the Iranian missile defences are totally destroyed – “until all of our objectives are achieved”, Trump has said. Military sources say that the Iranians have been hitting targets in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and will be aiming at refineries and electricity power generating power plants. If the Iranians can, they will launch the attack on Israel which Postol has mapped as near-total destruction of the Israeli cities. If they do, or if they are about to do, Israel will launch preemptive nuclear attack.
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“.. under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, only Congress may declare wars. The result has been over two centuries of conflicts between presidents and Congress.”

• Fight or Flight: How Trump Boxed in Congress on War Powers (Turley)

Below is my column in Fox.com on the move this coming week to introduce a war powers resolution to end the attacks in Iran. The task, however, will be far more challenging in light of the escalation of hostilities. With the loss of American personnel, the choice is even more stark politically for these members. President Donald Trump has left Congress with only fight or flight options.


Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) promised to force a vote on a war powers resolution to bar further prosecution of the war against Iran. Republicans such as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have joined in the call to bar further hostilities. These members are certainly within their rights to call for such resolutions and the Framers wanted such debates to occur in Congress. However, it is too late to make this cat walk backwards. While there are good-faith reasons to oppose the commencement of the attacks, the United States is now in close combat with Iran. Drafting a war powers resolution at this stage would be nearly impossible without putting U.S. personnel and allies at risk.

The Constitution divides war powers between the legislative and executive branches. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution declares that “the President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states.” However, under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, only Congress may declare wars. The result has been over two centuries of conflicts between presidents and Congress. Presidents are clearly authorized to respond to threats to national security by commencing military operations. Past presidents, including Democratic presidents such as President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, have asserted the unilateral power to attack other nations when they believe that combat is warranted by national security.

The War Powers Act was the response of Congress to try to curtail such unilateral authority. Overriding the veto of President Richard Nixon, Congress mandated that presidents must consult with them and cease all combat operations within 60 days if Congress has not approved the use of force. Presidents, and some academics, have long argued that the WPA is unconstitutional in part or in whole. Now to the current conflict. The sixty-day period is likely ample for what President Donald Trump is planning for Iran since he has ruled out putting American boots on the ground in the conflict. That is why Kaine, Massie, and others are moving to cut off authorization immediately.

The problem is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are now launching a full-fledged attack with thousands of missiles against the United States, its assets, and its allies around the world. It has also declared that the key Strait of Hormuz is now closed — potentially choking off twenty percent of the world’s oil reserves. So how are these members going to draft a War Powers Resolution? The WPA requires that“The President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and after every such introduction shall consult regularly with the Congress until United States Armed Forces are no longer engaged in hostilities or have been removed from such situations.”

Kaine and others insist that hostilities were not imminent when we attacked. Even if that were true, they are now. We are in a full engagement with Iran with mounting injuries and destruction. All threats are now imminent and all attacks are arguably preemptive. WPR specifically allows for the use of force in “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” Those attacks are now occurring. In these circumstances, it would be nearly impossible to limit the war powers of the President without putting American personnel or allies at risk. After decapitating the leadership in Iran, Iranian assets are clearly operating under prior orders in a decentralized structure. That means that the United States must neutralize any and all assets that they can find in preemptive attacks while trying to further degrade the command structure of the Iranian government. Is Congress going to require the United States to only act responsively, rather than preemptively, to attacks? That would be absurd from an operational standpoint. The most a resolution could demand is the cessation of hostilities once imminent threats are removed. That would be practically meaningless given the fact that hostilities will continue so long as the current Iranian government remains in power. Both the IRG and de facto Iranian leader Ali Larijani pledged that they are now unleashing every asset against the United States and its allies. Larijani declared “They stabbed heart of the nation, their heart will be stabbed too.”

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“Some of the supposed character “flaws” of @realDonaldTrump are precisely those that are needed to be a courageous and bold global leader.” Gad Saad

• Ayatollah So (James Howard Kunstler)

You’ve got to think: if the US military can pinpoint one room in Teheran with a Grand Ayatollah and 39 other high officials in it, then the US military can figure out where Iran’s missiles are being launched from and put a stop to that, too. With no high command left, Iran’s missile batteries have been on their own since Saturday, desperately trying a kind of last-ditch “Samson option” to light up the whole region and bring the House of the Middle East down with Iran.


Firing on the Emirates, and Saudi Arabia especially, was maybe not such a hot idea. Saudi Arabia’ air defenses intercepted almost all the drones aimed at their giant Ras Tanura oil refinery. Falling debris started a small fire that was contained while the refinery shut down safely. Iran has reawakened the centuries-old rift between Shi’a and Sunni Islam and Saudi Arabia has been stockpiling war planes from the USA for fifty years without getting to use them much. I doubt they’ll pass up the chance.

Who does speak for Iran now? Just naming a successor to the Ayatollah Khamenei would put a target on his turban. Iran’s Intel Service building was blown up on Sunday, so that network must be dark. How is Iran’s government and its remaining military command communicating? And how would US and Israeli intel not be listening in on whatever chatter is out there? The world fretfully expects Iran to try to close the Strait of Hormuz, but how does that happen with tanker traffic halted and most of Iran’s navy blown up and its naval command headquarters destroyed? Without the ships to do it, it’s unlikely that Iran will be laying out minefields in the Strait. Or that any tankers will be around to sink in the channel.

President Trump has declared a four-week window for Operation Epic Fury. Sounds a little too generous. With no command structure left and no viable communication, you might give the Islamic Republic one more week, maybe. It’s a tossup whether they run out of missiles and drones before all their launch-sites and stockpiles get bombed. Meanwhile, a US / Israeli info operation that hacked Iran’s state-run TV seeks to persuade Iranian army personnel and government bureaucrats to turn on what remains of the theocracy and think about forming a secular government. Why would they stick with the loser regime?

Of course, the Trump-deranged political opposition in America is ululating over this effort to put the world’s leading fomenter of terrorism out of business. The New York Times is especially glum, claiming, “The American public’s appetite for an attack on Iran was low before Trump and Israel took action.” Maybe the Jacobin-Democrats they cater to feel that way, since the party has been increasingly synchronizing with the forces of Jihad since the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas raid. After forty-seven years of ayatollahs, what part of “Death to America” don’t they understand?

Not a few prominent figures on the Right also deplored Operation Epic Fury. The increasingly rogue Trump-hater and Israel vilifier, Tucker Carlson, called the action “disgusting and evil.” MTG called it “unnecessary and is unacceptable.” Blackwater founder Erik Prince colored it as “not serving America’s interests and inconsistent with President Trump’s MAGA agenda.” Rep. Thomas Masie (R-KY) framed his objection in Congress’s prerogative to declare war — though the War Powers Act of 1973 permits the president to conduct military operations for 60 days after notifying Congress of his intentions.

You can understand why people are nervous about this, with so many commentators predicting World War Three and Biblical Armageddon. The Fourth Turning narrative asserts that a major war is inevitable at this moment in history. Maybe so. But Ukraine has already happened and is on a glide path to its conclusion. And Operation Epic Fury does not have to turn out badly for all concerned, including Iran. Other more sanguine observers see a more peaceful and prosperous Middle East emerging from the smoke, a fulfillment of the Abraham Protocols, and the termination of Iran-sponsored proxy wars, terror programs, and medieval social despotism.

Epic Fury looks like a turning point for Western Civ more generally as regards tolerating Jihadi insolence — its declared intent to destroy all its “infidel” enemies, meaning you and me and the remaining indigenous population of Europe. The strife Iran managed to stir up all around the Middle East and beyond for decades was largely responsible for the mass migration into Europe and the dispersion of millions into the USA during “Joe Biden’s” open border years. Citizens are now rising to oppose Islam’s aggressive promotion of Sharia Law and demographic replacement in Texas and other states. Expect bolder resistance to all that now, here and in Europe, too.

However this thing goes, Iran will not acquire a nuclear arsenal, and this was, after all, the main issue. Anyway, the Iranians must be sick of the rule of the mullahs. Mr. Trump told them some weeks ago that “help is on the way.” He meant what he said, he didn’t chicken out, and now it’s up to the people of Iran to sort out how they enter the future, starting now.

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Iran is important for Russia and China. That is not less so with Khameini gone. BRICS.

• Trump Bit Off More Than He Can Chew With Iran – Ex-Pentagon Analyst (RT)

The US-Israeli strikes on Iran are unlikely to trigger regime change and risk escalating into a wider geopolitical confrontation, former Pentagon security policy analyst Michael Maloof has told RT.Washington and West Jerusalem launched what they described as a “preemptive” attack on the Islamic Republic after nuclear talks failed to produce a breakthrough, prompting retaliation from Iran. Tehran responded with missile and drone strikes targeting Israel and US military bases across the region.


In an interview with RT on Saturday, Maloof said the timing of the attack had likely been finalized during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Mar-a-Lago on February 12, despite President Donald Trump publicly insisting that negotiations with Tehran were ongoing. “The United States has always done Israel’s bidding. Netanyahu basically controls Trump,” Maloof claimed, adding that the US president has effectively pursued the Israeli PM’s vision of “a greater Israel to encompass all the Arab countries.” Trump openly declared his goal to force regime change in Tehran, but efforts to topple Iran’s government would face major obstacles, according to Maloof.

“Regime change is something that is going to be difficult, especially in Iran, where they’re very, very set. They have a government in place,” he said. Even with the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would likely keep the country functioning as a “cohesive nation-state.”At the same time, he described the strikes as part of a broader strategic confrontation extending beyond Iran’s nuclear or missile programs, noting how the US president has been openly critical of BRICS and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“And Iran just happened to be a very critical component to that, with Russia and with China,” Maloof said. “I think Trump bit off more than he could chew on this one.”“These attacks are gonna affect the whole economic world order, literally overnight. So we’re in for a long, hard slug here,” Maloof said, adding that “it’s easy to start a war, but [it’s harder to know how to stop one.”

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“Last night, all over Iran, the voices of the Iranian people could be heard cheering and celebrating in the streets when his death was announced.”

• Trump Responds to American Casualties in Iran, Predicts More (DS)

President Donald Trump is promising to avenge the deaths of those lost in Operation Epic Fury. U.S. Central Command reported three fatalities in the first 24 hours after the strike on Iran. The United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran in what Trump characterized as the beginning of “major combat operations” early Saturday morning.“As one nation, we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation,” Trump said in a video address Sunday night. “Even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives, we pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude to the families of the fallen.”


Trump said “sadly” there will “likely” be more deaths before the operation in Iran end“It is likely be more, but we’ll do everything possible where that won’t be the case, but America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against basically, civilization,” he said. “They have waged war against civilization itself.” Trump said the resolve of the United States and Israel has never been stronger.“America is now again the richest, most powerful nation in the world by far,” he said. “But the only reason we enjoy the quality of life that we do and the freedom and security is we have done things that others are unable to do, but it’s because of warriors who are willing to lay down their lives to do battle with our enemies, and they do battle better than anybody.”

Trump again called the Iranian military and police to relinquish their weapons to “receive full immunity or face certain death.” He also encouraged protesters “to seize this moment to be brave, be bold, be heroic and take back your country.”“America is with you,” he said. “I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise.” Trump said the voices of celebrating Iranians could be heard across the world last night after the ayatollah was killed.“This wretched and vile man had the blood of hundreds and even thousands of Americans on his hands and was responsible for the slaughter of countless thousand of innocent people all across many countries,” he said. “Last night, all over Iran, the voices of the Iranian people could be heard cheering and celebrating in the streets when his death was announced.”

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Good story.

• U.S. Hits Iran With Iran’s Own Drone Design (Stephen Green)

In light of recent news out of the Middle East, we have to rewrite the old dictum — provenance disputed — that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. Because you know those Iranian-made Shahed drones Russia keeps smacking Ukraine with? Yeah, we hit Iran last weekend with a copycat version of the very same drone. In July of 2025, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth headed up a Pentagon event showing off 18 American-made drone prototypes, that had gone from drawing board to development in just an average of 18 months. By comparison, the Navy’s F/A-XX to replace the aging F/A-18 multirole jets with a modern platform started in 2012, and they haven’t even chosen a design.


One of the prototypes shown off by Hegseth looked more than a little familiar to anyone following the Russo-Ukraine War drone campaign, because it was a virtual copy of Iran’s infamous Shahed drone, now made in Russia, too, and manufactured in the thousands. Only this one is made in Arizona by a startup called SpektreWorks.They cost roughly $35,000 apiece and have an attack range of roughly 450 miles. Iran calls it Shahed, or Witness. The Russians call their domestically produced version Geran-2, or Geranium. We call ours the Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, because of course we do. Anyway.

At the time, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael told reporters, “It’s an extraordinary achievement. This kind of thing was going to take five, six years.” This was all in response to an executive order by President Donald Trump, directing the Pentagon to “procure, integrate, and train using low-cost, high-performing drones manufactured in the United States.”Trump called it “unleashing American drone dominance,” and not even a year later, here we are. On Saturday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that LUCAS flew in combat for the first time during Operation Epic Fury, not much longer than two years after SpektreWorks began developing them:

“Task Force Scorpion Strike, for the first time in history, is using one-way attack drones in combat during Operation Epic Fury. These low-cost drones, modeled after Iran’s Shahed drones, are now delivering American-made retribution.””For the price of a single Tomahawk, you can launch 57 LUCAS drones,” analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera posted over the weekend. What’s even more remarkable is the cost savings — even over the Russian model. “A Shahed-136 in Russian production costs approximately $80,000 per unit at the Alabuga facility. The American reverse-engineered version costs less than half the Russian licensed copy of the Iranian original.

“SpektreWorks received a $30 million initial production contract. That buys 857 kamikaze drones for what the Navy spends maintaining a handful of Tomahawks.”LUCAS also has some nifty electronics under the hood. The Shahed/Geran is a fairly simple creature, capable of flying to a pre-programmed location and blowing up. Each LUCAS is integrated into the Pentagon’s MUSIC mesh network — some even with built-in SpaceX Starshield terminals! — allowing operators to reprogram it in real-time, and making it into a communications node, expanding every local commander’s view of the battlespace.

All for the price of a nicely appointed Chevrolet Equinox.Granted, with its short range and comparatively tiny warhead, even in large numbers, there are jobs LUCAS simply can’t do that Tomahawk can. The Tomahawk can also carry some… interesting… payloads that LUCAS can’t. But having large numbers of cheap drones broadens the range of decisions available to any commander lucky enough to have LUCAS — and their low price means they’ll eventually be integrated anywhere we can make them fit.

It’s been maybe three years since the Russo-Ukraine War had even doubters admitting that drone warfare changes everything — and, frankly, we’ve been behind. While Western air forces (particularly the American and Israeli) dominate the skies above 3,000 feet, drone operators own, or at least can contest the lower altitudes. I wish I could remember who to credit that observation, but it dates back to probably 2023. So perhaps instead of some closed-minded insistence about imitation being the sincerest form of flatter that mediocrity can pay to greatness, how about we just ask, “How about a taste of your own medicine?”

Delivered on the cheap.

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“.. the Obama administration transferred $1.7 billion to Iran as part of a settlement tied to the nuclear agreement. The payment included $400 millon in cash delivered the same day American prisoners were released, along with $1.3 billion in interest.”

• The Left’s Iran Meltdown: Outrage on Cue, Memory on Vacation (David Manney)

Explosives our military shared with regime targets in Iran during Operation Epic Fury did more than blow up targets; it exposed a political reflex that snaps into place whenever President Donald Trump takes decisive action overseas.


Within hours of the strikes, prominent Democrats declared the operation illegal, reckless, and unconstitutional. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), she of the small ankle-biting dogs who never stop barking and constantly make a nuisance of themselves, called the action an unlawful war and demanded that Congress rein in the White House. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), calling on her comic-book collection for foreign-policy lessons from such esteemed fictional characters as Joe Biden, labeled the strikes catastrophic and unnecessary. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the Temu Obama, insisted the administration owed Congress immediate answers and suggested limits on war powers.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), six-time champion of the Gollom look-a-like contest, said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s removal was a positive development but warned the white House lacked a clear plan. Their language differed in tone and scripts, but the outrage moved in one direction. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez labeled the strikes catastrophic and unnecessary. U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries insisted the administration owed Congress immediate answers and suggested limits on war powers. Sen. Mark Kelly said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s removal was a positive development but warned the White House lacked a clear plan. Their language differed in tone, but the outrage moved in one direction.

Resolutions over the War Powers Act surfaced almost immediately; democratic lawmakers pushed for votes to restrict presidential authority and framed the strikes as a dangerous escalation. The urgency was unmistakable, the message unified, and the volume turned up to 11. Yet maybe because the left uses so much oxygen in a room, Democrats suffered from oxygen deprivation? I’m only asking because their memories surrounding historical Iranian policy appear selective. It was good to be an Iranian terrorist group in January 2016, when the Obama administration transferred $1.7 billion to Iran as part of a settlement tied to the nuclear agreement. The payment included $400 millon in cash delivered the same day American prisoners were released, along with $1.3 billion in interest.

Money was flown to Tehran in foreign currency, as the administration defended the transaction as a lawful settlement of a decades-old dispute. Democratic leaders broadly supported the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and its financial framework. That action didn’t trigger debates over emergency powers, didn’t produce accusations of unilateral recklessness, and didn’t prompt televised warnings about catastrophic instability. Instead, many Democratic lawmakers praised the diplomatic breakthrough and, in glorious terms, described the deal as a stabilizing force in the region. Seriously, what harm would a few billion dollars given to the world’s largest terrorist government create?

Good times. Seriously. Pfft! Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor under President Barack Obama, strongly supported the nuclear deal at the time and has since repeatedly criticized President Trump’s withdrawal from it. Following successful reports from Operation Epic Fury, Rhodes warned of escalation and humanitarian fallout. X users curtly told Rhodes to sit this one out. His critique reflects a sharp shift in posture compared to the confidence expressed during the 2015-16 negotiations. Surprisingly, compared to the single-message strategy commanded by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the Democrats were, well, in disarray. For her part, when the “emeritus” speaker talks about reckless behavior, irony quietly refills the glass.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) broke from most of his colleagues and defended the strike, arguing that decisive action against Iran’s leadership could create an opening for long-term stability. Rep Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, expressed support for confronting Iranian aggression while still seeking clarity on objectives. Their positions stand in visible contrast to the louder condemnations. What’s tough to ignore is the pattern: When President Joe “where’s my nose” Biden authorized strikes against Iran-backed militias during his administration, opposition within his party remained muted. When President Barack “Cash and Carry” Obama reduced sanctions relief and a $1.7 billion cash settlement, Democratic leaders framed the move as responsible statecraft.

But when President Trump orders coordinated strikes that eliminate hostile members of leadership, the response shifts from legal panic and televised alarm.Operation Epic Fury will succeed or fail on strategic grounds, but early on, it’s hard to argue that the attack’s planning was well coordinated. Serious debate about long-term consequences is fair and necessary. What undermines credibility is selective outrage that appears tied more to the occupant of the Oval Office than to the underlying threat posed by the Iranian regime.

For decades, Iran’s leadership funded proxy militias, backed regional terror networks, and suppressed (re: killed) its own people. Presidents from Jimmy Carter onward faced the decision of how to handle that regime. Some chose engagement, while others chose pressure: Each decision carried risk. What’s changed isn’t the region’s volatility, but the consistency of partisan reaction. If killing a tyrannical leader is illegal under one president, it must be illegal for all. If financial transfers are wise diplomacy under one administration, then decisive military action can’t automatically become reckless under another, simply because of party affiliation. The actors, displaying their versions of meltdowns, tell their own story.

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But does it protect against hypersonic?

• Golden Dome for America (Joe Dodd)

The Golden Dome for America (GDA) initiative has drawn criticism for not publicly releasing a detailed architecture, cost breakdown, or long-range budget projections. Think tanks, major media outlets, and some lawmakers argue that without public transparency the program risks becoming an expensive, open-ended undertaking. Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. But they often treat public disclosure as an unquestioned virtue. Revealing how the system works would give our adversaries the information they need to blunt it. We don’t disclose budget information or performance characteristics for nuclear submarines, the F-35 and other sensitive air vehicles, or spy satellites developed by [the National Reconnaissance Office]. Demanding public disclosure of GDA is akin to asking the United States to publish a playbook for defeating it.


This reality is not theoretical. China and Russia have already criticized Golden Dome as destabilizing and driving an arms race. In this environment, withholding key details is not only prudent—it is imperative. A homeland defense system that is predictable is easier to defeat and doesn’t deter aggression against the US. A system that retains secrecy forces adversaries to spend more to plan around it. The lack of public disclosure does not mean the program lacks oversight. General Michael A. Guetlein—the Director for GDA—has briefed members of Congress and industry leaders in classified settings. That is the appropriate model: informed insight without giving adversaries a free intelligence windfall on the design and capabilities of the systems and architecture.

Regarding cost, much of the debate has been distorted. Some estimates suggest GDA will cost trillions over decades, often assuming a perfect system with extremely large numbers of space-based interceptors, satellites, and radars. The CBO estimates that Golden Dome will cost up to $540B over the first 20 years or about 2% of [Department of Defense] spending in that period—that’s not budget breaking … and the Golden Dome office suggest that their estimates are even lower. This is more comparable to a large [Department of War] modernization program than a Manhattan Project-scale shock.

Critics also sometimes misapply affordability comparisons to the 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). SDI relied on immature technologies and unproven physics at scale. Golden Dome is largely a systems architecture challenge—linking sensors, command and control, and layered intercept capabilities across domains. General Guetlein even goes as far as saying the technology already exists for GDA, the challenge is integrating it.Golden Dome should face rigorous oversight, cost discipline, and clear milestones. Congress is right to demand accountability. Government and Industry must protect classified information. But the most common criticism—that secrecy is inherently illegitimate—misunderstands the domain. In homeland defense, transparency is not neutral. It is information that can be weaponized.

A classified architecture shared with Congress and industry, paired with public accountability on budgets, schedules, and outcomes, is the right balance. If Golden Dome can be delivered near the budget numbers cited above, it is not only affordable—it may be one of the most strategically beneficial investments the United States has ever made. For deterrence to work, the nation needs credible, demonstrated defensive capabilities to defend against credible threats. Golden Dome for America is about building that deterrence to protect Americans in their Homeland.

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“Britain desperately needs a reckoning with the Afghan crime wave—and with the political leaders who have allowed and enabled it ..”

