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Debt Rattle November 19 2024

Nov 192024
 
 November 19, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  82 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn A woman bathing in a stream (Hendrickje) 1654

 

• Biden Wants To Take World With Him – Russian State Duma Chair (RT)
• Trump’s Security Chief Nominee Blasts Biden’s Ukraine Missile ‘Escalation’ (RT)
• Has Biden Just Destroyed the World? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Biden Walks Off Into Jungle (RT)
• ‘Freezing’ Ukraine Conflict Unacceptable – Kremlin (RT)
• The Great Trump Exhale (QTR)
• Gabbard Could Help Change US Foreign Policy (John Kiriakou)
• Ramaswamy Says Some Government Agencies Will Be ‘Deleted Outright’ (ET)
• Trump Expands Search For Treasury Secretary (ZH)
• CNN Mole People Can’t Deal With MAGA Posse At UFC (MN)
• Beyond Consequence (James Howard Kunstler)
• WSJ Issues Scathing Indictment Of How Democrats Blew It On Inflation (ZH)
• Mad at the Election? Blame Obama (AmG)
• Germany Has Become Europe’s Political Wasteland (Bordachev)
• Gardening Against Evil Days (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

Trump

Gaetz

Vivek

Tucker
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858320988867350576

Speaker

Skripal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858271372020990012

60 min

 

 

 

 

“..it appears that the elderly Biden, nearing the end of his life, is “dreaming of eternity” and wants to “pull America under with him, and maybe the entire world as well.”

• Biden Wants To Take World With Him – Russian State Duma Chair (RT)

The outgoing President Joe Biden is taking the US and the rest of the world down with him by escalating the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the chairman of the Russian State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, stated on Monday. Biden has reportedly removed US restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles, according to a New York Times report on Sunday, which described the move as “a significant escalation” that might “provoke a direct response from Moscow.” The White House has made no official statements on the matter. Volodin said it appears that the elderly Biden, nearing the end of his life, is “dreaming of eternity” and wants to “pull America under with him, and maybe the entire world as well.”

“If this happens, Russia will be forced to respond. The manner of the response will be up to the Ministry of Defense, but there will be one,” he said, adding that this might even include the use of “new weapons systems” that Russia has not previously deployed on Ukrainian territory. As for the Western weapons in question, they have already been used against Russia, Volodin noted. Their expanded use might cause some additional damage, but “it will not change the situation on the battlefield.” “It will only worsen the fate and future of Ukraine. And it will finally destroy Russian-American relations,” Volodin predicted. While Washington has made no official policy announcements, a number of European NATO members and public figures across the West hailed the Times report. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky said on Monday that long-range strikes against Russia were part of his “victory plan” and that “missiles will speak” very soon.

The US and its allies have put in some restrictions on the use of the weapons they supplied to Kiev since 2022, in order to maintain plausible deniability of their involvement in the conflict with Russia. Ukraine has demanded the removal of these limitations since this spring. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in September that any use of Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia would “significantly change the nature of the conflict.” He noted that Ukraine does not have the capability to use such weapons itself, and would require foreign personnel to create targeting and firing solutions. This, Putin said, would mean that “NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict” with Russia.

Putin

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“..It was not a matter of the US “giving permission” to Ukraine, but crossing the threshold of direct involvement, Putin told reporters in September..”

• Trump’s Security Chief Nominee Blasts Biden’s Ukraine Missile ‘Escalation’ (RT)

Allowing Kiev to use US-supplied long-range weapons against Russia will only escalate the conflict that President-elect Donald Trump is trying to end, the incoming White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, has said. The New York Times reported on Sunday that US President Joe Biden had given Ukraine permission to use ATACMS missiles against Russian territory. Washington has neither confirmed nor denied the anonymously sourced claim. Waltz, a former Green Beret and Florida congressman tapped by Trump to serve as his top aide, told Fox News on Monday that he was not briefed on the move by the outgoing administration, as he normally would be by tradition. “It’s another step up the escalation ladder,” Waltz told Fox host Brian Kilmeade.

“And nobody knows where this is going. North Korea is unleashing ballistic missiles, artillery, now tens of thousands of soldiers. “The administration responds by lifting this restriction. North Korea sends more soldiers. South Korea is now saying it may get engaged…” Ukraine has accused the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea of sending weapons and thousands of troops to aid Russia. Washington has accepted this claim at face value. “So this is a development, but it’s a tactical one,” Waltz added. “President Trump is talking grand strategy here. How do we get both sides to the table to end this war? What’s the framework for a deal, and who’s sitting at that table?” Trump is putting together an “all-star team” that will consider the broader strategic issues and the ways to “we drive this war to an end,” Waltz said.

The Republican president-elect campaigned on ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying he would try to do so even before his January 20 inauguration. Many of his prominent backers have denounced Sunday’s rumored move by the outgoing President Joe Biden as an attempt to make any peace deal more difficult. Under Biden, the US has provided over $64 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine to support Vladimir Zelensky’s war effort against Russia. Washington placed certain restrictions on the use of such weapons, and Zelensky has spent months demanding the lifting of the limitations, as part of his “victory plan.”

Moscow has repeatedly warned the US and its allies that any such move would amount to their open involvement in the hostilities. Russian President Vladimir Putin has pointed out that Kiev lacks the capability to use long-range missiles without NATO satellites and military personnel to develop targeting and firing solutions. It was not a matter of the US “giving permission” to Ukraine, but crossing the threshold of direct involvement, Putin told reporters in September. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova acknowledged on Monday that reports of Biden’s decision were still unconfirmed, but added that if Kiev actually used US missiles in such a way, Moscow’s response would be “adequate and tangible.”

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“Trump cannot lose the war in Ukraine unless he can present peace as an accomplishment.”

• Has Biden Just Destroyed the World? (Paul Craig Roberts)

To make it impossible for Trump to enter office with good relations with Russia, in addition to “Russiagate,” as Gilbert Doctorow reminds us, the corrupt Obama regime unlawfully seized Russian consular properties in San Francisco, and I think elsewhere, in order to bring Trump into office with poisoned relations with Moscow. This time in November, 2024, the totally corrupt Biden Regime, has blocked any peaceful settlement negotiated by Trump of the Russian/Ukrainian conflict by reversing Biden’s decision and giving go ahead for the US/NATO to launch missiles from Ukrainian territory into Russia. The senile idiot, manipulated by his warmonger advisors, has possibly started WWIII. Recently in an interview with Russian television I expressed my opinion that such a trap was desired by the neoconservatives for Trump, but that I thought the Pentagon would block the approval.

There are so many reports that the Biden regime has given a green light to NATO launching missiles from Ukraine into Russia that the information must be correct. We hear it from Russian state television “news of the week.” We hear it from The Washington Post. We hear it from AP News. And so on. Here we have a classic example of how an outgoing administration can commit an incoming one and thereby forestall its electoral agenda. It is now happening before our eyes, although the whore American media will do everything possible to hide the truth. The question is: What will Putin do now if the red line that Putin says is the fatal one is actually crossed and Western missiles begin hitting targets inside Russia? Will it prove to be, like all other red lines Putin has declared, not to be real?

In light of Putin’s non-confrontational behavior, if the missile attacks begin prior to Trump’s inauguration, possibly Putin will wait and see what Trump does to reverse the decision before Putin releases death and destruction on the Western World. The crazed neoconservatives and Deep State have pressured Biden into a decision that places the entire world in a situation where destruction of all life possibly awaits. Why did a single American vote for such a cruel, inhuman, morally vacant, anti-American political Democrat party that is willing to risk life on earth for Washington’s hegemony and the profits of the military/security complex? Why did the European Union regret Trump’s election? Why does the Western media support actions that result in the end of the world? The final question and the most important one is: What can President-elect Trump do about it?

He can, prior to his inauguration, call Putin and tell him to hold off, that once inaugurated as President, he will reverse the policy and permit no missile attacks on Russia. Will Putin believe that Trump can deliver? Considering the war cabinet Trump has appointed, can Trump make a decision independently of his government? The situation is complicated by the fact that Trump’s appointees are aligned against Iran and for Israel. Neither Russia nor China can stand aside from an US/Israeli attack on Iran. Putin probably wonders if “Making America Great Again” also implies military dominance. Trump’s supporters are tired of losing wars. They want to win one. Trump cannot lose the war in Ukraine unless he can present peace as an accomplishment.

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Before okaying long range missiles in Ukraine, they sent Biden deep into the Amazon.

• Biden Walks Off Into Jungle (RT)

Outgoing US President Joe Biden appears to have once again aimlessly wandered off stage after delivering a speech on climate change in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil on Sunday. A clip of the 81-year-old’s latest gaffe has gone viral on social media. Speaking at a press conference near Manaus, the largest city in the Brazilian Amazon, Biden wore a loose-fitting button-down shirt and his trademark aviator sunglasses. Throughout the address, the president talked about the dangers of climate change, the importance of rainforest conservation as well as the investments his administration has made into clean energy.

Biden stated that he is officially the first sitting US President to personally visit the Amazon rainforest and announced that his government would be launching a special financing coalition to mobilize at least $10 billion by 2030 in order to protect 20,000 square miles of land in the Amazon. However, after finishing his speech, Biden waved to the cameras, turned away from the podium and started walking away, heading straight into what appeared to be some dense greenery. The video of the aging president’s exit has since gone viral on social media, with one clip posted by the Pop Base account gaining over 26 million views by Monday morning. In the comments, many users expressed confusion over where Biden was going, with some claiming he had “wandered off into the Amazon.”

“Bruh did he just wave bye and disappear into the jungle?” one user wrote, with another asking why the president was in the Amazon at all. “He’s really doing all the side quests now that he can retire,” one person suggested. According to Newsweek, however, a full version of the video supposedly shows that Biden was not actually lost and had walked down a path that was not clearly visible in the clip. The outlet noted that several other members of the press later also walked out along the same path. While Biden’s team has not commented on the incident yet, if the US president was indeed lost, it wouldn’t be his first public mishap. The White House, however, had previously insisted that most of the videos of the aging leader getting confused or ‘frozen’ at public events had been manipulated, with Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissing them as “cheap fakes.”

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First: no nukes, no NATO, no nazis. Only then can we talk freeze.

• ‘Freezing’ Ukraine Conflict Unacceptable – Kremlin (RT)

Moscow vehemently rejects the possibility of freezing the Ukraine conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday. He was responding to reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to suggest the move during the G20 summit in Brazil. Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with Erdogan’s plans, claimed that the Turkish leader would suggest freezing the conflict “on current lines” and encourage Kiev to delay discussions about joining NATO for at least ten years as a “concession” to Moscow. He also reportedly plans to propose the creation of a demilitarized zone in Donbass, where international troops would be deployed to provide security guarantees for Ukraine. Asked to comment on the report, Peskov stated that Moscow had no information about any proposals being prepared by Erdogan. However, he said “any kind of freezing along the line of military conflict is unacceptable for the Russian side.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously outlined conditions for ending the hostilities, and those steps are “what needs to be done to stop the fighting,” the spokesperson added. In June, Putin set out conditions for peace negotiations with Kiev, which involved the complete removal of Ukrainian troops from all Russian territories, including the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions. They also involved Ukraine legally committing to never joining NATO or any other Western military blocs. Last week, during his first direct phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in two years, Putin also reiterated that Moscow remains open to finding a political and diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine conflict, and said it was Kiev that was refusing to negotiate.

According to the Kremlin, the Russian president also emphasized that the crisis was the “direct result of NATO’s long-standing aggressive policy aimed at creating an anti-Russian bridgehead on Ukrainian territory, while ignoring our country’s interests in the field of security and trampling on the rights of Russian-speaking residents.” During the call, Putin emphasized that any potential settlement between Moscow and Kiev would inevitably have to take into account Russia’s security interests, recognize the new territorial realities, and “eliminate the root cause of the conflict.”

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“…the man that the media told us was Hitler nonstop has morphed into the people’s president.”

• The Great Trump Exhale (QTR)

I think this election cycle President Trump won so handily, not only because his competition was grossly incompetent, but because it was far less taboo this time around to be a Trump supporter. In 2016, before President Trump had a chance to establish a four-year record for himself in office, it wasn’t popular to openly support him. His “Make America Great Again” hats were ridiculed as a cheap branding trick and the mainstream media was unrelenting in its quest to crucify not only Trump, but those who supported him. Throughout the last four years of political lunacy, which included wide-open borders, rising inflation, squandering of taxpayer cash, and multiple geopolitical dust-ups, it became far less of a faux pas to support Trump publicly. This period culminated in an internal coup that subverted the primary process, further reinforcing this shift.

Today, there are still scores of Democrats who believe Trump is irredeemable and repugnant, just as there are still plenty of news organizations that spend 24 hours a day attempting to make him look bad. But this election go-round, there were just too many Americans on the center-left, center, and center-right who decided that the humiliation they would need to endure by supporting Trump publicly paled in comparison to how insulted they felt by the current administration’s assumption that they would buy an entire campaign based on flip-flopping, outright lies, race hustling, and identity politics. For every one person that still found it inconceivable to support Trump publicly, there were two more, myself included, who simply could no longer endure having their character and intelligence insulted strictly because they backed a set of political ideals that, at any other point in recent history, would’ve been considered center-left, moderate or barely right-leaning.

With that sea change among the most crucial part of the voter base, inclusive of independents and many around the center of the political aisle, Trump won this election in a landslide. And Democrats, who had been told many times over that their political strategies were wearing thin, were forced to face undeniable, quantitative proof of just how much of the American public agreed with this assessment. As such, it’s undeniable that the nation has issued a collective exhale in response to the election results. Many people who voted for Trump, and who may have still been wondering whether it’s OK to express their political beliefs publicly without being called “garbage,” now know that they can: they are in the company of more than 70 million other voters and form the majority of the country. For years, Trump campaigned on the saying that his voters were the “silent majority.” This election proved him right.

It was risky for many high-profile people to come out and publicly endorse Donald Trump prior to this election, and is a testament to just how much the left has lost its way. Had Trump not won, many of these people would have been lambasted as “far-right wingers,” “purveyors of misinformation,” and people whose moral and ethical integrity should be called into question heading into another Democratic administration. But instead, with a Trump mandate, millions of Americans can exhale publicly and, like Joe Rogan said last week, finally just admit that no matter what everybody says, they just like President Trump. Rogan said on his podcast a couple of days ago: “…you’re getting what you get. That’s who the guy is and I like him. I’ve gone I’ve grown to like him. I had a much more negative opinion of him back in the day because it was There’s only so much you can pay attention to and do deep dives on right before you lose your f*cking mind and with him I was like It’s probably not good for the country.”

And what we saw last night at the UFC fight, where Trump had a great interaction with fighter Jon Jones, who handed him his belt after winning his fight, is that whether people like it or not, the man that the media told us was Hitler nonstop has morphed into the people’s president. This will be like a snowball rolling down a hill: the more people that come out and embrace Trump publicly, the more who will follow. Put simply, Trump is just winning people over. I wrote last week about how this election doesn’t just feel like the beginning of four years of change; it feels like it could be spearheading a populist/libertarian renaissance in the country that could last multiple election cycles. You could tell from his entrance to the fights last night that the nation is starting to feel the excitement for this potential, too. Seeing Trump at the fights last night was like the flyover before an NFL game. It was one of many moments over the last year while he was campaigning that people muttered: “We’re back. America is back.”

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“Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.”

• Gabbard Could Help Change US Foreign Policy (John Kiriakou)

President-elect Donald Trump this week stirred up the intelligence community with his picks of former Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence (DNI) and former DNI and Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe as C.I.A. director. Ratcliffe, a fierce partisan, is nonetheless the more traditional pick of the two. Gabbard spent her life as a Democrat, including eight years in the House before running for president in 2020, dropping out, changing her affiliation to “Independent,” and then changing it to Republican and endorsing Trump. She is the more controversial pick, not necessarily because of her politics, but because she is far more isolationist than most Democrats and she supports an immediate end to the war in Ukraine and engagement with North Korea, China and Syria.

Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard are likely to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, according to The Washington Post. Neither is as controversial as, say, attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz, who was investigated a year ago for sex trafficking, or defense secretary nominee Peter Hegseth, a former Army captain who is currently a Fox News host and who has literally no experience running anything larger than his own household. While Democrats will likely oppose both Ratcliffe and Gabbard, if only because the two are MAGA Republicans who want to end U.S. financial and military support for Ukraine, Republicans now control 53 Senate seats, more than enough for confirmation, with room to lose a few. Publicly, Democrats aren’t saying much about Ratcliffe. He’s mostly a known quantity in Washington, having been DNI for a few months at the end of the first Trump administration. He’s a former member of the House Armed Services Committee and was also a member of Trump’s impeachment defense team.

Ratcliffe was initially dismissed as unqualified for the DNI job in 2019. He withdrew from consideration, but Trump renamed him a year later and he was finally approved by a sharply-divided Senate. His tenure was short, and he didn’t do anything either controversial or innovative in his few months in the job. Gabbard’s nomination has drawn far more ire, especially from Democrats. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), a former C.I.A. officer, said she was “appalled” by Gabbard’s nomination and added, “Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) called Gabbard’s nomination “incredibly reckless,” and added that “Putting someone with known sympathies for foreign adversaries (in the position) is not putting America’s interests first — it’s putting our security at risk.”

And Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) said, “Tulsi Gabbard’s deep ties to some of our nation’s most dangerous adversaries, including Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Vladimir Putin of Russia, make her an untrustworthy guardian of our nation’s most closely held secrets.” All of this is, in my own humble opinion, absurd. Democrats don’t like Gabbard because she never bought into the party’s anti-Russia hysteria, because she was never supportive of putting the U.S. and NATO on the brink of war with Russia in Ukraine, and because she doubted the Democratic Party’s assertion that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people, an allegation refuted by United Nations whistleblowers. That’s exactly what we need in a healthy democracy — somebody in a position of authority who makes decisions based on facts, not on what happens to be politically expedient.

We need a person willing to rein in the neoconservative/neoliberal intelligence and foreign policy establishment when they urge the president to double down on military action based on phony or incomplete intelligence. Gabbard may face one substantive challenge when she finally becomes DNI. That challenge will be in dealing with Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio, currently a Republican senator from Florida. Rubio is a longtime mainstream neoconservative hawk, especially on China, although he has kowtowed to Trump successfully over the past eight years. Rubio and Gabbard have some clashing views, but Gabbard is as much a seasoned bureaucratic fighter as Rubio is. The question, then, will be who can more successfully get Trump’s ear.

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“Most of the people making these decisions from health care to the Department of Defense are failing on effectiveness because they have no accountability..”

• Ramaswamy Says Some Government Agencies Will Be ‘Deleted Outright’ (ET)

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said on Sunday that some federal agencies will be “deleted outright” and that contractors may see “massive cuts” in what they can charge when the incoming administration takes office next year. Last week, Trump named former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead the presidential advisory commission, DOGE. Their work must be completed no later than July 4, 2026, Trump said in his statement. Ramaswamy told Fox Business on Sunday that “there is massive waste, fraud, and abuse right now.” “Federal contractors are really exploiting the federal government,” he said. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked him whether entire government agencies will be closed, he responded in the affirmative.

“We expect mass reductions. We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright,“ Ramaswamy said. ”We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts of all federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government. So, yes, we expect all of the above.” As a presidential candidate, Ramaswamy had called for totally eliminating or restructuring of several agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Elaborating on Fox, Ramaswamy said that “failures of the executive branch need to be addressed.” “Unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state that was created through executive action” are running the government, he said, which needs to be fixed by the executive branch.

“This is about restoring self-governance and accountability in America as well. Elected leaders, if they make the wrong decisions, voters have a great choice. You can vote them out and remove them,” Ramaswamy said. “Most of the people making these decisions from health care to the Department of Defense are failing on effectiveness because they have no accountability. Historically, it’s been the view of many scholars to say that those people could not even be fired. Now, we take a different view with the environment the Supreme Court has given us in recent years, and we’re going to use that in a pretty extensive way to move quickly.” DOGE will not be an official government agency, meaning that both Ramaswamy and Musk are not considered Cabinet members in the incoming Trump administration and therefore not subject to the Senate confirmation.

Both Ramaswamy and Musk, as well as Tulsi Gabbard, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined the president-elect at a UFC event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. Gabbard is Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, while Trump nominated Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

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It looked like Bessent had it, but apparently there was too much opposition to him.

• Trump Expands Search For Treasury Secretary (ZH)

The group of prospective Trump Treasury Secretary picks has expanded from two (Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent – as we detailed here) to four (now including former Fed governor Kevin Warsh and Apollo Globla chief Marc Rowan). While we noted earlier that Elon Musk and RFK Jr. are pushing for Howard Lutnick, with Musk praising the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO as a disruptor compared to Key Square Group (and George Soros protégé) Scott Bessent – the latter of whom met with Trump on Friday, and has the backing of many including noted investor Kyle Bass; The FT reports that people close to the process said Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, Marc Rowan, chief executive of Apollo Global Management, and Bill Hagerty, the Tennessee senator, are also now in the running, along with Robert Lighthizer, the former US trade representative under Trump.

The FT continues to note that since Trump was elected, Bessent has been on the defensive about his commitment to enacting the president’s economic vision. In an opinion piece for Fox News last week, he described tariffs as “a means to finally stand up for Americans”. But his critics have seized on comments to the Financial Times that the president-elect’s agenda represented “maximalist” positions that were negotiating tools, as a sign he would be soft on the issue. Trump’s aides are reluctant to repeat the tensions over trade in Trump’s first administration, when Steven Mnuchin, then-Treasury secretary, frequently sought to moderate tariff plans for fear of disrupting markets. Several people familiar with the discussions inside Trump’s team said Lighthizer, who served as US trade representative in the first administration, had previously expressed interest in becoming Treasury secretary.

On Sunday the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a pro-tariff think-tank, backed Lighthizer publicly for Treasury secretary. “The next Treasury secretary must be 100 per cent aligned with President-elect Trump’s policy on tariffs,” it said in a post on X. “Former USTR Robert Lighthizer is a steadfast champion for the US economy and the best choice to carry out President Trump’s trade agenda.”

Marc Rowan
Rowan, 62, is a billionaire investor who leads Apollo Global Management, which he cofounded in the 1990s. It now has nearly $700 billion in assets under management. Apollo recently announced that it plans to double its assets under management to $1.5 trillion by 2029. The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that while the billionaire’s aides are in touch with Trump, Rowan isn’t actively trying to secure the Treasury Secretary role and hasn’t spoken to Trump personally about such a position. But the Times also wrote that Trump has been telling his staff that he’s impressed with Rowan, who Bloomberg estimates to be worth $10.9 billion. Rowan has said that US economic concerns must be fixed by what he called “wholesale change,” which he said Trump and his new administration would bring.