• The UK’s New Grooming Gang Scandal (Fraser Myers)

In borderless Britain, it seems as if barely a day goes by without some monstrosity being committed by a migrant who should never have been in the country in the first place. The world is now familiar with the ongoing scandal of Britain’s predominantly Pakistani rape gangs. Yet what is also unfolding right now is a wave of brutal sexual violence committed by illegal arrivals, often asylum seekers from Afghanistan.Take the case of Afghan national Ahmad Mulakhil, convicted last month for raping a 12-year-old girl in a park in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Alongside one count of rape, 23-year-old Mulakhil was also found guilty of child abduction, two counts of sexual assault, and taking indecent photos of a child. He had already confessed to a charge of oral rape.


Mulakhil arrived in the UK illegally, crossing the English Channel from France in a small boat in July 2025. This being post-borders Britain, he was not detained or punished for this incursion. He was instead offered free accommodation and financial support, initially in Kent on England’s south coast, before he was relocated to Nuneaton, a quiet market town, where he was placed in social housing, at the taxpayers’ expense. Six weeks later, he approached his 12-year-old victim as she was playing on the swings in a park. His identity was confirmed when, after the attack, he went to purchase some cans of Red Bull in a nearby shop, using the preloaded debit card issued to him by the UK Home Office.

A few weeks later, just a few miles down the road in Leamington Spa, two Afghan 17-year-olds abducted a 15-year-old from a park, took her to a secluded area, and then raped her. Another Afghan illegal migrant raped a 15-year-old in broad daylight in Falkirk town center in Scotland in 2023. Sadeq Nikzad sought to defend himself by citing language barriers and “cultural differences.” These cases are barely the tip of the iceberg. You can open a newspaper on any day in Britain and expect to read about a gruesome crime committed by a small-boats migrant, more often than not from Afghanistan.

In a twisted way, the Falkirk rapist, Sadeq Nikzad, sort of had a point, even if the courts rightly rejected the notion that “cultural differences” were a reasonable defence. It is surely not for nothing that so many high-profile sex attacks in Britain are being committed by Afghans. Although data on the ethnicity and nationality of criminals are notoriously difficult to compile (made deliberately so by authorities beholden to political correctness), research by the Telegraph suggests that Afghan nationals are 20 times more likely to be convicted of a sexual offense than the average person in England and Wales. Afghans have the highest rate of sexual offending of all nationalities in the UK.

Should this really be a surprise? Of course, it would be wrong to tar every Afghan with the worst crimes imaginable. Yet it would be equally absurd to assume that Afghans shed their upbringings and cultural assumptions as soon as they arrive in Europe or on Britain’s shores.

According to the Georgetown Institute’s Women, Peace and Security Index, Afghanistan ranks last out of 181 countries on almost every measure of women’s wellbeing, from the threat of partner violence to gender-based political persecution and women’s safety in general. Since the Taliban retook power in 2021, women have been relegated to below second-class status. The Islamic Republic of Iran looks like a feminist utopia by comparison. Women are forbidden from leaving the house without a male relative, and must be fully veiled when they do so. All girls are banned from attending school and one in three is forced into a child marriage. Rape is rampant. and, while men go unpunished, female victims can be prosecuted and punished for “adultery,” including by being stoned to death. To call this misogyny “medieval” is an insult to the actual medievals.

Britons who grew up in the 1990s, 2000s or 2010s will remember the “feminist” campaigns to ban the sale of soft pornography on in supermarkets and newsagents. The Sun, once Britain’s bestselling tabloid newspaper, used to feature a bare-breasted woman on “Page Three” every day. “Lads mags”—bawdy magazines for men—would feature topless models, sex tips, and lewd anecdotes. These relatively harmless, anodyne fixtures of British public life were regularly denounced by the great and the good as “proof” that the UK had a “rape culture.”

Yet now a very real “rape culture” has been imported from Afghanistan and is tearing through Britain. It is doing so with the connivance of the state, thanks to its porous borders combined with an overly generous interpretation of who should be deemed a refugee. Meanwhile, establishment feminists are either silent at best or at worst, happily complicit in the erosion of Britain’s borders and indifferent to the now-constant abuse of women and girls this has entailed. Any suggestion that thousands of young, unattached men from the most misogynistic nation on the planet might pose a non-negligible risk to women and girls is dismissed as “divisive,” “racist” and even “fascist.”

This is not to malign everyone who arrives from Afghanistan. Not only are there many genuinely deserving of asylum from their tyrannical government (women, for instance, though they are notable for their absence among small-boats arrivals); there are also many Afghans whom the British government specifically has a duty to protect. Following the U.S.-UK withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, many interpreters and others who supported the British war effort were left stranded as the Taliban retook Kabul. Worse, a UK Ministry of Defence data breach led to more than 250 of their names being made public, effectively handing the Taliban a kill list of traitors. Here the case for asylum seems inarguable. Such people were placed in immediate danger of death by the rank incompetence of the British state. And so the British state has a responsibility to protect them.

But what also seems inarguable is that the British state’s primary responsibility ought to be to protect its own citizens. Instead, our “compassionate,” “open-hearted” elites are rolling out the red carpet for tens of thousands of mostly male, young, totally unvetted illegal migrants arriving at random on the southern coast. As far as the establishment is concerned, those men are the real victims deserving of the state’s charity. The women and girls that are being on a horrifyingly regular basis are treated as mere collateral damage. Britain desperately needs a reckoning with the Afghan crime wave—and with the political leaders who have allowed and enabled it.

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“… a Minnesota-based nonprofit stole roughly $300 million in COVID-19 relief funds meant to feed needy children..|| “Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison are set to testify before the House Oversight Committee on March 4 “

• Tim Walz Is Stonewalling Congress to Protect Fraudsters, His Legacy (Margolis)

Tim Walz’s political career is finished. He has abandoned his reelection bid, and his hopes of running for president are shot. Yet he’s still trying to protect his legacy by stonewalling a federal investigation into one of the biggest fraud scandals in American history. The U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee, chaired by Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan, sent Walz a letter in February, calling him out for failing to fully comply with a congressional subpoena that has been sitting on his desk since September 2024.


The U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce (Committee) continues an investigation it began in the 118th Congress into how the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) administers two federal nutrition programs (i.e., Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and Summer Food Service Program (SFSP)) and into the massive fraud perpetrated by the nonprofit Feeding Our Future (FOF), its principals, and other individuals.3 Federal prosecutors have described the scheme as “not just criminal, but depraved and brazen.” The Committee writes to reiterate key requests made in its earlier correspondence to which you have as yet failed to provide full or complete responses.

That subpoena — issued by then-Chairwoman Virginia Foxx — contained 14 specific document requests tied to the Feeding Our Future scandal, a breathtaking scheme in which a Minnesota-based nonprofit stole roughly $300 million in COVID-19 relief funds meant to feed needy children. For what it’s worth, Walz’s office responded to the subpoena — eventually. But what lawmakers got back was a carefully curated pile of nothing. Curiously, the information the committee really needed was missing. Text messages between Walz and his staff? Missing. Communications showing how his team handled congressional information requests related to the fraud probe? Also missing. Walberg wasn’t impressed. His February letter stated flatly that Walz’s “responses to the subpoena lack clarity and appear designed to evade the requests.”

In short, Walz may be headed out the door, but he’s not exactly going quietly. He has a legacy to protect, and he’s going to spend as much time and energy as he can to protect it. “Reporting over the last five to 10 years and the criminal trials of FOF personnel and others continue to raise grave concerns about whether the [nutrition] programs have adequate safeguards in place against fraud, waste, and abuse,” the committee’s letter noted. “Related questions exist of whether Minnesota and MDE have exercised sufficient oversight of food service sponsors and providers.”

Whistleblowers have claimed that Walz knew fraud was occurring and allowed it to continue. In January, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) argued that the scheme wasn’t an oversight failure but “active assistance” from the top of Minnesota’s government. All three Republican Minnesota state lawmakers who testified at a January House Oversight hearing agreed that the Walz administration didn’t just miss the fraud — it had political reasons to let it keep going.

Nearly 80 defendants have been charged in connection with the Feeding Our Future scheme, and more than 50 convictions have already been secured. But make no mistake about it, the investigation is far from over. Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison are set to testify before the House Oversight Committee on March 4.

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“age-gating”

• Poland Plans Social Media Ban For Under-15s (ZH)

Three months after Australia banned minors under the age of 16 from accessing social media, Poland is preparing to do the same thing. A bill is currently being prepared by the largest party in Poland’s ruling Civic Coalition Party that would prohibit children under the age of 15 from using social media platforms, and would require tech companies to verify users’ ages. Education Minister Barbara Nowacka laid out the plan on Friday, which include fines of up to 6% of the worldwide (global) revenue of social media companies if their services remain accessible to under-15s. “We need to limit access to social media for children under 15. At the same time, we need to work on mental health and raise awareness among children, parents, and the entire Polish society about the dangers of social media,” Nowacka said.


If sped through legislation, Poland’s bill could take effect as early as 2027, however the coalition hasn’t fully signed off yet, and it will undoubtedly face legal pushback from US tech giants. As the Epoch Times notes further, on Dec. 10, Australia became the first country to impose nationwide restrictions on minors accessing social media, banning those under 16 from a dozen platforms.The restrictions were brought in amid concerns over mental health, online harms, and screen addiction affecting Australian children.Poland is the latest country in the European Union to say it was planning to introduce a ban or some other form of restriction, with other member states similarly citing concerns over children’s mental health.

In France, legislation is moving through parliament to ban children younger than age 15 from accessing social media platforms. Denmark and Slovenia are likewise looking at bans for under-15s. Spain will follow Australia in banning social media for minors under age 16. Portugal is taking a different approach. Rather than introducing an outright ban on children under a certain age from accessing social media, it aims to require explicit parental consent for children aged 13 to 16 to access the platforms. Other countries around the world are making similar plans, including Malaysia, which says it will ban social media accounts for children younger than age 16 this year.

‘Age-Gating’ Social Media
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a series of new proposals earlier this month aimed at protecting young people from social media addiction, including a proposed ban for under-16s, subject to a public consultation. Some measures by the UK and the EU to curb online harms have led to tensions with the United States, home of many big tech companies, around issues of free speech and regulatory overreach. Privacy and free speech advocates, such as UK-based Open Rights Group, say that a social media ban for under-16s would be an ineffective response to online harms.

The Open Rights Group says it would lead to “age-gating” across all social media platforms, requiring users to prove their age. “Protecting children online should not mean building a surveillance infrastructure for everyone,” Open Rights Group spokesman James Baker said. “We need regulation that puts users back in control, not policies that force people to trade their privacy and voice for access to modern life.”

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“What the team giveth, the state taketh away.”

• Major League Pitcher Turns Down Padres $40 Million Due to State Taxes (Turley)

This week, “there is no joy in Mudville” – the mighty Padres have struck out. The California Padres thought that they had secured Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Merrill Kelly with an offer of $40 million for just two years. The Diamondbacks were offering that payout over three years, but Kelly took the Diamondbacks. The reason? California’s ruinous tax burden is fueling an exodus of wealthy taxpayers and businesses from the state. It is the latest example of how Democrats have reversed the Gold Rush with a long line of U-Hauls heading to more responsible states.


Explaining his decision, the pitcher told the media that “I don’t think it’s any secret on how much money you get taken out of your pocket when you go to California.”With the calls for billionaire taxes and attacks on the wealthy as “not paying their fair share,” Democrats and unions have doubled down on their “eat the rich” rhetoric. The problem is that wealth, like the wealthy, is mobile. Both are leaving, and the current estimate stands at a possible $2 trillion fleeing the state over the last year. California continues to lead the nation in the loss of citizens to other states. In the meantime, Democrats are continuing their high-spending pattern under Gov. Gavin Newsom from boondoggle projects to reparations to bloated union pension agreements.

With California’s 13% tax rate on income above $1 million, players view California as illusory in terms of elite contracts. What the team giveth, the state taketh away. That does not include the higher collateral taxes and costs, including gasoline costs (which are also the highest in the nation). It appears that the high-spending, high-taxing policies are not just benefiting red states but also their baseball teams. As a Cubs fan, I would be delighted except for the fact that Chicago and Illinois are also in the hands of Democrats pursuing the same disastrous policies. The irony is that Texas and Florida could end up not only with more jobs but better baseball players.

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https://twitter.com/thecurioustales/status/2028192575212163555?s=20 https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/2028326933961015587?s=20 https://twitter.com/ShiningScience/status/2028208402632184267?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 22 2025

Jun 222025
 
 June 22, 2025  Posted by at 8:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  91 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn The resurrection of Christ 1639

 

• Trump: Iran’s Nuclear Facilities “Completely & Totally Obliterated” (ZH)
• Trump Hails ‘Spectacular’ US Raid Against Iran (RT)
• With Six Bunker-Busting Bombs, Trump Just Rewrote History (JTN)
• US Strike On Iran Will ‘Change History’ – Netanyahu (RT)
• Iran Accuses US Of Nuclear Treaty Violation (RT)
• Trump Says US Intel of Iran’s Nuclear Program “Was Wrong”, Tulsi Responds (ET)
• Trump’s Envoy Urges Musk To Provide Free Starlink To ‘Friends’ In Iran (RT)
• US, Europe Plotting Iran’s Next Leader While Talking ‘Diplomacy’ (Sp.)
• Pakistan Recommends Trump for Nobel Peace Prize (RT)
• Iran Has The Right To Use Nuclear Energy For Peaceful Purposes – Putin (RT)
• Kiev’s Backers Don’t Want The Conflict Settled – Putin (RT)
• Putin’s Message to the West: Your Dominance is Over – BRICS+ the Future (Sp.)
• Zelensky Reshuffles Top Brass To Fix Faltering Draft – FT (RT)
• Europe’s Anti-Russia Hysteria Speeds Its Decline (Sp.)

 

 

https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1936119538833408128

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1936078927698526683

Macgregor

Ritter

 

 

 

 

“A Spectacular Military Success”

If the situation pans out the way it’s presented today, much of the criticism, domestically and internationally, will subside. But Iran has yet to react. And did they really demolish Fordow? Without a nuke?

• Trump: Iran’s Nuclear Facilities “Completely & Totally Obliterated” (ZH)

President Trump addressed the nation at 2200ET and said that with “massive precision strikes”, Iran’s nuclear facilities have “been completely and totally obliterated” in a “spectacular military success.” He warned Iran (“the bully of the Middle East”) that if they do not come to peace then there are many other targets: “There will be either peace; or tragedy for Iran worse than the likes of which we have seen over the last eight days.” “If peace does not come quickly,” we will go after the rest of the nation with “speed and skill. ” He ended the speech by saying “God bless The Middle East, Gold bless Israel, and God bless The United States.”

[..]

* * *
Update (2133ET): Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin revealed that the B-2 bombers spotted heading to Guam were part of a calculated deception to draw attention westward: “It’s notable how much deception was involved in this operation. All eyes were looking west towards Guam.” “The 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs were dropped at Fordo. And as we have reported, there are two entrances to Fordo.” “At least two bombs at each, two entrances, which suggests at least two B-2s were involved over Fordow. My suspicion is that there were more.”

Sean Hannity revealed he spoke directly with President Trump, who confirmed the scope of the U.S. strike on Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility: “Six “bunker buster” bombs were dropped by multiple B-2 stealth bombers. Thirty Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from U.S. submarines positioned approximately 400 miles away. Hannity added, “Everyone is out of harm’s way for now.”

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“..if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.”

• Trump Hails ‘Spectacular’ US Raid Against Iran (RT)

In a televised address from the White House on Saturday night, US President Donald Trump claimed that American forces had “completely obliterated” three Iranian nuclear sites in a major overnight operation. He described the strikes as a “spectacular military success” and threatened further action if Tehran does not pursue peace. Below is the full transcript of President Trump’s address to the nation:

“Thank you very much. A short time ago, the US military carried out massive, precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime. Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not. Future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.

For 40 years, Iran has been saying. Death to America, death to Israel. They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs, with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over 1,000 people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East, and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular. So many were killed by their general, Qassim Soleimani. I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen. It will not continue. I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done.

And most importantly, I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight, and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades. Hopefully, we will no longer need their services in this capacity. I hope that’s so. I also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine, spectacular general, and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack. With all of that being said, this cannot continue. There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.

Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes. There’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight. Not even close. There has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago. Tomorrow, General Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will have a press conference at 8am at the Pentagon. And I want to just thank everybody. And, in particular, God. I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

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“Trump’s Pentagon planned for every imaginable Iran response long before Saturday night’s bombing sorties, officials said. And almost immediately after the bombs dropped, signs of heightened security emerged.”

• With Six Bunker-Busting Bombs, Trump Just Rewrote History (JTN)

As early as 2011, Donald Trump sounded the alarm that Iran must not become a nuclear power or the world would face unspeakable havoc. “Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped by any and all means necessary. Period,” the future president wrote in his book Time to Get Tough. “We cannot allow this radical regime to acquire a nuclear weapon that they will either use or hand off to terrorists.” Fourteen years after penning that book, America’s 47th president took decisive action Saturday night to ensure Tehran didn’t reach that critical goal on his watch, dispatching six bunker-busting bombs aboard B2 bombers and 30 Tomahawk missiles fired from submarines to “obliterate” the Iranian regime’s three primary nuclear weapons facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan.

Early reports indicate the six GBU-57 bunker busting bombs imploded Fordow, a mountain-fortified facility that evaded decades of UN inspections and tantalized the world with a never-ending threat of Iranian nuclear holocaust as its mullahs chanted “Death to America. Death to Israel.” Trump declared himself pleased with the impact of his history-shaping decision, and pointedly made clear to Iran’s mullahs — led by the Ayatollah Khamenei — that their next step would determine the final outcome of the regime’s two-decade quest for an atomic bomb. “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier,” Trump warned.

“There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,” he added. “Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.”

Israel and the United States both braced for the worst possible response from Iran – more missile attacks or a possible terrorism strike – while hoping the earthquake-sized thunder of dropping the largest conventional bomb in world history may have shaken the Iranian regime toward a negotiated settlement. Trump’s navigation of the Iranian crisis demonstrated a redefinition of the use of American military might, directly pressuring diplomatic efforts toward peace by delivering surgical strikes with shock and awe destruction. He gave Iran 60 days to make a deal to forego its pursuit of a nuclear weapon and its enrichment of uranium, and on the 61st day green-lighted Israel to begin a military bombardment to destroy Tehran’s nuclear program. The first strikes decapitated Iran’s military leadership and disabled Tehran’s once-revered air defenses.

With unrivaled air superiority achieved by Israel, Trump then lulled Iran into thinking he would give the mullahs two weeks for more negotiations. In fact, he gave them just two days before unleashing Saturday night’s U.S. attacks that delivered utter destruction to Iran’s three most important nuclear development sites. While a military success, Trump and his team as well as his partner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, remain acutely aware there still may be peril ahead for the world. Iran’s vaunted Hezbollah sleeper terror cells and possible missile strikes against U.S. assets or its allies in the Middle East remain atop the worry list. Trump’s Pentagon planned for every imaginable Iran response long before Saturday night’s bombing sorties, officials said. And almost immediately after the bombs dropped, signs of heightened security emerged.

Israel went to a new level of alert demanding its citizens avoid any unnecessary public activities. New York City raised its threat level. And U.S. warplanes and ships patrolled aggressively for any sign of retaliation. In the meantime, Trump signaled unequivocally that Iran will choose the next edition of its fate: More attacks will bring more U.S. military might; more negotiations might bring a new era of peace and prosperity. The choice, Trump said, is Iran’s to make. Meanwhile, the president made sure to address the likely naysayers in the globalist community at large, the far-left of the American Democrat Party that pursued fruitless deals with Iran for more than a decade and the isolationists in his own party who immediately cackled the U.S. bombings were unjustified, illegal or even impeachable

During his nationally televised post-bombing address, Trump enumerated the deadly toll Iran’s violence took on Americans for five decades starting with the 1979 embassy hostage crisis followed by deadly bombings in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and 1990s and then the Iranian-made roadside bombs that killed and maimed hundreds of U.S. soldiers during the Iraq War. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying ‘Death to America, Death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs, with roadside bombs,” Trump reminded Americans. “That was their specialty. We lost over 1,000 people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of the hate.” Whether that carnage continues or subsides after Saturday’s massive bombing now rests with Iran.

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Praise from the child killer. Yay!

• US Strike On Iran Will ‘Change History’ – Netanyahu (RT)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised US President Donald Trump for his “bold decision” to join the Israeli bombing campaign against Iran. In a video address posted Saturday night, after the US carried out strikes against facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, Netanyahu called the move a turning point that “has created a pivot of history that can help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace.” “Congratulations, President Trump,” Netanyahu said. “Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history.”

The United States launched airstrikes late Saturday, hitting at least three Iranian facilities. According to US officials, B-2 stealth bombers reportedly dropped bunker-busting bombs during the raid on Fordow, while American submarines launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles against Natanz and Isfahan. President Trump described the strike as “very successful” and warned that Tehran must engage in negotiations or face further military action if it dares to retaliate.

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“This act… was unfortunately carried out in the shadow of indifference..”

• Iran Accuses US Of Nuclear Treaty Violation (RT)

Iran has accused the United States of violating international law and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with its overnight strikes on key nuclear facilities, while assuring the public that no radioactive contamination has been detected at the targeted sites. In an official statement released early Sunday, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) confirmed that US airstrikes hit its nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan at dawn, calling the operation an illegal and “brutal” act. Iranian authorities criticized Washington for publicly claiming responsibility for the attacks on sites that had been operating under the supervision of international inspectors. “This act… was unfortunately carried out in the shadow of indifference and even with the support of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” the statement claimed.

A separate statement from Iran’s Center for the National Nuclear Safety System confirmed that emergency inspections had been conducted at all three sites. “No signs of contamination have been recorded,” the center said, adding that there is “no danger to the residents living around the aforementioned sites.” The AEOI vowed that Iran’s nuclear program would not be halted by what it described as “evil conspiracies.” It praised the resilience of Iranian scientists and announced that legal measures would be pursued in response to the strikes. “We will not allow the development of this national industry, which is the result of the blood of nuclear martyrs, to be stopped,” the organization said.

The United States struck the facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan early Sunday morning as part of a broader Israeli military campaign described by the IDF as targeting Iran’s missile and nuclear infrastructure. Iran has not yet announced any military response but has characterized the strikes as “criminal” and a breach of sovereign rights. President Trump warned Tehran against retaliation, threatening further US attacks. The airstrikes mark the most direct US action against Iran’s nuclear program in years and come amid soaring tensions following ongoing exchanges of drones and missiles between Israel and Iran.

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Tulsi saving face?!

• Trump Says US Intel of Iran’s Nuclear Program “Was Wrong”, Tulsi Responds (ET)

President Donald Trump said on June 20 that his director of national intelligence’s assessment in March that Iran had yet to decide on building a nuclear weapon was wrong. Trump made the remarks to reporters on Friday while standing next to Air Force One at the Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey. The president was asked about the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that it had no evidence that Iran was building a nuclear warhead before Israel’s strikes on its military and nuclear sites last week. “Well, then my intelligence community is wrong,” Trump said. “Who in the intelligence community said that?” When he was told that it was his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who gave those remarks to lawmakers in March, Trump replied, “She was wrong.”

After Trump’s comments, Gabbard took to social media to share a clip of her March testimony to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and accused the media of twisting her words. “The dishonest media is intentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division,” Gabbard wrote. “America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree.” Gabbard said in her testimony at the time that the intelligence community had determined that Iran was not currently building a nuclear weapon. However, as part of that assessment, she said there were alarming signals that warranted continuous monitoring for any change.

The signs Gabbard mentioned included indications that Iranian decision-makers who wanted the country to have nuclear arms were becoming increasingly emboldened in their pursuit, and that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles were at “unprecedented” levels for a state without nuclear weapons. In remarks to reporters, Trump reiterated that he believes, based on the quantity of enriched uranium that Iran currently possesses, that the regime could develop a nuclear bomb “within a matter of months.” “We can’t let that happen,” Trump said, adding that he believes his current military intelligence is more accurate than what then-President George W. Bush used as a pretext to invade Iraq in 2003, which Trump opposed.

He was asked what makes the current situation different than the one 22 years ago, and Trump said: “Well, there were no weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq]. I never thought there were.” “There was a nuclear age [in 2003], but nothing like it is today. And it looked like I’m right about the material that they’ve gathered already,” he said. The United Nations’ nuclear watch group said early last month that Iran had more than 900 pounds of 60 percent enriched uranium at the time. To make a nuclear bomb, 90 percent enriched uranium is required. The group said that if Iran chooses, it could enrich enough stockpiled uranium to make a bomb in a matter of days, but building and testing a warhead could take much longer.

In response to comments from Iran’s foreign minister earlier on Friday, who said if the United States is serious about negotiations, it must first call Israel to order a stop to the airstrikes, Trump said it’s difficult to make that request now. “If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody’s losing,” he said. “But we’re ready, willing, and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens.” Trump said he is giving Iran two weeks to “see whether or not people come to their senses” before he makes a final decision on whether to involve the U.S. military in the conflict after Israel’s surprise airstrikes on Iranian military and nuclear sites last week. “I’m giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum,” he said. The president said he believes that Europe is not going to be able to help in negotiations with Iran to end the conflict.

Read more …

Peaceful purposes only?!

• Trump’s Envoy Urges Musk To Provide Free Starlink To ‘Friends’ In Iran (RT)

US Presidential Envoy for Special Assignments Richard Grenell has urged SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to provide free Starlink access across Iran so that his “friends” can have uninterrupted “access to information” amid an escalating Israeli bombing campaign against Tehran. “Can you turn on Starlink for free in Iran for the next few weeks, @elonmusk? My friends inside Iran don’t have regular access to information right now. I’ll chip in a donation and I think others would, too,” wrote Grenell, the former acting Director of National Intelligence, in a post on X. Musk has not yet responded to the request, at least not publicly. The billionaire previously said that the “beams are on,” indicating the service is technically available – although accessing Starlink requires a special satellite dish to receive and transmit signals.

Starlink’s constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites was originally promoted as a solution for providing high-speed, low-latency internet to remote and rural areas. President Trump has praised the system for offering vital connectivity in disaster zones, particularly after hurricanes Helene and Milton, when traditional networks failed. However, the system has also proven critical for frontline coordination and drone warfare. SpaceX has supplied the Ukrainian military with Starlink since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022, delivering more than 40,000 terminals. Kiev’s forces have become fully dependent on Starlink, and disabling it would result in the collapse of the “entire frontline,” Musk claimed in March.

When Israel launched a surprise “pre-emptive” attack against Iranian nuclear facilities last week, its intelligence agency Mossad reportedly activated sleeper cells who had smuggled drones into Iran to strike defensive infrastructure from within. With the possibility of Washington joining the bombing campaign growing, Iranian authorities have severely restricted communications, isolating the country’s internet from the rest of the world. They also urged citizens to delete WhatsApp, accusing Israel of using the Meta-owned app to spy on users. Richard Grenell, a former US ambassador to Germany and acting Director of National Intelligence, now serves as the Presidential Envoy for Special Missions under Donald Trump. In this role, he has handled a wide range of diplomatic crises and international back-channel efforts.

Read more …

From before the attack.

• US, Europe Plotting Iran’s Next Leader While Talking ‘Diplomacy’ (Sp.)

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated a “substantial” possibility of negotiations with Tehran, with a decision on further steps to be made within the next two weeks. Trump is not afraid to use force against Iran, Leavitt stressed, adding that the US continues contacts with Iran in both direct and indirect formats. According to US and European diplomats – who, of course, are just innocent bystanders in the Israel-Iran conflict – there are already secret conversations going on about who might lead Iran after the dust settles, CBS News reports.

They are also whispering about securing nuclear sites, and how to deal with a potential regional environmental disaster if Iran’s nuclear facilities are hit. Apparently, there’s still a “last shot” for talks to stop the Israel-Iran conflict, insiders told the outlet. Turkiye, Oman, Italy, Norway – they’re all ready to host US-Iran talks if Tehran chooses diplomacy. But as Iranian FM Abbas Araqchi put it: “As long as the aggression and attacks continue, there is simply no room for talk of dialogue or diplomacy,” per Fars News Agency.

Read more …

For Kashmir.

• Pakistan Recommends Trump for Nobel Peace Prize (RT)

The Pakistani government has formally recommended US President Donald Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, citing his mediation efforts in ending the recent military conflict between Islamabad and New Delhi. India, however, insists Trump played no role in de-escalating the tensions. Relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors escalated in late April after a deadly terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-backed militants. In a statement on Friday, the Pakistani government announced it “decided to formally recommend” Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize “in recognition of his decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership during the recent India-Pakistan crisis.”

According to Islamabad, the American leader helped de-escalate a “rapidly deteriorating situation” that could have triggered “catastrophic consequences for millions in the region and beyond.” It also expressed gratitude to Trump for offering to help resolve the longstanding Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India. The US president has repeatedly claimed credit for the ceasefire on May 10 that halted the hostilities between the two neighboring states. However, the Indian government has denied that the US president played a decisive role. Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri revealed that during a phone conversation with Trump the previous day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed that “India has never accepted mediation [to resolve its dispute with Islamabad over Jammu and Kashmir], does not accept and will never accept it.”

Also on Wednesday, the US president invited Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir to a private lunch meeting, after the field marshal similarly called for Trump’s Nobel nomination, Reuters reported, citing White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. On Saturday, in a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump stated that he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had arranged a “wonderful treaty between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda in their war.” “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between Serbia and Kosovo, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia… and I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for doing the Abraham Accords in the Middle East,” Trump lamented.

Speaking to reporters the previous day, the Republican made similar claims about his role in resolving those conflicts. “I should have gotten [the Nobel Peace Prize] four or five times,” he insisted, claiming that this will not happen “because they only give it to liberals.”

Read more …

In theory, yes.

• Iran Has The Right To Use Nuclear Energy For Peaceful Purposes – Putin (RT)

Iran has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said in an interview. After the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday, he spoke with Nadim Koteich, the moderator of the session and general manager of Sky News Arabia. ”We believe that Iran has the right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes. And we are prepared, as we have been in previous years, to provide the necessary support in this field,” the Russian president said. Putin added that Russia opposes the spread of nuclear weapons in any country. “The International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] confirms that there is no evidence of Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.”

Last week, Israel began a series of strikes against Iran and issued serious warnings regarding the country’s nuclear program. It claimed that Tehran is rapidly nearing a critical point in its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, saying the strikes were essential to prevent this. Iran, which maintains that its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes, responded with missile and drone strikes against Israel. In his interview on Friday, Putin urged both sides to resolve the conflict through negotiations. He added that Moscow has repeatedly informed Israel of the lack of evidence regarding Tehran’s intentions to create nuclear weapons. In a report earlier this month, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi stated that “Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60%.”

Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies have found no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. However, President Donald Trump insisted that Iran was “very close” to acquiring them at the time of Israel’s attack. He has demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and warned that the US might intervene. According to the Kremlin, Putin has a “complete picture” of the situation, as one of the few leaders to speak directly with the heads of Israel, Iran, and the US. In a late-night Q&A session on Wednesday, Putin told journalists that resolving the conflict should include mutual security guarantees – protecting both Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology and Israel’s right to security.

Read more …

“I hope that the Ukrainian leadership will follow the national interests of the country and not the interests of the third parties that stand behind the regime..

• Kiev’s Backers Don’t Want The Conflict Settled – Putin (RT)

The “third parties” that back Kiev are not interested in ending the Ukraine conflict, but are instead using the country for their own goals, Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Sky News Arabia’s Nadim Koteich. On Friday, during the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), moderated by Koteich, Putin stated that Moscow is not seeking the surrender of Ukraine. “We insist on the recognition of the realities that have developed on the ground,” he added. After the session, he gave an interview to Sky News Arabia in which he reiterated that Kiev should respect the will of the people who voted to join Russia. “I hope that the Ukrainian leadership will follow the national interests of the country and not the interests of the third parties that stand behind the regime,” Putin said.

“Ukraine deserves a better future, and not to be a tool in the hands of the third parties that are against Russia.” He added that Ukrainian neutrality and non-nuclear status are necessary for long-term stability in the region. During a Q&A session on Friday, Putin said that negotiations held in Istanbul in early 2022, shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, fell apart under pressure from “neocolonial forces.”Earlier in June, top Russian negotiator and presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky told RT’s Rick Sanchez that Ukraine had a chance to secure a deal on more favorable terms had it not withdrawn from negotiations in 2022. According to Medinsky, Kiev opted to walk away after consulting with the US and UK.

Read more …

“Russia’s Resilience Exposes Western Policymakers’ ‘Shocking’ Incompetence.”

• Putin’s Message to the West: Your Dominance is Over – BRICS+ the Future (Sp.)

In his speech at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, Vladimir Putin touched on array of issues, from Western neocolonialism and emerging global power centers to Russia’s economic prospects and defense exports potential. Sputnik asked experts in each of these areas to share their thoughts. The Russian president’s remarks at SPIEF about the need for a new model of development free of “golden billion” neocolonialism “is based on the observation of the world balances of power that have unfolded since the US financial crisis of 2008,” veteran Brussels-based geopolitical analyst Paolo Raffone told Sputnik. “Today the emerging countries have emerged to the extent of being comparable individually (China) or collectively (BRICS+) to overcome Western countries. [Putin’s] remarks are addressed to the US, but are also a warning to the European former powers that still have not abandoned the outdated path of eurocentrism,” Raffone explained.

Putin’s comments are geopolitical realism boiled down to its essence, “calling to rethink the national and international policies for the economy as well as security,” Raffone said. The Russian president isn’t alone in his thinking, the observer pointed out, highlighting Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto’s bombshell remarks this week about the EU and NATO’s loss of relevance, total dependence on China, and failure to engage diplomatically with the Global South. Western leaders became the “victims of their [own] stilted paradigm” about Russia and its economy, retired Jawaharlal Nehru University professor and Russia expert Dr. Anuradha Chenoy told Sputnik, commenting on Putin’s remarks relating to Russia’s emergence as the 4th largest economy globally, and the largest in Europe.

Treating Russia as a glorified “gas station” with no prospects for development, and slapping it with a severe, unilateral sanctions regime in 2022, the West expected the Russian economy and ruble to collapse.Instead, “the opposite happened,” Chenoy said, with the state, banks and industry leveraging finances generated from oil wealth to ramp up domestic production and generate growth. The West’s theories failed, as have their attempts to isolate Russia. “In fact, Russia now has turned to China, BRICS countries and the Global South, which will be their long-term partner. The West and its policies of unfair terms if trade, use of threat and force” ended up isolating them, not Russia, the veteran academic emphasized. “I am shocked at the great lack of collective knowledge and information [on the part] of the West, and their institutions,” Chenoy said, highlighting that Russia’s immense natural resources, the rebuilding of industry and infrastructure have been obvious to Russia watchers for decades.

“Russia will surely reestablish itself as one of the foremost exporters of arms in the world in the coming years,” former Swedish Armed Forces officer and military analyst Mikael Valtersson told Sputnik, commenting on Putin’s mention of Russian plans to expand defense cooperation with friendly countries. “The fast Russian adaptation to the needs at the battlefield and a strong Russian comeback in Ukraine has put an end to western dreams of the elimination of Russia as a strong competitor in the global arms market,” Valtersson said, highlighting the competitive edge Russia has honed from its experiences, including:
• battle-proven, upgraded weaponry. “This is especially important when it comes to air, missile, drone and EW-technology,” according to the observer.
• a “very large capacity to produce weapons quickly for the global military market…a capability the Western countries lack.”
• readiness to allow buyers to freely use the advanced weapons they purchase, without secret kill switches or other restrictions

Valtersson expects these factors to strengthen Russia’s position in the Global South, and in turn to threaten Western arms exports, especially Europe’s. “Europe will probably be forced to focus more on domestic sales within Europe, while the US must reduce restrictions and political demands in conjunction with arms exports. This might become even more acute in light of a growing hesitation to see the US as a reliable strategic partner by many countries,” Valtersson predicts. NATO might try to preserve markets by pressuring countries against buying Russian arms, “but this strategy will quickly lose power since Western economic power is diminishing,” the observer said, emphasizing that economic power translates into political power. While BRICS accounted for 12% of GDP in 2000, it’s over 40% today.

Read more …

Who makes these decisions?

• Zelensky Reshuffles Top Brass To Fix Faltering Draft – FT (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has reshuffled his top brass, with the goal of overhauling the country’s flawed and “unpopular” forced mobilization, the Financial Times reported on Saturday. Amid heavy frontline losses, the campaign has been marred by widespread draft-dodging and violent clashes between would-be recruits and mobilization officers. On Friday, Zelensky tapped Brigadier General Gennady Shapovalov to be the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, replacing Mikhail Drapaty and reassigning several senior officers. According to the Ukrainian HQ, in his new role, Shapovalov will focus on “increasing the combat capability of the army, improve the mobilization system and training of military personnel, and implement innovative approaches to management according to NATO standards.”

Shapovalov previously headed Kiev’s team in the NATO mission to coordinate military assistance to Ukraine. The Financial Times said the new commander will face numerous issues, as the “attempts to reform the Ukrainian mobilization and training process have been sluggish at best.” The draft, the outlet added, has been “unpopular,” while Zelensky is facing Western pressure to lower the draft age. Another problem is a new military contract program aimed at attracting young people between 18 and 24 to the army. However, as of April, only 500 contract soldiers joined the army, the FT reported, citing officials in Kiev.

Shapovalov’s appointment follows nearly three weeks of a leadership vacuum after Drapaty resigned from his post but was later moved to lead Ukraine’s joint forces command, which is aimed at helping align Ukraine’s armed forces with NATO operational methods. In a parting statement, Drapaty – who resigned after accepting responsibility for devastating Russian strikes on military training sites – condemned what he called a “culture of mutual cover-up and impunity” within the military. ”We will not win this war unless we build an army where honor is action, not a word, and responsibility is the basis of trust,” he said.

According to RBK-Ukraine, Drapaty’s departure also followed reported tensions with Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Aleksandr Syrsky. A source told the outlet that Drapaty privately expressed ambitions to take over Syrsky’s role. The two have had diverging battlefield strategies. Ukraine announced general mobilization in 2022, barring most men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country. In 2024, Kiev tightened the conscription laws and lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 to recoup growing battlefield losses. The mobilization campaign has resulted in numerous violent altercations between draft officers and reluctant draftees, while many have sought to flee the country at significant personal risk.

Read more …

Greatly.

• Europe’s Anti-Russia Hysteria Speeds Its Decline (Sp.)

No one is excluding Europe from modern processes – European countries are excluding themselves with their policy choices, Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, told Sputnik on the sidelines of the 2025 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). Europe is sabotaging itself by unjustifiably meddling in the Ukraine conflict and taking an anti-Russian stance, said the President of Republika Srpska. The European Union lost pivotal energy resources that it used to receive at a low price from Russia, Milorad Dodik stressed. “It is clear that Europe, if it even survives in the form of the European Union, is headed toward economic and other forms of marginalization,” he said. Europe is scrambling for solutions but somehow drifting even further from them. That’s exactly why I agree that the Global South’s role is only growing more crucial, said Dodik.

SPIEF sets an ideology-free stage for a New Global Order, underscored the leader of Bosnia’s Serb autonomy. A surge of cooperation agreements is signed here, offering a prime opportunity to showcase the Russian economy’s cutting-edge achievements across all modern sectors. What draws crowds to the forum is its host — Russia — a nation reshaping the global value game, noted Dodik. A total of 1,060 agreements worth 6.3 trillion rubles ($80 billion) have been signed on the sidelines of the 2025 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), the Organizing Committee’s executive secretary, Anton Kobyakov, said on Saturday. Over 140 countries sent their representatives to the forum, Kobyakov added.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Ursula

EV

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1936406246107529538

 

 

 

 

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Western “Thinking” on Nuclear Weapons

Apr 262023
 
 April 26, 2023  Posted by at 5:00 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  10 Responses »


Mark Chagall I and the village 1911

 

 

My good friend Wayne brings up some interesting questions about weapons, in the view of the current Ukraine conflict. Are nuclear weapons the most terrifying ones we know? Or have hypersonic precision weapons taken that “crown”? The answer is not all that obvious.

There is a persistent rumor that sometime in March, Russia hit a secret NATO base deep underground near Kiev with a hypersonic Kinzhal missile and took out some 300 people, including a bunch of high-placed NATO commanders. I have neither seen this confirmed nor, perhaps more importantly, denied. But Russia has no reason to boast about it, and the US has even less reason to acknowledge it happened.

What we do know is that US/NATO (or even China) doesn’t have these weapons, and Russia does. And that, from what I’ve read, partly has to do with the fact that since the missiles move at speeds of up to Mach 15 (15x speed of sound), they need a special heat resistant coating that only Russia has been able to develop. Moreover, these hypersonic missiles are not just much faster than any other missile, they are also far better at hitting precision targets. Try hitting a bunker 60 meters or more underground.

Here’s Wayne for some philosophy:

 

 

Wayne Hall:

The 1980s were the decade of the Non-aligned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement. The Non-aligned movement’s political line differed from that of the Communist-Party controlled anti-nuclear movements, which took their lead from Soviet diplomacy. The Non-aligned current had some party-political cover from Eurocommunist parties. It said “there are no good and bad nuclear weapons”. Implication: Soviet nuclear weapons are bad. To be consistent the movement should have called for Soviet nuclear disarmament when the USSR disintegrated, particularly because it was not clear at first whether Yeltsin would be better or worse than Gorbachev. Some of us did indeed call for unilateral Soviet nuclear disarmament.

NATO policy was for removal of Soviet nuclear weapons from Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine. But not from Russia. Why not from Russia? Well, for a start, that would mean abolition of the Russian nuclear bogy. What justification could there then be for NATO’s nuclear weapons? The Non-Aligned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement was clearly confused. Why were they not raising the demand for nuclear disarmament of Russia? They had spent the nineteen eighties ridiculing ideas of “nuclear deterrence”.

Yeltsin turned out to be (or at least to appear) even more open to ideas of nuclear disarmament of Russia than Gorbachev had been. The Non-Aligned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement called out NATO for fraud. Even official spokespersons acknowledged that nuclear weapons were “more of political than of military utility”. In other words they were useless, except for politicians (and journalists). The Swedes had recognized the uselessness when the nuclear hawk Olof Palme changed his stripes and became an anti-nuclear activist, presiding over unilateral nuclear disarmament of Sweden.

A demand for unilateral nuclear disarmament of Russia would have been a brilliant poke in the eye for the Tory smartypants who were always jeering: “If you want unilateral nuclear disarmament, recommend it to the Soviets!” Instead of raising the demand, some anti-nuclear activists simply started pointing out to each other that the Cold War is over and this should be recognized. Others didn’t do even that.

Since March 2023, the unnecessary character of Russian nuclear weapons has been confirmed. In March a provocation was staged inside Russia (by Ukraine? By NATO?) with civilians including children being killed and injured. Putin declared that there would be retaliation, and indeed, there was, within days. A command bunker in Ukraine four hundred feet underground (too deep then for run-of-the-mill bunker-busting technology) was hit by a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile and hundreds of dignitaries and high-ranking NATO personnel were allegedly killed. The media were pretty silent about it. And pretty soon the gaslighting started.

If this Kinzhal strike typifies the code of ethics that Russia intends to follow in its war making, the superfluous character of Russian nuclear weapons is confirmed. Attacks on civilians are punished by attacks on the top leadership of the side that resorts to them. The media propaganda machine is now bending over backwards to scream that the Kinzhals are “nuclear capable”. So what? Is a nuclear weapon needed to wipe out political leadership in a bunker? It is said that the United States has begun testing its own hypersonic missiles but the tests so far have failed. Will this failure be the prelude to a new arms race, or to abandonment of the 20th century mode of conducting wars particularly from 1914 onwards? The twentieth century mode of mass politics and mass slaughter of civilians?

When one studies the ideas of Hitler apologists it is easy to come to the conclusion that Hitler’s key intellectual mistake was to assume that the category “white people” includes Germans. The Boers had to learn the same lesson in South Africa, I suppose. Given this and given the assumptions of “nuclear deterrence”, which is an acceptable doctrine for the white people of NATO but not for the white people of Russia unless they face the “fact” that they too require to be “deterred” from destroying all life on planet earth, WOKE notions that “only white people can be racist” become comprehensible and the Hitlerian misreadings of the Coudenhove-Kalergi prediction/recommendation(?) of a world of mulattos following the extinction of “white people”, elevatable into a praiseworthy program for the future of this world.

If racism cannot be overcome intellectually there is obviously no alternative to overcoming it, or “trying to”, biologically. Is there? It seems to me that the logic of Russia’s development of hypersonic missiles, particularly given the way they appear to be using them, is the opposite of the motives according to which nuclear weapons were initially developed: i.e. elaboration of a mass “shock and awe” effect. Hypersonic missiles apparently aim at introducing military precision: graduated retaliation, which so far has been used to retaliate for attacks on the civilians of one’s own side. But the retaliation has been strikingly disproportionate, suggesting that one is planning to really stigmatize cowardly attacks on unarmed civilians. In effect stigmatize modern mass destruction warfare.