Kevin Warsh
Warsh, 54, is a former Morgan Stanley banker and one of the newer contenders. He was an economic advisor to President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2006 and a governor of the Federal Reserve Board from 2006 to 2011. During the latter period, Warsh was a central figure in shaping the nation’s response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, working to rescue major ailing banks. Trump had been floating Warsh that year as a frontrunner for Fed chair. He eventually picked Jerome Powell for the role. More recently, he’s been working on Trump’s transition team, helping with economic policy and personnel, according to The Journal. Most recently, Warsh was outspoken in questioning The Fed’s independence with regard the 50bps rate-cut right before the election. “if that’s all true, maybe they’re not data-dependent.” “I do not want to be the person accusing them of politics … but when you don’t have a theory of the case and you don’t follow it, it is easy to get that accusation and it is harder … to defend them.”

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“They’re deathly afraid of ‘masculinity’ and strong personalities.”

• CNN Mole People Can’t Deal With MAGA Posse At UFC (MN)

The MAGA crew took over UFC 309 in Madison Square Garden over the weekend, triggering demon energy woke seethery into action. Behold their media leaders, the CNN mole guys. Why do they all wear those thick heavy black rimmed glasses? Anyway, these guys, it doesn’t matter what their names are, lets call them Howard and Greg, couldn’t cope with president Trump leading out his transition team to uproariously loud cheering at the event. Howard said Trump was “giving supporter based permission structure,” by bringing his crew with him, while Greg said it was like ancient Rome with Caesar bringing his gladiators into the Colosseum. “It really looks like ancient Rome here. This is the conquering Republican Caesar who’s going into the Colosseum, and everyone’s cheering, and he’s got his political gladiators with him,” Howard excitedly whined, ignoring the fact that Julius Caesar was long dead when construction on the Colosseum began.

“That appearance isn’t just about him enjoying the applause. He’s sending a message to the Senate. For sure,” Greg continued blathering. “Not only are you entertained, but these are my people, and are you willing to fight?”Because here’s who I have,” Greg clamoured. It’s hilarious watching these people having a meltdown analysing Trump’s team and the UFC crowd having fun. They were having a well deserved day off, celebrating, watching the event and dancing to YMCA by the Village people, but the mole people want you to believe it’s some kind of scary authoritarian display of power. CBS News also couldn’t cope. The article states “Trump is a longtime UFC enthusiast and frequent attendee of major fights. He made promoting hypermasculine tones a signature of his campaign — as he looked to further widen the gap among male voters between himself and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.”

“Trump and his top supporters embraced alpha-male terms and often accentuated them with vulgar and demeaning language.” It gets even more hilarious… “While campaigning, Trump appeared frequently on podcasts, gaming platforms, and with key supporters who described a vote for Trump as a way to demonstrate true manliness. While Trump taped a podcast with Rogan, who himself has spoken about hypermasculinity, Harris failed to do a similar appearance, citing scheduling conflicts.” They’re deathly afraid of ‘masculinity’ and strong personalities.

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“I don’t know why the Democrats lost. I don’t understand … Prices have come down, the economy is good. I don’t know why they voted against her, against the party.” — William Shatner (Captain Kirk)”

• Beyond Consequence (James Howard Kunstler)

If you boil down everything the woked-up, psychopathic Democratic Party did the past eight years as it drove the country into a ditch, it all amounted to a Great Pretending. Whatever the party said, they knew it was not so. Whatever they did, they pretended the other side was doing. They lied lavishly, knowingly, and incessantly and now they are pretending to soul-search in a great public display of pretend humility as they await the dreaded reckoning. Case in point: the interview on PBS between the Aspen Institute’s former chief Walter Isaacson and Harvard civics philosophy prof Michael Sandel, “to make sense of Donald Trump’s Presidency.” Listen to them prattle about “the dignity of work,” “credentialist condescension,” and “income disparities.”

You know it was way worse than that: censorship, witch hunts, the gestapo FBI, a stupid money-pit war, medical fascism, the wide-open border, race-and gender hustles, state-sponsored riots, lawfare programmatically destroying lives, careers, reputations, and misuse of the news media (including PBS) to lie about all of it. These two pusillanimous pricks, pretending to be genteel, are the poster boys for a diseased polity. And behind the scenes now, in the C-suites of the big agencies, the faculty lounges of Higher Ed, the Zoom meet-ups of so many crypto-government NGOs, and especially in the Big Media board-rooms, the cries of anxiety and desperation signal a momentous end of something: the punking of America by a gang of vicious, criminal snobs. The aggregate insult alone deserves a world-class beat-down. They know it, and they know they are going to get it, and it will be satisfying to watch them rat each other out as judgment nears.

But even as all that plays out, and justice returns to the scene, Mr. Trump and Company face the enormous task of getting our nation’s house in order. The balance sheet is a catastrophe, we are functionally bankrupt, and “Joe Biden” has been busy destroying the value of our money in the futile attempt to work around all that. All the economic statistics rolled out to benefit Ms. Harris in the election are false. Something is underway that is too big to stop and it will express itself as ruinous inflation and economic depression in some wicked combo of the two. It will surely lead to epic rearrangements in everyday life. I will suggest a few examples. The people of this land have been deprived of purpose and meaning in an economy organized among giant enterprises and vast distances from wherever you live. To call ourselves “consumers” degrades us. We are citizens who have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to each other.

We are economic actors who can make choices and take risks, not passive units to be exploited. The people need an economic role in their locality: employer of neighbors, producer of useful goods and services, all the way down to faithful servants of something and someone. Monopolies and chain stores killed American towns and all the complex relations in them that furnished purpose, meaning, and livelihoods for the people in a rich ecosystem of production and services. Now it’s the monopolies and chain store’s turn to decline and die off — and they will in the course of things, but it would be foolish to try to prop them up. Let them go and let the people rebuild their networks of making-and-doing locally. It’s already happening.

The giant shopping malls that came along in the 1970s have already died, and there was no official campaign to rescue them, nor any official funeral. It just happened quietly in the background. The malls were a pure product of the combo of Boomer household formation and Happy Motoring. That’s ending now. What replaced the malls, strangely, is the new model of Garage Sale Nation. That will continue to evolve and elaborate itself, and integrate into what happens next — which will not be the A-I robot nirvana of endless leisure, but rather an era of tribulation. You can see it coming on all around you. So many things don’t work anymore. Medicine. School. The task of reorganizing them is monumental. It will generate plenty of friction and hardship.

The people also need a social role in their community: head of household, mother, mentor, public servant, caretaker, local hero. You need a place in this world to enact those roles, a location in it, at the proper scale, and it must be a place that is worthy of your affection. Too many places in the USA do not meet these requirements. They are ugly, sprawling, chaotic, and grotesque. The suburban template for development is a long-running fiasco, the anti-community, and MAGA’s psychological investment in it is, sadly, a mistake — though it is consistent with the psychology of previous investment (sunk costs).

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“..they overcorrected, flooding an already fragile economy with cash and setting the stage for soaring inflation that has burdened millions of Americans ever since.”

• WSJ Issues Scathing Indictment Of How Democrats Blew It On Inflation (ZH)

The Wall Street Journal has issued a scathing postmortem analysis of how the Biden administration completely botched the economy and supercharged inflation. President Biden hadn’t even been inaugurated when he and his senior advisers made a monumental gamble in January 2021 that would reverberate through his presidency. Fresh on the heels of a $900 billion Covid-relief bill that Congress had approved weeks earlier, Biden proposed a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. Biden and his team, many of whom had served in the Obama administration, claimed they were correcting their mistakes from 2009: spending too little to combat a major economic crisis. Instead, they overcorrected, flooding an already fragile economy with cash and setting the stage for soaring inflation that has burdened millions of Americans ever since.

Key among their policies was the American Rescue Plan (ARP) – a package which boosted the child tax credit, showered Americans with $1,400 per person, and directed $350 billion to state and local governments. The plan was passed against a backdrop of already unprecedented government spending. Americans were awash in federal aid from bipartisan measures under Trump, supply chains were breaking down, and businesses were struggling to rehire workers. The administration dismissed these concerns, prioritizing speed over prudence. The plan, of course, totally backfired. “If inflation had been less severe in that first year, if it had peaked at a lower level, could Vice President Harris have survived that? My intuition is yes,” said Michael Strain, head of economic-policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

On election day, approximately 40% of voters polled said the economy was their top issue – with those voters backing Donald Trump by a 22% margin. The White House is unrepentant, of course. “Any scenario that envisions less inflation from a reduced ARP also has to wrestle with slower growth, higher unemployment and more child poverty,” said White House Council of Economic Advisors chair, Jared Bernstein. “White House and Democratic officials have argued that overall U.S. economic outcomes were better than those achieved in nearly every other advanced economy. But politically, those arguments fell flat and gave Trump his opening. “It comes off as cold comfort to say that people have it worse in Germany, the U.K., France,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Pa.). “People naturally compare their experiences today to what things were like prepandemic.” -WSJ”

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“When he failed, they decided to send their message in a language that no one could misunderstand. They sent Trump.”

• Mad at the Election? Blame Obama (AmG)

Liberals who are in the throes of capitulation and despair after Donald Trump’s crushing electoral and popular vote win can lay blame for their disastrous loss at the feet of one man: Barack Hussein Obama. Obama built the Trump wave. His failure to live up to the promises of his populist 2008 run has cursed the Democratic Party, probably for a generation. The Washington DC establishment in just two short months is going to get “scholonged” by an angry and vengeful Trump, ready to rain executive hellfire on the bureaucrats and institutions that have spent the last nine years fighting him tooth and nail. All of this could have been prevented. In 2008, Obama swept into power with a crushing electoral college and popular vote majority. He won Iowa, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. He even won Indiana. Democrats swept into power in Congress with a 74-seat lead in the House, nearly 59% of seats, and were gifted with a magical 60-seat filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate.

This was a generational victory, a sign that voters were fed up with politics as usual and the failures of the GOP and the Washington and Wall Street establishment as such. This victory wasn’t just about electing the first Black president, though that was important: The policies and platform at stake appealed deeply to voters. It is worth remembering what exactly those policies were. Obama promised to end the war in Iraq, end the Afghanistan war with honor, help the economy by reducing health care costs (prioritizing “Main Street” over Wall Street), and bring about a new era of racial harmony. Moreover, Obama explicitly eschewed radical leftist politics. He explicitly defended traditional marriage. In his DNC nomination speech, he condemned employers who “undercut American wages by hiring illegal workers.” Obama ran a campaign on bringing “change” to DC. He made much of his status as a newcomer who lacked the “typical pedigree” of a candidate for the nation’s highest office.

Put another way, Obama won a decisive victory in 2008 by campaigning as a Washington outsider bent on ending foreign wars, boosting the economy by helping ordinary people, and being a moderate on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Does this message sound familiar? It should. In broad measure, it is the same formula that brought Donald Trump to power in 2016 and has given him, like Obama, unified control over the executive and legislative branches after a crushing electoral and popular vote win. Obama’s hubris is the reason the Democratic Party stands here today—powerless in the face of “Orange Hitler.” Obama did not close Guantanamo Bay, he ended the Iraq War only to get sucked back in, killed Osama Bin Laden but kept troops in Afghanistan, started wars in Libya and Syria, and, most damningly, inflamed racial tensions when he had a chance to calm them.

Far from being a moderate on social issues, Obama was the president whose picks for the Supreme Court rammed gay marriage down Americans throats after it had suffered numerous state-level electoral setbacks, including in California of all places in the very election that brought Obama to power! Obama’s pledge to reduce health care costs in 2008 did not come with an individual mandate to purchase health insurance. The final bill that snaked its way through Congress and was signed into law did contain such a penalty. Instead of lowering health care costs, Americans watched as their premiums went up.

Instead of fewer foreign wars, we got more. Instead of declaring victory after the death of the mastermind behind 9/11, we got eight more years of war. On every front, Obama didn’t just fail to follow through on his mandate, he actively worked for the opposite outcome. Obama lacked the strength of character and will to follow through on his promises and to deliver the shake-up in Washington that he promised. He was more concerned with hanging out with celebrities and being cool than facing down his own Party’s bosses to deliver on the promises he made to the American people. Nancy Pelosi, 16 years later, still remains one of the most powerful figures in the Party. Americans sent a refined, urbane, grassroots college professor to do their bidding in DC. When he failed, they decided to send their message in a language that no one could misunderstand. They sent Trump.

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“..a natural product of the loss of any possibility of determining their own destiny.”

• Germany Has Become Europe’s Political Wasteland (Bordachev)

Germany is a political void in the center of Europe, even though it contributes significantly to the global economy and is influential in trade. It’s also the Western country with which Russia has had the most historical, cultural and, until recently, economic contacts. A week ago the government in Berlin collapsed, and so far the leading German parties have agreed that early parliamentary elections will be in February 2025. It’s very likely that the next government will be led by the main opposition force, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). At the start of the election campaign, CDU leader Friedrich Merz publicly announced that – if he wins – he’ll issue an ultimatum to Moscow over Ukraine. He’s promised that if this ultimatum is not accepted within 24 hours, his government will provide the Kiev regime with cruise missiles to attack Russian territory.

The consequences of such a decision for Russian-Western relations are obvious. It is not surprising, therefore, that our main reaction was astonishment at the irresponsibility of such a high-ranking member of the German elite. There are even fears that Merz and those behind him intend to drag Germany into a destructive military conflict with Europe’s largest country. But all this German talk means nothing in practice. Without US authorisation, or direct orders from Washington, the leaders in Berlin are not only incapable of starting a major war in Europe, they are incapable even of adjusting their shoelaces. Any statements by German politicians, the fall and rise of governing coalitions there, should only be seen in the context of how the Berlin establishment is trying to find a role in the shadow of total American dominance.

It’s deeply symbolic that Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a decisive step towards the collapse of the governing coalition on 6 November, the day on which the domestic political balance of power in the United States changed radically. In the context of significant changes at the center, the peripheral political systems must react as sensitively as possible: at the level of how a branch of a large corporation reacts to a change in its general management. Berlin’s international position is defined by its crushing defeat in the Second World War, which ended any hope of determining its own future. Germany, like Japan and South Korea, is a country with a foreign occupying force on its territory, albeit under the NATO flag. The German elite, both political and economic, is, with few exceptions, even more integrated with the US than the British elite. To say nothing of those running France, Italy or other European countries.

Germany has no autonomy in determining its foreign policy, nor does it aspire to have any. It’s no coincidence that over the past two and a half years of the Ukraine crisis, it’s been Berlin that has provided the largest amount of military and financial aid to the Kiev regime. Almost ten times more than, say, France, whose president likes to make bellicose speeches. Naturally, the representatives of the German establishment look like pale copies of what we used to consider real politicians. And this is a natural product of the loss of any possibility of determining their own destiny. Of course, Berlin can still set the parameters of economic policy for the weak countries of the European Mediterranean. States such as Greece, Italy or Spain are given to Germany to ‘feed’ within the framework of the European Union and its single currency.

But even Poland, which has a special relationship with the US, has managed to avoid tying itself to Germany’s industrial grip. France is resisting slightly. But it is gradually sinking to the level of southern Europe. The UK has left the EU, but retains its position as the main representative of the US in Europe. It should be noted that such a state of affairs for Germany did not come about overnight. Even during the Cold War, the Federal Republic (FRG) was led by bright personalities. Under chancellors such as Willy Brandt (1969-1974), the Moscow Treaty was signed between the FRG and the USSR on the recognition of post-war borders in Europe. In the early 1970s, German politicians and business were able to persuade the US to allow Germany to establish energy cooperation with the Soviets. In our time, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (1998-2005) pushed for European energy security based on German-Russian cooperation.

But all this came to an end with the global economic crisis of 2008-2013, after which the US began to tighten the screws on its allies. In the spring of 2022, Olaf Scholz, who had previously been committed to dialogue with Russia, fully supported the military-political confrontation created by the Americans over Ukraine. Now German politicians are not free to choose their own future. For most of them, with the exception of the non-systemic opposition, this is quite obvious. Why appoint bright personalities to the highest positions if nothing depends on their decisions? Gradually, the entire political system and the mood of the electorate are adapting to these conditions. The differences in the parties’ platforms are becoming blurred. Observers are already talking about the likelihood that the government will be formed by the Social Democrats and their main opponents from the CDU. This means that disagreements on fundamental issues are a thing of the past.

Only the technical aspects of forming a government need to be agreed upon, and the main goal of all efforts is to hold on to power as such. The united and sovereign German state existed for 74 years (1871-1945). Its revival as such is not possible: even if Russia and China would look favourably on it, the Anglo-Saxon world will not allow it for several reasons at once. Firstly, both German attempts – in the First and Second World Wars – to play a leading role in the West came close to succeeding. So nobody will give them a third chance. Just to be on the safe side. It should be borne in mind that the West takes order within its own community even more seriously than it does the defence of its privileges against the rest of humanity. Second, Germany’s position at the center of Europe, its huge industrial base and its industrious population make it an ideal partner for the US and Britain, the maritime trading powers. Politically insignificant, Germany can economically control much of the rest of Europe, but cannot dictate the substance.

Third, the revival of visible German independence is in the interests of Moscow and Beijing because it would split the ranks of the consolidated West. A small front of countries like Hungary, Slovakia or even one a little larger cannot create such a split. And the unity of the West under the leadership of the US is a fundamental obstacle to the implementation of the plans for a multipolar world order promoted by Russia and China. Germany is now a political wasteland in the heart of Europe. Tiny shoots of reason are, of course, breaking through the decades-old system based on pandering to the interests of American patrons. With some very obvious exceptions, the representatives of the non-systemic German opposition are talented people. But their prospects are still very dim because of the way things are manage. In the future, we can expect to re-establish some economic ties with Germany but we must treat it as a political colony of the US, rather than thinking about try to establish full inter-state relations with Berlin.

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An unknown side of Stalin.

• Gardening Against Evil Days (Helmer)

In politics — the Kremlin is no exception — politicians don’t mean what they say. In gardening, the plants always mean what they say. Gardeners, obliged to record what that is, are more likely than politicians to tell the truth. In the records of Russian politicians since the Bolshevik Revolution, only one leading figure stands out as having the eye, ear, and nose for what plants have to tell. Not the present nor the founding one. The only gardener among them was, and remains, Joseph Stalin. Nothing has been found that he wrote himself on his gardening except perhaps for marginal comments in books he read. There is no mention of books on gardens or gardening in the classification system Stalin’s personal library adopted from 1925. He kept no garden diary. Without a diary recording the cycle of time and seasons, the planting map, colour scheme, productivity of bloom and fruit, infestation, life and death, he must have committed his observations – “he possessed unbelievably acute powers of observation” (US Ambassador George Kennan) – to memory, as peasants do.

Unlike the tsars who employed English, Scots, and French architects and plantsmen to create gardens in St. Petersburg and Moscow in the royal fashions of Europe, defying the Russian winter to display their power and affluence without shovelling for themselves, Stalin dug his gardens himself in the warm weather of his dacha at Gagra, on the Black Sea. There he was photographed with his spade tending parallel, raised beds of lemon trees. There is no sign of him wielding trowel and fork in the garden at Kuntsevo, his dacha near Moscow, where the photographs show him strolling in a semi-wild young forest or seated on a terrace in front of a hedge of viburnum. No record of Stalin digging at Kuntsevo has been found.

There is just one reminiscence of Stalin speaking to a visitor about his gardening. “Stalin is very fond of fruit trees. We came to a lemon bush. Joseph Vissarionovich carefully adjusted the bamboo stick to make it easier for the branches to hold large yellow fruits. ‘But many people thought that lemons would not grow here!’ [He said] Stalin planted the first bushes himself, took care of them himself. And now he has convinced many gardeners by his example. He talks about it in an enthusiastic voice and often makes fun of would-be gardeners. We came to a large tree. I don’t know it at all. ‘What is the name of this tree?’ I asked Stalin. ‘Oh, this is a wonderful plant! It’s called eucalyptus,’ Joseph Vissarionovich said, plucking leaves from the tree. He rubs the leaves on his hand and gives everyone a sniff. ‘Do you feel how strong the smell is? This is the smell that the malaria mosquito does not tolerate.’ Joseph Vissarionovich tells how, with the help of eucalyptus, the Americans got rid of the mosquito during the construction of the Panama Canal, how the same eucalyptus helped with the work in swampy Australia. I felt very embarrassed that I did not know this wonderful tree.”

Stalin read a great deal of philosophy, Roman and Russian history, art, and agronomy, and so he is bound to have reflected on the way in which the ideas of the classics he read took physical form in the gardens of the time. Especially so on the ancient idea of the paradise garden. It is this transference between thinking and digging, between the idea of paradise and the cultivation of it, which a new book, just published in London, explores in a radical way. Olivia Laing, author of The Garden Against Time, In Search of a Common Paradise, knows nothing whatever about Russia or its gardens or its politics – except for propaganda on the Ukraine war she has absorbed unquestioningly and briefly repeats from the London newspapers. That’s a personal fault; it’s not a dissuasion from the book of reflections she has written out from her garden diary to an end which Russians understand to aim at, not less than the English.

In this wartime it’s necessary to keep reflecting on this end, on the aesthetic and philosophical purpose of the paradise garden. Laing begins her book and her garden with John Milton’s lament for gardening in wartime – in his case, the English Civil War of 1642-46 and the counter-revolution of 1660. “More safe I Sing with mortal voice, unchang’d”, Milton observed at the beginning of Book 7 of his Paradise Lost, “to hoarce or mute, though fall’n on evil dayes/ On evil dayes though fall’n, and evil tongues;/in darkness and with dangers compast round,/And solitude.” At the same time, Laing records for herself and Stalin certainly knew, “what I loved, aside from the work of making [the paradise garden], was the self-forgetfulness of the labour, the immersion in a kind of trance of attention that was as unlike daily thinking as dream logic is to waking.”