If it is true that “the West” is behind in this hypersonic missiles technology, how is it going to respond? Through embarking on a hypersonic missiles arms race? If it does to Russia what Russia has just done to it in Ukraine, there is a widespread view that this will trigger generalized nuclear war, which “the West” claims not to want. So what would be the purpose of getting ahead in hypersonic missiles technology? Public relations? Being first for the sake of being able to say that one is first?

It is said that nuclear weapons serve political more than military purposes, but those political purposes have to do with the “shock and awe” effect, not the ability to launch a precision strike at the nerve centre of the enemy (and so trigger the nuclear war one supposedly seeks to avoid). Will “the West” think this through or will it just go ahead anyway and “try to catch up and overtake”? Is “the West” thinking coherently about nuclear weapons?

 

 

 

 

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A Tale of Three Narratives, Energy Edition

Oct 312022
 
 October 31, 2022  Posted by at 2:41 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


VIncent van Gogh Railway carriages 1888

 

 

Frequent and longtime commenter TAE Summary makes lists from time to time of differing views on topics as these can be found on The Automatic Earth and elsewhere. Since so few people understand the topic of energy (and thermodynamics), this latest list is useful as usual.

What the media reports on energy is as much “The Science” as it is on Covid and the climate. We better start questioning everything about it, or we’ll be as wrong about it as we were about Covid. With equally damaging consequences. Or worse.

 

 

TAE Summary:

Background

– We are addicted to high energy use.

– Each first world citizen has the equivalent of scores of energy slaves.

– We spend colossal amounts of energy on useless things.

– Governments and especially militaries are fabulous energy wasters.

– People and even experts don’t understand energy.

 

 

The Green Narrative

– Radical action is required to move to renewable, sustainable energy sources to save the environment from climate change. We need to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 by shifting to renewable energy sources like hydro, solar, wind, tidal and geothermal. Electric cars are our future.

– Hydrogen can be a green energy source when it is produced from green electricity sources. Nuclear and fusion power are also carbon free and possibly parts of a green energy future. Improving technologies will help solve our energy problems.

– We need massive investments in green energy. Financial instruments like subsidies, carbon credits and green energy bonds will help us move to a renewable energy future. The world will be better off without fossil fuels.

– The price of green energy has dropped and is now competitive with fossil fuel energy. Switching to renewables will save most people money. Moving to clean energy will create millions of good paying jobs.

– By moving to green energy we have a bright future awaiting us.

 

 

The Abundance Narrative

– There is plenty of energy but its availability is blocked by those who use energy scarcity to enhance their own power. The real cause of energy insecurity is under-investment in oil and gas. Climate policy is being used as an excuse to limit energy.

– Energy Cost of Energy is a myth rolled out when energy production is blocked. There are at least 47 years of oil in known reserves in the world and that doesn’t include the trillions of barrels of recoverable shale oil in the US alone. Oil was and is continuously produced by abiotic means in the earth. We will never run out of oil.

– We need to harness all possible sources of energy including oil, gas, hydro, wind, solar, thermal and tidal energy. Nuclear and fusion power are important parts of our energy solution.

– Technology will help solve our energy problems. “Clean” energy sources abound within humanity’s grasp. By 2100, we will have quantum reactors creating zero-point energy, air-wired to your car with TeraGigaHertz transmission, and matter synthesizers as well.

– By using all available sources of energy we have a bright future awaiting us.

 

 

The Going, Going, Gone Narrative

– The easily extractable energy is mostly gone. Sane energy policies in the 60’s or 70’s could have mitigated the problems but not much can be done now. New technologies almost always end up using more energy than they produce.

– Green energy is a mirage. All so-called green energy solutions require fossil fuels as precursors and are not sustainable long term. We don’t have enough lithium, cobalt, etc. for car batteries and our electric grid won’t support charging everyone’s electric cars. People may say they want green energy but are unwilling to significantly sacrifice for it.

– Infinite growth in a finite world is not possible. We are nearing an energy cliff where there will be drastically less energy available and which will cause an economic depression that never ends. Energy scarcity will be used by those in charge to enhance their own power. We will eventually return to only having local energy from the sun at our disposal, that is, about 1% of the energy we use now. Everything will be mostly local.

– Our future is not bright. Prepare now.

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 22 2022

Sep 222022
 
 September 22, 2022  Posted by at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Head of a woman 1939

 

• Russia Will Mobilize About 1.2% Of Her Mobilizational Potential (Saker)
• Russia To Begin Partial Mobilization – Putin (RT)
• Russia Announces Partial Mobilization (MoA)
• Squelching the Noise about the Ukraine (9Bill)
• Defensive West Smears Samarkand Summit (Lauria)
• The Plot to Seize Russia & Make It a NATO Vassal – Martin Armstrong (G&E)
• The Real US Agenda In Africa Is Hegemony (Escobar)
• NATO’s “Green” Masochistic EUthanasia (Vilches)
• 10,000 anti-Russia Sanctions (Vilches)
• Europe Implodes (Vilches)
• Federal Reserve Chair Announces Another 75 Point Rate Hike (CTH)
• The European Central Bank’s Zimbabwean Model (Hayes)
• How the West Poisoned Its Money (Varoufakis)
• Beyond the Peak (Greer)
• House Democrats Take Ownership of Hunter (Turley)
• EU Health Regulator Says Covid Pandemic Not Over (R.)

 

 

 

 

Miller

 

 

 

 

Detroit cringe (I can’t even listen to the end)

 

 

 

 

Biden. Trump.

 

 

 

 

“We are talking only about those soldiers who have an official status of “reserves” and all of them will have to undergo a special training before being sent to the Ukraine.”

• Russia Will Mobilize About 1.2% Of Her Mobilizational Potential (Saker)

So, after lots of speculation, we now know that the Kremlin has decided to mobilize about 300’000 soldiers from a total mobilizational potential of 25’000’000 soldiers. That’s just a little over 1% of Russia’s mobilizational potential. We are talking only about those soldiers who have an official status of “reserves” and all of them will have to undergo a special training before being sent to the Ukraine. A few comments about this decision: It will take Russia a few months to gather and retrain (refresher courses) these forces and they will not be immediately available to protect the Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhie and Kherson regions during the upcoming referendum on to whether to join Russia or not. The 3rd volunteer army corps is already deployed in the south and could greatly assist in this.

Putin and Shoigu gave several reasons for this decision, including the very long line of contact, the direct involvement of NATO personnel who are now running the Ukronazi regime in Kiev and the threats by the West to dismantle Russia. Shoigu indicated that the UAF lost about 50% of its personnel (over 100’000 soldiers out of a total potential of about 200’000). He also added that most of the Ukrainian weapons systems, which were of Soviet origin, was mostly destroyed. Russian KIAs are just under 6000 soldiers. Shoigu also clearly spelled out that “we are not so much fighting against the Ukraine but against NATO plus the united (collective) West“. Shoigu also mentioned that all of the NATO satellite capabilities (70 military and 200+ civilian satellites) are used against Russia right now.

Finally, Shoigu added that NATO high precision weapons are deliberately used by NATO commanders to terrorize civilians. In other words, Russia is preparing for an escalation of this war in the coming months. She is basically augmenting her forces to a level which could deal with a major NATO escalation in the Ukraine (and elsewhere as not all mobilized forces would have to be combat units; deploying more C4ISR capabilities, logistics/supply forces or civil affairs and counter-terrorism units would also make sense). The other big news of the day is, of course, that Russia will back and accept the outcome of the referendums in the four regions mentioned above.

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“The Russian leader pledged to support the plebiscites in terms of security and said his government would respect whatever outcomes they produce..”

• Russia To Begin Partial Mobilization – Putin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization during an address to the nation on Wednesday morning. He said the Defense Ministry had recommended drawing military reservists into active service as the country faces a protracted conflict in Ukraine and Donbass. The measure is sensible and necessary under the circumstances, Putin said, considering that Russia is fighting “the entire Western military machine” in Ukraine. He has already signed an order for the call-up to start immediately. The move will see the armed forces draw on military reservists only, and those who have completed national service, the president added. He promised that they would be provided with additional training, along with all the benefits due to people involved in active duty.

Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu revealed some details about the mobilization in a separate statement on Wednesday. He said the ministry wanted to call to arms some 300,000 reservists, or just over 1% of Russia’s full mobilization potential. Putin has accused Kiev of backing away from peace talks with Moscow, which he said it had done on the instructions of its Western backers. Instead, the Ukrainian government has doubled down on military action, he said. “After certain compromises [with Moscow] were reached, Kiev received a de facto direct order to derail all agreements. More weapons were pumped into Ukraine. The Kiev regime deployed more gangs of international mercenaries and nationalists, military units trained to NATO standards and under de facto command of Western advisers,” Putin said.

Russian forces sent to Ukraine in February have secured a large portion of territory claimed by the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as parts of Ukraine, he said. The resulting front line stretches over 1,000km, the president pointed out. He warned the US and its allies against ramping up pressure on Moscow. Western nations are openly pursuing a military defeat of Russia, seeking to push the country into insignificance and to loot its natural wealth, he stated. “Parts of Western elites use every effort to preserve their dominance. That is why they try to block and suppress any sovereign centers of development, so that they can continue to brutally force their will on other nations and peoples, to impose their pseudo-values,” he explained. “Their goal is to weaken, disunite and ultimately destroy our nation.”

Some senior officials in NATO states have even suggested that using tactical nuclear weapons against Russian troops would be justified, according to Putin. The president stressed that Moscow would not hesitate to retaliate to such an attack with its own nuclear weapons. If the territorial integrity of our nation is threatened, we will certainly use all the means that we have to defend Russia and our people. Putin also commented on the upcoming referendums in the two Donbass republics and two regions of Ukraine currently controlled to a large extent by Russian troops. The four entities are putting to a general vote a proposal to ask Moscow to accept them as new parts of the Russian Federation, with polling scheduled to start on Friday.

The Russian leader pledged to support the plebiscites in terms of security and said his government would respect whatever outcomes they produce. Russia’s goal is to protect civilians from the Ukrainian government, which had escalated the persecution of its opponents at home and had been using terrorist tactics against people living in Russia-controlled lands, Putin said.

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“..we can expect that the Russian forces will start to degrade Ukrainian infrastructure on a large scale.”

• Russia Announces Partial Mobilization (MoA)

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said (video, Sputnik report) that 300,000 reservist will be mobilized. Conscripts and people currently studying will not be send to Ukraine. He also said that, so far, 5,937 Russian soldiers have died during the war in Ukraine. (This number does not include the militia of the DPR and LPR, or the Wagner group, who have done most of the frontline work and thus have had higher losses.) Shoigu puts Ukrainian losses at some 62,000 killed and some 50,000 wounded. (I regard this as a low estimate.) Russia’s total military reserve, people who have previously gone through military training, is 25 million. It also has the equipment to arm those forces.

There are rumors that the Ukraine is preparing for an all out offensive, mobilizing and preparing new units from Kiev and further west for one big push against the Russian and allied forces. It will take a few months to prepare for this. The Ukraine will need much more equipment and ammunition from the ‘west’, including ‘western’ tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, and has yet to train troops to be able to use it. It is likely intending to start the offensive only in spring. The call up Russia announced now may have the intent to draw Kiev into a premature launch of its general offensive. The mobilized Russian troops will take about three months to be ready for war. Russia could thus launch its own offensive during the winter season. In the meantime constant defensive work will continue to severely degrade the Ukrainian units which are currently on or near the frontlines.

With a force of an additional 300,000 troops, far beyond the 100,000 to 150,000 engaged now in the war, the Russia forces could change their tactics from the slow grind that is happening now into a larger scale maneuver war with heavy strikes into the operational depth of the Ukrainian army. Belarus, allied with the Russian Federation, is also in the process of getting ready for war. It could, as it had threatened before, cut of the supply lines from the ‘west’ into the Ukraine in the western part of that country. Should current Ukrainian attacks on civilians and infrastructure in Russia and the Donbas regions continue, we can expect that the Russian forces will start to degrade Ukrainian infrastructure on a large scale. The electricity and railway networks would be the primary targets. s

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“The celebrations that will follow these regions joining Russia are likely to be massive: Crimea 2014 times ten.”

• Squelching the Noise about the Ukraine (9Bill)

Earlier this morning, Vladimir Putin gave the order to call up army reservists. According to him, the nature and the goals of the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine remain the same. The reservists will be given contracts (they will in essence become salaried employees). Only those with relevant military experience and training will be called up. Shoigu went into further specifics: just 300.000 reservists will be called up in the first phase (roughly 1% of Russia’s total reservists), which will coincide with the normal, regularly scheduled annual training of reserves. They will be equipped, trained and sent in with the task of shoring up and straightening up the battle front. To be sure, they will also be called upon to provide security and to suppress enemy activity on both sides of the border.

Given the current configuration of the battle front, which includes a toehold on the Kharkov region, all of Lugansk, most of Donetsk, most of Zaporozhye and most of Kherson, their mission could conceivably come to include driving the Ukrainian forces out of the remainder of Donetsk and Kherson regions and perhaps setting up and maintaining a buffer zone to make it impossible for Ukrainian artillery to reach within what will soon become territory of the Russian Federation.
To this end, referenda will be held starting this Friday in all of the above formerly Ukrainian regions except for Kharkov, which is excluded. According to most recent opinion polling, the idea of joining the Russian Federation is very popular in all of the above: 94% in favor in Donetsk, 93% in Lugansk, 87% in Zaporozhye and 80% in Kherson.

And why wouldn’t these people want to be part of a peaceful, stable and prosperous state where their native language is the official language rather than stay within a failed state that has been fighting a civil war against them going on nine years? The celebrations that will follow these regions joining Russia are likely to be massive: Crimea 2014 times ten. Finally, I’d like to add a note on the Russian withdrawal from most of the Kharkov region. The region itself is of no consequence to Russia while the city of Kharkov, with its remaining population of around two million and with Ukrainian heavy armor and artillery hiding among high-rise buildings and using civilians as human shields, would be either a hard target, a humanitarian disaster, or both, were the Russians to try to conquer it. Also, although Kharkov is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking, these are some of the most heavily brainwashed, Westernized, Nazified Russian-speakers on the face of the planet and, from a Russian perspective, just not worth the bother.

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Good to see people other than Pepe Escobar cover this angle, too.

• Defensive West Smears Samarkand Summit (Lauria)

The Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO)’s summit in the Uzbek capital of Samarkand last Thursday and Friday was a world historical event for the forces creating this separate world representing the majority of humanity. Major economic deals were concluded and Beijing and Moscow further strengthened their budding alliance. In what should be a worrying sign for Washington, many of its Middle East allies, which have also rejected U.S. pressure to sanction Russia, have applied to join the SCO. For years the West rejected overtures from Russia and China to collaborate in a multipolar world. But that would mean giving up its dominant position, maintained from overtly colonial days. Instead the U.S.-led West pushes for total domination. So rather than acknowledge that its attempt to destroy Russia’s economy and bring down its government has instead led to economic chaos in the West and a threat to its global position, Western leaders are doubling down.

By sanctioning Russian energy and other vital exports, and by shutting out its financial system, the West thought Russia would collapse. Instead Moscow has found markets in the world’s most populous nations so that its currency, its industry and its banking system have survived. The Western response to this growing challenge to its hegemony was reflected in the way Western media covered the Samarkand summit. On top of the dismissive tone of its reporting came distortion of facts that misled its Western audiences to the significance of what Samarkand means to the future. The Daily Telegraph began its report, headlined, “Isolated Putin left at Beijing’s mercy as his disastrous war backfires,” with an account about how Putin was humiliated because he was left waiting for the president of Kyrgyzstan. With the headline, “Putin and Xi plot a new world order to challenge America’s might,”

The Times of London took the same line, writing of “Russia’s dependence on China since its disastrous war in Ukraine.” CNN’s report sowed seeds of doubt about the SCO’s unity, writing about the summit from Hong Kong that the “Ukraine war risks exposing regional divisions.” The New York Times report filed from Washington and Beijing, sought to portray the “limits” of “cooperation” between Russia and China. None of these reports focused on an emerging world order that is leaving the U.S. on the outside looking in. Western media instead seized on a few words uttered to try to frame India and China as criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine. They completely took out of context Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words that “today’s era is not of war.” CNN reported:

“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to have directly rebuffed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that now is not the time for war. In what was the latest in a series of setbacks for the Russian leader, Modi told him of the need to ‘move onto a path of peace’ and reminded him of the importance of ‘democracy, diplomacy and dialogue.’” After Putin told Modi during their public comments that Ukraine refuses to negotiate, Modi said, according to the English translation on India’s Foreign Ministry website, “I know that today’s era is not of war and we have spoken to you many times on the phone that democracy, diplomacy and dialogue are such things that touch the world. Today we will get a chance to discuss how we can move forward on the path of peace in the coming days.” It is clear that Modi was criticizing Ukraine for not negotiating, rather than criticizing Russia for the war.

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“The Great Reset is basically a debt default and the EU is a disaster that will fall apart.”

• The Plot to Seize Russia & Make It a NATO Vassal – Martin Armstrong (G&E)

Martin Armstrong discusses his new book based on declassified documents where in the 1990s the West, NATO, and Russian oligarchy plotted to seize Moscow, loot Russia, and takeover its natural resources. Yeltsin turned to Putin who was not a communist and is not an oligarch. The Moscow apartment bombings or propaganda surrounding them being a false flag would likely have come from Boris Berezovsky. The Great Reset is basically a debt default and the EU is a disaster that will fall apart. At this point most of the attack on Russia is related to “climate change” and to shut down fossil fuels.

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I’m not as negative as Pepe about Guterres. Whatever his faults, I think he’s honestly trying to get the fertilizer to Africa.

• The Real US Agenda In Africa Is Hegemony (Escobar)

In a rational environment, the 77th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) would discuss alleviating the trials and tribulations of the Global South, especially Africa. That won’t be the case. Like a deer caught in the geopolitical headlights, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued platitudes about a gloomy “winter of global discontent,” even as the proverbial imperial doomsayers criticized the UN’s “crisis of faith” and blasted the “unprovoked war” started by Russia. Of course the slow-motion genocide of Donbass russophone residents for eight years would never be recognized as a provocation. Guterres spoke of Afghanistan, “where the economy is in ruins and human rights are being trampled” – but he did not dare to offer context.

In Libya, “divisions continue to jeopardize the country” – once again, no context. Not to mention Iraq, where “ongoing tensions threaten ongoing stability.” Africa has 54 nations as UN members. Any truly representative UNGA meeting should place Africa’s problems at the forefront. Once again, that’s not the case. So it is left to African leaders to offer that much-needed context outside of the UN building in New York. As the only African member of the G20, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently urged the US not to “punish” the whole continent by forcing nations to demonize or sanction Russia. Washington’s introduction of legislation dubbed the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, he says, “will harm Africa and marginalize the continent.”

South Africa is a BRICS member – a concept that is anathema in the Beltway – and embraces a policy of non-alignment among world powers. An emerging 21st century version of the 1960s Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is strengthening across the Global South – and especially Africa – much to the revulsion of the US and its minions. Back at the UNGA, Guterres invoked the global fertilizer crisis – again, with no context. Russian diplomacy has repeatedly stressed that Moscow is ready to export 30 million tons of grain and over 20 million tons of fertilizer by the end of 2022. What is left unsaid in the west, is that only the importation of fertilizers to the EU is “allowed,” while transit to Africa is not.

Guterres said he was trying to persuade EU leaders to lift sanctions on Russian fertilizer exports, which directly affect cargo payments and shipping insurance. Russia’s Uralchem, for instance, even offered to supply fertilizers to Africa for free. Yet from the point of view of the US and its EU vassals, the only thing that matters is to counter Russia and China in Africa. Senegal’s President Macky Sall has remarked how this policy is leaving “a bitter taste.”

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I took three separate parts of Jorge Vilshes’ latest. Which is very long, I could have picked more pieces. Of course he helps himself by referencing one of my articles. 😉

• NATO’s “Green” Masochistic EUthanasia (Vilches)

The German political class has torn up the social contract agreed with its constituents by swiftly ignoring the historical and most successful existential partnership established with Russia since decades ago. In parallel, Anglo-inspired unelected EU bureaucrats take turns to blindly attack Russia with suicidal Wagnerian style based on hollow virtue-signalling nonsense. Now, the German Vice-Chancellor and Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck (a former mediocre poetry translator…) finally and “bitterly” has admitted that Germany — and thus all of Europe — relies on ´cheap energy from Russia´ or else it´d trigger ”the collapse of energy providers” with a dire ´Lehman moment´.

This would crash the German and European economies with widespread bankruptcies unleashed by margin calls as later explained. Thus the “green” solution now found for this Made-In-Europe mess is a deeper and longer proxy Ukraine war, über-high price inflation, $ 500 billion in subsidies for starters with more coming, new ad hoc high taxes and un-applicable price caps in a supply-driven market … with scarcity all around and “no matter what voters may think or how hard their life may get” (sic). So, European businesses will fail per the terrible damage induced all along upstream supply lines including food and fuels. As brilliantly worded by Rachel Mardsen…“The West cut itself off from its sourcing in order to play geopolitics”… and then blame Russia and supposed “extremist enemies of the state”.

So, if recent declarations from German Foreign Minister Annalena (“Kobold”) Baerbock are of any guide, we shall soon witness street crowds blossoming in Europe. With circumvolutionary style, the EU Commission is now also trying to convince everyone that Europe will become “greener” in a hurry. Actually, with its lignite-fired re-commissioned power stations – the largest ever single source of pollution – Europe will turn “browner” fast, not “greener” thus setting the worst possible example to the rest of the world.It also contradicts its supposed ´moral high ground´ Green Plan. Still, EC spokesman Eric Mamer proudly stated that “The Ukraine invasion will help us speed up our move away from fossil fuels”.

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“And just like small children do, EU leaders still won´t admit it´s bed-time.”

• 10,000 anti-Russia Sanctions (Vilches)

The EU and the US imposed crippling sanctions on Russia which now finds it impossible – for instance – to comply with energy delivery to Europe. This in turn affects the European entire industry & trade including medicines, fuels, food, heating and everything in between. So the EU complains that Russia is using this energy non-delivery ´excuse´ as a weapon. Actually, sanctions restrict or prohibit trade of anything and everything with Russia from chips to flowers, and also disconnect Russian banks from SWIFT plus block money transfers, penalize all Russian cargo insurance, prohibit Western vessels at Russian ports and access of Russian ships to Europe. So a case in point for nat-gas non-delivery is the NS1 turbines mandatory maintenance/repairs. Contractually, Siemens is the only party allowed to touch them but sanctions do not allow their access per “Contract Violations”.