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Grandma

 

 

Plane tech

 

 

Foal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858438984684146947

 

 

Orangutan

 

 

Guilty

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 19 2024

Oct 192024
 
 October 19, 2024  Posted by at 8:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


René Magritte Youth 1924

 

• Why Women Should Vote for Trump (Tiffany Marie Brannon)
• The Collapse of Kamala Harris (Hammer)
• The Three Layers of Culpability (Kunstler)
• Trump Pokes Fun At His Subpoenas, Kamala’s Absence During Al Smith Dinner (JTN)
• Harris’ One Answer To Bret Baier That Americans Just Don’t Believe (JTN)
• Obamas To Hit Campaign Trail With Harris (RT)
• Judge Chutkan In Jack Smith’s Trump Probe Unseals More Docs (JTN)
• CBS Could Be In Trouble Over Kamala Interview (RT)
• Could Biden Create Global Upheaval in His Remaining Time in Office? (Sp.)
• The Debate – General Staff vs Kremlin, Helmer vs Doctorow (Helmer)
• Zelensky ‘Feels Noose Tightening Around His Neck’ (Sp.)
• Zelensky’s Victory Plan A Delusional Distraction From Diplomacy And Peace (SCF)
• Zelensky’s Plan Sells Ukraine to West – Lavrov (Sp.)
• EU Looking To Expand Fines Against Musk (RT)
• Colonial Legacy Of The Nile Threatens Peace In Africa And Beyond (Ryzhenkova)

 

 

 

 

Al Smith
https://twitter.com/i/status/1847100390237499809
https://twitter.com/i/status/1847118287089397871

https://twitter.com/i/status/1847095450211377631
https://twitter.com/i/status/1847098080752971896
https://twitter.com/i/status/1847108883992793229

Elon waste
https://twitter.com/i/status/1847062684803469367

Barron

Kimbal

Trump 34
https://twitter.com/i/status/1846987041852346491

RFK

Delaware

AIPAC

Apple

 

 

 

 

“..voting for the rich white man in this election doesn’t make you evil. It makes you wise.”

• Why Women Should Vote for Trump (Tiffany Marie Brannon)

Dear fellow women, You are being played… And falling for this particular confidence scheme won’t just cost you, it’ll cost all of us. I’m an affluent 30-something divorced, white, childless, American woman with multiple postgraduate degrees, and a busy career. I’ve lived abroad in several metropolitan cities and I own my home. According to every single statistic, I should be a J.D. Vance-loathing single cat lady. I should also really hate Donald Trump. But I don’t. Lest we forget, the presidency is not a popularity contest. There seems to be some confusion on that front. You aren’t casting a ballot for Prom Queen, you’re voting for the leader of the free world. It’s why that little thing called the Electoral College exists. I’ve heard other women say they’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris because “she’s more iconic” than Trump. My response: what about inflation, foreign or domestic policy, war, immigration, education, human trafficking, or any other serious issue?

The truth is, if you actually voted for real pro-women policies, you’d vote for Trump. And the Left knows this. That’s why the Democratic Party has spent untold millions making Abortion the #1 issue for women. White women alone make up 40% of the electoral vote and 89 million American women total are registered to vote, making us the largest voting bloc in the nation. In 2020, swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania saw women vote at record rates, with Biden winning 57% of female voters.We hold serious power. Hence why Democrats want to convince women that the unrestricted right to abortion is more important than the right to vote, freedom of speech, or any other right you can think of. Make abortion equalitarian with being female and tell them they are physically under attack by the GOP. Oh, and also by the Supreme Court. We can’t forget them.

Democrats have done such a good job with this indoctrination that, in a recent viral video, young women said they would rather have the right to an abortion over the right to vote. What are they teaching girls in schools these days? Yet even if you’re a passionately pro-choice voter, it’s silly to consider abortion as the critical issue at stake in this election. After all, Trump has already said he doesn’t favor a national abortion ban and that he would veto any such bill. According to KFF, only 14% of American women – or 7% of the American population – have had an abortion at some point in their life, 21% being Black, 19% Hispanic, and 11% White women. In contrast, 100% of Americans – women included – have to buy food, pay medical bills, and want to know their tax dollars are going to help them in an emergency. Just ask the victims of Hurricane Helene as they were offered a measly $750 after FEMA gave billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars away to noncitizens and foreign countries under the Biden Harris Administration.

We’ve been inundated with the message that voting for an objectively unpopular and recognized failure of a Vice President because she loves abortion, possesses a female reproductive system, and is of minority ethnicity is more important than anything else that matters. Ladies – don’t be so easily fooled. Trump’s record speaks for itself and is deserving of closer attention by female voters. The former president approved the largest paid parental leave program in history, guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid leave. He directed more than $200 million per year to technology education grants for women and programs that encouraged STEM careers. He founded the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, the first-ever government program focused on advancing women’s “full and free participation” in the global economy. Trump also shone a spotlight on under-the-radar domestic women’s issues, establishing a task force for missing and murdered Native American women.

Under the Trump administration, women’s unemployment reached the lowest level in 67 years and women received over 70% of new jobs. Last I checked, those policies affect far more than 14% of the female population. Even Trump recognizes this. He recently observed, “Women want to have safety. They want to have a strong military. They want to have a strong police force… They want to be in their house and they want to be safe. … I hope they like my personality… But to me, it wouldn’t be very important, the personality.” He’s right. This is not a personality contest. It’s not about which candidate is more “iconic.” It is our duty as citizens to vote for the best policies, laws, and chances for us and our loved ones to thrive for years to come. Women voters are no exception to this rule. So, from one would-be single cat lady to a nation of others, consider this: voting for the rich white man in this election doesn’t make you evil. It makes you wise.

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“Will the last person hanging around Harris-Walz campaign headquarters please turn off the lights?”

• The Collapse of Kamala Harris (Hammer)

On July 26, in the aftermath of the Democratic Party’s ruthless midsummer coup of their own democratically elected presidential nominee, this column predicted that the elevation of dimwitted cackler-in-chief Kamala Harris to the party’s presidential slot would “spectacularly backfire.” More specifically, I wrote: “Practically, the path to winning 270 Electoral College votes still runs through the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. It is frankly bizarre for Democrats to swap out the man who talks ceaselessly about his hardscrabble Scranton upbringing for a Californian who boasts the most left-wing voting record of any presidential nominee in modern history.” I’m feeling pretty good these days about that prognosis. Harris recently campaigned in Erie, Pennsylvania—a crucial regional hub in this election cycle’s most important battleground state.

Conspicuously absent from that snoozefest was incumbent Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.). Harris tried to pass off the snub as a nothingburger, suggesting that Casey was doing the more important work of knocking on doors and getting out the vote. This doesn’t pass the laugh test. Facing a spirited challenge from Republican hopeful Dave McCormick, Casey has clearly concluded that Harris’ immense Bay Area lefty baggage—her history of endorsing the Green New Deal, a national fracking ban, and crippling electric vehicle mandates—is an electoral albatross around his neck. It’s tough to blame Casey. Other vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents, such as Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), reached the same conclusion a while ago. Such a conclusion makes a great deal of sense: A recent Marist national general election poll, for instance, shows Trump up a whopping 10 points on Harris with registered independents. If that margin ends up being anywhere near accurate, it is extraordinarily difficult to see a scenario in which Trump loses.

Harris has recently been engaging in what the psychology profession calls “projection,” ludicrously criticizing Donald Trump for avoiding the media when it was actually Harris who infamously avoided a single one-on-one sit-down interview for weeks on end following the Biden coup. In reality, Trump recently sat down for two interviews with Time magazine, whose owner is a vocal Harris donor. Harris declined a Time interview nonetheless. Prior to this week’s desperate, last-second change of course, which saw her sit down with Fox News’s Bret Baier, Harris had only deigned to sit down with the most obsequious media imaginable.

One can only wonder how bad the Harris-Walz internal polling must be to impel her to ditch the far-left “Call Her Daddy” podcast and the friendly ladies of “The View” for the considerably more mainstream Baier. Desperate times sure call for desperate measures. Democrats routinely blast Republicans as misogynistic, but their own chronic misandry is so bad that Kamala is apparently considering a sit-down with podcast king Joe Rogan, whose own brand of woke-skeptical irreverence sharply clashes with Harris’ identity politics obsessions and overt race-based pandering. The tables sure have turned. Will the last person hanging around Harris-Walz campaign headquarters please turn off the lights? Snark aside, this race isn’t over yet. But the Harris-Walz camp cannot possibly be feeling too good right now, either.

Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for their predicament. Throughout this interminable campaign season, they have studiously avoided substantive discussion of the four issues that Americans consistently tell pollsters are most important to them this cycle: the economy, inflation, immigration, and crime. Instead, they have repeatedly attempted to shift the electoral terrain back to the few issues that poll in their favor: namely, abortion and the Jan. 6 jamboree at the Capitol. In this, they have completely failed. The American people still care above all about the same four basic quality-of-life issues that they have cared the most about for years now. It is Democrats’ fault that they are so woefully out of touch with the voters’ sentiments on those issues and that the Biden-Harris administration’s track record polls as poorly as it does.

Perhaps if the Harris-Walz ticket does go down in flames, Democrats will pause and take a long, hard look in the mirror. Perhaps they will recognize that promising late-term abortion is a peculiar way to pander to women, that pledging mass amnesty for illegal aliens is a counterproductive way to pander to Hispanics, and that dangling marijuana legalization is an outright offensive way to pander to Blacks. Perhaps. But if history is any indication, they probably won’t.

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“Most of all, Mr. Trump has to defeat the sick belief that anything goes and nothing matters.”

• The Three Layers of Culpability (Kunstler)

The Great Fright among the elite of the party ruling our country steals across the land chillingly now from sea to shining sea — as if all those ghouls, werewolves, zombies, and tormented wraiths assembled in the front yard Halloween displays send up one mighty wail of despair: Donald Trump will seek revenge against his enemies if you elect him! they scream into the pale moonlight. Well, he ought to, of course, and remember: they are your enemies, too — the FBI thugs battering down your doors at five in the morning, the malicious US attorneys manufacturing phony felonies, the Soros-owned DAs and party-owned judges, and the thousands of spooks from agencies both known and unheard-of surveilling your every move, every purchase, every journey, every thought. Consider that it is not whether Mr. Trump might seek revenge but whether justice, and the mental health of the nation, require an accounting for the real crimes of actual persons against the people of America lo these years of the Woke Jacobin Inquisition.

Finally, as the days dwindle down to November 5, you understand exactly what motivates the three layers of evil heaping America with malice and punishment. Layer one: the officers of the political establishment, a.k.a., “the blob” or Deep State, both current and emeritus. You know now that they are motivated to stay out of courts-of-law (and, ultimately, prison). Figures such as John Brennan, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Chris Wray, Anthony Fauci, Alejandro Mayorkas, Barack Obama, and many more, exude culpability for doing real harm to US citizens. They do not want to do time. As Dr. Johnson famously said: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” They see Donald Trump’s poll number go hockey stick and they tremble in their Beltway mansions. On the Kubler-Ross transect of grief, they are just now wavering between the stages of anger and bargaining.

Second layer: the lawfare lawyer gang deployed to keep the blob safe from investigation and prosecution: Marc Elias (the mail-in ballot fraud genius), Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord (authors of every get-Trump legal brief), and many others who work with them, are motivated by the gigantic fees they command from the Democratic National Committee and other cut-out orgs that funnel payments to them. The Elias Law Group alone is rumored to have raked-in millions from one client, the Kamala Harris campaign. This is apart from whatever lawyerly zeal they exercise so enjoyably in their blood-lust for Mr. Trump and his associates. Remember: Jacobins are sadists who derive pleasure from cruelly punishing their adversaries. It probably motivates them more than the money involved, since ambitious Beltway lawyers can always and easily make bundles of money from the most mundane services to the blob.

Third Layer: the news media. The motives of these birds are the flimsiest: social status and professional stature. They operate within a self-referential reward bubble that provides psychological nourishment as long as they go along with the mumurations of their flock. They will be easiest to turn around as the national mood turns (and is now turning, sharply). A year from now, don’t be surprised if they treat Mr. Trump as a revered hero who saved the country from the malignant blob — and pretend that they never thought otherwise. By then, it will be too late for some, of course, and actual figures such as Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, NBC’s Nicolle Wallace, will be drowning in their own slime trails.

Now, whether Mr. Trump would actively seek revenge is a thing apart from the paranoia of his adversaries. On the one hand, he seems aware that his own place in history will rest not on looking backward to the harms inflicted on him as the sacrificial goat for the sins of “the deplorables” — the many Lawfare cases against him will likely be reversed in higher courts, or just dropped — but on attending to and fixing the many obvious, reality-based problems afflicting the nation: inflation, the horrendous debt, the libido for war induced by military contractors and neocons, the return of productive industry and jobs that pay living wages, sealing the border and expelling dangerous aliens, and stopping the race-and-gender hustles, to name a few things.

In 2016, Mr. Trump floated the idea of defaulting on US debt, or negotiating its terms. Sounded outrageous to some at the time. Now, with the BRICs org meeting to de-dollarize their trade arrangements, might be a ripe time to make such a move. He can reverse “Joe Biden’s” 2021 reversal of his border policies by executive order on day one, put a stop to the “sanctuary city” idiocy, and end all cash incentives to illegals currently inside the USA. He can negotiate a reasonable end to the Ukraine conflict that leaves that country neutral, as everyone knows it should be. He can incentivize the return of factory production with US companies. He knows (and you know) that there is a huge agenda of practical problems to face. Mr. Trump does not need the aggravation of stirring up further grievance and resentment among the defeated Wokesters. He needs them to get aboard a national reclamation project, get their minds right, and lend a hand.

Speaking of hands, on the other hand, remember that the signal weakness of Julius Caesar was pardoning his enemies. Since Mr. Trump is best known as a deal-maker, I believe he will seek to make a deal with the blob. The deal will be for them to cooperate in the prosecution of certain key figures in exchange for not demolishing their agencies altogether. Some of these people — Garland, Mayorkas, Fauci, Brennan, and Wray, for examples — really do need to do some ‘splainin’ in front of juries. That may be sufficient to clarify for history some of the damage the Woke insanity did to our country. We can’t pretend that nothing happened. Most of all, Mr. Trump has to defeat the sick belief that anything goes and nothing matters.

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“These days, it’s really a pleasure [to be] anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance..”

• Trump Pokes Fun At His Subpoenas, Kamala’s Absence During Al Smith Dinner (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday night poked fun at both himself and rival Vice President Kamala Harris during a speech at the Al Smith charity dinner in New York City. The dinner is a historic night where presidential candidates often make lighthearted jokes about each other while raising money for Catholic charities. Trump, who attended the event alongside his wife Melania Trump, joked about his recent court cases in the Big Apple, and claimed that he was happy to be in New York without a subpoena, The Independent reported. “These days, it’s really a pleasure [to be] anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance,” Trump said. “Anytime I don’t get a subpoena, I’m very happy.”

Trump also teased Harris for not attending the event in person, while also commenting on a recent viral video of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer feeding a woman a chip in the same manner that a Catholic priest gives someone Communion. “I must say, I was shocked when I heard that Kamala was skipping the Al Smith dinner,” Trump observed. “I’d really hoped that she would come, because we can’t get enough of hearing her beautiful laugh. She laughs like crazy. We would recognize it any place in this room … Instead of attending tonight, she’s in Michigan receiving communion from Gretchen Whitmer.” Harris decided to skip the event to campaign in Wisconsin, becoming the first major party presidential candidate to skip the dinner since 1984, but did address the audience in a pre-recorded video.

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“In the period after Biden’s debate meltdown, Harris insisted Biden was “sharp as a tack.”

• Harris’ One Answer To Bret Baier That Americans Just Don’t Believe (JTN)

Vice President Kamala Harris largely demurred on tough questions in her interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, offering a concrete and definitive answer on only one key question. Unfortunately for her, it’s the one answer Americans just don’t buy. Harris’ ties to President Joe Biden have been a double-edged sword for her, as she simultaneously tries to distance herself from him and his unpopular administration while also asserting that she was a major player in the White House over the past four years. Ostensibly justifying her candidacy, however, was Biden’s failing mental health. When asked about Biden’s current mental health situation, she offered an unequivocal answer: Biden is fine. But that answer raised eyebrows. During the interview Baier pressed her on Biden’s cognitive decline, a development that became plain for all to see during his debate with former President Donald Trump and which served as the ostensive reason that top Democrats pressured him to step aside.

“You told many interviewers that Joe Biden was on his game [and] ran around circles on his staff. When did you first notice that President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished?” Baier asked her. Harris, for her part, deflected the premise of the question and insisted that “Joe Biden is not on the ballot.” She notably, however, took great care to assert that the president is competent to remain in office. “Joe Biden, I have watched in – from the Oval Office to the situation room, and he has the judgment and experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people,” she insisted. Baier pushed back, asking “I understand you met with him at least once a week for three and a half years. You didn’t have any concerns?” “I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump,” Harris retorted, “which is why the people who know him best, including leaders of our national security community, have all spoken out, even people who worked for him in the Oval Office, worked with him in the Situation Room, and have said he is unfit and dangerous and should never be President of the United States again.”

Harris’s response appears to undercut the premise for her candidacy to some extent, given that public perception of Biden’s mental faculties after the debate largely drove the pressure for him to step aside and permitted her elevation. In the period after Biden’s debate meltdown, Harris insisted Biden was “sharp as a tack.” Her continued insistence that he remains sharp puts her in opposition to the overwhelming majority of the public, who have witnessed a litany of Biden’s awkward gaffes, ramblings, and forays off script. While conservatives had long suggested that Biden suffered from mental and physical decline, the sentiment became the consensus opinion after the presidential debate, during which he often stumbled over his answers and appeared lost on stage. A CBS News/YouGov survey released in late June, after his debate with Trump, found that 72% of registered voters did not believe Biden had the mental and cognitive health to serve as president. Only 27% believed he did.

A Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll after the debate, meanwhile, found that 66% of registered voters had doubts about Biden’s mental fitness while 74% said he had shown he was too old to be president. Fifty-four percent expressed the belief that he was “getting worse.” In explaining his decision to step aside, Biden did not mention internal party pressure or concerns over his mental fitness, but implicitly acknowledged his age by saying “I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.” The Trump War Room distributed the clip on social media, with many respondents questioning Biden’s decision to leave the race if those close to him genuinely believe he is fit to continue in the White House.

The Baier interview came as part of a major media blitz by the Harris campaign to familiarize voters with the candidate at the 11th hour and to push back on claims she had ducked substantive interviews. The campaign had touted her willingness to appear on Fox News, a generally right-leaning outlet perceived as hostile territory. She has still not held an unscripted, open-question press conference. Indeed, pro-Harris media celebrated the interview as a rebuttal to her critics who fretted over her penchant for softball interviews with friendly news outlets. On the right, Harris attracted considerable mockery over her evasive answers and habit of redirecting questions to permit her to attack former President Donald Trump. While several such clips went viral, her one attempt at a concrete answer may prove the most damaging in that it begs the question: Why isn’t Biden at the top of the ticket?

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Too late.

• Obamas To Hit Campaign Trail With Harris (RT)

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will join US Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on the campaign trail in swing states Georgia and Michigan next week, according to media reports. Harris is set to appear with the former president in Georgia on October 24 and with Michelle Obama in Michigan on October 26, the Associated Press reported on Friday, citing a senior official from the Harris campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity. The latest polls put Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump neck-and-neck nationally, while Trump leads Harris with 52% to 45% in Georgia, and Harris is ahead of Trump 47% to 45% in Michigan. Barack Obama and his wife remain “immensely popular” with supporters of the Democratic Party, Reuters noted. Their appearance could boost Harris’ chances in states where victory margins are thin, the agency added.

The former president recently campaigned for Harris in Pittsburgh, and is scheduled to appear in the coming days in the swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Michelle Obama is set to campaign for the first time this election cycle. Harris, while serving as district attorney of San Francisco, supported Barack Obama’s successful presidential bid in 2008. The former president also reportedly helped usher President Joe Biden out of the race after the 81-year-old’s disastrous debate against Trump in June. Joe Biden served as vice-president during Obama’s two terms in office from 2009 to 2017. The New York Post claimed earlier this week that Biden and Obama shared a private conversation at a memorial service in Washington, reportedly agreeing that Harris wasn’t as strong as the outgoing president.

The current election race has seen several high-profile endorsements of the rival candidates. Among celebrities to support Harris are singers Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Bruce Springsteen, and actors George Clooney, Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence. Trump has been endorsed by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, rapper 50 Cent, politician and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., commentator Tucker Carlson, retired professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, and actor Jon Voight.

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“1,900 pages of documents..”

• Judge Chutkan In Jack Smith’s Trump Probe Unseals More Docs (JTN)

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over former President Donald Trump’s federal Jan. 6 election interference case, on Friday unsealed nearly 1,900 pages of documents from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation for the public to view. Trump has said the release of such documents ahead of the election on Nov. 5 is election interference in itself. Trump’s legal team has said the “asymmetric release of charged allegations and related documents during early voting creates a concerning appearance of election interference.” The judge in the case disagreed. “If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute — or appear to be — election interference,” she argued in her order on Thursday evening.

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“..going to the news is an act of extending trust. Now, the thing about trust is that once it’s lost, it’s very difficult to regain.”

• CBS Could Be In Trouble Over Kamala Interview (RT)

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has grounds to hear a complaint against CBS for deceptively editing an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a Republican-appointed commissioner has said. Earlier this month, the broadcaster aired two different answers by Harris to the same question, one in a preview and the other in the actual ‘60 Minutes’ show, prompting accusations of misleading editing to make the sitting vice-president sound more coherent than she actually was. The Center for American Rights (CAR) filed a complaint to the FCC on Wednesday, accusing the network of “deliberate news distortion,” which would be an actionable offense under the regulator’s rules. “What this claim is alleging is that an act of distortion took place,” Commissioner Nathan Simington told Fox News Digital on Friday.

The FCC has “certainly contemplated the possibility of distortionary reporting taking place via splicing,” he explained, noting that in a previous proceeding the commissioners “gave the example of substituting a yes answer to one question or a no answer to an entirely different question.” Simington reminded the audience that the FCC can’t regulate what can be said or written, given that the US has the First Amendment to the Constitution that protects freedom of speech and the press. However, CBS could still find itself in trouble for “abuse of public trust,” he said. “I think everyone agrees that deliberately misleading the public is a bad idea,” the commissioner said, adding that if CBS did so, Americans should be upset, “because people go to the news in order to learn about things that they would never be able to learn about themselves.

In other words, going to the news is an act of extending trust. Now, the thing about trust is that once it’s lost, it’s very difficult to regain.” Simington is one of the two Republicans on the five-member FCC. He was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2020. Trump will face Harris in the November 5 election for the White House, after the Democrats pressured President Joe Biden to drop out of the race in July. Trump accused ‘60 Minutes’ of perpetrating “the greatest fraud in broadcast history” by swapping Harris’ responses. FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, responded by accusing the former president of attacking free speech and democracy itself. “The FCC does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage,” she said last week.

The CAR complaint specifically names WCBS-TV in New York, which is owned and operated by CBS Corporation, rather than an affiliate who could assert plausible deniability. While Simington would not speculate about a possible probe, he said the FCC might levy a fine or place conditions on the network’s license renewal, if CBS is found to have deliberately distorted the Harris interview. A day before the CAR complaint was filed, House Speaker Mike Johnson accused CBS of selectively and deceptively editing his own interview. The Louisiana Republican offered proof by posting raw footage recorded by his office, alongside what actually aired, on X (formerly Twitter).

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“..We’re not sure whether he is cooperating or not or whether he’s going to watch the Democratic Party go into the wilderness.”

• Could Biden Create Global Upheaval in His Remaining Time in Office? (Sp.)

Though Joe Biden’s presidential term is nearing its end, he can still “make major decisions that can never be overturned” while still in the office, says Professor Joe Siracusa, political scientist and dean of Global Futures at Curtin University. “For example, in the next four months and here we’re talking about January 20th, 2025, he could in this short period of time encourage President Zelensky to negotiate with the Russian Federation about a diplomatic solution of the war in Ukraine,” Siracusa suggests. “He could encourage the Israelis to attack Iran and drag the United States into a conflict that might ultimately involve the Russian Federation,” Siracusa continues.

Aside from affecting global affairs, Biden’s decisions may also affect the outcome of the upcoming presidential election in the US, seeing how Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is Biden’s vice-president and thus “will pretty much have to wear what he does,” Prof. Siracusa points out. For instance, Biden could “give the Ukrainians the green light to use American offensive weapons on their border to hit inside Russia itself” or “encourage the Israelis to attack the oil and gas installations in Iran, threatening world prices.” “In terms of the United States leverage with its allies, and here we’re looking at Israel and Ukraine, allies such as they are, could get the United States in a lot of trouble down the road that would affect the system for a long time,” the scholar remarks.

That said, while Biden still has “plenty of time to get in trouble,” there is “probably not enough time for a major diplomatic breakthrough,” Prof. Siracusa observes, making it unlikely that the 46th POTUS could be aiming for some sort of legacy-defining success in foreign policy. “I think in the next four months, Joe Biden has to decide whether he’s really going to help Kamala Harris become the next president,” Prof. Siracusa adds. “He’s very angry that he was pushed aside, particularly since he seems to have reclaimed his cognitive abilities. We’re not sure whether he is cooperating or not or whether he’s going to watch the Democratic Party go into the wilderness.”

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“Who takes seriously the Rupert Murdoch approach to truth – you don’t read the London Times or Fox News to determine what is true.”

• The Debate – General Staff vs Kremlin, Helmer vs Doctorow (Helmer)

“The winners of the war are the Russian General Staff. Everyone in Russia understands that the Russian Army is winning and will win this war…I believe Gilbert is wrong on the history of the negotiations that have gone on since before this war began… It’s [Russian] military protection that guarantees [Ukrainian] permanent neutrality… Second, I think that Gilbert is wrong on the foundation of policy…The US policy does not date when Gilbert has put it from Madeleine Albright [US Secretary of State 1997-2001]…US policy since 1945 has been to destroy Russia and prevent Russia from ever forming a kind of partnership with Germany in Europe. If such a German-Russian partnership post-war were to develop, that would end US control of Europe… This is not a neocon invention. It goes back to non-Ukrainian, non-Jewish decision makers during World War II in the United States…Thirdly, Gilbert is wrong on method…

What Gilbert is saying is that he watches Russian television talk shows… This is an absurd method for understanding either President Putin’s role in the command structure, or the General Staff’s role, or what the future security of Russia is required to be in a settlement…Who takes seriously the Rupert Murdoch approach to truth – you don’t read the London Times or Fox News to determine what is true. Therefore, the notion that we should watch Russian television with that group of talk show presenters as an example of what is the truth of Russian debate is inappropriate.” “I’m sorry, Gilbert is well-meaning but we are not talking about Doctorow — we are talking about Doctor Zero…If we don’t settle the outcome of the war according to Russia’s security needs now, by the time there is the next [Russian] presidential election, there will be more war.”

“The issue isn’t what [President Vladimir] Zelensky says publicly. The major security threat for Russia is in the secret annexes [of the Ukrainian ‘Victory Plan’]…What went into the US secret annex in Greece [1981-87] was the deployment of US nuclear weapons aimed at Moscow…Secret annexes mean secret weapons, secret deployments, and dual-capable bombs, missiles and warheads…We know we are back in the world of nuclear targeting on Russia…That brings us back to the general problem – what’s US policy toward Russia? Can anything, anything a US administration ever offer Russia be trusted unless the Russian Army is in place? And that brings us back to the Gorbachev treason, repeated as the Yeltsin treason. No Russian president — no Russian president can repeat those two things. The Russian Army won’t tolerate it, and neither will the Russian people…Without the Russian Army, the signature of the US on an agreement is worthless.”

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“..doing everything imaginable to foment a NATO war and hope to save his life if not his political power..”

• Zelensky ‘Feels Noose Tightening Around His Neck’ (Sp.)

Volodymyr Zelensky’s so-called “victory plan” that was recently unveiled to the public and met with a rather lukewarm reaction from the NATO countries may represent the Ukrainian ex-comedian taking a page from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s playbook, suggests international relations analyst Gilbert Doctorow. Just like Netanyahu, having realized that Israel bit off more than it can chew with its “three front war” and seeing the only chance of victory in dragging the US “into the fight on his side,” so Zelensky seems to be trying to do the same, Doctorow explains to Sputnik. “He knows his armies are suffering a disastrous defeat and that in a matter of a few months all of Ukraine east of the Dnepr will be in Russian hands,” he elaborates.

“His only way to stay in power and to salvage something of Ukraine is to bring NATO into the battle at his side right now. Immediate admittance of Ukraine into NATO, his point one of his 5-point plan, would immediately make NATO a co-belligerent and widen the war to a NATO-Russia war.” Another point of Zelensky’s scheme is involving strikes using Western weapons deep into Russian territory. If implemented, this would “immediately make NATO a co-belligerent and start a NATO-Russia war which NATO and the US in particular absolutely refuses to do,” the analyst notes. “Zelensky feels the noose tightening around his neck and is doing everything imaginable to foment a NATO war and hope to save his life if not his political power,” Doctorow concludes.

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“There must be an end to the ideological disease if the world is ever to establish lasting peace.”

• Zelensky’s Victory Plan A Delusional Distraction From Diplomacy And Peace (SCF)

After weeks of touting a so-called victory plan, the former comedian and illegitimate Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky finally revealed his big idea. It is a bad joke indeed. Zelensky, who outlived his electoral mandate months ago and then cancelled scheduled elections, is not even a legally elected leader. He is the head of a junta that is running a war racket and milking Western taxpayers for hundreds of billions of dollars. Last month, he began briefing U.S. president Joe Biden about a “victory plan”. Zelensky also lobbied the presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. All was kept secret about the plan – although Trump did not seem impressed at the time. This week, the military-fatigue-wearing former comic met with the heads of the European Union to unveil how the NATO-backed Kiev regime would defeat Russia. Seeing him sitting at a big round table with European politicians has become farcical. This is while Russian forces are grinding down remnants of Kiev’s foot soldiers and NATO mercenaries in the eastern region of former Ukraine.

The Kiev regime’s puppet has nothing new to offer. It all boils down to begging for more weapons and money and desperate wishlists of long-range missiles to hit Russian territory with, joining the NATO alliance – and the ultimate insanity, giving the neoNazi regime nuclear warheads. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban called Zelensky’s latest star-turn ludicrous and a frightening, desperate gamble to start World War Three. The game is up for the Ukrainian conman and his corrupt regime. Ukraine has been destroyed with over 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers having perished for no good reason – only for a proxy war that the U.S.-led NATO axis wanted in a delusional attempt to somehow defeat Russia. Zelensky and his cabal went along for the ride, making money from the war racket. Even in the Western media, there are sobering admissions that the proxy war has turned out to be a disastrous defeat for the NATO-backed side.

This conflict should never have happened. Russia had offered a comprehensive set of proposals at the end of 2021 to address its long-term security concerns about NATO’s expansion and its relentless promotion of a NeoNazi front in Ukraine on its doorstep. Moscow’s reasonable attempt at diplomacy was dismissed by an arrogant U.S. and NATO, thinking that a military strategic defeat could be achieved against Russia. It was the Western powers that opted for war instead of diplomacy. Through their criminal recklessness, many Ukrainian military lives have been wasted and the former Soviet republic has been shattered. The lands that Russia took were historic Russian territories and they will not be given back. The Kiev regime has forfeited any right to negotiate. It’s remorseless aggression and Russophobia means that the only solution is its complete eradication. Russia is dismantling the regime and its NATO pretensions by force.

Ultimately, the United States and its NATO accomplices will have to recognize that their criminal machinations in Ukraine have been vanquished. The war must come to an end by accepting Russia’s rightful demands for security on its terms. It could have been done the easy way through diplomacy. But the West chose the hard way. The Kiev regime is a sordid residue that must be discarded like its former Nazi forebears was. Talk about a “victory plan” is nothing but a cruel joke that prolongs the agony of the Ukrainian people. American and European leaders need to understand that their war fantasies are finished. Sooner rather than later, the work of diplomacy and reason must begin. That means treating Russia with the respect that it deserves.

The trouble is the Western political elites are so ingrained with arrogance and ideological animosity towards Russia, it is hard to see how they will sober up to begin the task of genuine peace negotiations. Until that happens, Russia has every right to smash the enemy and ensure that NATO never threatens its nation. When the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany in 1945 it was a tremendous victory and blow against fascist aggression. However, tragically, as history has shown, the cause for world peace was not secured. Because it wasn’t the end of Western imperialism. The beast returned over and over again. There must be an end to the ideological disease if the world is ever to establish lasting peace.

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“..on the one hand, [Zelensky] sold all the land and the valuables that it holds, and on the other hand, offered up his country as a private military company..”

• Zelensky’s Plan Sells Ukraine to West – Lavrov (Sp.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s so-called victory plan suggests that Ukraine will hand over its natural resources to Western allies in exchange for weapons and turn the Ukrainian army into a private military company, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday. “Zelensky, in these points of his, spoke so veiledly about the economic side of the issue. According to the leaks, the secret annexes… stipulate that he is ready to place all of Ukrainian natural resources under the management of his Western masters, hand over controls over them, effectively to sell Ukraine,” Lavrov told reporters after a foreign ministers’ meeting on the South Caucasus.

Some leaks suggest that Zelensky’s main purpose is to get weapons no matter what, Lavrov added. He said that Western countries had already made it clear this was an “unacceptable scenario” that increased risks for the West.
“According to the leaks, also accompanied by a secret annex, the Ukrainian army will be ready to defend Europe and deploy its soldiers under a contract … maybe even replacing US contingent that is already in Europe after it wins. So just, on the one hand, [Zelensky] sold all the land and the valuables that it holds, and on the other hand, offered up his country as a private military company,” Lavrov said.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova brushed off Zelensky’s “victory plan” as a set of incoherent slogans that would push NATO into a direct conflict with Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the conflict would end when Kiev realized the futility of its policy. Zelensky presented the three-point plan, which also includes three secret additions, in parliament on Wednesday. He proposed that allies invite Ukraine to join NATO, lift restrictions on strikes deep into Russia and deploy a “comprehensive non-nuclear deterrence package” on Ukrainian soil to contain Russia. The plan envisions an end to the conflict no later than 2025.

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“..it is currently considering whether sales from his other businesses, namely SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI and The Boring Company, should be included in determining potential fines against X.”

• EU Looking To Expand Fines Against Musk (RT)

The EU could target all of Elon Musk’s private businesses when calculating fines for X (formerly Twitter), Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. Brussels has been considering fines against X since the bloc’s former tech czar, Thierry Breton, accused the platform of failing to properly police illegal content and violating the EU’s 2022 Digital Services Act (DSA). The decision on whether to penalize X now lies with the EU commissioner for competition, Margrethe Vestager. According to Bloomberg, Brussels recently warned Musk that it is currently considering whether sales from his other businesses, namely SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI and The Boring Company, should be included in determining potential fines against X.

The outlet’s sources noted that Tesla Inc’s sales would not be included in such calculations because it is a publicly traded company and not under the billionaire’s full control. Under the DSA, the EU can slap online platforms with fines of up to 6% of their yearly global revenue for failing to combat illegal content and disinformation and follow the bloc’s transparency rules. Bloomberg’s sources noted, however, that no final decision to penalize X has yet been made and that the size of any potential fine is still under deliberation. They also stated that the platform may avoid penalties altogether if it complies with the bloc’s demands.

While X has not officially responded to the report, Musk previously vowed to appeal any potential DSA fines through a “very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.” In August, ahead of his interview with former US President Donald Trump, Musk was also threatened by Breton with facing a “full toolbox” of legal repercussions if he did not step up censorship of “harmful content.” In response, the billionaire posted a meme, telling the EU commissioner to “take a big step back and literally, f**k your own face.” Since purchasing Twitter in 2022, Musk has pledged to turn the platform into a more transparent space that is committed to free speech and is devoid of censorship.

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“.. about 85% of the water that flows into the Nile comes from the Ethiopian highlands, yet Ethiopia can use only 1% of that volume of water.”

• Colonial Legacy Of The Nile Threatens Peace In Africa And Beyond (Ryzhenkova)

This past summer, a significant and somewhat unexpected development occurred when the parliament of South Sudan ratified the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA), also known as the Entebbe Agreement. Some 14 years after several East African countries initially signed the agreement, the ratification of the document officially called into question Egypt and Sudan’s historic rights to the water of the Nile. The Entebbe Agreement was originally signed in 2010 by Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Burundi. South Sudan joined the agreement in 2012. However, a key provision required the document to be ratified by the parliaments of at least six countries in order to establish a special commission that would be permanently headquartered in Uganda. After South Sudan ratified the document, the necessary quorum was finally achieved.

On October 13, Ethiopia officially announced that the agreement had entered into force. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed described this moment as a “historic milestone” in the collective efforts of the signatory countries to “foster genuine cooperation in the Nile Basin.” The Entebbe Agreement nullifies the historical water allocations to Egypt and Sudan (55.5 billion cubic meters annually for Egypt and 18.5 billion cubic meters for Sudan), determined by colonial-era agreements from 1929 and the 1959 Agreement “for the full utilization of the Nile waters” between the two countries. A total of 12 African countries are located in the Nile Basin: Burundi, Egypt, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. Together, these nations are home to 40% of Africa’s total population.

Known as the longest river in Africa (and possibly in the world), the Nile competes only with the Amazon in terms of length. It stretches approximately 5,600km from Lake Victoria, where the White Nile originates, to the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile Basin covers an area of 3.4 million square kilometers. The Blue Nile, which begins in Ethiopia, merges with the White Nile in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, before flowing into the Mediterranean Sea via Egypt. Since ancient times, the waters of the Nile have been used for irrigation and, today, they play a crucial role in electricity generation. The Nile is particularly important for Egypt – 95% of its population resides along the banks of the river and in the Nile Delta. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus famously referred to Egypt as “the gift of the Nile.” Major Egyptian cities, including the capital Cairo and Alexandria, are situated along the banks of this river.

Currently, official statistics indicate that Egypt faces a water deficit of up to 20 billion cubic meters per year, while its total annual water requirements reach 80 billion cubic meters. The country’s economy relies heavily on the Nile, with approximately 97% of its water supply coming from this river. Though Egypt lies downstream, colonial-era agreements still grant it not only a larger share of the river’s water but also the authority to oppose the construction of dams and other water projects in upstream states. As a result, economic development in these countries poses a threat to Egypt’s water needs. Interestingly, about 85% of the water that flows into the Nile comes from the Ethiopian highlands, yet Ethiopia can use only 1% of that volume of water.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Maps

 

 

Crossing
https://twitter.com/i/status/1846592234868601199

 

 

Mudfish

 

 

Snoop

 

 

Pippillota

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 7 2024

Oct 072024
 
 October 7, 2024  Posted by at 8:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  77 Responses »


Francisco Goya Fire at night 1793-94

 

• Trump Promises To Reach Mars (RT)
• Harris Calls for Backup: Obama Joins Struggle to Keep Campaign Afloat (Sp.)
• Milton Strengthens to Hurricane, DeSantis Preps Gulf Coast (ET)
• “We Lose Total Control”: Clinton Continues Her Censorship Campaign (Turley)
• RFK Jr. Focused on America’s Chronic Disease Problem (ET)
• Biden Urges Congress to Replenish Disaster Relief Funding (ET)
• Slovak PM Fico Pledges To Block Ukrainian NATO Membership (RT)
• Zelensky Rules Out ‘Bargaining’ With Russia (RT)
• Khamenei’s Lebanese Red Line (Rizk)
• Israel Won’t Last Long – Khamenei (RT)
• 4 in 5 Gaza Mosques, All 3 Churches Devastated in Israel Bombing Campaign (Sp.)
• ‘America is Partner and Financier of Israel’s Crimes’ – Houthi Leader (Sp.)
• Medvedev Calls for ‘Sinking’ of Great Britain (RT)
• Julian Assange’s Oct. 1 Address with Comment by Paul Craig Roberts (PCR)

 

 

 

 

Trump Elon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842701203630690680

 

 

Grace of God

 

 

Rally

 

 

Star Spangled

 

 

Discover

 

 

Tulsi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842674700323021299

 

 

Walz

 

 

Biden immigrants

 

 

US child trafficking

 

 

Shah
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842829985754521677

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We’re gonna win, and he’s gonna reach Mars by the end of our term, which is a big thing, before China, before anybody. My money’s on that guy [Musk].”

• Trump Promises To Reach Mars (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has pledged to “reach Mars” before the end of his term in office, should he defeat Vice President Kamala Harris next month. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will lead the mission, Trump declared. Musk joined Trump for a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening. During the event, which took place at the site of Trump’s attempted assassination in July, the 45th president issued a series of familiar campaign promises – vowing to close the US southern border, end the Ukraine conflict, and lower energy prices and inflation – as well as a pledge to reach the Red Planet before 2028. ”We will lead the world in space exploration,” he told the audience. “We will reach Mars before the end of my term.” “Elon promised me that he was going to do that,” Trump continued, before turning to Musk and asking “I don’t know, can you do that?”

“We’re gonna win, and he’s gonna reach Mars by the end of our term, which is a big thing, before China, before anybody. My money’s on that guy [Musk].” During his first term in office, Trump issued a series of space-related executive orders and policy directives. He tasked NASA in 2017 with leading “the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations,” and in 2019 established the US Space Force as the sixth branch of the country’s military, leading opponents to accuse him of militarizing space. Musk, who endorsed Trump’s campaign earlier this summer, has promised for years to make humanity a “multiplanetary” civilization. However, he blames excessive government regulation for delaying his planned colonization of Mars.

Last month, Musk claimed that his SpaceX reusable ‘Starship’ rocket would be ready for uncrewed flights to Mars within two years, and crewed flights two years later. After the Federal Aviation Administration denied SpaceX permission to test the rocket before November due to environmental concerns, Musk took to his X platform to complain that “we will never get humanity to Mars if this continues.” “Unfortunately, we continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware,” SpaceX wrote in a statement at the time. “This should never happen and directly threatens America’s position as the leader in space.” During his first term, Trump pushed the idea of cutting two government regulations for every new one enacted. If elected again, he has promised to go further, telling the New York Economic Club last month that he would “eliminate a minimum of 10 old regulations for every one regulation” imposed.

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“..some Democrats, including a few of Harris’ staff, were concerned that the vice president was not holding enough campaign events..”

• Harris Calls for Backup: Obama Joins Struggle to Keep Campaign Afloat (Sp.)

Former President Barack Obama is stepping in to save the day, as he’ll start hitting the campaign trail for Vice President Kamala Harris starting October 10, according to ABC News. Obama will help Harris in her campaign through election day, his speeches are planned in key swing states, the first of which will be Pennsylvania, a senior member of Harris’ campaign told the broadcaster. Earlier, NBC News reported that some Democrats, including a few of Harris’ staff, were concerned that the vice president was not holding enough campaign events, which could cost her the election. The US presidential election will take place on November 5. The Democratic Party will be represented by Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Republican Party by former President Donald Trump.

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“Milton has intensified into a category 1 hurricane. [..] ..expected to make landfall on Wednesday on the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 3 major hurricane..”

• Milton Strengthens to Hurricane, DeSantis Preps Gulf Coast (ET)

Milton has intensified into a category 1 hurricane. According to the 2 p.m. ET advisory from the National Hurricane Center on Sunday, Milton was about 815 miles west-southwest of Tampa, Florida. It is expected to make landfall on Wednesday on the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 3 major hurricane. Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis said earlier on Sunday that the state is preparing for the storm and that the top priority is round-the-clock debris cleanup from Hurricane Helene, which hit only 10 days ago. “This is all hands on deck to get that debris where it needs to be,” he said during a press conference at the state’s emergency operations center on Oct. 6. A tropical storm warning has been issued for Mexico’s Celestún to the Caribbean’s Cabo Catoche, while a tropical storm watch is in effect for east of Cabo Catoche to Cancún. Hurricane and storm surge watches could be required for for portions of Florida later Sunday.

When DeSantis gave his briefing, the tracks predicted landfall on Madeira Beach in Pinellas County, and he warned that along with the intense winds, storm surge damage could exceed that of Helene. “Most of the Big Bend is uninhabited,” he said. “When you’re talking about Tampa Bay, and you talk about what even 10 feet of storm surge would do in an area that has, I mean, the Greater Tampa Bay Area has millions of people. “That is just a level of damage, I think, that would far exceed the damage that was done in the Big Bend.” DeSantis and Kevin Guthrie, executive director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, announced plans underway to stage resources in the Tampa Bay area. They said they are prepared for the possibility of Tampa Bay landfall and a storm track that runs along the I-4 corridor across the state, causing debris, significant power outages, and infrastructure damage.

“The State Emergency Response Team planning section has been working this particular scenario, as well as other scenarios, for at least two weeks now,” Guthrie said. “So that’s what’s making us very effective in the response before hurricane season ever began. Our team knew to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” High-water vehicles have been sent to Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties. A Hillsborough County fire station received 400 feet of flood protection systems, and another 1,800 feet will be distributed to wastewater facilities, pump stations, and a hospital in Hillsborough and Manatee counties. DeSantis also recalled members of Florida’s State Guard, National Guard, Fish and Wildlife, Highway Patrol, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who were deployed to help North Carolina and Tennessee recover from Helene, along with all necessary equipment to respond to Milton.

“I have the State Emergency Response Team preparing for the largest evacuation that we have seen, most likely since 2017 hurricane Irma,” Guthrie said, urging Floridians to finalize their hurricane plans as soon as possible. Guthrie added that the Florida Department of Emergency Management has “thought through a lot of contingencies,” including providing emergency fuel and EV charging along evacuation routes, as well as identifying every potential housing location, which his division calls “a refuge of last resort.” Meanwhile, debris cleanup remains a top priority across the Gulf Coast before tropical storm conditions return. In his Oct. 5 executive order declaring a state of emergency for 35 counties—now amended to 51—the governor ordered all disaster debris management sites and landfills in all Helene-impacted counties to remain open for 24-hour operations.