Europe keeps playing Russian roulette with itself insisting on the game plan of (1) provoking and supporting armed conflict with Russia (2) confiscating Russian assets (2) applying crippling sanctions on everything ´Russian´ (3) betting the farm on militarily winning the Ukraine war — how ??? (4) attempting a regime change in Russia (5) benefit from the spoils (6) simultaneously require Russians to provide whatever the EU may need, or else…??? (7) improvise highly dangerous experiments with well-proven European business models and European livelihoods at stake.

And just like small children do, EU leaders still won´t admit it´s bed-time. So now all that´s left for Main Street Europe is not winning anything other than freezing temperatures, far less food and fuels, ultra high price inflation of anything and everything, and plenty of hardship and discontent. But them all just keep re-arranging the chairs on the deck of an EU sinking Titanic while the orchestra enthusiastically keeps on playing one Strauss vals after another. True enough, Europe is trying its best to unnecessarily divorce Russia. But per Bloomberg – not exactly a pro-Russian mouthpiece — the EU sanctions and new taxes badly hurt Europe while Russia keeps ever improving its geopolitics and finances.

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“..as per the German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck´s own words, “just expect the worst“. Meaning areas with no energy, no fuels, no power at any price, period. Or as plain Germans would have it, just expect “kaputt”.

• Europe Implodes (Vilches)

Very soon EU sanctions on Russia will start consuming the Europe we know with an ever more self-sufficient and growing Russia just watching the unfortunate scene. For instance, German SMB “Mittelstand” (99% of German GDP) will bankrupt or strain badly. The fact remains that no one has explained exactly what is to be finally gained with the EUthanizing sanctions and new taxes which are not really hurting Russia but are very seriously hurting Europeans and — indirectly — the rest of the world. “Russia rakes in more oil revenue than ever” says the Wall Street Journal by exporting almost as much crude as it did before the conflict in Ukraine… but at much higher prices.

“Now Russia has new buyers, new means of payment, new traders and new ways of financing exports”. By the way, current electricity prices in Germany are already almost ten times higher than a year ago — and keep rising – while the EU’s energy market is rattled by fears over whether highly unstable power plants will be able to provide enough electricity this winter. So it´s not just a matter of even higher prices as grid “wherewithal” is at stake with simply not enough energy available. Unmanageable price inflation is thus unstoppable. From fertilizer to aluminum production and every single commodity in between are all being seriously hindered by current ( self-inflicted ) truly soaring European energy costs.

It´s simple, and as per the German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck´s own words, “just expect the worst“. Meaning areas with no energy, no fuels, no power at any price, period. Or as plain Germans would have it, just expect “kaputt”. So this “new” German and European business model does not impress or fly well. And even on the basis of self-righteous exceptionalistic ideologies and newly-found virtuous ´moral´ arguments, current immolation of defenseless Europeans is a nonsensical price to be payed with this freezing green checkmate. Because there are no quick, ready-made, valid replacements of many / most Russian produce Europe depends upon, there is no real grass-roots political support either, and politicians cannot expect people to go along under the extreme hardship conditions soon to come.

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The central banks are not in control.

• Federal Reserve Chair Announces Another 75 Point Rate Hike (CTH)

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced another 75-point increase in federal interest rates today. This is the third consecutive 0.75 percentage point increase. Additionally, Fed policymakers have pledged to continue raising rates as high as 4.6% in 2023. While Powell walked through his reasoning to continue targeting inflation by lowering consumer demand, not once in any of his remarks did he mention energy policy driving up the cost of materials and goods. The Great Pretending continues.:

The Fed chair is trying to manage the economic policy transition by reducing economic activity to match intentionally diminished energy supplies. Lowering economic activity drops demand for energy. Unfortunately, as admitted by Powell on August 26, 2022, in Jackson Hole, this means a period of “some pain” for Americans as the central banks join together in an effort to lower consumption. What does “some pain” mean? It means lower incomes, higher prices, lowered standards of living and more scarce resources. During this transition to owning nothing and being happy about it, the pain is your wealth being stripped as the economy is intentionally diminished.


We will not be able to afford much; we won’t be able to afford the foods we want; we will not be able to purchase anything except the essentials, and those essentials will cost much more; we won’t be able to vacation, travel, or enjoy recreational activities; we won’t be able to afford any indulgences; but at the end of the process, we will learn to live more meager existences based on lowered expectations needed for sustaining the planet. Pay no attention to the elites who don’t have those concerns, comrade.

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“..Albion is really in squeaky bum time…”

• The European Central Bank’s Zimbabwean Model (Hayes)

Though the function of European, German, Japanese and Zimbabwean central banks is to enable the credibility and efficiency of the financial side of their respective economies so that the real side of their economies may achieve the nation’s broader macro economic goals, NATO’s central banks have obviously and disastrously abandoned those tasks for reasons this article makes apparent. Because Zimbabwe, like Germany’s Weimar Republic before it, has reached annual inflation rates of 90 sextillion per cent a year, Europe should not be emulating the financial and economic basket case of Harare. Whatever about Zimbabwe, Germany has been famously down this road before and, in a total reversal of earlier post-war policies, seems determined to traverse it again. The European Central Bank, based in Frankfurt, is printing euros as quickly as their colleagues in Zimbabwe are printing Zimbabwean dollars, as the Confederates printed their Greybacks and as Weimar printed their famously worthless marks.

Although Weimar’s woes were many, two of the most pertinent were that the Kaiser borrowed immensely to fund his armies, whose victories were supposed to enable him to repay his nation’s debts, and that the Western allies bled defeated Germany’s resources dry, thus opening the way for Herr Hitler once Weimar fell. Europe’s central banks are following this very policy today. They are doling out billions to ease energy bills, to bribe farmers and, most notoriously, to feed the money laundering Ponzi scheme that is Zelensky’s Kiev junta. The money supply, at more than 15 trillion euros, is at record levels and real interest rates are in negative terrain, pauperizing pensioners but failing to kick start their fuel starved economies. Inflation,.Germany’s bane, is again on the march as too far much money is in search of far too few bags of fire wood; and English toilet paper has increased in price by 50% in the last few months, Albion is really in squeaky bum time.

As the European Central Bank’s leaders presently have no other card to play, they must think their printing presses are enough to prevail in Ukraine and to allow Europeans to both eat and heat themselves this winter. Not only is that wishful thinking on the part of ECB President Christine Lagarde, the ‘multi cultural’ Parisian, who previously fronted the IMF and who held senior Ministerial positions in the French government but it betrays her fundamental ignorance about monetary policy. The main aim of the euro was to have the stability of the German mark and the Dutch guilder and not to be as volatile as Lagarde’s French franc, which was devalued four times since 1945. Unlike Lagarde, the Central Bank of the Federal Republic of Germany, along with that of Japan, seemed to have understood monetary policy, which is best seen as being like the throttle of a motorbike which must, when necessary, allow more fuel to enter the economic engine but which also must not flood it by drowning it in Zimbabwean dollars, French francs, Confederate Greybacks or Lagardean euros.

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“Today, there is no optimal interest rate that will restore the balance between money demand and money supply ..”

• How the West Poisoned Its Money (Varoufakis)

Negative prices make sense for bads, not goods. When a factory wants to remove toxic waste, it charges a negative price for it: its managers pay someone to get rid of it. But when central banks begin to treat money like car manufacturers treat spent sulfuric acid, or nuclear power stations their radioactive wastewater, one knows that something is rotten in the kingdom of financialized capitalism. Some commentators now hope that Western money is being purified in the flames of inflation and interest-rate hikes. But inflation is not driving the poison out of the West’s money system. After more than a decade of addiction to poisoned money, no obvious detoxification method presents itself. Inflation today is not the same beast the West faced in the 1970s and early 1980s.

This time around, it threatens labor, capital, and governments in ways that it could not 50 years ago. Back then, labor was organized enough to demand wage increases that averted a cost-of-living crisis, and neither states nor private corporations relied on free money to keep going. Today, there is no optimal interest rate that will restore the balance between money demand and money supply that does not trigger a massive wave of private and public bankruptcy. That is the long-term price of poisoned money. The US government faces the impossible dilemma of curbing domestic inflation and forcing Corporate America and many friendly governments into a solvency crisis that will threaten America’s own stability.

Things are far worse in the eurozone, where policymakers refused to do the obvious once Europe’s banks had failed after 2008: establish a proper federation’s foundation – a fiscal union. Instead, they let the European Central Bank do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. Only by poisoning its own money could the ECB keep the euro show on the road. Today, the ECB owns huge quantities of Italian, Spanish, French, even Greek debt that it can no longer justify holding as a means of achieving its inflation target, but which it cannot renounce without calling the euro’s existence into question.

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The archdruid finishes off nuclear power.

• Beyond the Peak (Greer)

Coal had two world-changing effects. The first, the one everyone thinks of, is that it could be used to power steam engines, replacing wind, water, and muscle power first in dozens, then in hundreds, and finally in thousands of uses. The second, less widely known but just as dramatic, is that it could be used via the Bessemer process to produce steel in previously unimaginable amounts. Steel plus steam power drove the industrial revolution, sent railroads scything across continents and steamships driving through oceans, and transformed human life in a galaxy of ways.

Then, about the time coal reserves started to run short, petroleum (and its gaseous form, natural gas) came into general use. More chemically complex than coal, petroleum had even more net energy, and shifted the industrial revolution into overdrive. Airplanes, automobiles, plastics, industrial lubricants, the entire modern chemical industry—the list just keeps on going. Lewis Mumford, one of the twentieth century’s most insightful students of energy and civilization, argued that the distinction between coal-fired technologies and petroleum-fueled technologies was significant enough to define a change of eras: he called the coal period the Paleotechnic Era, and the petroleum period the Neotechnic Era.

The assumption all along was that petroleum would eventually run short and have to be replaced by something else, leading to a third technic era. By 1950 nearly everyone assumed that what would replace it was nuclear power. You have to read books from that time to get a sense of just how inevitable the coming nuclear era was thought to be. Even avant-garde ecological thinkers treated nuclear power as the next inevitable thing. Pick up any of the works of Paolo Soleri, Frank Lloyd Wright’s most innovative student, who imagined humanity settling in gigantic city-sized buildings called arcologies so that the natural world could be allowed to thrive elsewhere. Each of his arcologies was supposed to be powered by its own nuclear power plant.

That, in turn, was where the dream ran off the rails, because it turned out that nuclear power doesn’t pay for itself. It’s not economically viable, because its net energy is so low. Thus it wasn’t Chernobyl or Fukushima Daiichi that brought the nuclear dream to a grinding halt, it was a long series of financial disasters suffered by utilities that got suckered into the nuclear hoopla, above all the bankruptcy of the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, unfondly remembered as “Whoops!” by the many thousands who lost money on it).

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“If Republicans take the House as expected in the midterms, the Democrats now effectively took ownership of Hunter — a political proprietary claim that few would relish.”

• House Democrats Take Ownership of Hunter (Turley)

House Democrats on the Oversight Committee took a vote on Tuesday that could come back to haunt them. All of the 23 Democrats voted not to inquire into the influence peddling scheme of Hunter Biden and the Biden family. Rep. James Comer (R-KY) proposed a “resolution of inquiry” in light of growing evidence of not just a possible multimillion dollar influence peddling operation by Hunter and his uncle, but the knowledge of his father, President Joe Biden. At a minimum, it appears that President Biden’s repeated public denials of any knowledge of these dealings is false. Yet, the Democrats blocked any inquiry into the corruption. If Republicans take the House as expected in the midterms, the Democrats now effectively took ownership of Hunter — a political proprietary claim that few would relish.

The vote comes after 33 senators asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel in the matter, a call that I have repeatedly made in prior columns for over two years. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, called the resolution a “nakedly partisan effort” and accused Republicans of being “obsessed” with Hunter Biden. The vote, however, reveals a blind avoidance by Democrats of a corrupt scheme that brought in millions for the Biden family and may have benefitted the President himself. Even if no criminal acts are charged, the foreign dealings of Hunter and his uncle were clearly corrupt and leveraged access to Joe Biden to acquire windfall payments from governments and their surrogates. There is no good faith basis to refuse to investigate such a scheme designed to influence U.S. policy and policymakers.

Why wouldn’t the Congress want to know if there was a multimillion dollar influence peddling scheme reaching the very top of our government, including allegations of the involvement of foreign intelligence figures? The vote, however, does bring a modicum of clarity at long last. The House Democrats are now on record as actively blocking efforts to investigate this massive influence peddling scheme. The implications of that vote will likely become more clear if the House switches hands after the midterm elections. The Democratic members are not alone in such a reckoning. The mainstream media has been clearly moving to re-position itself in anticipation of possible criminal charges after years of blocking or downplaying the story.

Read more …

I honestly don’t understand how anyone can promote more vaccines after the New England Journal of Medicine reported Covid Vaccine Destroys Natural Immunity just last week.

• EU Health Regulator Says Covid Pandemic Not Over (R.)

An official at the European Union’s drugs regulator said on Tuesday the Covid-19 pandemic was not over, contradicting US President Joe Biden, and that a planned vaccination campaign in the region during the cold season was key to fighting it. “We in Europe still consider the pandemic as ongoing and it’s important that member states prepare for rollout of the vaccines and especially the adaptive vaccines to prevent further spread of this disease in Europe,” the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Chief Medical Officer Steffen Thirstrup told a media briefing, referring to vaccines targeting specific strains of the virus. He was asked to comment on Biden’s remark in an interview broadcast on Sunday that “the pandemic is over”. “I cannot obviously answer why President Biden came to that conclusion,” Thirstrup said.


The World Health Organization has said the pandemic remains a global emergency but the end could be in sight if countries use the tools at their disposal. During the media briefing, EMA officials reaffirmed a call by the agency’s Executive Director Emer Cooke made last week in a Reuters Next Newsmaker interview that people in Europe should take whatever Covid-19 booster is available and recommended to them in the coming months. Apart from the original Covid vaccines, the EMA has in recent weeks endorsed a number of vaccines adapted to the Omicron variant of the virus for use as booster shots to ease the burden from a feared surge in infections during autumn and winter in Europe. The EMA’s head of vaccines strategy, Marco Cavaleri, said the agency was also looking into the use of the adapted shots as a primary course of vaccination and that there were discussions on the types of data that could support such an approval.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Fox MV

 

 

Sociopath
https://twitter.com/i/status/1572284911268003840

 

 

 

 

Hasty

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 7 2022

Aug 072022
 
 August 7, 2022  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


Edward Hopper Ground swell 1939

 

• Vaccine Deaths Outnumber Covid Deaths in US Households (DS)
• Russian MIL Declares Ukraine Origin of C19 (Clandestine)
• US Prepares New Weapons Package For Ukraine (RT)
• Pentagon Chiefs’ Calls To China Go Unanswered Amid Taiwan Crisis (Pol.)
• Erdogan’s Diplomacy With Russia Alarms West – FT (RT)
• Putin Says EU Should Thank Turkey (RT)
• 100s Of New Mines Required To Meet 2030 Battery Metals Demand — IEA (Mining)
• Sanctions On Russia ‘Irresponsible’, Adviser To Brazil’s Lula Says (RT)
• Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of Fraud: Countersuit (ET)
• Elon Musk Says He Will Buy Twitter On One Condition (RT)
• VP Joe Biden Met With Two Chinese Energy Execs In The West Wing (DM)
• EDF Cuts Output At Nuclear Power Plants As French Rivers Get Too Warm (G.)
• China’s July Coal Imports Surge 24% To Meet Peak Power Load (R.)

 

 

 

 

Roger Waters
https://twitter.com/i/status/1555989512353890304

 

 

 

 

MacGregor China
https://twitter.com/i/status/1555974674357440512

 

 

 

 

Haditsch

 

 

BREAKING: Alex Jones has been ordered to pay an extra $45 million in punitive damages by a Texas Jury.


Robert Barnes @barnes_law: By law in Texas, this is reduced to $750K per plaintiff, so it’s actually $1.5M not $45M. Also, like everything else in the trial, a product of a court that denied Jones any evidence on his side or any witnesses at this stage, and should be set aside by Texas Supremes.

 

 

 

 

Based on Steve Kirsch studies/polls. How can you justify a mandate is the vaccines kill more people than the disease they “protect” from?

• Vaccine Deaths Outnumber Covid Deaths in US Households (DS)

Polls of the U.S. public continue to show that up to twice as many Americans have lost a household member to a Covid vaccine injury as have lost one to Covid. The pooled results of five surveys of the American public, now totalling over 2,500 people, show that while 4.4% of respondents reported that someone in their household had died from COVID-19, 8.9% said someone had died as a result of Covid vaccination. The results also showed that 8.6% said they had been injured by their vaccination, 4.9% that they had sought medical help and 3.2% that they had been hospitalised, while 3.6% said that as a result of vaccination they were no longer able to work a full day or at all.

These are percentages of all respondents. If we look only at the 74.0% vaccinated with at least one dose then the figures, as a proportion of vaccinated persons, are 11.7% injured, 6.7% needing medical help, 4.4% hospitalised and 4.8% unable to work. While these figures are self-reported and there is no control group, since the unvaccinated were not asked about adverse events, they are still alarmingly high. The results also showed that, among those who reported a Covid death in their household, more than twice as many reported that it occurred after the person was vaccinated than before (2.8% vs 1.2%). The proportion who said they had contracted Covid before their vaccination (13.1%) was very similar to the proportion who said they contracted it afterwards (11.7%). These figures are not indicative of a highly effective vaccine against either infection or death.

The people polled were randomly selected, representative samples of the U.S. public, of whom 74.0% were vaccinated, so the samples were not inherently biased towards or against the reporting of vaccine problems, though as in all opinion polls (especially online ones) there may be an issue of self-selection bias.

Read more …

FYI

• Russian MIL Declares Ukraine Origin of C19 (Clandestine)

New briefing from Chief of Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defence Forces, General Igor Kirillov, on military biological activities of the United States in the territory of Ukraine. The Russian MIL have been studying biological samples from surrendered Ukrainian soldiers, and what they have been finding is beyond disturbing. Approximately 20% of them carrying West Nile pathogens, which were being studied “by the Pentagon as part of the Ukrainian UP-4 and UP-8 projects”. Suggesting that Ukrainian soldiers are being subject to involuntary biological experimentation and exposure to biological weapons (think Nuremberg). In addition to carrying pathogens, nearly all of the surrendered Ukrainian soldiers carried traces of a wide variety of narcotics and opioids, including Meth and Codeine.

Russia were sure to remind us of the Nazi’s usage of methamphetamines in WW2. I covered this 2 weeks ago, when the left-wing media tried to spin this reality as some sort of X-men mutant conspiracy theory. No, they are just Nazis, and historically, Nazis use drugs. Particularly as an advantage in war. Russia goes on to cite that this methamphetamine Ukraine are using, Pervitin, was also used by US soldiers during Vietnam and Korea. It’s designed to reduce the psycho-emotional burdens of war. However, an intended side effect is excessive aggression, which Russia alleges is one of the main factors for the Nationalist Ukrainian forces displaying “extreme cruelty” to civilians and the shelling of their own people in Donbas. Ukraine are using mind-numbing agents on their forces to make them more susceptible to carrying out heinous acts.

Next, we find perhaps the most explosive slide to date, in which Russia FINALLY comes out and DIRECTLY accuses the US of being responsible for the creation and release of Covid-19. What I have been saying from the beginning, is that this all leads to C-19, which will be the nail in the coffin and the red-pill that wakes up the world. The backlash the US are facing from Russia and the rest of Eastern world, is directly because the world found out THE UNITED STATES CREATED COVID. Specifically the “DNC/Liberal Globalists”, as the Russians allege. Not Trump. Russia clarifies they have record of over 16,000 biological samples, including blood and serum samples, transported from Ukraine to the US, Georgia, European countries.

[..] In conclusion, Russia have now DIRECTLY accused the DNC Globalists of: -creating and releasing new variants of Coronaviruses, and now Monkeypox, intentionally, for the purposes of political control and world domination. -using non-consensual experimentation on citizens of the world to create genome specific biological weapons for ethnic cleansing. -creation and usage of narcotics, such as methamphetamines, on Ukrainian forces to dehumanize them in order to carry out heinous crimes against humanity on civilians in Ukraine. Russia just confirmed my overall narrative; that the war in Ukraine is backlash for the Deep State’s creation and usage of C19. We are already in WW3 and C19 was the first weapon fired. The fact that Russia have now come out and openly called this spade a spade… suggests we are approaching the finish line. Russia claims final dossier will be complete in “Autumn”.

Read more …

Another $700 million straight down the drain.

• US Prepares New Weapons Package For Ukraine (RT)

The US government is reportedly preparing its largest weapons transfer to Ukraine to date, with officials ready to authorize another $1 billion in military aid, including advanced rocket and missile platforms and additional ammunition. The new aid package could be announced as soon as next week, Reuters reported on Friday, citing three unnamed officials. It would bring the total US security assistance to Kiev to nearly $10 billion since Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24. While the officials said President Joe Biden has yet to formally sign off on the transfer, the current proposal would see $1 billion in arms shipped to Kiev, including additional munitions for the HIMARS rocket system, NASAMS surface-to-air missiles, and up to 50 M113 armored personnel carriers, allegedly the ‘medical’ variant.


A separate military aid package to Ukraine was announced on Monday, worth around $550 million, and also featured HIMARS rockets. Washington has so far sent a total of 16 HIMARS systems to Ukraine, longer-range platforms capable of striking targets inside Russian territory. Though Moscow has claimed to have eliminated some of the weapons from the battlefield, US military officials have disputed the Russian account, insisting Kiev’s HIMARS remain intact. The new massive arms transfer also comes after a Pentagon decision to allow US military personnel to treat wounded Ukrainian troops at a large US-run hospital in western Germany, though the logistics for that arrangement remain unclear, as the facility is more than 1,000 miles away from Ukraine’s capital and even further from active battle zones in the Donbass region.

Read more …

Thanks Nancy.

• Pentagon Chiefs’ Calls To China Go Unanswered Amid Taiwan Crisis (Pol.)

Top Chinese military officials have not returned multiple calls from their American counterparts this week as a crisis erupted in the Pacific over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, according to three people with knowledge of the attempts. Beijing’s ghosting of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley comes as China continues launching missiles and positioning warships and aircraft in unprecedented military drills around Taiwan. Officials and experts say China’s silence is a shortsighted and reckless move that increases the risk of escalation in an already tense situation.

“If the [Chinese military] is operating more aggressively, and in closer proximity to U.S. forces with greater frequency, we’d need these mechanisms even more to promote a safe operating environment,” said Randy Schriver, who served as the top Pentagon official for Asia policy in the Trump administration. U.S. military leaders strive to maintain open lines of communication even with potential adversaries such as China to prevent accidents and other miscalculations that could turn into a full-blown conflict. But the last call Milley had with his Chinese counterpart, Chief of the Joint Staff Gen. Li Zuocheng, was on July 7, the Pentagon said. The two spoke by secure video teleconference about the need to maintain open lines of communication, as well as reducing risk, according to a readout from Milley’s office.

Austin, meanwhile, met in person with Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe in June on the sideline of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. “The secretary has repeatedly emphasized the importance of fully open lines of communication with China’s defense leaders to ensure that we can avoid any miscalculations, and that remains true,” Todd Breasseale, the Pentagon’s acting press secretary, told POLITICO in an email. China on Friday announced that it was halting certain official dialogues between senior-level U.S. military commanders, including the regional commanders, as well as talks on maritime safety. The announcement does not specifically apply to Austin and Milley’s counterparts, and officials said they are still open to communication between those leaders.

Read more …

“..a NATO member since 1952 and an EU applicant since 1987..”

• Erdogan’s Diplomacy With Russia Alarms West – FT (RT)

Western officials are “increasingly alarmed” that Turkey, a NATO ally and prospective EU member, is deepening its cooperation with Russia, the Financial Times has reported. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently returned from Sochi vowing to boost trade after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Six unnamed Western officials told the newspaper that they were “concerned”about the plans of Russia and Turkey to cooperate on trade and energy. One EU official said that Brussels was monitoring relations between Ankara and Moscow “more and more closely,” given how Turkey seems to be “increasingly” becoming a platform for trade with Russia. Following a four-hour meeting with Putin on Friday, Erdogan welcomed Russia’s role in building a nuclear power plant in Turkey.

The two nations aim for bilateral trade turnover of $100 billion, and are cooperating against terrorism and toward peace in Libya and Syria. Putin pledged that Russia would supply Turkey with oil, gas and coal “without any interruptions,” after the two leaders agreed that Ankara would pay for some of this gas in rubles. Another official told the newspaper that Erdogan’s behavior is “very opportunistic,”adding that “we are trying to make the Turks pay attention to our concerns.” Although a NATO member since 1952 and an EU applicant since 1987, Turkey has broken with both blocs on several occasions, most recently over the conflict in Ukraine.

Erdogan has described his diplomacy with Kiev and Moscow as “balanced,” and has refused to sanction Russia over its military operation. Turkey is the only NATO country not to impose such penalties. Erdogan also took the opportunity to host peace talks between the countries in March, which ultimately bore no fruit. Since then, however, he has won acclaim for overseeing talks that led to the resumption of grain shipments across the Black Sea from Ukrainian ports. As the Financial Times’ article went online on Saturday, the first ship carrying Ukrainian corn arrived in Istanbul for inspection by Turkish, Ukrainian, Russian and UN officials.

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“The Turkish Stream, unlike all other routes of our hydrocarbon supplies, works properly, works smoothly, without any failures.”

• Putin Says EU Should Thank Turkey (RT)

Turkey has ensured a reliable supply of Russian natural gas to Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, adding that European nations should be grateful to Ankara for that. During a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi, Putin named the TurkStream pipeline as one of the most important arteries for delivering Russian gas to Europe. The Russian president praised the reliability of the pipeline, for which the Europeans should be grateful. “The Turkish Stream, unlike all other routes of our hydrocarbon supplies, works properly, works smoothly, without any failures. […] I think our European partners should be grateful to Turkey for ensuring uninterrupted transit of our gas to the European market,” Putin said.


TurkStream consists of two parallel lines running under the Black Sea from Russia and joins Turkey’s gas transportation network and sends Russian gas onward to Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary. The route has been unaffected by the developments around Ukraine and the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the EU but rejected by Turkey. The main pipeline between Russia and the EU – Nord Stream 1, which carries gas to Germany – has been operating at 20% capacity recently due to equipment issues caused by sanctions. Meanwhile, additional routes via Ukraine’s gas transportation network have been restricted by Kiev. Deliveries via the Yamal-Europe pipeline continue, although Gazprom stopped using the Polish leg of the pipeline in May due to sanctions.

Read more …

Included the Charles Vance video again. It’s good.

• 100s Of New Mines Required To Meet 2030 Battery Metals Demand — IEA (Mining)

Global battery and minerals supply chains need to expand ten-fold to meet projected critical minerals needs by 2030, a report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) has found. The report concludes the industry needs to build 50 more lithium mines, 60 more nickel mines and 17 more cobalt mines by 2030 to meet global net carbon emissions goals. Pressure on the supply of critical materials will continue to mount as road transport electrification expands to meet net-zero ambitions. According to the IEA, demand for electric vehicle (EV) batteries will increase from around 340 GWh today to over 3500 GWh by 2030.

“Additional investments are needed in the short-term, particularly in mining, where lead times are much longer than for other parts of the supply chain. In some cases requiring more than a decade from initial feasibility studies to production, and then several more years to reach nominal production capacity,” the report reads. The projected mineral supply until the end of the 2020s is in line with the demand for EV batteries in the ‘stated policies scenario’ of the IEA’s world energy model. But the supply of some minerals, such as lithium, would need to rise by up to one-third by 2030 to satisfy the pledges and announcements for EV batteries in the ‘announced pledges scenario (APS) of the same energy model.


“For example, demand for lithium – the commodity with the largest projected demand-supply gap – is projected to increase sixfold to 500 kilotonnes by 2030 in the APS, requiring the equivalent of 50 new average-sized mines,” according to the report. By 2030, nickel is facing the largest absolute demand increase as high-nickel chemistries are the current dominant cathode for EVs and are expected to remain so. For cobalt, the opposite is true as battery makers continue to thrift to lower cobalt content chemistries (and even potentially cobalt-free chemistries by 2030) to reduce costs and due to environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns. [..] “For the Announced Pledges Scenario, 60 nickel and 17 cobalt new mines are required in 2030, (assuming average annual mine production capacity of 38,000 tonnes for nickel and 7,000 tonnes for cobalt).”

Read more …

“..if he is elected, “Brazil will again become a protagonist on the international stage and we will prove that it’s possible to have a better world.”

• Sanctions On Russia ‘Irresponsible’, Adviser To Brazil’s Lula Says (RT)

Celso Amorim, Brazil’s former foreign minister and current foreign policy adviser to presidential frontrunner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has condemned the West’s sanctions on Russia and said that should Lula take office, Brazil would chart a different course. In an interview with Bloomberg published on Friday, Amorim claimed that the West’s response to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine – sanctions on Russia and billions of dollars worth of weapons for Ukraine – have made nuclear war a real possibility. “For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis we see articles about the risk of nuclear weapons published on a weekly basis,” he said, arguing that “it’s irresponsible not to seek peace.”

Amorim’s argument mirrors that of Lula himself. Back in May the former Brazilian leader toldTime magazine that he sees Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as equally responsible for the conflict in Ukraine, and condemned Washington for encouraging him to oppose Russia. “The United States has a lot of political clout. And Biden could have avoided [the conflict], not incited it,” Lula argued at the time. From the perspective of the US, Amorim questioned the logic of driving Russia into a deeper partnership with China, another economic and military rival of America. “I have nothing against China,” he stated, adding that both are part of the BRICS group, but said that he “can’t understand the interest of the US in strengthening the China-Russia relationship.”

This relationship aside, Amorim told Bloomberg that an economy as large as Russia’s is “too big and strategic” to isolate, and that Lula’s administration would not pursue such policies if the two-term leftist president is elected in October. Speaking to Time in May, Lula said that “many different countries” are having to “foot the bill” for Washington’s hardline anti-Russia policies, and that if he is elected, “Brazil will again become a protagonist on the international stage and we will prove that it’s possible to have a better world.” Lula is currently polling 11 points ahead of incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, according to an aggregate compiled by the US-based Americas Society.

Read more …

Hard to read how the judge will see this.

• Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of Fraud: Countersuit (ET)

Elon Musk in a countersuit has accused Twitter executives of fraudulently presenting an undercount of fake users, known as bots. Twitter in July sued Musk for withdrawing from a $44 billion acquisition agreement, alleging he breached the agreement. In the counter-filing, entered under seal last month and obtained by The Epoch Times on Aug. 5, Musk says he relied on statements from Twitter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about key components of the company, such as the percentage of fake and spam accounts and moderation practices. But once Musk entered the agreement, he found that the technology company refused to provide access to the company’s books and records to verify the information. “The more Twitter evaded even simple inquiries, the more the Musk Parties grew to suspect that Twitter had misled them,” the countersuit says.


One key statistic: 238 million monetizable daily active users (users who actually see ads on the platform and thus would be considered monetizable). But that number is an overcount because there are more false and spam accounts on the platform than Twitter says, according to the filing. There are just 173 million monetizable users and most ads are shown to less than 16 million, it says. Twitter has said under 5 percent of its users are bots. Musk, in a meeting in May, attempted to understand how Twitter reached that percentage. He “was astonished to learn just how meager Twitter’s processes were,” the countersuit says. Musk learned that human reviewers look at a sample of just 100 accounts, and that Twitter executives weren’t able to say how the accounts in the sample were selected.

Read more …

Clear that Twitter hasn’t been forthcoming with files. Less clear is if they had to.

• Elon Musk Says He Will Buy Twitter On One Condition (RT)

Billionaire Elon Musk would go through with the deal to buy Twitter if the social media platform demonstrates how it checks the authenticity of user accounts, Musk wrote on Twitter on Saturday. Responding to a comment by another user, Musk said the deal to buy Twitter “should proceed on original terms” if the platform shares with him their method for sampling accounts to determine they are genuine. “If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms. However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then [the deal] should not [proceed],” he continued, referring to the regulatory documents that companies must submit to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the sake of transparency and to provide information on operations.


Musk previously warned he would personally authenticate 100 randomly selected accounts on the platform. In April, the entrepreneur announced his intention to purchase the social media platform, of which he is an avid supporter and frequent user, for $44 billion. Then in May, Musk said he was trying to obtain information that would confirm that fake accounts and those used to send mass advertising messages on the platform comprise less than 5% of the total number of Twitter users. In early July, Musk’s lawyers notified Twitter that he no longer wished to go through with the deal because the company had failed to provide him with this information. Twitter, although initially reluctant to agree to Musk’s acquisition plans, filed a lawsuit against him on July 12 in an attempt to compel him to complete the purchase. On July 29, Musk filed a counterclaim against the company

Read more …

A new scandal every day.

• VP Joe Biden Met With Two Chinese Energy Execs In The West Wing (DM)

Two Chinese businessmen with ties to Hunter Biden’s company met with Joe Biden at the White House and followed up with the VP’s son days later with a fawning email and invitation, records reveal. The meeting is the fifteenth to be uncovered between Joe and businessmen linked to Hunter. Executives for Chinese energy company Wanxiang secured a meeting with the vice president in the West Wing in July 2014 with just one day’s notice, according to White House visitor logs. A client of Hunter’s company Seneca Global Advisors partnered with Wanxiang in 2012 on a $1.25billion natural gas plant in China. The ceremony for the signing of the deal between Hunter’s client GreatPoint Energy and Wanxiang was attended by then Chinese vice president Xi Jinping.

Wanxiang is a major Chinese company, and also partnered with the North Korean state for a giant copper mine. Through his firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, Hunter also invested in a car company, Fisker, that was later bought by Wanxiang. After the company went bankrupt in 2013, Hunter was listed as a creditor on its filings. He bought one of its electric sports cars for $142,300. According to the White House visitor logs, Wanxiang America president Pin Ni met with Joe on July 25, 2014. Four days later, Ni emailed Hunter offering help servicing his Fisker sports car. ‘Last Friday when we visited DC, I heard that your Fisker is out of order and could not get serviced. Sorry,’ Ni wrote. ‘It would be our honor to get your Fisker fixed… I would like to give you a call to see what we could do as next step. ‘It would be our great honor to welcome you to visit Fisker or Wanxiang at any time.’

Joining Ni for the White House visit was Wanxiang Resources Co. president Youhong Han. Records show his meeting was at 11am and he left at 12.15pm, after scheduling the meeting with VP just the previous day. Han, 57, appears in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ offshore leaks database, with a British Virgin Islands company called Elegant Sky Investments Limited that has a registered address in Shanghai. Emails between Hunter and his business partners show them monitoring reporting around the $1.25billion Wanxiang-GreatPoint deal. Wanxiang bought Fisker in February 2014. The luxury hybrid cars it makes were bought by celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber.

Read more …

When it rains it pours.

• EDF Cuts Output At Nuclear Power Plants As French Rivers Get Too Warm (G.)

The French energy supplier EDF is temporarily reducing output at its nuclear power stations on the Rhône and Garonne rivers as heatwaves push up river temperatures, restricting its ability to use river water to cool the plants. The majority-state-owned company, Europe’s biggest producer of nuclear energy, said it would extend output cuts at several power stations on the two rivers as the hot spell continues – but that a minimum level of output would be maintained to keep the grid steady. EDF warned of potential output cuts at its nuclear power plants Tricastin, St Alban and Golfech in coming days due to high temperatures in the Rhône and Garonne rivers. It started imposing production restrictions in mid-July at Tricastin, St Alban and Bugey on the Rhône and Blayais at the mouth of the Garonne amid sweltering temperatures.

A spokesperson told the Guardian that the company was lowering production “for a few hours” where possible but not shutting the reactors completely. After the 2003 heatwave, France’s nuclear safety authority (ASN) set temperature and river flow limits beyond which power stations must reduce their production, to ensure the water used to cool the plants will not harm wildlife when it is released back into the rivers. Temperatures in southern France are expected to reach 40C over the next two days, according to the forecaster Météo-France. Since 2000, production losses due to high river temperatures and low river flows have represented an average of 0.3% of annual production.

However, half of EDF’s 56 nuclear reactors are offline due to planned maintenance and work to repair corrosion which was delayed by the pandemic, just as Europe faces an energy crunch following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a result of the maintenance work, EDF estimates its power output this year will be the lowest in more than three decades. The company issued its fourth profit warning of the year last Thursday when it reported a first-half loss of €5.3bn. The French government, which owns 84% of EDF, is in the process of buying out minority shareholders to take full control of the business.

Read more …

Maybe this happens every year?

• China’s July Coal Imports Surge 24% To Meet Peak Power Load (R.)

China’s coal imports in July rose by nearly a quarter from June to near the highest levels so far this year as power generators increased purchases to provide for peak summer electricity demand. Arrivals of the fuel totaled 23.52 million tonnes last month, up sharply from 18.98 million tonnes in June but 22% lower than a year earlier, data issued by the General Administration of Customs showed on Sunday. Over the first seven months of the year, China imported 138.52 million tonnes of coal, down 18% on the same period of 2021. Daily coal consumption in major coastal regions hovered around 2.2 million tonnes in late July, a similar level to last year, according to Shanghai Shipping Exchange.


A temperature spike across the country drove up the use of air conditioning. The government has vowed to avoid power rationing this year and has urged coal-burning power generators, which supply about 60% of the country’s electricity, to enlarge coal stocks. Data tracked by Refinitiv showed China’s seaborne coal imports from Russia would hit a record high of 7.38 million tonnes in July. However, analysts have expected coal demand will soon begin to ease as temperatures moderate, while industrial activity remains sluggish amid Covid-19 restrictions.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Maher: Fat celebrattion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coke Machine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1555919490017288195

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 20 2022

Apr 202022
 
 April 20, 2022  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  74 Responses »


Andy Warhol Grace Kelly 1984

 

• There Has Been No Talk Of Peace, Only War (Celente)
• Putin ‘Will Go Nuclear’ Says CIA Boss in Regime Change Set Up (Ransom)
• Yet Another Huge Ukraine Arms Package As Total Military Aid Nears $3BN (ZH)
• Watch Out, Vlad! Here Comes the British Invasion (Tracey)
• Russia Must Prepare For “Possible Aggressive Action” From NATO – Medvedev (ZH)
• Two Cheers for Realism (Lee)
• Telling the COVID Good Guys from the Bad Guys (Hope)
• Wall Street Now Paying Attention to the ‘Trust the Science’ Fraud – Dowd (Wolf)
• New CDC Center to Predict Pandemics, Provide ‘Outbreak Analytics’ (CSN)
• DOJ To Appeal Court Decision to Overturn Mask Mandate, if CDC Asks (CTH)
• CDC Removes All Countries From COVID-19 ‘Do Not Travel’ List (Reason)
• Treasury Bond Massacre, Mortgage Rates Hit 5.35%, and it’s Only April (WS)
• Clinton Campaign: Fusion GPS Provided Legal Advice (TechnoFog)
• Taylor Lorenz Is Simply Following The New Rules Of Journalism (Miller)

 

 

Number of days Julian Assange has been in Belmarsh prison, never charged with anything.

Today, another decision is due in his extradition case.

 

 

 

 

Zelensky’s statements influenced by what he drinks or smokes – Lavrov

 

 

 

 

Musk

 

 

The only thing you need to know, really.

• There Has Been No Talk Of Peace, Only War (Celente)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that the Western sanctions that were intended to punish Moscow into submission and end its war with Ukraine have failed and, instead, hurt the very countries who imposed them. Putin used a televised address to tell Russians the sanctions were “expected to quickly upset the financial-economic situation, provoke panic in the markets, the collapse of the banking system and shortages in stores.” But said the West’s “economic blitz” failed and backfired. He said they instead led to a “deterioration of the economy in the West.” Last month, President Joe Biden told reporters that the sanctions imposed on Russia were not intended to prevent the 24 February invasion, but were intended instead to unite Europe and show its resolve.

“That’s the important thing. If you’re Putin and you think that Europe is going to crack in a month or six weeks or two months, [that] they can take anything for another month…We have to stay fully, totally, thoroughly united,” he said. When the White House announced a ban on Russian oil imports, oil prices in the U.S. hit their highest levels since 2008. The Russian central bank on Monday announced that consumer prices were about 16.7 percent higher than the same time period last year. The New York Times, citing international financial organizations, reported that economists believe that the Russian economy will contract up to 15 percent.

Biden, who has called Putin a war criminal, killer, and a brute, has discussed additional sanctions against Russia with European allies on Tuesday, Reuters reported. They also discusses arming Ukrainians with even more weapons. Canada announced Tuesday a new round of sanctions against Russians, including Putin’s two adult daughters, the report said. The repot said: “Among those on the call were Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as well as the leaders of Poland, Japan and Italy.” There has been no talk of peace, only war.

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The narrative needs a new chapter every day, lest people start questioning yesterday’s tale.

• Putin ‘Will Go Nuclear’ Says CIA Boss in Regime Change Set Up (Ransom)

Democrats have invented their own WMD story to support regime change, as the head of the CIA warned about taking Russia’s nuclear capability too “lightly.” Speaking at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, CIA Director William Burns has said that in desperation Russian President Vladimir Putin could use a tactical or low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine in order to try to reverse his battlefield mistakes. “Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far, militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons,” said Burns, according to Voice of America. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also warned about potential Putin use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.


Nina Khrushcheva, the great granddaughter to former Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev, echoed the comments but said it wasn’t a prediction of the use of nukes, but was just noting the potential is there for Putin to use nuclear weapons, said Newsweek. “Since there are questions about how far Russia can go to create victory, and nuclear weapons have been part of the conversation on both sides, Russian and the West, the tactical atomic option is potentially imaginable,” said Khrushcheva, a professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City, a progressive hotbed.

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Let’s make it an even $30 billion. $3 billion is hardly enough to pay the bonuses at Raytheon this Christmas

• Yet Another Huge Ukraine Arms Package As Total Military Aid Nears $3BN (ZH)

Coming off last week’s approved gargantuan $800 million military package for Ukraine, which the broader public and media seemed to not even bat an eye about (but quite the opposite: positively cheering it), what more is there for Biden to do except sign off on another massive weapons package for Kiev… “The Biden administration is preparing to announce another substantial military aid package for Ukraine this week,” NBC News cited five US officials to report Tuesday evening. “Three officials said the package is expected to be similar in size to the $800 million one the administration announced last week.” Biden previewed the new aid package by answering a simple “yes” when asked by a reporter whether Washington will send more artillery to Ukraine.

The new transfers are expected to include “tens of thousands more artillery rounds” – notes Bloomberg, and likely along with more anti-tank missiles, as has been consistently shipped stretching back even before Russia’s late February invasion kicked off. It appears to be the administration’s response to Moscow launching a ‘new phase’ in the war: a major force buildup and push to take the Donbas region from Ukraine, which the Kremlin reportedly wants to see fully accomplished by May 9, Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. Without doubt these continual major weapons packages pledged to Ukraine will only push Russia and NATO into increasingly direct confrontation, given the Kremlin’s standing warning that it will target any inbound Western arms transfers.

Meanwhile, on Monday a senior Pentagon official told Reuters of plans to begin training Ukrainian forces on how to use American-supplied howitzers. It was described, however, that the training would occur outside Ukraine, likely in a neighboring friendly country like Poland. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed this week that so far the United States has successfully delivered new weapons to the Ukrainians on four flights – this as overall US aid pledged to Ukraine since Feb.24 has totaled about $2.6 billion and counting.

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“..the article was published at 10pm local time on the Friday of Easter weekend..”

• Watch Out, Vlad! Here Comes the British Invasion (Tracey)

“You heard it here first”? Within less than 48 hours of publishing my previous article — aptly titled “The UK is Trying to Drag the US into World War III” — the most decisive evidence yet for the thesis conveniently emerged. This was thanks to The Times newspaper, which reported that British “boots on the ground” have been deployed to Ukraine. It’s the first time that the armed forces of any NATO member state were confirmed to be physically present inside Ukraine since the war started on February 24. If the UK Government really does aim to position itself at the “vanguard” of an escalating military intervention, in hopes that it can cajole the US into hotter and hotter warfare — as I reported in the previous article — then this seems like a pretty plausible way of going about it.


Is the US content to just sit around and let itself be one-upped by the British, who have now demonstrated their willingness to boldly send “boots on the ground” in defense of freedom and democracy? While the mighty US dithers impotently on the sidelines? Oddly, the response to the Times revelation has been conspicuously muted. At least from my vantage point here in London. And maybe that’s by design: the article was published at 10pm local time on the Friday of Easter weekend, and as I recently discovered, Easter weekend in England a big four-day Bank Holiday bash. So maybe the article was intentionally “buried” to dampen its effect — or maybe the timing was just an innocent coincidence. Either way, there’s been a curious lack of followup or even significant discussion in the days since the news broke. Maybe some inscrutable code of omertà reigns within the UK press corps? For all the problems with US media, it’s not quite as weirdly incestuous and insular as media in the UK.