Gulf

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“..Clinton will hopefully continue to face “a long and difficult road to getting anything done” in limiting the free speech of her fellow citizens.”

• “We Lose Total Control”: Clinton Continues Her Censorship Campaign (Turley)

Hillary Clinton is continuing her global efforts to get countries, including the United States, to crackdown on opposing views. Clinton went on CNN to lament the continued resistance to censorship and to call upon Congress to limit free speech. In pushing her latest book, “Something Lost and Something Gained,” Clinton amplified on her warnings about the dangers of free speech. What is clear is that the gain of greater power for leaders like Clinton would be the loss of free speech for ordinary citizens. Clinton heralded the growing anti-free speech movement and noted that “there are people who are championing it, but it’s been a long and difficult road to getting anything done.” She is right, of course. As I discuss in my book, the challenge for anti-free speech champions like Clinton is that it is not easy to convince a free peope to give up their freedom.

That is why figures like Clinton are going “old school” and turning to government or corporations to simply crackdown on citizens. One of the lowest moments came after Elon Musk bought Twitter on a pledge to restore free speech protections, Clinton called upon European officials to force Elon Musk to censor American citizens under the infamous Digital Services Act (DSA). This is a former democratic presidential nominee calling upon Europeans to force the censorship of Americans. She was joined recently by another former democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, who called for government crackdowns on free speech. Other democrats have praised Brazil for banning X. For her part, Clinton praised the anti-free speech efforts in California and New York and called for the rest of the country to replicate the approach of those states.

Clinton added a particularly illuminating line that said the quiet part out loud. This is all about power and the fear that she and others will “lose control” over speech: “Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content we lose total control and it’s not just the social and psychological effects it’s real harm, it’s child porn and threats of violence, things that are terribly dangerous.” Clinton continues to offer a textbook example of the anti-free speech narrative. While seeking sweeping censorship for anything deemed disinformation, Clinton cites specific examples that are already barred under federal law like child porn.

Despite the amplified message on sites like CNN, most citizens may not be as aggrieved as Clinton that she and her allies could “lose total control” over the Internet. The greater fear is that she and her allies could regain control of social media. The Internet is the single greatest invention for free speech since the printing press. That is precisely why figures like Clinton are panicked over the inability to control it. If citizens remain true to their values and this indispensable right, Clinton will hopefully continue to face “a long and difficult road to getting anything done” in limiting the free speech of her fellow citizens.

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“I prayed to God every day for the past 19 years that America’s health crisis would be solved for the next generation..“

• RFK Jr. Focused on America’s Chronic Disease Problem (ET)


Rescue the Republic rally in Washington on Sept. 29, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu.

As the dust settles on his White House bid, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is focusing on his initiative, Make America Healthy Again, with the goal to turn around what he calls a chronic disease epidemic in the United States. Kennedy suspended his independent presidential campaign on Aug. 23 and threw his support behind former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee. Trump has promised to appoint Kennedy to a health-related role in a potential second term. Kennedy told The Epoch Times in September that ending his presidential campaign was a difficult decision, but it was a “necessary step” to achieving his mission. “I prayed to God every day for the past 19 years that America’s health crisis would be solved for the next generation,“ he said. ”That is a major reason why I ran for president.” Kennedy’s campaign platform focused on fighting “corporate capture of government agencies” and ending the chronic disease epidemic.

An environmental lawyer and founder of Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy believes one issue impacts the other. U.S. corporations, Kennedy said, have made America the sickest country in the world. “We enriched these corporations and their captive agencies. And now they want to go and commoditize all of the things we value in our lives,” he said on a soggy afternoon on Sept. 30. Kennedy was among the keynote speakers at Rescue the Republic, a day-long rally that brought 6,500 supporters of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement to the National Mall in Washington. Little will change until the corporate capture of government agencies is removed, he said. “The FDA, USDA, and CDC are all controlled by giant or private corporations. Their function is no longer to improve and protect the health of Americans. Their function is to advance the mercantile and commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry that has transformed them and the food industry that has transformed them into sock puppets,” he said at the event.

At an earlier address in Washington, Kennedy said the state of health care should be measured by patient outcomes, including chronic illness, childhood obesity, and life expectancy. He pointed out that the United States is significantly behind other countries with smaller economies, such as Italy, which has a higher life expectancy and spends less on health care. “Today, we are an average of six years behind our European neighbors. Are we lazier and more suicidal than Italians or is there a problem with our system? Are there problems with our incentives? Are there problems with our food?” Kennedy said. He said the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, has contributed to the nation’s health care crisis by driving up insurance premiums and “making health care the largest driver of inflation while American life expectancy plummets.” Since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy has been an outspoken critic of how elected officials and public health leaders managed the crisis.

The United States had one of the worst COVID outcomes in the world with deaths, he said. “Our health leaders said that COVID was a pharmaceutical deficiency. This was a lie. We have the highest chronic disease rate on earth.” Two-thirds of U.S. adults suffer from chronic health issues, Kennedy noted, and 74 percent are overweight or obese. “When my uncle was president [1961-63], about 1 percent of the children in this country had a chronic disease. That number may be as high as 60 percent in America today,” he said. He sees the chronic disease epidemic among American children as a form of abuse. “Children are the most precious assets that we have in this country. How can we let this happen to them? How can we call ourselves a moral nation, the most exemplary democracy in the world, if we are treating our children like this?” He said diseases that once mostly impacted the elderly are now increasingly common among children.

“About 18 percent of American teens now have fatty liver disease,” Kennedy stated. “When I was a boy, this only affected late-stage alcoholics who were elderly. Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and old. Young adult cancers are up 79 percent, and 1 in 4 American women is on antidepressant medication. Forty percent of teens have a mental health diagnosis; 15 percent of high schoolers are on Adderall. No other country has anything like this.” Ultra-processed foods are a primary culprit in the medical crisis impacting the young, he said. “Seventy percent of American children’s diet is now ultra-processed, which means industrial, manufactured in a factory.” He said these ultra-processed foods have chemicals that didn’t exist a century ago and are partly responsible for the rise in diseases in all ages.

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Now when the money runs out Congress is to blame. That was easy…

• Biden Urges Congress to Replenish Disaster Relief Funding (ET)

President Joe Biden urged Congress on Friday to expedite funding for the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) disaster loan program, warning that it will run out of money within weeks amid ongoing recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. In a letter to Congress on Oct. 4, Biden warned that the SBA’s disaster loan program will run out of funding “in a matter of weeks and well before the Congress is planning to reconvene.” “I warned the Congress of this potential shortfall even before Hurricane Helene landed on America’s shores,” the president stated, adding that he had requested more funding for SBA “multiple times” in the past months. “Small businesses and individuals in affected areas depend on disaster loans as a critical lifeline during difficult times,” he said. “The Congress must act to restore this funding.” The president did not specify the amount needed to replenish the disaster loan program.

The SBA offers low-interest loans to businesses, homeowners, and renters affected by declared disasters. Its loan program provides affected homeowners with up to $500,000 to repair their primary residence, and up to $2 million for businesses to cover disaster-related losses. In his letter, Biden stated that while the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief fund has sufficient resources to meet its immediate needs for Hurricane Helene response efforts, it could face a shortfall by the end of the year. FEMA and the Department of Defense have been carrying out “critical life-saving and life-sustaining missions” due to impacts from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 26. Biden said that FEMA will continue to perform its missions “within present funding levels” but urged Congress to provide additional resources. “Without additional funding, FEMA would be required to forego longer-term recovery activities in favor of meeting urgent needs,” the president stated.

Biden traveled to North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia this week to tour areas severely impacted by the storm, which caused heavy flooding and widespread power outages. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Oct. 2 that FEMA does not have enough money to make it through the hurricane season. “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas told reporters aboard Air Force One on Oct. 2. Hurricane Helene barreled through the Southeast last week, making landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region. The storm hammered Florida’s Gulf Coast with record storm surges and brutal winds before pommeling the rest of the region with historic flooding, wiping out entire towns. More than 150,000 households have registered for FEMA assistance, according to Frank Matranga, an agency representative. That number is expected to climb as rescue and recovery efforts continue.

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“Ukraine’s entry into NATO would serve as a good basis for a third world war.”

• Slovak PM Fico Pledges To Block Ukrainian NATO Membership (RT)

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has said that his country would not allow Ukraine to join NATO as long as he stays in power. Admitting Kiev into the US-led military alliance would trigger a new world war, he warned in an interview with the broadcaster STVR on Sunday. “As long as I am the prime minister of the Slovak Republic, I will lead the legislators, whom I have control over as a party chairman, to never agree to Ukraine’s membership in NATO,” Fico said. “Ukraine’s entry into NATO would serve as a good basis for a third world war.” Fico, a longtime critic of Western military and financial aid to Ukraine, has insisted that the conflict must be resolved through diplomatic means. He repeatedly warned against further escalation with Moscow. The accession of new countries must be approved by all of NATO’s 32 existing members, with national parliaments voting in favor or against new candidates.

Kiev formally applied to join NATO in September 2022, citing the ongoing conflict with Russia. While many Western states publicly backed Ukraine’s aspirations, they have refused to provide a concrete roadmap or a timetable for accession. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zenesky acknowledged in July that “we will not be in NATO until the war is over in Ukraine.” Russia views NATO’s expansion eastward as a security threat and has cited Ukraine’s cooperation with the alliance as one of the main reasons behind the conflict. President Vladimir Putin warned last month that using Western-supplied longer-range weapons for strikes deep inside Russia would be tantamount to “direct involvement” of NATO in the fighting.

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Russia has no intention of bargaining.

• Zelensky Rules Out ‘Bargaining’ With Russia (RT)

Kiev has no plans to cede any territories to achieve peace in the conflict with Russia, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said, following media reports that the West is considering a settlement with Moscow in which it retains “de-facto” control over some areas formerly controlled by Kiev. In a video address on Saturday, the Zelensky announced that Ukrainian officials would discuss Kiev’s so-called ‘victory plan’ with Western backers next week, claiming it would help strengthen the country, especially in the military sphere. Kiev has yet to release the much-hyped roadmap to the public, though it has promised to do so, at least with regard to the essential points. Several media reports, however, claim that the plan includes NATO-like Western security guarantees for Ukraine, the continuation of Kiev’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region to serve as a territorial bargaining chip, deliveries of “specific” Western-made advanced weapons, and international financial aid for Ukraine.

The plan was presented by Zelensky in the US last month, and was reportedly met with skepticism by officials who suggested that it contains no “real surprises” and largely amounts to a “wish list,” according to Bloomberg. Discussions with Kiev’s Western backers will enable it to move closer to ending the conflict in line with Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’, the Ukrainian leader said, referring to his plan which demands that Russia withdraw troops from territories claimed by Ukraine. This has been rejected by Moscow as a non-starter for talks. “This is our goal – to guarantee Ukraine reliable peace and security. This is possible only based on international law and without any bargaining over sovereignty or trading territories,” he stated.

His remarks come after the Financial Times reported that Western diplomats and some Ukrainian officials “have come round to the view that meaningful security guarantees could form the basis of a negotiated settlement in which Russia retains de facto, but not de jure, control of all or part of the Ukrainian territory.” The outlet noted that this approach implies “tacit acceptance that those lands should be regained through diplomatic means in the future,” adding, however, that this remains a “taboo” for Kiev, at least in public. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow is ready to immediately declare a ceasefire and start peace negotiations as soon as Ukraine starts withdrawing troops from the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye. In August, however, he ruled out any engagement with Kiev as long as Ukrainian troops are occupying parts of Kursk Region.

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“..his first public sermon in nearly five years..”

• Khamenei’s Lebanese Red Line (Rizk)

Friday’s commemoration of Hezbollah’s late leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in Iran was no ordinary event and provides an indication of how far Tehran is willing to go to preserve the Axis of Resistance in the face of Israeli escalation. Thousands reportedly turned out for the commemoration ceremony, in which Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers before addressing the gathered masses. Khamenei’s public appearance can itself be seen as both an act of defiance directed at the Axis’ enemies and a message of reassurance to its supporters, who are no doubt looking to Iran for leadership following Nasrallah’s assassination. The Iranian leader’s public appearance comes after foreign media reports that he had been moved to an undisclosed location for safety reasons in the immediate aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination.

Perhaps more importantly, it comes on the heels of Operation True Promise 2, in which Iran launched a heavy barrage of missiles on Israel, which, according to the Iranians, hit 90 percent of their intended targets. That operation was notably heavier-handed than the first True Promise, which came in response to Israel’s attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus last April and marked the first direct military action by Tehran on Israel. In an article for Foreign Policy, Vali Nasr notes how Iran’s second direct attack on Israel was carried out with far less advanced warning compared to the April operation. Nasr – considered an authoritative voice in Washington on issues related to West Asia – also explained how the latest missile salvo “signaled Iran’s will and ability to attack Israel – and penetrate its defense systems in potentially damaging ways.”

True Promise 2 came in response to the assassination of Nasrallah, Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismael Haniyeh, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Abbas Nilforushan, conveying a clear message that Iran, contrary to many assessments, was ready to escalate. This message was reinforced by Khamenei on Friday, as he delivered some fiery remarks with a rifle by his side. “What our armed forces did was the minimum punishment for the crimes of the usurping Zionist regime,” said Khamenei in reference to Iran’s latest offensive, while warning that Tehran was ready to conduct more direct military action against Israel should the need arise.

These warnings come amid much speculation on Israel’s likely response to True Promise 2, as senior officials in Tel Aviv have pledged that Iran’s attack will not go unanswered, and the Israeli military appears to be readying a large-scale operation against Iran, with US support. In turn, senior Iranian military officials have warned that any Israeli operations targeting Iranian soil would be met with devastating blows, far exceeding the strikes Tehran has conducted in both its previous operations. As IRGC Deputy Commander Ali Fadavi said in a statement published by Iranian state-affiliated media: “If the occupiers make such a mistake [attack Iran], we will target all their energy sources, installations, and all refineries and gas fields.”

That Iran has upped the ante dramatically in the aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination speaks to how determined it is to demonstrate that this setback will not weaken the Axis of Resistance. Perhaps even more importantly, these latest developments speak to the special relationship between the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah. This is reflected in the fact that Khamenei’s speech was the first time in which Iran’s supreme leader publicly addressed a mass crowd since the US assassination of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in early 2020, further highlighting the special status of Nasrallah throughout Iran, and with Khamenei, at a personal level.

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“..those who help” the Palestinians and support them are merely “doing their duty.”

• Israel Won’t Last Long – Khamenei (RT)

The surprise attack on Israel launched by Hamas last year was a “logical and legal” step towards defeating the “malicious and cowardly” Zionist regime, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said. On Friday, in his first public sermon in nearly five years, Khamenei defended the actions against Israel by the ‘axis of resistance’, which includes the Lebanese-based Hezbollah and Palestinian group Hamas. Monday marks one year since the start of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which came in response to Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,100 people were killed and more than 200 people were taken hostage. Israel’s campaign in the enclave, following years of a de-facto blockade of Gaza, has resulted in the deaths of over 41,000 Palestinians, Gaza’s Health Ministry said earlier this week.

Tensions between Israel and neighboring Muslim countries have soared during the Gaza operation, with both Iran and Hezbollah supporting Hamas and Palestine. Earlier this month, the conflict entered a new stage as Israel launched a ground operation in Lebanon. In retaliation, Iran launched a massive missile attack on Israel this week. Khamenei said in his sermon that the Palestinians, like “every people,” have “the right to defend their land, their home, their country, and their interests against aggressors,” and this “logic is supported by international law.” He added that “those who help” the Palestinians and support them are merely “doing their duty.” “This is the rule of Islam, the rule of reason, and international and global logic. The Palestinians are defending their land; their defense is legitimate, and helping them is also logical and legal,” he stated. He defended Iran’s recent missile attack on Israel, saying it was “the minimum punishment for the usurping and bloodthirsty Zionist regime… whose only achievement has been to bomb homes, schools, hospitals and civilian gathering centers” in Gaza.

Khamenei went on to say that Iran “will perform any duty required” to see Israel defeated, claiming that West Jerusalem has only managed to “survive” for so long due to the assistance of its allies in the West. “This regime acts like rabid wolves and raging dogs of America in the region. This malicious and cowardly entity has barely kept itself afloat thanks to America’s support, and it will not last long,” he said. Khamenei stressed that the main problem in the Middle East is foreign interference, as “the countries of the region are capable of establishing security and peace” if left alone. He criticized America’s involvement and support for West Jerusalem, saying the US has never wanted peace in the Middle East, but has instead been pursuing the goal “of turning Israel into a tool to seize all the natural resources of the region and invest them in major global conflicts.”

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“..the use of AI-assisted “kill-lists” known as Lavender – allowing 15, 20, or 100 or more civilians to be killed to eliminate one suspected Hamas operative..”

• 4 in 5 Gaza Mosques, All 3 Churches Devastated in Israel Bombing Campaign (Sp.)

At least two dozen people were killed and nearly 100 injured in an airstrike on a mosque sheltering displaced persons in the city of Deir al Balah, central Gaza early Sunday. The IDF confirmed responsibility for the strike, alleging that the mosque and a nearby school were used by Hamas as a command post. Some 814 of 1,245 mosques in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, another 148 partially damaged, and all three of the strip’s churches ravaged. Those are the stark conclusions reached by Gaza’s Ministry of Religious Affairs on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Gaza war, which has become the deadliest chapter in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since 1948. According to the ministry, 19 of 60 cemeteries in its care have been targeted, eight destroyed, and 11 damaged, and grave sites and remains have been exhumed, desecrated, plundered, and mutilated in areas where Israeli troops have operated.

The campaign of Israeli airstrikes is estimated to have destroyed some 79% of all religious sites in the enclave, causing some $350 million in damage. Eleven of 14 administrative and educational facilities under the Ministry of Religious Affairs’ care have also been targeted, with nine of them razed, the ministry said. Targeted sites included the ministry’s headquarters, the Holy Quran Radio building, the Khan Yunis Endowments Directorate, the Antiquities and Manuscripts Center, the Endowments Sharia School for Boys and the College of Islamic Propagation’s northern branch. Nine of the ministry’s vehicles have also been destroyed. Over the past year, 238 Religious Affairs Ministry employees have been killed and 19 others detained by Israeli forces, according to the figures. The ministry called on the international community and Islamic organizations to intervene to stop what it characterized as an “ongoing war of extermination.”

The Gaza conflict has now claimed the lives of over 43,000 people, mostly Palestinian civilians, and maimed nearly 97,000 others – collectively accounting for over 6% of the strip’s prewar population of 2.1-2.3 million people. An estimated 99% of Gaza’s population is Sunni Muslim, with Christians, Shia, and Ahmadi Muslim communities making up less than 1% of residents. Before the war, Christians were tightly packed into Gaza City, worshiping at the Gaza Baptist Church, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, and the Catholic Holy Family Church. All three have been targeted by Israeli aerial bombardments. The severity of Israel’s operations in Gaza, which have reportedly included the use of AI-assisted “kill-lists” known as Lavender – allowing 15, 20, or 100 or more civilians to be killed to eliminate one suspected Hamas operative – has sparked international outrage and condemnation. Over a dozen countries have signed onto South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel accusing the nation of “genocide” in Gaza. Israeli officials have rejected the allegations.

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“..a “curse” would “fall on the Zionist enemy,” and the “global conscience” sure to remember its “crimes.”

• ‘America is Partner and Financier of Israel’s Crimes’ – Houthi Leader (Sp.)

The Houthis’ escalating conflict with Israel is nearing its one-year anniversary, having started on October 19, 2023 with the launch of missiles and drones toward Tel Aviv, and expanding in November of that year into a partial blockade of the Red and Arabian Seas which the US and its allies have proven unable to effectively challenge. “America is a partner and financier of all the crimes of the Zionist enemy. It is killing the Palestinian nation and has brought suffering and misery to this nation,” Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said in a televised address Sunday on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Gaza War. Pointing to the US provision of large amounts of armaments to Israel in decades past, al-Houthi said Washington had delivered the “devil of wars” in Tel Aviv “the deadliest weapons” over the past year, including hundreds of transport planeloads and over 100 shiploads, (among this 240 planes and 20 ships worth in the first three months of the conflict alone).

“The Israeli enemy has used about 100,000 tons of explosives, including bombs, missiles and rockets, which were provided by the United States,” the militia leader asserted, adding that this includes an estimated 10,000 tons of unexploded ordonnance currently littering the Gaza Strip today, and US-made bombs prohibited under international law. “The enemy has mobilized all its resources to attack Gaza, and America, Britain and the West have supported this regime through the Gaza War. The Israeli enemy attacked Gaza with an army of over 350,000 soldiers and reserve forces…sending five formations under the cover of fire from the land, sea and air. This has been the most violent and brutal attack in the history of wars,” al-Houthi said. Listing off a series of “murders and massacres” he said had targeted Gaza’s residents over the past year, al-Houthi warned that a “curse” would “fall on the Zionist enemy,” and the “global conscience” sure to remember its “crimes.”

Al-Houthi went on to blast the US over what he characterized as Washington’s “obstruction” of efforts at the United Nations to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, including the blocking of five ceasefire resolutions, while its officials visited Israel. Characterizing ‘Al-Aqsa Storm’ – the Hamas surprise attack into southern Israel on October 7, 2023 which kicked off the present war, as a “very big and very hard blow to the Israeli enemy,” al-Houthi asserted that “no matter how much the Israeli enemy continues with its genocide, killing and terrorism, it will not achieve the result it wants.

No matter how many genocidal crimes it commits, it will not bring about any result other than the downfall and destruction of this regime.” “The [Axis of Resistance] fronts of support in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen are one of the most important features of this round of the conflict with the Israeli enemy…and this situation is unprecedented and has never been seen before in the past 75 years,” al-Houthi said. As for the Houthis, “one of the most important results of the Yemen operation has been preventing the movement of the Israeli enemy in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Arabian Sea,” al-Houthi said.

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“..we need to solve the problem radically and just sink the damned island of Anglo-Saxon dogs..”

• Medvedev Calls for ‘Sinking’ of Great Britain (RT)

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council and former president, has suggested ‘sinking Great Britain’ as a way to solve the country’s problems with London. The former president was responding to a statement made late last month by renowned Russian skiing champion Elena Vyalbe. In an exclusive interview with NEWS.ru outlet, the three-time Olympic champion and head of Russia’s Cross-Country Skiing Federation slammed the West for banning the country’s athletes from most international sports tournaments in response to the Ukraine conflict. Vyalbe claimed that “if we had dropped a serious bomb in the center of London, it would have all been over by now and we would have been allowed everywhere.”

Medvedev, who has become known for his sharp language in social media posts, argued that there are more effective ways to deal with the problem than bombing. “Our famous skier Elena Vyalbe suggested dropping a bomb on London. She’s right, of course, but we need to solve the problem radically and just sink the damned island of Anglo-Saxon dogs,” Medvedev said. He did not elaborate on whether ‘the problem’ refers to sports or the state of Russia’s relations with the UK in general. The UK and its NATO partners have sided with Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, providing Kiev with financial and military aid and placing sanctions on Moscow. London was among 30 nations that urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to uphold a ban it had placed on Russian and Belarusian athletes when it proposed allowing them to compete in the Summer Olympics this year.

Most Western-based sports bodies banned Russia and Belarus from taking part in international sports tournaments shortly after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, including the IOC, FIFA, FIDE, and others. Moscow has repeatedly criticized the restrictions. In her interview, Vyalbe slammed the IOC, calling it a “trash heap” that is “engaged in who knows what, but certainly not honest sport.” She added that while “sports has always been tied with politics,” the sweeping bans on athletes for political reasons “no longer resemble sport at all.”

Read more …

Julian Assange’s Address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on October 1, 2024, with Comment by Paul Craig Roberts.
(Assange address is under the link, this is PCR’s commenst)

• Julian Assange’s Oct. 1 Address with Comment by Paul Craig Roberts (PCR)

After reading Assange’s address I realized that all of this was just the tip of the iceberg. What the United States government did to Assange is worse than can be found in any dystopian novel. Read Assange’s speech, and then ask yourself how you can possibly believe you are a free person living in a free democratic country with accountable government where there is justice, mercy, integrity, morality, and the rule of law. Also notice that it was the Obama Justice Department that dropped all attempts to indict Assange as there are no legal grounds for his indictment, and that it was the Trump Justice Department that reopened the case under CIA pressure. If memory serves, the whores who comprise Western journalism came out against Assange, that is, the dumbshits came out against their own profession, and conservative pundits accused Assange of being a Russian spy. Get the traitor, get the traitor, screamed the presstitutes and conservative pundits.

It was pressure from the Council of Europe and funding of Assange’s lawyers by donations from individuals that caused the CIA to settle for Assange’s plea that he was “guilty of practicing journalism.” We might laugh, but what the CIA has accomplished is a possible precedent for the criminalization of truthful, objective journalism, and its replacement with enforcement of official narratives. Assange himself says he “pled guilty to being a journalist.” The guilty plea implies that journalism is a crime. How many people will be bothered to understand Assange’s treatment by the “great free democracy, the light of the world”? Hardly any, just as hardly any understand that Washington has provoked Russia to the point of nuclear war, and a majority of Americans, it seems, support Israel’s relentless slaughter of Palestinians redefined by Israel as “Muslim terrorists.” Suppose people were able to free themselves from insouciance and gain access to truth and understanding, what can they do without political leaders?

Where are their leaders? I can only think of two who have recognizable names: Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. How have the ruling establishments reacted to these two representatives of the people? Trump has been served by the “freedom and democracy” US government with four criminal indictments for which he is on trial. Le Pen is on trial for representing French ethnicity. The official charge is embezzlement of funds, but her defense of a French ethnic nation makes her a racist under the ruling DEI ideology, and that is the real charge against her. How good are these two leaders? Le Pen must be pretty good. She has stood the heat for many years, and the party has grown. Possibly it is the largest of the French political parties, but the Establishment has been successful keeping it out of office. It seems Le Pen is on trial on an annual basis.

Trump is a neophyte, He defeated himself in his first term by stupidly surrounding himself with the representatives of the ruling establishment that he thought he was going to overthrow. Instead they overthrew him. Trump claims he has learned Washington since appointing Gestapo operatives such as Pompano and Barr and refusing to defend General Flynn, his only sensible appointment. But what has he learned? Did he learn that the Establishment is more powerful than the President and that second time around he had best get along with the Establishment? Leaders are rare. Even if one appears, he cannot count on the people’s support. Cicero, Quaestor, Procounsel, and Counsel of Rome, tried to rally the Roman people from their self-destruction and paid for it with his life. Trump tried to give power back to the American people and was punished for it with four criminal indictments. Le Pen tries to represent French ethnicity and is constantly legally harassed.

When the people themselves lose interest in their rights and cannot bring themselves to fight to regain them, they lose their freedom. In the United States today, and I think throughout the Western world, law has been weaponized against all who openly dissent from the Ruling Establishment’s narratives and agendas. As law is now a weapon in the hands of the state, why would Democrats, whose hand is on this weapon, permit an election to take it away from them? A sinking ship cannot change its course. If the Democrats steal a third national election, and the American people again accept it, there will not be another election. Americans will have crossed the Rubicon into tyranny. Older Americans will be slow to realize it, and new generations, having been born into tyranny will not know what has been lost, having never experienced freedom. This is the way liberty dies.

Read more …

 

 



 

 

RFK Covid

 

 

Maher Dr. Phil

 

 

Helper

 

 

Penguin

 

 

Ukame

 

 

Barcelona
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842963176545235161

 

 

Locks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842837698890932241

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 29 2024

Jul 292024
 
 July 29, 2024  Posted by at 9:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Courtyard of the hospital in Arles 1889

 

• Kamala Harris Is A “Low IQ Individual.” – Trump (RT)
• It All Tracks – Hersch Reports Obama Threatened Biden with 25th Amendment (CTH)
• For 25 Minutes, Secret Service Command Center Didn’t Notify Trump Detail (ZH)
• Will RFK Jr be Trump’s Vaccine Czar? (AT)
• Bitcoin Breaks Through (Quoth The Raven)
• Olympics Opening Ceremony Shows ‘Absence of Public Morality’ – Orban (Sp.)
• French Bishops Condemn Olympic ‘Mockery of Christianity’ (RT)
• German Publisher Stops All Printing of JD Vance’s Book Hillbilly Elegy (Turley)
• Erdogan Says Turkiye Could ‘Enter’ Israel To Help Gazans (Sp.)
• Erdogan ‘Going Down The Path of Saddam Hussein’ – Israeli FM (RT)
• Netanyahu Granted Powers To Devise Retaliation Against Hezbollah (RT)
• Houthis Announce ‘New Stage’ of Conflict With Israel, Urge Arabs to Unite (Sp.)
• T-Rex May Have Been 70% Bigger Than Previously Believed (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

K..a..m..a..l..a

 

 

Grassroots
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817429727100952993

 

 

Kamala 68
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817375226570633526

 

 

Eva
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817208920579916261

 

 

 

 

“..dumb as a rock.”

• Kamala Harris Is A “Low IQ Individual.” – Trump (RT)

Former US president and current Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has claimed that his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, is a “low-IQ individual.” Speaking at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday, Trump called the cryptocurrency a “marvel of technology” and a “miracle of cooperation and human achievements.” The former president went on to praise the Bitcoin community as “very smart people,” and used the opportunity to disparage his election rival. “This room is amazing. The people in this room are high-IQ individuals. I’m running against a low IQ individual,” Trump told the audience. He had insulted Harris in the past, having described her as “dumb as a rock.” Harris became the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee last week after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

High-ranking Democrats and major party donors urged Biden to withdraw in the wake of his disastrous June debate with Trump, when more concerns were raised over his declining health and the ability to win the election in November. Harris has since secured enough commitments to be officially nominated as her party’s candidate at a convention next month, according to an Associate Press survey. During a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Tuesday, she launched a scathing attack against her rival, claiming that she knows “Donald Trump’s type” and listed “all kinds of predators” she dealt with when serving as a prosecutor. She repeatedly called Trump a “convicted felon” and accused him of “restoring to some wild lies.” The campaign was shaken up by an attempt to assassinate Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. Trump narrowly escaped death as the gunman’s bullet grazed his ear. The incident prompted the resignation of Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle, who admitted that the agency had failed to properly protect the former president.

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“2007 through 2017, that decade is filled with unlawful action by Barack Obama and the people behind him. This is the core of their ongoing need for control, likely for a generation or more..”

• It All Tracks – Hersch Reports Obama Threatened Biden with 25th Amendment (CTH)

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersch writes on his substack, an article outlying how his sources in Washington DC and the White House have confirmed to him that former President Barack Obama was the impetus to push Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race. Seymour Hersh says President Obama was “deeply involved” with the alleged coup and called Joe Biden after his “incident” in Las Vegas, which, from all outward appearances, looks like a major slip and fall – with a significant hit to the head. “I went over [reports] this week with a senior official in Washington who helped me fashion an account of a White House in complete disarray,” Hersh said. “Obama called Biden after breakfast [on July 20] and said, ‘Here’s the deal. We have Kamala’s approval to invoke the 25th Amendment,’” a senior Washington official told Hersh. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries were reportedly directly involved.

Obama’s plan was to not to immediately endorse Kamala, but it was clear that she would “get the nod.” “[Obama] had an agenda and he wanted to seek it through to the end, and he wanted to have control over who would be elected.” (Hersch article encapsulated) Not only does this outline track with every datapoint known about events leading up to the Biden announcement, it also aligns with the entire background of the Obama team operating inside the Biden administration. Team Obama have always been in control. Heck, the Obamas never even left Washington DC after their term in office. The bigger understanding is in the final quote cited. “[Team Obama] had an agenda and he wanted to seek it through to the end, and he wanted to have control over who would be elected.” This is the part where people forget the risk to Team Obama that has never gone away.

The Obama “fundamental change” was a construct of malicious intent. Much of it fraught with unlawful activity only possible by weaponizing the various agencies and bureaus of the U.S. government. Going all the way back to 2007 through 2017, that decade is filled with unlawful action by Barack Obama and the people behind him. This is the core of their ongoing need for control, likely for a generation or more. President Obama and his likeminded ideological foot-soldiers weaponized the federal system of government. In every action from the moment he left office, Obama’s team have been working one long continuum of control in order to keep all of their prior activity hidden. The need for Kamala ‘brat’ Harris is simply another step in this long process to hide the activity.

• The NSA Database was weaponized to conduct political surveillance.
• The Dept of Justice was weaponized to target their political opposition.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation was weaponized to act as the police investigative units for those targets.
• The Dept of Homeland Security was weaponized to control the evidence and information about their political targeting and surveillance.
• The IRS was weaponized against Obama’s political opposition.
• The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was weaponized to allow the targeting radar to sweep internally against American citizens under the guise of national security and domestic terror threats.
• The Central Intelligence Agency was weaponized allowing and permitting their “foreign surveillance” mandate to merge with the DHS internal surveillance mandate, while simultaneously the CIA conducted overseas political operations against the interests of sovereign countries. All of their activity in ideological alignment.
• The Defense Department was purged of patriotism, intentionally weakened through diversity equity and inclusion, and then boiled down to a flag corps of general willing to go along with the policy of Obama.
• Main Justice through the National Security Division used FARA violations to target anyone who was determined a threat to the fundamental change, and Main Justice began wholesale Lawfare operations against Donald Trump and any entity who would dare align with him.
• Hundreds of millions, likely billions, were funneled through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, The Green New Deal, The Inflation Reduction Act, and various legislative expenditures to foreign governments; those funds went directly into the bank accounts of Democrat donors and political activist groups.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, the part the awakened American public can look into and see for themselves. Underneath the waterline, there’s tens of thousands of vested interests, inside and outside of Washington DC, operating to maintain the fundamental change that Obama created. However, their defenses are weak and shallow, fraught with vulnerability and the endless need to avoid sunlight. All of that scheming, rot, corruption and unlawful activity makes them vulnerable. The need for control is a reaction to fear. The ‘fundamental change’ group are fraught with fear. That is why they consider the current political landscape as a zero-sum contest.

Read more …

You missed.

• For 25 Minutes, Secret Service Command Center Didn’t Notify Trump Detail (ZH)

While members of the Secret Service in a Butler, Pennsylvania command center were notified that an individual later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks was acting suspiciously before he tried to assassinate Donald Trump, members of the former president’s secret service detail were not informed of the threat, according to the Washington Post. Members of former president Donald Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have privately questioned why they were not informed that local police were tracking a suspicious person before that person opened fire on Trump at his July 13 rally in western Pennsylvania, according to people with direct knowledge of the concerns. Approximately 20 to 25 minutes before Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at the former president, local countersnipers noticed him behaving strangely and sent his photograph to a command center staffed by state troopers and Secret Service agents, the head of Pennsylvania State Police told a congressional committee Tuesday.

According to three sources, members of Trump’s Secret Service detail have complained to confidants and others inside the agency that they were never made aware of the warning, and they had no idea that local countersnipers eventually lost track of Crooks – or that a local police officer who was hoisted onto the roof of the building saw Crooks perched there with a gun. Trump was on stage a full eight minutes – roughly 20 minutes after Crooks was spotted and reported – before shots rang out, wounding Trump, critically wounding two others, and killing one rallygoer. “Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” Trump told Fox News in an interview last Monday. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes, something. Nobody said — I think that was a mistake.” Meanwhile, the Secret Service, which initially lied about denying Trump additional security requests, is not talking.

“As it relates to communications at the rally, the Secret Service is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again,” said spox Anthony Guglielmi, the guy who lied about the denied security. Trump’s team has been at odds with Secret Service headquarters over various requests that the agency denied, including more magnetometers at events, more countersnipers at some events and other specialty teams at other events, The Post has reported. The Secret Service and Trump’s team also repeatedly clashed over security and logistics at the Republican National Convention earlier this month. The Butler, Pa., shooting is also emblematic of what some Secret Service critics say are chronic communication problems that have dogged the agency and contributed to serious security lapses. -WaPo.

Yes, just a breakdown in communication. Nothing nefarious. Also on Monday, then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle deflected when asked by House lawmakers why the Secret Service didn’t immediately delay Trump’s speech when local police reported a suspicious person – telling the committee that such reports are commonplace. “At a number of our protected sites, there are suspicious individuals that are identified all the time,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they constitute a threat.” Cheatle – who resigned last week, admitted that the Secret Service was notified of a suspicious person at the Butler, PA rally “somewhere between two and five times,” and she didn’t know when Trump’s security detail was notified. Turns out, they weren’t.

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“The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with his decades-long record investigating vaccines and with his bestselling exposé of Fauci and the corruption of the public-health establishment, would loom large in Trump’s legacy as well as RFK Jr’s.”

• Will RFK Jr be Trump’s Vaccine Czar? (AT)

In 2017, shortly before assuming the presidency, president-Elect Donald Trump asked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if he would be willing to investigate one of Trump’s top-of-mind concerns — the safety of vaccines. Trump’s goal, to have Kennedy chair a “Vaccine Safety and Scientific Integrity Commission,” was soon sidetracked by the Russiagate accusation and then Covid. But it was not forgotten. In a recent leaked videotaped discussion between Trump and Kennedy, Trump reminded Kennedy about their 2017 discussion and urged him to take on the vaccine issue again. “I would love you to do so,” Trump urged. Trump’s preoccupation with vaccines — coming the very day after the assasination attempt on his life and shortly before his formal acceptance as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee — demonstrates that the government bureaucracies overseeing the vaccine industry remain top-of-mind to him.

“Something is wrong with that whole system,” he stated. “When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a 10-pound or a 20-pound baby… do you ever see the size of it, its massive, then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I’ve seen it too many times.” In an attempt to clinch the deal, Trump pointedly referred to Kennedy’s long commitment to reforming the CDC and the vaccine industry, highlighting the personal satisfaction such an accomplishment would bring, and its importance to Kennedy’s legacy. “And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you.” In their recent discussion, Trump and Kennedy didn’t discuss the specifics of what a renewed investigation of the vaccine industry would look like, but their 2017 discussion – an hour-long meeting held at Trump’s initiation that also included Kellyanne Conway and Mike Pence — raised the same issues that continue to preoccupy him today.

“He is troubled by questions of the links between certain vaccines and the epidemic of neurodevelopmental disorders including autism,” Kennedy told Science in a telephone interview at the time. “And he has a number — he told me five — friends, he talked about each one of them, who has the same story of a child, a perfectly healthy child who went into a wellness visit around age 2, got a battery of vaccines, spiked a fever, and then developed a suite of deficits in the 3 months following the vaccine. “He said that he understood that anecdote was not science, but said that if there’s enough anecdotal evidence… that we’d be arrogant to dismiss it. Those were his words.” In their recent discussion, Kennedy didn’t agree to take Trump up on his offer. No formal, detailed offer was even made, the call was merely the beginning of a process that Trump hoped would lead Kennedy to join the future Trump administration in a vaccine-related capacity.

The call wasn’t even supposed to be made public – Kennedy’s son, Bobby Kennedy III, leaked it on his own. “When President Trump called me, I was taping with an in-house videographer. I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president,” Kennedy explained. Following the leak, Kennedy told the press that he was continuing with his candidacy for president. Should his candidacy fail and Trump’s succeeds, as appears likely, look to negotiations between them to proceed for a vaccine-related role in Trump’s administration. If Trump has a regret about his first term, it’s likely over his promotion of Covid vaccines — a policy that his base overwhelming opposes, so much so that it drew boos at his rallies. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with his decades-long record investigating vaccines and with his bestselling exposé of Fauci and the corruption of the public-health establishment, would loom large in Trump’s legacy as well as RFK Jr’s.

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“..two major presidential candidates in the United States, both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, have now publicly come out and supported Bitcoin. That, in and of itself, is enormous.”

• Bitcoin Breaks Through (Quoth The Raven)

Almost everybody in the Bitcoin world is already going to be aware of the headlines former President Donald Trump made last night at the Bitcoin 2024 conference. At Bitcoin 2024, Trump pledged that if re-elected, his administration would retain all federal Bitcoin holdings, establishing a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile.” He highlighted that the federal government currently possesses nearly 210,000 bitcoins, about 1% of the total supply, mostly seized from cybercriminals. Trump promised that his administration would never sell this Bitcoin, adhering to the fundamental Bitcoin principle of holding. Additionally, he vowed to fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler on his first day in office, criticizing Gensler’s stringent regulations that many believe have hindered innovation in the crypto industry. Anyway you slice it, last night was a flurry of positive Bitcoin-related headlines hitting the wire as soon as Trump took the stage and began speaking to the crowd of crypto enthusiasts.

The idea of bitcoin as a reserve asset has always been the holy grail for maximalists and Trump’s speech sent the idea of a bitcoin “standard” to supersonic speeds. And while there’s been plenty of speculation online about Trump’s motives, with some saying he’s simply fishing for votes from wherever he can get them, it doesn’t matter at this point: the game theory snowball of a Bitcoin “standard” has officially started rolling down the hill. This pro-Bitcoin psychology and reserve asset game theory, and what it could do for the world of Bitcoin regardless of whether or not Trump is elected, cannot be understated. The Bitcoin community has now, for the first time, seen a former and potential US president endorse the cryptocurrency as a strategic reserve asset for the country. This is multiple times more consequential than Wall Street listing Bitcoin ETFs, in my opinion, because it accelerates Bitcoin’s adoption regardless of whether or not Trump is elected our next president.

The idea that the United States could potentially make Bitcoin part of a monetary standard has officially been launched into the orbit of the country’s economic zeitgeist. For comparison, when I started to warm up to the idea of Bitcoin about 6 months ago, I speculated that Middle Eastern money would be the next, after El Salvador, to put Bitcoin on a sovereign balance sheet. From there, I speculated such a move could unleash a tsunami of game theory, with multiple other countries scrambling to catch up across the world, not unlike the way Democrats — the party of Elizabeth “Ban Crypto” Warren — are now scrambling to play catch-up and modify their position stance on crypto. Too late, losers. If you would have told me months ago that one of the two major United States presidential candidates and a former president would be the first to assure the world they would place Bitcoin on the sovereign balance sheet of the most powerful nation in the world, I would have been assured the rest of the world would follow.

That is exactly the case that is unfolding. And, by removing the red tape in the world of Bitcoin, not only would the Trump administration send adoption of the asset to stratospheric levels, it would also be the first tacit public acknowledgment that the fiscal crisis unfolding in the United States is not sustainable and must be dealt with via means other than printing dollars. In other words, holding a bitcoin reserve would represent an attempt at a strategic move to sound money, regardless of whether or not Bitcoin itself stands the test of time.

Yesterday not only marked a momentous occasion for Bitcoin, it marked a momentous occasion for everybody on the Austrian side of the economic aisle who has been waiting for a politician to begin to make serious concessions that the fiscal trajectory the country and the dollar are on is not sustainable. It was a limited hangout of sorts – a passive admission that eventually, the country is going to need a solution to its monetary problem that is outside the Keynesian pattern of simply printing more fiat. And so even if you are first and foremost an advocate for gold or silver, like I am, it’s easy to see last night’s comments by President Trump as not just a victory for Bitcoin but a victory for economic common sense. Just think about this: two major presidential candidates in the United States, both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, have now publicly come out and supported Bitcoin. That, in and of itself, is enormous.

Read more …

“They have gradually shed metaphysical ties, with God, country and family..”

• Olympics Opening Ceremony Shows ‘Absence of Public Morality’ – Orban (Sp.)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban described the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris as “the weakness and disintegration of the West”, La Depeche reported. The politician believes that the event that sparked a fierce public backlash was the embodiment of the Western void. “They have gradually shed metaphysical ties, with God, country and family,” Orban said, adding that it has led to “the absence of public morality, as you could see if you watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics yesterday.” Orban also pointed out that the collective West denies the existence of nation states, resulting in the absence of a common culture and a common morality based on it. “Western values, long considered universal, are increasingly considered unacceptable and rejected by many countries in the world,” he concluded.

Read more …

Never again.

• French Bishops Condemn Olympic ‘Mockery of Christianity’ (RT)

The Bishops’ Conference of France has denounced the organizers of the Olympic Games over an LGBTQ-themed parody of the Last Supper during the event’s opening ceremony. The organizers have claimed that the performance reflected their “values and principles.” The ceremony, which took place in central Paris on Friday night, concluded with a troupe of drag queens, homosexuals, and transsexuals posing at a table, as Jesus Christ and his apostles appeared in Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’. A giant serving dish was then wheeled out in front of the table, from which emerged a mostly naked man made up to resemble Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and festivity. Throughout the performance, a male dancer’s exposed testicles could be seen behind the table. “This ceremony unfortunately included scenes in which Christianity was mocked and ridiculed, which we deeply regret,” the Bishops’ Conference said in a statement on Saturday.