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“We are talking primarily about an attempt to expand NATO’s presence near our borders.”

• Russia Must Prepare For “Possible Aggressive Action” From NATO – Medvedev (ZH)

Following earlier this month both Finland and Sweden signaling their intent to join NATO, close Putin ally and former president Dmitry Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has warned that the Western military alliance is engaged in a military buildup along Russia’s borders. “A senior Russian official said on Tuesday that NATO’s reinforcement of its borders with Russia was no longer a figure of speech and Moscow should be prepared for possible aggressive action, Russia’s TASS news agency reported,” according to Reuters. “NATO’s expansion near Russia’s borders is no longer a figure of speech or a set of threats, we must be prepared for aggressive action,” he said according to a translation. The fresh words follow Medvedev’s prior threats to position nuclear and hypersonic missiles along Russian’s western border in the scenario that Finland and Sweden join NATO.

The prospect of Finland, which is said to be studying the issue, joining the alliance is especially alarming for the Kremlin, given Russian and its Scandinavian neighbor share a 810-mile border. Sweden, though a little less important geographically, has already announced its intent to join the alliance. “There can be no more talk of any nuclear–free status for the Baltic – the balance must be restored,” Medvedev said previously. But now on Tuesday, he’s heightened the rhetoric further by saying, “We are talking primarily about an attempt to expand NATO’s presence near our borders.” Medvedev stated further according to state-run TASS, based on a rush translation: “And this is no longer a figure of speech today, this is not a set of standard threats. We must be prepared for those aggressive actions that may happen.”

The thrust of his words were toward encouraging the rapid technological advance of the country’s defense capabilities amid the new ‘NATO threat’ – given the remarks were delivered before a national conference on science and education. He stressed that “it is important to build up, among other things, a system that allows you to provide the country with the most modern weapons.” “And this requires reliable, high-tech, powerful equipment – both military and dual-use,” the deputy head of the Security Council added, explaining that the situation did “not arise by itself, especially in those conditions when sanctions have been imposed on the country.”

Cement

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Westphalian Treaty, 1648.

“Russia, China have legitimate spheres of influence and this should be respected. This will involve an end to the gross provocations in the South China Sea and in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics, not to mention the ongoing series of colour revolutions.”

• Two Cheers for Realism (Lee)

As the US and its vassals therefore prepare for war, its populations must be conditioned to believe and accept such an inevitable outcome. The propaganda machine has been stepped up to unprecedented levels. The message is simple. Our side = good, Their side = bad. Our side does good things, their side does bad things. Thus, the media – now an asset of the deep state – plays an essential role of propagating this political construction among the populations of the Anglo-Zionist heartlands. All of which is very reminiscent of Orwell’s short novel Animal Farm. After the Animal Revolution and the eviction of Jones the Farmer, the sheep were instructed by the ruling group – the pigs – into reciting the goodness of the animals and the badness of humans. The short and endless bleat of the sheep went as follows: ‘’Four legs good, two legs bad,’’ repeated endlessly.

That is about the level of western foreign policy. Good guys, bad guys, white hats, black hats, no compromise, no surrender. Result war. The question we must now ask is has this menacing process gone too far to go into reverse? This of course remains an open question. But the thrust of neo-conservative foreign policy would suggest this war would be a logical outcome. Either that or the whole thing is a bluff. Up to this point the US performance in attacking recalcitrant weak states has not been a roaring success. The same goes for Israel. Bombing countries with no air defence or shooting Palestinian kids with sniper rifles is easy-peasy. Taking on Iran is a different matter entirely. The irresistible force seems to be meeting its immovable object.

From a realist as opposed to a neo-conservative foreign policy the idea of an American world empire is frankly deranged. Pursuit of this pipedream can only result in mutually assured destruction; yes, M.A.D. still applies. The United States and its minions might not like it, but it will have to learn to live with other great powers. Russia, China have legitimate spheres of influence and this should be respected. This will involve an end to the gross provocations in the South China Sea and in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics, not to mention the ongoing series of colour revolutions.

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“These sociopathic characteristics include superficial charm, untruthfulness, absence of neurosis or anxiety, poverty of emotion, and a lack of remorse or shame. ”

• Telling the COVID Good Guys from the Bad Guys (Hope)

Most recently, Elon Musk has stepped forward, offering to purchase Twitter and remove the censorship from the platform. This move would turn the tables on the Great Reset and restore the voice of the American public. Some are conflicted and see Musk as a potential bad guy due to his billionaire status and work developing technologies that could be used against the populace. However, upon closer inspection, one notices that Musk has been consistent in his views over the last two years. Musk was among the first to tweet about the potential benefits of using HCQ in early 2020. Musk’s position has not changed, while the opposition lies, waffles, and double talks.

In his first interview with Joe Rogan in May of 2020, Musk questioned the lockdowns’ wisdom and insisted that our freedoms should come first. He noted that our liberty and democracy had come at significant cost, and we should not allow them to be eroded so easily. Looking deeper at Musk, one realizes he is not a sociopath like so many other billionaires. Sixteen factors help identify a sociopath – according to the Cleckley Profile as set forth by Dr. Hervey M. Cleckley, the expert considered to be the Father of Psychopathy. He discussed these in his treatise, The Mask of Sanity. These sociopathic characteristics include superficial charm, untruthfulness, absence of neurosis or anxiety, poverty of emotion, and a lack of remorse or shame.

In short, they have cold, reptilian personalities and no conscience. Sociopaths have no anxiety and can often beat lie detector tests because their heart rates and blood pressure can remain stable under questioning that would phase most of us. While our leading health authorities and top vaccine billionaires easily qualify as sociopaths, Musk’s personality does not fit. He tears up at interviews to the extent the cameraman must stop filming; he exhibits great emotion when speaking about his childhood or challenges with his businesses.

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There goes the CDC.

• Wall Street Now Paying Attention to the ‘Trust the Science’ Fraud – Dowd (Wolf)

As Pfizer try to ‘pump their stock’ Hedge Fund guru Dowd, takes us inside what he calls the third great fraud in his lifetime, in this new bombshell interview with Dr Naomi Wolf.

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Except, they’re giving the CDC more powers, no matter how badly it failed.

• New CDC Center to Predict Pandemics, Provide ‘Outbreak Analytics’ (CSN)

On Tuesday, the Biden Administration announced the launch of the CDC’s new Center for Forecasting and Analysis (CFA) to predict future pandemics and guide the government’s efforts to address such anticipated infectious disease threats. A center of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CFA will use “infectious disease modeling and analytics and to provide support to leaders at the federal, state, and local levels,” the CDC explains in its announcement. As “the equivalent of the National Weather Service for infectious diseases,” the CFA will “predict trends and guide decision-making,” the CDC says:

“CFA’s work will be focused into three main pillars: to predict, inform, and innovate. CFA has begun to build a world-class outbreak analytics team with experts across several disciplines to develop faster, richer evidence to predict trends and guide decision-making during emergencies.” According to the CFA website, the new center will also predict the future course of ongoing pandemics, in order to help public health officials to take preemptive measures: “The goal of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) is to enable timely, effective decision-making to improve outbreak response using data, modeling, and analytics.

“To do so, CFA will produce models and forecasts to characterize the state of an outbreak and its course, inform public health decision makers on potential consequences of deploying control measures, and support innovation to continuously improve the science of outbreak analytics and modeling.” CFA Science Director Marc Lipsitch, hopes to employ regular population sampling, by means like blood draws and swab tests, in order to collect data, the AP reports: “[T]he United Kingdom uses regular population sampling with swab tests and blood draws to get a clearer picture of who’s been infected, said Marc Lipsitch, the new center’s science director. He said similar sampling should be considered in the U.S.”

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“..a political DOJ has to wait for a political CDC to determine whether they still have any currency of influence..”

• DOJ To Appeal Court Decision to Overturn Mask Mandate, if CDC Asks (CTH)

On one hand, Joe Biden needs to appease the base of his Covidians who identify themselves through the prism of COVID. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of Americans are done with the COVID fear mongering. What to do, what to do? Trying to split the baby, Biden’s DOJ announces it will appeal the federal court ruling that overturned the federal Transporation covid mask mandate, but only if the CDC tells them to. “DOJ PRESS RELEASE – […] “The Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disagree with the district court’s decision and will appeal, subject to CDC’s conclusion that the order remains necessary for public health.” “If CDC concludes that a mandatory order remains necessary for the public’s health after that assessment, the Department of Justice will appeal the district court’s decision.”


Keep in mind, the federal court ruling specifically centered around the arbitrary nature of the original mandate, which exceeded the scope of CDC legal authority, compounded by the CDC breaking its own rules for public feedback in the implementation.The mandate created by Joe Biden did not have legal structure. It was a dictatorial fiat that exceeded the capacity of the executive branch to create. Congress could easily write a law authorizing mechanisms for the CDC and TSA to use in enforcement of a federal Transportation mask mandate; but they won’t – because the public would never support it. So now, a political DOJ has to wait for a political CDC to determine whether they still have any currency of influence amid the politics of COVID.

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Just demolish it.

• CDC Removes All Countries From COVID-19 ‘Do Not Travel’ List (Reason)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its international travel recommendations on Monday, relaxing previous COVID-19 risk assessments.Previously, the CDC’s “Level 4” risk designation applied to destinations with “very high” levels of COVID-19 transmission. On Sunday, 89 countries and territories were listed in this category, with the CDC advising, “Avoid travel to these destinations. If you must travel to these destinations, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel.” The agency has since named its highest risk category “Level 4: Special Circumstances/Do Not Travel” and removed all countries from it. In a statement last week, the CDC indicated it would reserve this designation for “special circumstances, such as rapidly escalating case trajectory or extremely high case counts, emergence of a new variant of concern, or healthcare infrastructure collapse.”

The CDC’s next highest designation, “Level 3: COVID-19 High,” now includes 122 destinations and advises that travelers are up to date with their COVID-19 vaccinations, but does not advise the fully vaccinated to avoid travel wholesale. Given that there are few places in the world where COVID-19 has not spread widely, it is becoming necessary for the individual traveler to determine his own risk tolerance. Safety does not simply depend on picking the country with no active COVID-19 cases, but rather on taking stock of your vaccination status, your preexisting conditions, and the medical infrastructure at your destination.

The CDC’s new advisory structure makes the point that not all areas with high COVID-19 transmission are irreconcilably dangerous to visit. As recently as Sunday, the CDC advised travelers to exercise the same level of COVID-related caution when visiting Norway and the Central African Republic; South Korea and Papua New Guinea; and Australia and Vietnam. It makes little sense to advise the same level of extreme medical caution across each of these nations, considering how vastly each country’s health capacities may differ. Denmark, Switzerland, and Sweden are said to have some of the best health care in the world, but in terms of COVID contagion, the CDC considered them as risky to visit as Somalia, a country with only one surgeon for every 1 million people and a full COVID vaccination rate of just 8.5 percent.

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You will own nothing and you will be happy.

• Treasury Bond Massacre, Mortgage Rates Hit 5.35%, and it’s Only April (WS)

The interesting thing is that no one at the Fed is trying to talk down those spikes in Treasury yields and mortgage rates. It shows that those yields are going where the Fed wants them to go, and that the Treasury market is coming around to the Fed’s rate-hike plan, and that those yields have a long ways to go, given that CPI inflation is 8.5%, a gigantic mess that has unfolded over the past 15 months, finally, after 12 years of money-printing. The two-year Treasury yield spiked by 15 basis points today to 2.61%, the highest since January 2019. This has been a huge move in just seven months. When the two-year yield goes over 2.83%, it will be in territory not seen since 2007, as the Treasury market begins to price in the Fed’s coming policy action to crack down on inflation:

Even the biggest doves at the Fed are now fully on board the rate-hike train, and it’s only a question of how fast and how long. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, one of the biggest doves, is “comfortable” with 25-basis-point hikes at every meeting this year (there are seven more), and even he is “open” to 50-basis-point hikes: “we want to be humble and nimble, and get to neutral before too long – maybe 50 helps, I’m open to that,” he said. The 10-year Treasury yield rose by 8 basis points to 2.93% at the close today, the highest since December 2018. The magic number there is 3.24%, beyond which yields are back in 2011 territory:

When yields rise, it means prices of those bonds fall, and prices fall the hardest of bonds with the longest remaining maturities. And it’s a massacre for people who invested in what they thought was a very conservative and prudent instrument, namely a bond fund tracking long-term Treasury securities, when in fact it turned out to be a highly risky wager on long-term Treasury yields always going lower forevermore. The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF [TLT], which tracks an index of Treasury securities with at least 20 years of remaining maturities, dropped another 0.75% today, is down 19.5% year-to-date, and has plunged by 30.6% from the peak in August 2020, which was when long-term Treasury yields had hit historic lows, and which was – with hindsight – the moment the greatest bond-market bubble in US history began to implode:

Holy moly Mortgage rates. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate spiked to 5.35% today, the highest since 2009! This daily measure of mortgage rates by Mortgage News Daily had briefly hit 5.05% in November 2018, with inflation at or below the Fed’s target, and with markets tanking left and right, before the Fed made its infamous U-Turn, and mortgage rates dove. Now the Fed is just getting started, with inflation at 8.5%. There is no one that can persuade me that this jump in mortgage rates isn’t going to have a serious impact on the housing market. It’s the Fed’s way of getting the housing bubble under control before it tears up the financial system again:

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They’re getting lost in their own narratives.

• Clinton Campaign: Fusion GPS Provided Legal Advice (Techno Fog)

The battle over documents and e-mails in the Michael Sussmann case just got hotter. Back in August 2017, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining how his firm was retained to gather “lots of facts about Donald Trump.” He admitted that Fusion GPS met with reporters leading up to the 2016 election to spread opposition research against then-candidate Trump. The context of Perkins Coie’s retention of Fusion GPS was further explained in a book co-authored by Simpson and Fusion GPS co-founder Peter Fritsch. They documented an April 20, 2016 meeting with Mark Elias (Perkins Coie partner and counsel for the DNC/Clinton Campaign), where Elias requested their services for opposition research.

Now the stories have changed. Fusion GPS is no longer an opposition research firm, and they weren’t hired to dig-up dirt against Trump. Instead, they would have you believe, after the phony dossier and the Alfa Bank hoax, that Fusion GPS was retained to provide legal advice to the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Remarkable. On April 6, Durham filed [a] motion to compel in the Michael Sussmann case, requesting the court require the production of “emails and attachments between and among” Perkins Coie, Rodney Joffe, and Fusion GPS. These emails and documents, according to Durham, “appear or involve or relate to” Fusion GPS’s provision of research and media services to Hillary for America, the DNC, and Perkins Coie. (Some documents had been produced pursuant to grand jury subpoenas dating back to the 2021.)

Faced with this pressure, today there was a flurry of filings from interested entities in the Sussmann case, seeking to intervene to petition the court to keep these emails and documents secret. The DNC, Rodney Joffe, Perkins Coie, and Hillary for America all filed motions to intervene and memorandums in opposition to Durham’s motion to compel. Notably, we saw arguments to the court that Fusion GPS wasn’t retained for opposition research. Hillary for America, for example, asserted “attorney-client privilege and work product protection over communications and work product of its attorneys (at Perkins Coie) and their consultant (Fusion GPS).” In support of that motion, Hillary for America included declarations from John Podesta, Robby Mook, and their attorney, Marc Elias. Declarations which contradict the public record.

To prove my point, John Podesta declared that to his knowledge, Perkins Coie has “consistently maintained” confidentiality, despite the fact that Perkins Coie (Sussmann in particular) assisted in distributing to the press the materials and allegations prepared by Fusion GPS and other researchers. Not to be outdone, Robby Mook (Hillary’s campaign manager) told the court that he believed that contractors for Perkins Coie – which would include Fusion GPS – were providing “legal services and legal advice” to the Clinton campaign. Unfortunately for Hillary for America, Mook’s belief is insufficient for the purposes of privilege. Clinton lawyer Mark Elias also submitted a declaration, stating the role of Fusion GPS was to “provide consulting services in support of the legal advice” Perkins Coie and Elias were providing their clients. This contradicts the Elias’s own statements cited above.

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“Taylor Lorenz is not the ultimate problem. The problem is news outlets and infotainment companies using their outsize power and vast budgets to harass and doxx private citizens they disagree with. ”

• Taylor Lorenz Is Simply Following The New Rules Of Journalism (Miller)

Much has been said about Taylor Lorenz, the 30-something-year-old journalist for the Washington Post and former New York Times Slack channel gossipmonger. Still, her lack of media ethics is now unambiguous. On Tuesday, we learned about Lorenz’s doxxing of those behind a viral social media account she personally dislikes. Lorenz published a story on the popular “LibsofTikTok” Twitter account. This account curates and highlights content from the extreme fringes of the cultural and political Left on TikTok and other platforms. The account isn’t much different from the “Right Wing Watch” account on Twitter, which does mostly the same thing from a politically left perspective. The difference is simply who is protected by most of the media and who isn’t. That’s what much of the discourse around the public revealing of the person behind the LibsofTikTok account is missing.

Taylor Lorenz is what the media are now. In 2017, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski tracked down an anonymous Reddit user who had created a gif of President Donald Trump clotheslining a wrestler at a WWE event, with the CNN logo replacing the opposing wrestler’s head. CNN found this to be doxx-worthy simply because it was retweeted by Trump. In 2019, when a joke video of a “drunk” Nancy Pelosi (the creator simply reduced the speed of the video) spread around, Kevin Poulsen of the Daily Beast tracked down and doxxed the person who did it, revealing he is an ex-con living in the Bronx who was working as a forklift operator. These details were not newsworthy. The video itself was not newsworthy. But the Daily Beast published his name and employment anyway.

In 2018, HuffPost writer Luke O’Brien doxxed and revealed the identity of a pro-Trump Twitter user, including information regarding a popular Brooklyn deli that her siblings owned and was not related to her social media posts. The deli was soon threatened with boycotts and negative Yelp reviews. These are just three examples of what has become an industry standard. It’s a standard that now has some reporters comparing LibsofTikTok to Harvey Weinstein and the Watergate scandal. However, in singling out Taylor Lorenz, what the political Right doesn’t understand is this is about politics and shutting down opposing speech. That is to say, speech that Lorenz or Kaczynski or the Daily Beast are ideologically opposed to. Of course, this is also about media power.

CNN is a multibillion-dollar media conglomerate that used the full weight of its corporate power to threaten a private individual with a Reddit account. In a newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos, Lorenz publishes a story with an individual’s name, professional license, and address information. It’s a struggle between one of the richest, most powerful men on the Earth and someone behind a Twitter account with less than a million followers (although that follower count is almost certainly about to increase). Taylor Lorenz is not the ultimate problem. The problem is news outlets and infotainment companies using their outsize power and vast budgets to harass and doxx private citizens they disagree with. It’s a new journalistic model for an industry that sees its grip loosening on what news it can control and create (see the media freak-out over Elon Musk buying their favorite toy). Taylor Lorenz, for all her theatrics, is simply leading the charge.

Tucker Libs of TikTok

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Gates Nov 2019
https://twitter.com/CovidMemo/status/1516444224622927882

 

 

 

 

Ships waiting to dock in Shanghai.

 

 

NATO ad

 

 

 

 

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Warheads

Apr 212021
 
 April 21, 2021  Posted by at 4:46 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


Mark Chagall I and the village 1911

 

 

Joe Biden declares a “national emergency”, calls Putin a killer, slaps more sanctions on Russia, for which he has his Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken declare that “Today, we announced actions to hold the Russian Government to account for the SolarWinds intrusion, reports of bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, and attempts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections,” … and then “invites” Putin for a summit.

For the SolarWinds “intrusion”, the US has never provided any evidence at all, the Russian bounties story was -finally- fully debunked well before Blinken made his statement -which makes him look very incompetent-, and the election interference narrative is by now just too dumb to even get into. No evidence for it whatsoever after 2 years of the Mueller investigation, but now Putin’s at it again? Who did he want to win, then? Trump again, after apparently not even trying in 2016?

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky states that his country should urgently be made a full member of both NATO and the EU, and has his own proxy, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, solemnly claim that not just “The only possibility for this [to prevent alleged invasion plans] is for Ukraine to finally become a NATO member”, but also that “Ukraine has no other choice: either we are part of an alliance such as NATO and are doing our part to make this Europe stronger, or we have the only option – to arm by ourselves, and maybe think about nuclear status again”.… And then Zelensky invites Putin for a summit. In the Donbass, no less.

These people are all as insincere as they possibly could be, but they trust that this doesn’t matter anymore. The western media have been planting the “Putin is a monster” seeds in their readers and viewers for many years now, and critical thought has long since left the building. Yes, that is the ultimate effect of what’s called propaganda, and as long as the sheeple “victims” don’t recognize it as such, it works like a charm.

 

I’ve been wondering for a long time why Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin as his successor in 1999, and I can’t find much information on it. Yeltsin was a US asset, and sold out his country to the CIA and a bunch of CIA-asset homegrown oligarchs. I’ve always suspected that when Yeltsin left, he felt a lot of regret for what he had done to Russia, and that maybe appointing Putin was his way to try and make up for that. I see people saying that Yeltsin thought Putin was pliable, but I think perhaps he knew exactly how Putin thought.

A “detail”: remember that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, male life expectancy for a period of time feel from a very steep cliff. And nothing Yeltsin did provided a solution to that crisis. Then, in August 1999, he appointed Putin as his prime minister, and didn’t leave a year later as planned, but 4 months later, in December. His chief of staff, Valentin Yumashev , who had hired Putin as his deputy in 1997, wrote his resignation speech:

Mr Yumashev was entrusted with writing Yeltsin’s resignation speech. “It was a hard speech to write. It was clear the text would go down in history. The message was important. That’s why I wrote the famous line ‘Forgive me’. “Russians had suffered such shock and stress during the 1990s. Yeltsin had to speak about this.”

Back to today. All economic -and other- sanctions against Russia since Putin first became president have led to one thing only: the country has dramatically increased its self-sufficiency. And in the process has upgraded its weapons arsenal to a level that no western country even comes close to, including the US, for maybe 10% of what the same US has spent on its own arsenal.

Russia’s latest generation of hypersonic missiles, against which no country has any defense, are far superior to what anybody else possesses. When they said recently they could take out a specific building in Kyiv if they wanted, they were not exaggerating. So yeah, look for Biden and Blinken and NATO et al to soon start using that superiority as a reason to incite more war vs Moscow.