“We thank the members of other religious denominations who have expressed their solidarity with us,” the statement continued. “This morning we think of all Christians on all continents who have been hurt by the exaggeration and provocation of some scenes.” The ceremony was condemned by Christians and conservatives around the world. Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota called the performance a “gross mockery of the Last Supper,” while Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini declared that “opening the Olympics by insulting billions of Christians across the world was a really bad start” for France. SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the spectacle as “extremely disrespectful to Christians,” while tech entrepreneur Dr. Eli David wrote that “even as a Jew,” he was “infuriated by this outrageous insult to Jesus and Christianity.”

Olympic organizers have defended the opening show. “We imagined a ceremony to show our values and our principles so we gave a very committed message,” Paris 2024 President Tony Estanguet told reporters on Saturday. “The idea was to really trigger a reflection. We wanted to have a message as strong as possible.” “Our idea was inclusion,” added Thomas Jolly, the ceremony’s artistic director. “We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everybody.”

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“German readers want to read the book, which Ullstein acknowledged is one of the most influential works of this generation..”

• German Publisher Stops All Printing of JD Vance’s Book Hillbilly Elegy (Turley)

JD Vance is a marked man. After accepting the nomination for vice president, Vance has been the subject of endless media attacks. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris even questioned his “loyalty” to the country despite his serving as a Marine in the Iraq War. Yet, one of the most chilling attacks came from Germany where the publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage has stopped printing the sold-out German translation of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 autobiography. As we have discussed previously in this country, it is the modern left’s equivalent of book burning. After all, why burn books when you can simply prevent their being printed under blacklisting campaigns? In this country, we have seen the left successfully force book bans for writers and even justices who espouse opposing viewpoints. We have seen actual calls for book burning recently (here and here).

Ullstein is facing a high demand for Vance’s best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, but has refused to print more copies due to his political viewpoints (unrelated to the book). First published in 2016 and made into a movie in 2020, the book returned to the top position on The New York Times‘ bestseller list after Trump chose Vance as his running mate. HarperCollins is rushing to print more books to meet the demand. Some in the United States are already balking at the selling of any book by Vance. Seven Stories Press wrote, “Seven Stories Press is extremely thrilled to have never published JD Vance.” Ullstein published the German translation of Hillbilly Elegy in 2017 and held the rights to reprints. The company cited Vance’s allegiance with Trump and his politics as the reason in a statement to German media:

“At the time of its publication, the book made a valuable contribution to understanding the drifting apart of US society…In the meantime, he is officially acting alongside him and advocating an aggressively demagogic, exclusionary policy.” German author Gerd Buurmann posted a mocking response that we should be happy that Ullstein had just thrown Vance’s book out of its catalogue and not into the fire – a reference to the notorious Nazi book burnings of the 1930s. Other Germans have raised the same objections and referenced the painful history of book bans and burnings in Germany under the Nazis. German readers want to read the book, which Ullstein acknowledged is one of the most influential works of this generation. However, because the company disagrees with his political viewpoints, it moved to block others from reading the book.

We have seen similar campaigns leading to the banning or burning of books by figures like JK Rowling because of her opposition to some transgender policies. The left now protests any programs on Rowling’s work and opposes the selling of her enormously popular Harry Potter series or even video games based on the series. When authors have defended her right to be published, they have also been subjected to cancel campaigns. Yet, Ullstein’s decision is particularly chilling as a publishing house. Again, we have seen editors at publishing houses sign petitions to bar books by conservative figures like Justice Amy Coney Barrett from being published.

In 1933, thousands of books by Jewish and leftist writers were burned throughout Germany. Publishing houses further banned the printing of these books. The books were announced as corrupting the minds of German citizens. Many books were banned or burned on the basis of the authors being Jewish or known socialists or anarchists. Now the left has developed a taste for censorship and blacklisting. Editors and publishing houses are blacklisting those with conservative or libertarian views as forms of dangerous viewpoints or disinformation. Ullstein will, of course, not stop people from reading the work of JD Vance. While it may make it more difficult for Germans to find copies, ideas like water have a way of finding their way out. Blacklisting and censorship have not succeeded in killing a single idea. What it does is reveal the true character and values of those who want to prevent others from hearing opposing viewpoints.

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He looks alone for now.

• Erdogan Says Turkiye Could ‘Enter’ Israel To Help Gazans (Sp.)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkiye could “enter” Israel just as it once did in Libya and Karabakh. Speaking at a meeting of the ruling party branch in the president’s native province of Rize, Erdogan noted the success of the country’s defense industry, but urged not to be deceived by them. According to the president, if the successes had been even greater, Israel “would not have done to Palestine what it did.” “We must be strong. As we entered Karabakh, as we entered Libya, so we will do to them [Israel]. There is nothing we cannot do. We must be strong to take such steps,” Erdogan said in a speech broadcast by the national television. Erdogan also once again recalled the refusal of the leader of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to speak in the Turkish parliament. Earlier, the Turkish president urged Abbas to apologize.

The Turkish parliament approved the extension of the mandate for the deployment of the Turkish military contingent in Libya for two years from January 2024. Turkiye supported Azerbaijan during the Second Karabakh War in the fall of 2020, and Turkish drones actively participated in the operations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in the US Congress on Wednesday, sparking protests by anti-war activists at the Capitol. Turkish politicians, including Erdogan, harshly criticized the speech of “war criminal” Netanyahu in the Congress and those senators who gave him a standing ovation. On October 7, 2023, Israel was subjected to an unprecedented rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. After that, fighters of Palestinian movement Hamas penetrated the border areas, opened fire on the military and civilians, and took more than 200 hostages.

According to the authorities, about 1,200 people were killed. The Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Iron Swords in the Gaza Strip, which included strikes on civilian targets. Israel announced a complete blockade of the enclave: supplies of water, electricity, fuel, food and medicine were stopped. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the death toll from Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7 has exceeded 39,000, with more than 89,800 people injured. The Russian Foreign Ministry called on the parties to cease hostilities. According to Moscow’s position, a settlement is only possible on the basis of the UN Security Council-approved formula with the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem.

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Sounds like a personal threat.

• Erdogan ‘Going Down The Path of Saddam Hussein’ – Israeli FM (RT)

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has warned that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could end up like the toppled and executed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein if he attempts to intervene in the Gaza war. Erdogan traded threats with Israeli officials on Sunday amid the IDF’s operation against Hamas in Gaza, as well as the rapidly escalating tensions between Israel and the Lebanese-based armed group Hezbollah. Speaking at a rally in his hometown of Rize, Erdogan suggested that Türkiye could “enter” Israel in order to help the Palestinians. “We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine,” Erdogan said. In the past he has condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Nazi Germany – and likened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.

Katz responded with a warning of his own on X (formerly Twitter). “Erdogan is going down the path of Saddam Hussein and threatens to attack Israel,” he wrote, adding that the Turkish leader “should just remember what happened there and how that ended.” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid also blasted Erdogan, calling him a “danger to the Middle East” and a “wannabe dictator.” “The world, and especially NATO members, must strongly condemn his outrageous threats against Israel and force him to end his support for Hamas,” Lapid wrote on X. Saddam Hussein was overthrown during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. He went into hiding, but was eventually caught by US troops, convicted by an Iraqi court of crimes against humanity, and executed by hanging in 2006.

The US under President George W. Bush claimed at the time that the Iraqi leader had connections to Al-Qaeda – a group behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks – and had weapons of mass destruction. Both claims later turned out to be false, but Washington used them as rationale for attacking Iraq, despite having failed to secure the approval of the UN Security Council.

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“Iran has warned that Israel would face an “obliterating war” in case of a “full-scale military aggression” against Lebanon..”

• Netanyahu Granted Powers To Devise Retaliation Against Hezbollah (RT)

Israel’s security cabinet has authorized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to determine the scope of a potential military operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon. During the meeting on Sunday evening, the cabinet agreed to let Netanyahu and Gallant “decide on the manner and timing of the response” to Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks. Tensions flared up on Saturday after a rocket hit a football pitch in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) blamed Hezbollah for the strike and later showed photos of shrapnel that it said matched an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket, which is used by the pro-Palestinian militant group. According to the IDF, the rocket was launched from the Chebaa area in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah, however, denied any involvement in the strike on Majdal Shams. The group has been firing rockets and mortar shells at Israeli positions after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7. The IDF carried out further airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Sunday. However, there is an expectation of a stronger response from Israel, including a potential ground invasion, given the warnings made by leading politicians over the weekend, with Foreign Minister Israel Katz saying that Hezbollah has “crossed all red lines.” Iran has warned that Israel would face an “obliterating war” in case of a “full-scale military aggression” against Lebanon. The US, meanwhile, has backed Israel and condemned Hezbollah. Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said through her national security adviser that her “support for Israel is ironclad.”

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“..Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi vowed that Yemen’s response was “inevitable.”

• Houthis Announce ‘New Stage’ of Conflict With Israel, Urge Arabs to Unite (Sp.)

Yemen is entering a “new stage” of its war with Israel, and is asking Arab and Muslim countries to unite to help wage it, Houthi political bureau member Ali al-Qahoum has told Sputnik. “Yemen and its leader are entering a new stage of conflict, new alliances are being created that do not have red lines,” Al-Qahoum said. “As long as Israel exists, there will be no peace – this is an existential battle. It is time to unite Arabs and Muslims, use their opportunities and stand together in this battle to preserve the identity of Islam and Arabism in the face of the challenges, dangers and projects of the Great Satan represented by America and Israel,” the official said, using the derogatory epithet originating from the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and typically referring to the United States. Al-Qahoum’s language signals a marked escalation in the militia’s position, which at the beginning of its Red Sea semi-blockade and missile attacks on Israel last October and November was aimed at “standing in solidarity” with Palestinians with a view to stopping the now more than nine-month old war in Gaza.

The Houthi political bureau member has not shied away from using increasingly sharp rhetoric in interviews in recent months, warning Washington in January that Yemen would become America’s “graveyard” and that the US would be forced to “leave the region in humiliation” after the US and British navies launched a campaign of air and missile strikes inside Yemen. In March, al-Qahoum said the Houthis were “cooperating” with the rising powers in the world to “drown America and the West in the mire around the Red Sea, to get them bogged down, weaken[ed] and unable to maintain unipolarity.” Tensions between the Houthis and Israel escalated dramatically over the past week after the militia flew a long-range airplane-style combat drone into Tel Aviv on July 19, evading Israel’s powerful air defenses in an incident the IDF attributed to “human error.” One person was killed in the attack, and seven were injured.

Israel reacted by launching F-35I jets to target the western Yemeni Red Sea port city of al-Hudaydah on July 20, targeting the port’s oil facilities and a power plant. The attacks were meant to make “it clear to our enemies that there is no place that the long arm of Israel will not reach,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. At least nine people were killed and 87 others injured in the Israeli attack, according to local authorities. The Houthis have vowed to respond to the tit-for-tat escalation, with Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam, saying last week that Israel’s “brutal aggression will only increase the determination and steadfastness of the Yemeni people and their brave armed forces, continuing and escalating their support for Gaza.” In a televised speech on Thursday, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi vowed that Yemen’s response was “inevitable.”

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“..2.5 billion T-Rex once lived on Earth. But just 32 adult fossils have ever been found..”

• T-Rex May Have Been 70% Bigger Than Previously Believed (Sp.)

According to a new study, the king of dinosaurs may have been 70% heavier and 25% longer than previously thought. Paleontologists from the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, said the carnivorous T-Rex could have weighed up to 33,000 pounds (15,000 kilograms), which would make it 35% heavier than an average school bus. In an effort to determine how big the dinosaur could get, scientists first examined the fossil record, which shows that a total of about 2.5 billion T-Rex once lived on Earth. But just 32 adult fossils have ever been found. The largest T-Rex on record is a specimen named “Scotty”, which weighed an estimated 19,555 lbs (8,870 kg) when it was alive.

But the largest T-Rex “would have been about 70% bigger” than Scotty, said study co-author Jordan Mallon, a research scientist and head of palaeobiology at the Canadian Museum of Nature. “Our study suggests that, for big fossil animals like T-Rex, we really have no idea from the fossil record about the absolute sizes they might have reached,” said Mallon, whose team also took into consideration other factors including population size, growth rate, lifespan, and the incomplete nature of the fossil record. “It’s fun to think about a 15 tonne T-Rex, but the implications are also interesting from a bio-mechanical or ecological perspective,” he said.

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High Jump

 

 

Turnings

 

 

Dog n puppy

 

 

Smile
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817551970716033046

 

 

Pet dad

 

 

Clingy

 

 

Water

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 28 2024

Jul 282024
 
 July 28, 2024  Posted by at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh The yellow house (The Street), Arles 1888

• USA As I Knew It Has Passed Into The Trash Bin Of History (Paul Craig Roberts)
• ‘Democracy’ Saved (Manley)
• Obama Threatened Biden with 25th Amendment – Seymour Hersh (Sp.)
• Trump: Biden Was Ousted In A “Fascist Coup” (MN)
• Harris Win Will Lead To WW3 – Trump (RT)
• ‘Queen Kamala,’ Election Cheating & Money Grab (Sp.)
• Trump To Return To Scene Of Shooting, Hold Rally (RT)
• Manhattan DA Argues Trump Case Not Affected By SCOTUS Immunity Ruling (ZH)
• US Treasury Should Buy, Hold Bitcoin as Strategic Asset – RFK Jr (Sp.)
• Trump Promises To Make USA The “Bitcoin Super-Power Of The World” (ZH)
• ‘Bitcoin Fort Knox’ (ZH)
• Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump and Bitcoin (ZH)
• Europe’s Path to War and Self-Destruction (Scheidler)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Puppet

 

 

5 Joe Bidens

 

 

RFK jr
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817266039937548313

 

 

Trump ad 2016

 

 

 

 

“Men’s testosterone levels have dropped so much that you can’t even get into a fight in a redneck bar..”

• USA As I Knew It Has Passed Into The Trash Bin Of History (Paul Craig Roberts)

Kamala Harris says she has raised $230,000,000 in campaign funds from rich American liberals. Why are rich American liberals so determined to have Kamala as President of the United States? One reason could be because she, unlike Trump, is easily controlled, so the explanation is the rich are electing their own self-interests. But are they? The Democrats’ have two agendas: One is to normalize and legitimize sexual perversity. The other is open borders. To put it in different words, the Democrats are devoted to transforming traditional America into a Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel. Does this serve rich liberals’ interests beyond providing them with a servant class? The main benefactors are sexual perverts and immigrant-invaders. Do rich liberals prefer their genes not to be passed on because their transgendered kids are unable to procreate and are made infertile by Covid vaccines and a variety of testosterone-inhibitors that leave even young men unable to have a natural erection?

Their politics suggest that the interests of the rich liberals diverge from their heirs, the future of their country, and their self-respect. Everything with which the rich liberals are involved–Diversity, equity, and inclusion, global warming, globalism, the WEA’s Great Reset–undermines their commitment to their country. Rich liberals see America as a resource to be used in behalf of “larger agendas.” So where does America’s leadership class come from?It comes from the Jews. The Secretary of the Treasury is a Jew. The Secretary of State is a Jew. The Secretary of Homeland Security is a Jew. Finance, media, Hollywood and entertainment are in the hands of Jews. As Netanyahu told Congress yesterday, every Jew is a Zionist, a defender of Israel. And every American who is not a defender of Israel is an anti-semite. John V. Whitbeck describes the total humiliation of “Proud America” on its knees kissing Netanyahu’s feet. A totally conquered country whose obeisance is shown with 58 standing ovations.

In America today the remaining patriots are “Trump deplorables.” They are despised by the elite and the left-wing and regarded as white supremacists, threats to democracy, and insurrectionists. The FBI puts their names on watch lists and brings false charges against those who attended the January 6 Trump rally. The Democrats having moved Biden out of the picture are set to steal the November election. Democrats in the swing states have legalized and institutionalized the theft mechanisms they used to steal the 2020 and 2022 national elections. For example, the Democrat state Supreme Court in Wisconsin overturned the ban on drop boxes, thus making it possible for invalid ballots to become part of the vote count. A large number of such practices that enable electoral fraud are now legal in the swing states. Democrats could not steal the election with Biden as candidate as no one would believe he won. Biden was moved out of the way. Now polls are being rigged showing Kamala leading Trump by 3 points. The rigged polls create public believability of a Kamala win.

If the Democrats did not intend to steal the election, they would not have legalized the theft mechanisms in the swing states. The public accepted the last two stolen national elections and will accept a third. A people this insouciant have no chance of preserving their liberty and the accountability of government. Considering American insouciance, one wonders if the voting public and the Republican Party realize that if the Democrats take the election with so much going for Trump, the result will be to solidify the Uni-Party. The Republican establishment will conclude that the only way the party can compete with Democrats is to better represent the interests of the ruling elite. Henceforth there would be no more Trumps. “Representative Democracy” would only represent the ruling elite. If Trump is elected despite the Democrats’ intent to steal the election, what can he do? Can he find people willing to accept the risks of helping him to reconstruct America? Can such people get confirmed in office by the Senate?

Can Trump survive another four years of media, FBI, CIA attacks, and can his appointees? Can Trump survive assassination? Most certainly Trump cannot rely on Secret Service protection. It is clear that America is split more decisively than it was by tariffs that led to the so-called “Civil War.” All relations in American society have been damaged by the liberal-left. Feminism has made women unsupportive and even hostile to men. Consequently, men cannot trust women. Families, the basis of society, are weakened. Men’s testosterone levels have dropped so much that you can’t even get into a fight in a redneck bar. The Republicans point to Kamala’s warchest provided by rich American liberals and ask their working class supporters to help fund Trump’s election. The mismatch of resources between Democrat billionaires and Republican working class “deplorables” is extraordinary. But note that for both parties the election is a matter of who has the most money. This is the sign of a country that is finished, over and done with.

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“She’s already rallying all the potential candidates behind her,” the source said. “You’re going to see everyone fall into place.”

• ‘Democracy’ Saved (Manley)

This weekend, US President Joe Biden formally bowed out of the 2024 US presidential race. The development came after months of assertions Biden would continue on as the Democratic Party nominee. Biden endorsed his vice president, former Senator Kamala Harris, to take his place and his campaign funds are reportedly being transferred to her nascent campaign. Harris accepted, and announced she will seek the Democratic Party’s nomination. “I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination. Over the past year, I have traveled across the country, talking with Americans about the clear choice in this momentous election. And that is what I will continue to do in the days and weeks ahead,” Harris said in a statement. “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.”

Biden moved to transfer his campaign’s financial war chest to Harris, which former President Trump’s campaign has challenged by filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. The campaign’s general counsel David Warrington argued that transferring the funds is little more than a “thinly veiled $91.5 million excessive contribution from one presidential candidate to another.” Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, told CNN he doesn’t think “most campaign finance lawyers believe that this is a best reading of the law,” but said the move could be tied up in FEC proceedings for years and won’t be resolved before the election. According to campaign experts who spoke to the website Verify, Harris is allowed to use the campaign funds because she and Biden shared the same campaign account, which has ballooned to $91 million. The FEC has “long permitted candidates for president and vice president to share a campaign account,” said Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program.

Democrats reportedly plan to hold a virtual roll call vote to confirm their nominee in the first week of August, although the Democratic National Convention will not begin until August 19. Only 300 signatures will be required to qualify for a virtual ballot and an AP survey found Harris has the backing of more than 1,900 delegates as of Monday night. Although Harris is not yet the party’s official nominee, many Democratic lawmakers and elites have endorsed her candidacy and a majority of delegates to the party’s convention have said they will back her. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who many expected to take Biden’s place, quickly endorsed Harris on X, claiming no one is “better to prosecute the case against Donald Trump’s dark vision” than Harris. A source from Harris’ campaign said she is working hard to win support from any challengers. “She’s already rallying all the potential candidates behind her,” the source said. “You’re going to see everyone fall into place.”

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has also been viewed as a possible Democratic contender for the White House, shrugged off Republican criticism that Harris’ rise to the top of the ticket is undemocratic. The Michigan governor joined other Democratic Party leaders in throwing her support behind Harris. “It’s hard to take the Republican criticism seriously because one day it’s, ‘Joe Biden shouldn’t be running’ and the next day it’s, ‘well, he should be running,’” she said Thursday. “Give me a break.” “I think it’s the right decision and that’s why we have a vice president,” Whitmer argued. “Kamala Harris has been his No. 2 for four years. No one should be surprised that if he steps away that she’s the one to step into the breach.”

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“..by the time Obama called Biden, it was already clear Harris would receive Democratic leaders’ approval to run as the party’s candidate..”

• Obama Threatened Biden with 25th Amendment – Seymour Hersh (Sp.)

Former President Barack Obama threatened Joe Biden with removal from office under the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution if he did not withdraw from the presidential race, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed. Obama told Biden he had gotten the approval of Vice President Kamala Harris to invoke the safeguard against presidential incapacity, Hersh wrote in a blog post on Substack. The journalist noted that, in accordance with the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, the US president may be removed from power in the event they are judged to no longer be able to carry out their duties, with the vice president stepping into the role.

Hersh claimed that by the time Obama called Biden, it was already clear Harris would receive Democratic leaders’ approval to run as the party’s candidate. Obama’s call to Biden came amid discontent among Democratic Party donors, who threatened to withhold funding over concerns about Biden’s health. The US presidential election will take place November 5. It was assumed Biden would again appear on the ballot, but figures within the party began to express concern after a widely-panned debate performance against former President Donald Trump in June. Biden announced his intention to drop out of the race July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee.

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“..You can’t beat him. Get out. Get out. We want you out…We want you out of the race. You’re going to lose. We want to put somebody else in.’”

• Trump: Biden Was Ousted In A “Fascist Coup” (MN)

During an address to the Turning Point Summit on Friday, President Trump asserted that Joe Biden was forced to quit the presidential race by “fascists” who carried out a “coup.” Trump told the Florida crowd “As you know, five days ago, we officially defeated the worst president in the history of the United States, Crooked Joe Biden. You know, I thought a lot about it. We defeated him.” Trump continued, “He was badly beaten. And, you know, everybody who was going to him said, ‘You can’t beat him. You’re not going to beat this guy. You can’t beat him. Get out. Get out. We want you out…We want you out of the race. You’re going to lose. We want to put somebody else in.’” Trump compared the situation to “a prizefighter,” explaining “He’s losing badly, ready to be knocked out. And they say, well, wait, let’s stop the fight. Let’s put somebody else in.”