A war they could never win, but that’s not the point any longer. One might argue of course that it never was after the advent of nuclear weapons. The whole point of NATO today, its raison d’être, is that it can create chaos wherever it goes and looks. It’s no longer capable of defending anyone from the Russian threat, but then that threat hasn’t been there for many years.

 

And NATO wants to continue existing, as does the Pentagon, and Boeing and Raytheon, it’s all about money, so they have to make up a threat, aided by their media brethren. That‘s why you see, from time to time, reports about Putin having yet another person “poisoned”, why governments in countries like the UK and Germany go along with the narrative, and why media in all other vassal states parrot these stories.

In that vein, the story this week out of Czechia, which expelled 18 Russian diplomats, kind of sets a new standard in absolute nonsense.

The Czech organised crime squad (NCOZ) said it was looking for two men using Russian passports in relation to the explosions. The passports bear the names of Alexander Petrov, born in 1979, and Ruslan Boshirov, born in 1978, and their holders are also wanted in Britain in connection with Skripal’s poisoning in Salisbury.

Mark Ames’ reaction to this on Twitter is so good, I’m not going to try to beat him to it: : “If I understand this right, apparently GRU thought it’d be smart to use the same 2 spies to carry out 2 separate deadly operations in NATOland – 2014 bombing in Czech Rep, 2018 Skripal poisoning – using exact same aliases & fake passports in both operations.”

Now that the west has lost its military superiority, all that’s left for it to claim is some sort of “intelligence superiority”, so it portrays Russians as really dumb people. Putin tries to poison one person after another, invariably people who are no threat to him at all, with the deadliest poisons on the planet, and fails time and again. Navalny is a US asset who gets 2% max of votes in a poll, Skripal is a former military intel officer who was allowed to go to the UK after being exposed as a double-agent (!), but they fit the 20+ year old narrative of Putin as Pol Pot. Stories. They are all that counts. Reality, not so much. Bernays and Goebbels are having a ton of fun in their own private hells.

So how will the Ukraine episode be resolved? Not easy. Making the world’s 2nd-most corrupt country a full member of NATO is out of the question, Russia will never accept that. Which is why the west is pushing it. Ukraine with nukes is even more preposterous, if that is possible (hard call). Dmitry Orlov suggested a “solution” the other day about which I have major question marks, but he’s Russian and I’m not, so take a look:

Putin’s Ukrainian Judo

The answer, I believe, is obvious: evacuation. There are around 3.2 million residents in Donetsk People’s Republic and 1.4 million in Lugansk People’s Republic, for a total of some 4.6 million residents. This may seem like a huge number, but it’s moderate by the scale of World War II evacuations. Keep in mind that Russia has already absorbed over a million Ukrainian migrants and refugees without much of a problem.

Also, Russia is currently experiencing a major labor shortage, and an infusion of able-bodied Russians would be most welcome. Domestically, the evacuation would likely be quite popular: Russia is doing right by its own people by pulling them out of harm’s way. The patriotic base would be energized and the already very active Russian volunteer movement would swing into action to assist the Emergencies Ministry in helping move and resettle the evacuees.

The elections that are to take place later this year would turn into a nationwide welcoming party for several million new voters. The Donbass evacuation could pave the way for other waves of repatriation that are likely to follow. There are some 20 million Russians scattered throughout the world, and as the world outside Russia plunges deeper and deeper into resource scarcity they too will want to come home.

While they may presently be reluctant to do so, seeing the positive example of how the Donbass evacuees are treated could help change their minds. The negative optics of surrendering territory can be countered by not surrendering any territory. As a guarantor of the Minsk Agreements, Russia must refuse to surrender the Donbass to the Ukrainian government until it fulfills the terms of these agreements, which it has shown no intention of doing for seven years now and which it has recently repudiated altogether.

[..] The West would be left with the following status quo. The Donbass is empty of residents but off-limits to them or to the Ukrainians. The evacuation would in no sense change the standing or the negotiating position of the evacuees and their representatives vis-à-vis the Minsk agreements, locking this situation in place until Kiev undertakes constitutional reform, becomes a federation and grants full autonomy to Donbass, or until the Ukrainian state ceases to exist and is partitioned. The Ukraine would be unable to join NATO (a pipe dream which it has stupidly voted into its constitution) since this would violate the NATO charter, given that it does not control its own territory.

Further sanctions against Russia would become even more difficult to justify, since it would be untenable to accuse it of aggression for undertaking a humanitarian mission to protect its own citizens or for carrying out its responsibilities as a guarantor of the Minsk agreements. The Donbass would remain as a stalker zone roamed by Russian battlefield robots sniping Ukrainian marauders, with the odd busload of schoolchildren there on a field trip to lay flowers on the graves of their ancestors. Its ruined Soviet-era buildings, not made any newer by three decades of Ukrainian abuse and neglect, will bear silent witness to the perpetual ignominy of the failed Ukrainian state.

Dmitry suggests 4.6 million people leave the Donbass so peace may be restored. But most of those people grew up there, and so did their families. And largely peacefully so, until the US and NATO, John McCain and Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, tried to take over Ukraine. Why should Russia, instead of protecting these people where they live, migrate them and protect them in Russia? Anyone ask for their own opinion?

There would be a giant empty piece of land where they once lived, in a kind of demilitarized zone? And what then? Nobody in Ukraine would come up with the idea to move into the empty land? And if they did, Russia would have to shoot them from Russian territory? I sort of see the reasoning of course, but not all of it. It only seems to work if you see Russia, and the Russians in the Donbass, as the aggressors.

Were they? Are they? Russia only sprung into action when the west tried to take away their sole warm water port, Sevastopol in Crimea. An election was held, and 97% of mostly Russians voted to be part of Russia. Yeah, that upset NATO and the other usual suspects, but that doesn’t make Russia an aggressor.

Russia has no reason to “invade” Ukraine. They don’t need even more territory, they’re already by far the largest nation on earth. Moreover, they don’t have the military to occupy large swaths of land. They only have the capacity to protect their own.

Thing is, they really got that down. So the only thing NATO can do, in its quest to prove it has reason to exist, is to create chaos, as I said before. But there is a problem with consciously creating chaos between nuclear powers, instead of maintaining communication channels, as the US and USSR always did during the Cold War. Do we all understand this means we are in a worse situation today than back then? That all those expulsions of diplomats only make the situation worse?

And that some fool could actually fire a nuclear missile because of that? Me, I’m not so sure anymore. Between the Covid virus and the US cancel culture, there are not that many western people paying attention to warmongers and NATO aka warheads. Not a good idea.

 

 

 

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Energy vs Waste

Nov 072019
 
 November 7, 2019  Posted by at 2:27 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Ivan Shishkin Midday. Near Moscow 1869

 

 

“In theory they were sound on Expectation
Had there been situations to be in;
Unluckily they were their situation”
– W.H. Auden

 

 

And drawn back again into energy… I did a little interview on the topic this week, and that was a little too little. Can’t cover it all in 5 or 10 minutes, even though that is mostly because people understand so precious little. We fool ourselves non-stop 24/7 on the topic, just the way industry and politics like it.

A wee step back: “The only clean energy is the one that isn’t used.” I’ve seen that attributed to Nicole, and that’s fine. But at the same time, I see terms like “clean energy”, “zero-emissions” and “zero-carbon” fly by all the time, used to depict things that are not clean at all. Perhaps less polluting, but that’s only perhaps; we’re experts at discounting externalities.

Still, we do still realize that without oil and gas there would be no wind turbines and solar panels, don’t we? How much carbon waste is generated in the production process of the two may be up for grabs, if only because that’s nobody’s favorite topic, but it’s a whole lot more than zero. More for solar, I would guess, because mining of rare earth metals is a pretty dirty process.

 

But in the end, the only aspect that I find really interesting, and that everybody appears to ignore, is why we produce so much waste. If you were hell-bent on designing a contraption aimed at wasting as much energy, and generating as much waste, as possible, you would have a hard time competing with the automobile.

Your run of the mill internal combustion engine uses maybe 10% of the energy you put in at the gas station, and you use it to transport yourself in a contraption that is 20x heavier than you are. That leaves you with just 0.5% of the energy embedded in the gasoline that is effectively used.

And that’s not all: before the gas reached the station, there was an entire process of extraction, refining, multiple transport steps. And before the car reached the store, it had already generated over a third of all the waste it will in its ‘lifetime’. If ever you need a way to demonstrate that people are not very smart, look no further.

Angela Merkel this week said she wants 1 million car charging points in Germany by 2030 (the country is way behind). And she may mean well, but for a physicist it’s still disappointing. If anyone could understand that replacing petrol powered cars with electric ones is a very poor deal, it should be her.

 

But sure, Germany has some very large carmakers, and she needs to appease them. Cars run the economy, after all. Or, rather, that’s not quite right, it’s in fact generating waste that runs the economy. Which is the only sensible conclusion we can draw after seeing that way less than 0.5% of energy is efficiently used in and by a car.

And for people like Merkel, practical politicians with ties to industry, that means you have to keep them running. And help the media and industry in convincing people that electric cars, produced by BMW, Merc and VW, is a great way to save the planet. Still, making those things requires enormous amounts of oil and gas.

If a car that runs on an internal combustion engine generates a third of the waste produced in its ‘lifetime’ before it hits the store, I bet you the ratio is worse for electric cars, because again of mining of rare earth metals and other components. And then they run on electricity generated by coal or gas or oil plants, or wind that we saw is not clean, or even nuclear, which produces the ultimate lethal form of waste, which we can still not safely store.

 

We need an entirely different approach, and I find it both very hard to understand and very disappointing that I don’t see this reflected as their no. 1 item by the climate rebellion and the various Green New Deals. That is, we must reduce our consumption of all forms of energy, not just oil and gas, and we must do it in a drastic fashion.

Luckily, we can start with the automobile, that contraption [seemingly] aimed at consuming as much energy, and generating as much waste, as possible. But even if we would achieve a 50% increase in efficiency there, we would still hover around that same 0.5%. Still crazy after all these years.

That won’t work. But there are other options. We presently live in cities and towns that are designed exclusively around those cars with their abysmal efficiency rates. In many if not most places, over half of what once was, and could be again, public space, has been turned into car space. There are no kids playing in the streets anywhere anymore.

If you talk about waste or pollution, that too could be labeled as such. In only 100 years, or even just 50, not only have most city populations exploded, both through birth rates and migration, all those extra people and the ‘original’ population now demand space for their vehicles that are 20x their weight and size.

And the car makers keep on advertizing ‘lifestyle’ ads with wide open roads and smily happy people. If I can repeat myself “If ever you need a way to demonstrate that people are not very smart, look no further.”

 

Now, mind you, if and when I say something that sounds like: we can do this, I am a lot more skeptical than most of you. This is because as I wrote three weeks ago in Energy vs DNA, we are driven by nature, by our DNA, it doesn’t matter how you define it, to maximize our energy consumption. Not on an individual level, but on a group level.

There’s still the trifle little matter of how all systems, all organisms, deal with energy (sources). Now, according to Alfred J. Lotka and Howard T. Odum, in what they and others have labeled the 4th law of Thermodynamics, all systems and organisms of necessity (DNA/RNA driven) seek to maximize their use of energy, for pure survival reasons: the one that’s most efficient in its ability to exploit and utilize -external- energy sources will survive. (another word for this is: Life)

In that article I also quoted Jay Hanson:

Why can’t we save ourselves? To answer that question we only need to integrate three of the key influences on our behavior: 1) biological evolution, 2) overshoot, and 3) a proposed fourth law of thermodynamics called the “Maximum Power Principle” (MPP). The MPP states that biological systems will organize to increase power generation, by degrading more energy, whenever systemic constraints allow it.

But then that takes me right to a quote I’ve used a few times before, from Herman Daly and Kenneth Townsend:

“Erwin Schrodinger (1945) has described life as a system in steady-state thermodynamic disequilibrium that maintains its constant distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on low entropy from its environment—that is, by exchanging high-entropy outputs for low-entropy inputs. The same statement would hold verbatium as a physical description of our economic process. A corollary of this statement is that an organism cannot live in a medium of its own waste products.”

 

Note that the Maximum Power Principle is quite mute on efficiency. It talks about being efficient in grabbing the resource, not in using it. That only matters if you MUST be efficient. The oil extravaganza we discovered in Pennsylvania and Baku in the 1850s has left us without any reason to be efficient. And there is precious little reason to believe we will suddenly change that behavior BEFORE we hit a wall (or, rather, THE wall).

And also note that Daly and Townsend talk about waste in general, waste as in what is left over once we have “consumed energy”, when we have used a low entropy “source” and turned it into a high entropy one, i.e. one that is useless to us (though trees live off of CO2, we have no use for it). In that regard, replacing one form of energy with another, as electric cars seek to do, is a very dubious undertaking.

The only approach that makes any sense, is to use and consume vastly less ‘energy’. From a rational point of view, that would seem an easy thing to do: it should be possible to transport yourself at a higher efficiency rate than 0.5%. But at the same time, that’s not at all what we are doing.

We, like all organisms, are obeying the Maximum Power Principle: we grab all the energy we can, and we use it in whatever way we can. Got to be a bit careful with the term “we” perhaps, if only because if by some miracle we might drastically reduce our energy consumption, which physics says should be no problem -though biology might disagree-, we would leave a lot of oil, or other energy forms, available to for instance the Chinese, who could use it against us.

Very much a part of the Maximum Power Principle: competition between species leads to maximum ‘power grabs’ (for survival), but also competition within species (same reason). What you have in your possession, they do not.

 

I very much welcome any and all thoughts and contributions and disagreements on this topic. But do note I’ve been on it for many years.

 

 

I will return to Jerusalem, my holy city, and live there. It will be known as the faithful city… Once again old men and women, so old that they use a stick when they walk, will be sitting in the city squares. And the streets will again be full of boys and girls playing.
– Zechariah 8:3-5

 

 

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Nuclear Energy, the Ultimate Hubris

Jul 292019
 
 July 29, 2019  Posted by at 9:37 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  9 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Massacre in Korea 1951

 

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything at all about nuclear energy. And even then I thought the whole discussion had been wrapped up and thrown away. But I guess it’s inevitable that as the climate change debate develops, there’d be parties seeking to revive the nukes ‘discussion’, because there’s so much potential profit in there. And then today I came upon this report, and a few interpretations of it, that set me off again, and brought back the whole Yucca Mountain issue to mind.

Please note that in all that follows, there is ONE very obvious notion to keep in mind: nuclear energy is a huge economic loss-maker, no matter how and where you look.

And that makes nukes, right from the get-go, completely unfit to replace anything fossil-fuel based, because coal and oil and gas are sources that do the opposite: they generate huge profits while nukes generate huge losses, i.e.: you can’t run your economy on nuclear. You can not run an economy on any energy source that generates economic losses. It does NOT get simpler than that. It’s the economics of energy, and for once economics are right (though not economists, name me one who understands this. Hi, Steve!).

Mind you, you can’t run our present complex economies and societies on renewables either, no more than you can run them on nuclear. Much simpler economies, sure, but then you will have to figure out how you’re going to pay for that. It’s hard to comprehend to which extent fossil fuels have shaped our world, but we have no choice but to try, because this is one thing you don’t want to get wrong.

The report comes from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), which studied 674 nuclear power plants built since 1951. Their own abstract says the following:

 

Nuclear Power Is Not an Option for the Climate-Friendly Energy Mix

The debate on effective climate protection is heating up in Germany and the rest of the world. Nuclear energy is being touted as “clean” energy. Given the circumstances, the present study analyzed the historical, current, and future costs and risks of nuclear energy. The findings show that nuclear energy can by no means be called “clean” due to radioactive emissions, which will endanger humans and the natural environment for over one million years. And it harbors the high risk of proliferation. An empirical survey of the 674 nuclear power plants that have ever been built showed that private economic motives never played a role.


Instead military interests have always been the driving force behind their construction. Even ignoring the expense of dismantling nuclear power plants and the long-term storage of nuclear waste, private economy-only investment in nuclear power plant would result in high losses— an average of five billion euros per nuclear power plant, as one financial simulation revealed. In countries such as China and Russia, where nuclear power plants are still being built, private investment does not play a role either. Nuclear power is too expensive and dangerous; therefore it should not be part of the climate-friendly energy mix of the future.

In other words, nuclear energy is already a huge economic loser even before decommissioning and waste storage are taken into consideration, and those last two costs are by far the largest. So much so that it even makes precious little sense to calculate nuke costs without including decommissioning and waste storage costs. But people do it, and they get paid for that….

A site called Renew Economy, which appears to be Australian, has this comment on the DIW report (they’re one of the few I found that had any comment at all):

 

Nuclear Energy Is Never Profitable

A new study of the economics of nuclear power has found that nuclear power has never been financially viable, finding that most plants have been built while heavily subsidised by governments, and often motivated by military purposes, and is not a good approach to tackling climate change. The study has come from DIW Berlin, a leading German economic think-tank, and found that the average 1,000MW nuclear power plant built since 1951 resulted in an average economic loss of 4.8 billion euros ($7.7 billion AUD). The report comes amid a hot debate over the future of nuclear power in both Germany and Australia.


The report published by the German Institute for Economic Research (known as DIW Berlin) reviewed the development of 674 nuclear power plants built since 1951, finding that none of the plants was built using ‘private capital under competitive conditions’. “The results showed that in all cases, an investment would generate significant financial losses. The (weighted) average net present value was around minus 4.8 billion euros,” the study says. “Even in the best case, the net present value was approximately minus 1.5 billion euros. The authors included conservative assumptions with high electricity prices, low capital costs, and specific investment. Considering all assumptions regarding the uncertain parameters, nuclear energy is never profitable.”

 


click to enlarge in new tab

 

The report authors are also pessimistic about the future of nuclear power, concluding that nuclear power will remain unprofitable into the foreseeable future. Unlike Australia, Germany has a history of nuclear power use, which as recently as 2010, supplied around a quarter of Germany’s electricity. The government led by Angela Merkel has committed to the complete phase-out of nuclear power by 2022. The report found that when nuclear power plants were built using private investment, that “large state subsidies” were used to make the projects viable, and that in most cases, nuclear power stations were built at a loss.


DIW Berlin calculated that for every 1,000 Megawatts of nuclear power capacity that has been built since 1951, there were average economic losses of between 1.5 to 8.9 billion Euros. “Nuclear power was never designed for commercial electricity generation; it was aimed at nuclear weapons. That is why nuclear electricity has been and will continue to be uneconomical. Further, nuclear energy is by no means ‘clean.’ Its radioactivity will endanger humans and the natural world for over one million years,” Christian von Hirschhausen, co-author of the study said.

 

 

The DIW Berlin report stressed that governments should not be seduced by claims that nuclear power was a solution to the climate crisis. “Nuclear energy for climate protection” is an old narrative that is as inaccurate today as it was in the 1970s. Describing nuclear energy as “clean” ignores the significant environmental risks and radioactive emissions it engenders along the process chain and beyond,” the report concluded.

Another site called Recharge Transition finds basically the same:

 

Nuclear Has Never Been Economic And Is Dangerous

Nuclear power is economically unviable, dangerous and should not be labelled as a clean form of energy, the renowned German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) said, pointing to research it has carried out on the profitability of investments in nuclear power plants. DIW Berlin is one of the leading economic think tanks in Germany. According to “numerous scientific studies,” none of the world’s more than 600 nuclear power stations have ever been economically viable, and the plants could only be operated for years due to government subsidies, the institute claims.


“That nuclear energy has never been economically competitive comes as no surprise as electricity production has always only be a by-product. Military and geo-strategical interests have always come first and this energy source has been massively subsidised,” the study’s author Christian von Hirschhausen said. “Now it is also certain that it won’t be profitable in the future either to invest in atomic energy – neither in new nuclear power plants, nor in the extension of existing ones. “If in addition you consider that nuclear power absolutely isn’t safe, the fairy tale of a climate friendly alternative to fossil energy sources completely collapses.”

And you know what’s “funny” is that as mentioned before, the report never even talks about decommissioning and storage. For me, this was a closed topic, got it, move on. But I looked it up anyway. I couldn’t remember the dates the judge had set. I knew he had thrown out the EPA’s 10,000 years for guaranteed storage safety.

10,000 years is already way beyond man’s powers to guarantee anything at all, it’s pure hubris. According to YuccaMountain.org, the latest a judge mentioned is at least 300,000 years. You know, half-life and all that. I didn’t remember if it was 100,000 or 1 million, and it makes no difference at all, man can make no claim of being capable of doing either, or even 10,000.

The Court’s Ruling

On July 9, 2004, the Court of Appeals ruled on Nevada’s Yucca Mountain Lawsuits. The judges dismissed almost all of the State’s claims except a key challenge against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Court ruled that the EPA’s 10,000-year safety standard on radiation containment at the site was arbitrary and inconsistent with the congressionally-mandated recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences. The Court also struck down the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing standards insofar as they include a 10,000 year compliance limit.

The National Academy of Sciences said the radiation safety standard should be set at a higher limit, when the waste would be at its peak radiation levels – at least 300,000 years from the time the waste is sent to Yucca. The EPA was required by law to base its rule on NAS’ recommendation, but chose to set the standard at 10,000 years instead.

[..] State officials believe the ruling will significantly delay or even scrap the project. State Attorney General Brian Sandoval claimed a sound victory for Nevada, saying that the EPA would have to form a new rule with a tougher standard – a standard the Energy Department would not be able to meet due to Yucca Mountain’s inferior geology. This “is a fatal blow to the repository ,” Sandoval said. DOE itself has expressed doubts in the past about being able to meet a longer time limit. As quoted by the Court, former project director Lake Barrett wrote in 1999 that a safety standard significantly longer than 10,000 years would be “unworkable and probably unimplementable.”

Yeah, there are dozens of nuclear plants either under construction or in planning phases as we speak. We are told to see Chernobyl and Fukushima as unfortunate accidents, and there are plenty nuclear plants that never have accidents like those, but even then they are all of them gigantic economic loss-makers, and that’s before decommissioning and waste storage, which generate additional behemoth financial losses, and in the end are incapable of solving the problems they themselves generate. It’s all exclusively about profit, damn humans or other lifeforms, and damn the torpedoes.

And the little green Martians out there in space somewhere are watching us saying ”A potentially smart species. Too bad they’re doomed by their own ultimate hubris. But why would they volunteer to nuke their offspring?”

One more time: you can not run an economy on an energy source that generates economic losses. It is NOT an option. Our present economies have been made possible by fossil energy sources that gave us 10-100 times more energy than we put in to extract them. Those days are over. Please adjust your lifestyles accordingly.

 

 

 

 

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