“It doesn’t work that way. And it’s not supposed to work that way. And this really was a coup by the Democrats. This was a coup. Nothing else,” Trump emphasised. “He got 14 million votes,” Trump noted, referring to the Democratic primary, adding “I hate to stick up for Biden, but, you know, he didn’t want to do what he did. He said, ‘I’ll never go out. I’ll never, ever go out.’ About two days later, ‘I’m proud to go out.’” Trump further declared “the fascists went after him. They threatened him with the 25th Amendment.” “They said, we can do it the nice way or we can do it the hard way, Joe. That’s what happened. I know,” Trump added, referring to reports of what Nancy Pelosi said to Biden. Trump continued, “I know as many people on that side as I know on our side, so to speak. But that’s what happened. They said, we can do it the hard way. We can do it the easy way. 25th Amendment, if you don’t go. And he said, ‘Oh, I’ll go.’”

“And now they’re trying to make him into a brave hero. He’s so brave,” Trump concluded. Elsewhere during the speech, Trump highlighted how some leftists are saying it is ‘hateful’ to pronounce Kamala Harris’ name incorrectly. Trump proclaimed “there are numerous ways of saying her name. They were explaining to me, you can say Kamala, you can say Kamala. I said, don’t worry about it.” “It doesn’t matter what I say. I couldn’t care less if I mispronounce it or not. I couldn’t care less,” he urged. “Some people think I mispronounce it on purpose, but actually I’ve heard it said about seven different ways. There are a lot of ways. There are a lot of ways,” Trump told the audience.

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Or will blind support of Netanyahu lead to WWIII?

• Harris Win Will Lead To WW3 – Trump (RT)

Should Kamala Harris win the US presidential election, “major wars” in the Middle East and “maybe a third world war” will break out, former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump has claimed. Trump has repeatedly accused Harris and President Joe Biden of dragging the US toward a global conflict. Speaking ahead of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, Trump vowed that the Israel/Hamas war would “work out and very quickly” if he were to return to the White House.“If we don’t, you’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East,” he continued. “And maybe a third world war. You are closer to a third world war right now than at any time since the Second World War. We’ve never been so close because we have incompetent people running the country.” Trump has leveled similar accusations at Biden and Harris since the Ukraine conflict began in 2022.

The former president has claimed that the conflict never would have started if he were in power, and promised to bring Moscow and Kiev to the negotiating table “in 24 hours” if elected in November. Netanyahu met with Trump at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, a day after meeting both Biden and Harris in Washington. Speaking to reporters after her face-to-face with the Israeli prime minister, Harris said that she “expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians.” Harris’ comments reportedly angered Netanyahu, with an aide to the Israeli leader telling Axios that the vice president was far less critical during the meeting. Trump was a staunch ally of Netanyahu during his time in the White House, imposing sanctions on Iran at Netanyahu’s request, moving the US Embassy in Israel to West Jerusalem, and brokering the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalize relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan.

However, this relationship soured after Netanyahu congratulated Biden on his electoral victory over Trump in 2020. “I haven’t spoken to [Netanyahu] since,” Trump told Israeli journalist Barak Ravid later that year. “F**k him.” Before Trump and Netanyahu embraced on the steps of Mar-a-Lago on Friday, Trump told Fox News that Israel must end its war in Gaza “fast,” as “they are getting decimated with this publicity, and you know Israel is not very good at public relations.” Earlier this week, the former president took to his Truth Social platform to share a letter he received from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who wished Trump “strength and safety” after the attempt on his life earlier this month. “Thank you. Everything will be good,” Trump replied to Abbas. Trump’s sharing of the letter was seen by some pundits as a move to gain leverage over Netanyahu.

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“..the Democracy Institute, an independent American pollster, found that Trump would secure 48 percent of the popular vote versus Harris, who enjoys 40 percent support.”

• ‘Queen Kamala,’ Election Cheating & Money Grab (Sp.)

Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama backed Harris after a conspicuous pause that had prompted speculation about an internal power struggle within the Democratic Party. The New York Post on July 25 quoted a source close to the Biden family as saying that Barack Obama doesn’t think Kamala can win. “The Obamas likely received substantial assurances from Harris that, in the event of victory, Barack would play important roles guiding and selecting key players in the federal government,” Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik. “In the event of a Trump victory, the Obamas may have bargained for blanket pardons especially concerning ‘organization’ and ‘operation’ of several tax-exempt entities. In exchange, the Obamas will bring money and voters, though I fail to see them closing Kamala’s yawning enthusiasm gap. In fact, whenever and should Kamala appear with either Obama, she will come off weaker and inauthentic by comparison,” he continued.

Prior to Obama’s belated endorsement of Harris, some US political commentators and lawmakers suggested that the real game behind Barack’s hesitation could be aimed at igniting a “Draft Michelle Obama” movement into the forthcoming Democrat convention. With a strong vice presidential pick, Michelle could have higher odds of defeating the Republican contenders than Harris, Ortel presumed. He believes “Obama certainly understands that Harris is an insincere, incompetent manager and unsympathetic contender.” While the corporate press is now insisting that Kamala Harris is narrowing the gap with Trump, her victory is not a done deal. The latest New York Times/Siena College and Wall Street Journal polls claim that after Joe Biden stepped aside, Harris almost erased Trump’s lead. However, the Democracy Institute, an independent American pollster, found that Trump would secure 48 percent of the popular vote versus Harris, who enjoys 40 percent support.

[..] Biden’s campaign had spent $243 million through the end of June, according to FEC records, and continued to do so even after some liberal donors refused to continue funding in the wake of Joe’s deplorable performance in his debate against Trump. The setback did not stop Biden’s team from buying a whopping $35 million in ad time in July, according to Bloomberg. “National campaigns burn through enormous sums especially on advertising,” Ortel said. “Media corporations are key beneficiaries of this spending, so it seems that editors and ‘journalists’ are not driven to identify and explain such obvious conflicts of interest. Another factor is that very few candidates spend much of their own money on campaigns. So, the temptation to live large on the campaign trail (flying private and the like) is overwhelming.”

It appears that ailing Biden’s campaign was used by some as a source of financial bonanza, according to the analyst. What’s more, a large and fair question is when the Cabinet and White House staff first began to suspect Biden was suffering from diminished mental capacity, according to Ortel. “Who decided to shade the truth about Biden and then to treat him as a figurehead and who, actually, makes key decisions in the Biden administration?” the analyst asked. The Democracy Institute’s survey shows that 62 percent of American voters believe Harris knew about Joe Biden’s declining health for some time, but chose to cover it up, while only 31 percent believe she did not.

Read more …

“..Trump said that he will “continue to do outdoor rallies,” and claimed that the Secret Service had “agreed to substantially step up their operation.”

• Trump To Return To Scene Of Shooting, Hold Rally (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has announced that he will hold a “big and beautiful rally” in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was wounded in an assassination attempt earlier this month. Trump narrowly avoided death at a rally in Butler on July 13, when a would-be assassin’s bullet clipped his ear as it streaked past his head. Firing from a rooftop that the US Secret Service had inexplicably left unsecured, the 20-year-old gunman killed one spectator at the rally and wounded two others before he was shot dead by Secret Service snipers. The rally ended with cheers and chants of “USA” as Trump rose from behind his lectern and pumped his fist in the air, before he was led to safety by his security detail.

“I will be going back to Butler, Pennsylvania for a big and beautiful rally, honoring the soul of our beloved firefighting hero, Corey, and those brave patriots injured two weeks ago,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday. Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former firefighter, was fatally shot in the head during the attempted assassination. “What a day it will be – fight, fight, fight!” Trump continued, using the phrase he mouthed to supporters as he climbed to his feet after the shooting. “Stay tuned for details.” Trump did not reveal a date or location for the rally. The July 13 rally was held at the Butler Farm Show, a fairground near the city’s regional airport.

Following the shooting, Secret Service officials cautioned Trump against holding large-scale outdoor rallies, the Washington Post reported earlier this week. According to a separate report in the New York Times, the agency refused repeated requests from the Trump campaign to provide extra resources at these large events. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump said that he will “continue to do outdoor rallies,” and claimed that the Secret Service had “agreed to substantially step up their operation.” “No one can ever be allowed to stop or impede free speech or gathering,” the former president concluded.

Read more …

I really had to think, too many cases, but this is the Stormy Daniels case. 2006. I still prefer the idea that it was Michael Cohen who was boinking Stormy, and paying her for it with Trump’s money.

• Manhattan DA Argues Trump Case Not Affected By SCOTUS Immunity Ruling (ZH)

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has argued in a new court filing that former President Trump’s criminal case and guilty verdict are not affected by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. “That decision has no bearing on this prosecution and would not support vacatur of the jury’s unanimous verdict (let alone dismissal of the indictment) even if its reasoning did apply here,” reads a July 24 brief from Bragg’s team. Earlier this month the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for core constitutional conduct, presumptive immunity for official acts, but no immunity for unofficial acts – which Bragg has seized on in his response to a Trump filing asking New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to toss Trump’s indictment, arguing that communications between Trump and his aides have been used as evidence before the grand jury which indicted Trump and a jury which returned a guilty verdict.

According to Bragg’s team, all of the criminal charges in Trump’s ‘hush money’ case “stem from the defendant’s ‘unofficial acts’ – conduct for which ‘there is no immunity.'” As the Epoch Times notes further, the affected evidence is only a “sliver” if the “mountains of testimony and documentary proof that the jury considered,” therefore not warranting dismissal. Prosecutors had relied on testimony of White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and Oval Office Director of Operations Madeleine Westerhout to establish that President Trump had signed Trump Organization checks at the White House. Defense attorneys had raised presidential immunity objections to Ms. Hicks’s testimony, and Justice Merchan had overruled the objections. The defense had also objected during Ms. Westerhout’s testimony, but not specifically citing presidential immunity.

Prosecutors had also shown several social media posts made by President Trump during his time in office, some directly addressing allegations after his former attorney Michael Cohen was charged for financial crimes. Defense attorneys had objected to the admission of these quotes, but not on the basis of presidential immunity. Prosecutors argue defendants failed to preserve a record of objections based on immunity for official acts, and this “precludes this Court from considering any claim to vacate his conviction.” Prior to the trial, attorneys for President Trump did file a presidential immunity motion. Justice Merchan had dismissed the motion, ruling that defense attorneys could make individual objections against the admission of specific evidence during the trial and that he did not believe the motion was filed in good faith.

The judge had faulted defendants for not raising presidential immunity earlier, including during an attempt to remove the case to federal court. Prosecutors now argue that the defense “waived reliance on presidential immunity as a defense” when they tried to remove the case to federal court. They cited a separate, civil case against former President Trump in which a federal judge had ruled that presidential immunity was a waivable defense. However, the U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion held presidential immunity to be necessary to the core principle of separation of powers. Former President Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, and prosecutors argued that even excluding the contested evidence, the grand jury evidence establishes these charges.

The 34 records are 11 checks to Mr. Cohen and their corresponding invoices and vouchers, including one repeated record after the initial one was lost. Prosecutors argue that the grand jury record establishes that these are business records, that they contain false entries, that former President Trump caused or made the entries, and that he “acted with intent to defraud.” “Even excluding all of the evidence defendant belatedly identifies as immune, the grand jury record is easily sufficient to support the indictment,” the brief reads. Justice Merchan has scheduled former President Trump’s sentencing in the case to Sept. 18. The judge is expected to issue a ruling on the presidential immunity arguments by then.

Read more …

Lots of bitcoin today. Things are shifting in a big way. First, RFK Jr:

• US Treasury Should Buy, Hold Bitcoin as Strategic Asset – RFK Jr (Sp.)

Independent US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would make all US-held Bitcoin a strategic asset if elected, a Sputnik correspondent reports. “I intend as the President of the United States to sign an executive order on day one directing the Department of Justice and the US Marshals to transfer approximately 200,000 Bitcoin held by the US government to the United States Treasury … for the strategic assets,” Kennedy said speaking at the main stage of the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville Friday.

Kennedy added he would issue a second executive order instructing “the US Treasury to purchase 550 Bitcoin daily until the US holds in reserves of at least 4 million Bitcoins.” The candidate expressed support for Former President Donald Trump’s proposal to hold a portion of the United States’ reserves in Bitcoin and said he hopes Trump’s interest in the currency extends beyond politics. Trump is set to address the conference Saturday. Bitcoin’s price increased to nearly $68,000 Friday morning in anticipation of Trump’s speech.

Read more …

Then, a very long piece by Tyler et al, which they kept adding to while I was already formatting it for TAE. Ergo, cut into 3 pieces.

I’m still wondering to what extent Trump understands Bitcoin.

• Trump Promises To Make USA The “Bitcoin Super-Power Of The World” (ZH)

In a spirited keynote address, Former President Trump promised to make USA the “bitcoin super-power of the world,” ensuring that cryptocurrency is “mined, minted, and made in the USA.” “We have to talk about Bitcoin. Our country is blessed with the extraordinary talent and genius in this room. This spirit built America and will help us make it great again. I admire what the Bitcoin community has achieved. In just 15 years, Bitcoin has gone from an idea to the 9th most valuable asset in the world. It’s already bigger than ExxonMobil and soon it will surpass the market cap of silver. That’s a big deal.” He went on with some big promises: “I pledge the day I take office the weaponization against Bitcoin ends.” “On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC Chairman.” “I will immediately shutdown Operation Chokepoint 2.0”.

Trump also confirmed that he will appoint a crypto advisory council with “regulations written by industry-loving people within 100 days.” Trump also confirmed that “there will never be a CBDC” while he is president. “Those who say that bitcoin is a threat to the dollar have it exactly backwards, the danger to our financial future comes from Washington DC not crypto.” Additionally, the former president pointing out that “Bitcoiners understand inflation better than anyone. You all understood it first.” Promising to ‘drill, baby, drill’, Trump notes that with low energy costs the USA will become the undisputed bitcoin mining center of the world. Finally, Trump dropped the big guns: “The policy of the Trump administration will be to keep 100% of all that it currently holds as the core of the strategic national bitcoin stockpile,” and confirmed his promise to commute the sentence of Russ Ulbricht to time-served.

Read more …

Trump could have been woken up by this from RFK Jr: “..[the US] Bitcoin reserve would eventually reach a value of “hundreds of trillions of dollars..”

• ‘Bitcoin Fort Knox’ (ZH)

Who could have seen this coming?

In the sixteen months since, we have seen a seismic shift in attitudes towards crypto from both Independents and Republicans; while Democrats continue to demonize the sovereign currency. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised the role Bitcoin could play in improving the US economy and the American way of life as he spoke to an audience at the Bitcoin 2024 conference on July 26. He promised to sign a number of executive orders on his first day in office to begin the process. Kennedy would sign an order requiring the US Justice Department and US Marshalls to transfer the 204,000 Bitcoin held by the US to the Federal Reserve to be held as a “strategic asset,” he said. Furthermore, Kennedy said he would also order the Treasury Department to purchase 500 Bitcoin daily until the reserve reaches at least four million BTC. The United States would attain “a position of dominance no other country will be able to usurp” and its Bitcoin reserve would eventually reach a value of “hundreds of trillions of dollars,” he promised.

In addition, CoinTelegraph’s Derek Andersen reports that Kennedy would order the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to treat all transactions between Bitcoin and the US dollar as nonreportable and nontaxable. He would also order the IRS to treat Bitcoin as eligible for exchange into real property under the 1031 Exchange program, which provides incentives for real estate investment. “Transactional freedom [is] as important as freedom of expression in the 1st Amendment,” Kennedy said, and Bitcoin can provide that freedom and help restore the United States economy to its condition before President Richard Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard to fund the Vietnam war. Kennedy added: “Fiat currency was invented to fund war. […] If the world was on a BTC standard, there would be no more war because you can’t print Bitcoin.”

“I understand that tomorrow President Trump may announce his plan to build a Bitcoin Fort Knox and authorize the US government to buy a million Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset,” Kennedy told the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on Friday, a day before Trump was scheduled to speak at the same event. “And I applaud that announcement.” However, most notable is the shift seen by former President Trump from his initial comments in 2019.. “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated cryptoassets can facilitate unlawful behaviour, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”

[..] Earlier this month, the Republican National Committee adopted an ambitious platform to promote innovation in the US’ digital assets industry and protect the rights of bitcoin holders. For one, the official platform pledges that the Republicans will “defend the right to mine bitcoin.” This represents a much-needed departure from the policies of the incumbent administration. In February this year, the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued an “emergency” survey to bitcoin mining companies, demanding highly sensitive information such as the specifications of the machines being used, the specific locations of their mining operations, and contractual information relating to their commercial energy partners. The EIA not only demanded all of this information but pledged to publish even the most commercially sensitive bits of it.

This initiative represented an unprecedented intrusion into the activities of Bitcoin miners and a massive assault on the crypto industry. It prompted organizations such as the Texas Blockchain Council to launch legal proceedings to try and protect the rights of the crypto industry against federal outreach. The Republicans’ pledge to “defend the right to mine bitcoin” is therefore very welcome. There are other encouraging pledges that the Republicans have made. The GOP has said they will “ensure every American has the right to self-custody their digital assets and transact free from government surveillance and control.” They have also come out strongly against the idea of a CBDC. “Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency,” the party has said. Of course, all of this is highly encouraging for digital asset industry advocates. But it still begs the question. What caused President Trump to change his mind and start embracing the massive potential of digital assets and decentralized finance?

Read more …

But Vivek will have been Trump’s no. 1 source (get him a big cabinet post). And then came JD Vance.

• Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump and Bitcoin (ZH)

What caused President Trump to change his mind and start embracing the massive potential of digital assets and decentralized finance? How has this pro-digital asset agenda vaulted into the limelight of Presidential politics? If there is one man who has contributed more than anybody else to changing Republicans’ mind on crypto, it is Vivek Ramaswamy. The former Republican presidential candidate and entrepreneur is clearly having increasing amounts of influence on the GOP inner circle. At the Republican Convention this month, Donald Trump Jr joked that he would like Ramaswamy to be his running mate in 2036. Indeed, ever since his presidential bid last year, it is clear that he has been one of the leading voices at the upper echelons of the Republicans guiding the party in a more pro-crypto direction.

Ramaswamy made waves in GOP circles when, at the North American Blockchain Summit in Texas last year, he released a detailed and comprehensive plan for the US crypto space. What did he pledge to do? Perhaps the most eye-catching measure was his promise to fire most of the employees at the bloated Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and order the rest to stop trying to bully the crypto industry. Importantly, Ramaswamy defines many cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as commodities that are therefore not under the jurisdiction of the SEC.

“I think it’s nothing short of embarrassing that Gary Gensler, the current leader of the SEC, in front of Congress could not even say whether Ethereum counted as a regulated security or not,” Ramaswamy said during one of the Republican debates last year. “This is just another example of the administrative state gone too far.” Ramaswamy has been a vocal advocate for innovation in the crypto space and the use of decentralized digital currencies as a tool for financial freedom. He has argued that the right to code should be a right protected by the First Amendment, protecting developers from the overreaches of federal agencies. He has also said that consumers should have a right to possess self-hosted digital wallets beyond the grasp of the government. This has now been explicitly adopted by the Republicans for their 2024 election campaign, showing the practical influence Ramaswamy is having on Republican policy.

[..] arguably the most important impactful of Ramaswamy’s crypto activism is to persuade the broader Republican Party that supporting crypto innovation is in line with their political philosophy and natural instincts. He has powerfully argued that the current federal assault on the crypto industry is “an embodiment of our national decline” in the way it represents an attack on innovation and entrepreneurship, two values the Republicans have always claimed to hold dear. Ramaswamy has similarly noted that Bitcoin mining is “a frontier in American innovation” in the same tradition as American heroes such as Thomas Jefferson – who Ramaswamy thinks “would have been a Bitcoin miner.” This rhetoric seems to have worked in convincing President Trump and Republican leaders that they should indeed be the pro-bitcoin party.

Another key emerging figure in the Republican party who is of a similar mind on digital assets as Vivek is Trump’s recent VP pick, J.D. Vance. Senator Vance is vocal about his support for bitcoin and digital assets and has a background in tech venture capital. He is young and he understands the importance of courting younger votes. So, what will “four more years” of President Trump mean for the US digital asset industry? Let’s end as we started, with another quote from the President – one that shows, thanks to the efforts of Vivek Ramaswamy, Senator Vance and others, just how much the Republican stance on crypto has changed over the last few years. “I will end Joe Biden’s war on crypto. We will ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in America.” “If Trump is elected, the U.S. will have to add Bitcoin as a reserve, because it is digital gold,” said Arseniy Grusha, chief executive officer of data-center firm Dataprana, who attended the conference. “The earlier they do that, the better it will be for the United States.”

Read more …

This will be the fall of Europe.

“..with every day that the war rages on, Ukraine’s prospects of maintaining a sovereign and reasonably functional state diminish..”

• Europe’s Path to War and Self-Destruction (Scheidler)

Brussels is working hard to boycott Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s EU Council Presidency. The background: Orbán’s trips to Kiev, Moscow and Beijing, which were aimed at negotiating a ceasefire agreement, are infuriating EU leaders and the governments in Berlin, Paris and other capitals. There is certainly a lot that can be said against the right-wing Hungarian head of state and Trump friend, who is responsible for a whole series of rule of law deficits in his home country. But to accuse him of a diplomatic initiative that other member states have so far been unwilling or unable to take shows how far the EU has moved away from its former claim to be a force for peace. The fact that at the highest level of the Union, the bypassing of essential EU rules such as the rotation of the Council presidency is seriously considered in order to punish Orbán for his travels is a portent for the future of the Union.

It is remarkable that the EU, which could be completely devastated by a possible escalation of the war in Ukraine, is not only doing nothing to avert this danger and stop the killing, but is also undermining the diplomatic attempts of a member state. It has long been known that Ukraine cannot win the war and that it is – at best – a stalemate. This was already clearly stated in November 2022 by the then Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and a year later by the supreme commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valery Zalushnyi. Since then, with every day that the war rages on, Ukraine’s prospects of maintaining a sovereign and reasonably functional state diminish. But the EU does not want to acknowledge this simple reality. As its first official act, the new EU Parliament passed a resolution on July 17 vowing to provide military support to Ukraine until all occupied territories are recaptured, regardless of how long this takes (i.e. how many people die in the process).

You don’t have to be a military expert to understand that the complete reconquest of the Donbass and Crimea is a completely unrealistic perspective, if only because of the massive recruitment problems of the Ukrainian military. However, the resolution goes even further: it “strongly advocates for the removal of restrictions on the use of Western weapons systems delivered to Ukraine against military targets on Russian territory”. The EU Parliament thus explicitly hazards a Europe-wide escalation, including the possibility of nuclear war. It also calls on all member states to permanently provide at least 0.25 of their economic output for the rearmament of Ukraine (in addition to increasing their own military budgets), to train more Ukrainian soldiers and to “boost” their arms industries. Furthermore, the resolution endorses the “irreversible path of Ukraine to NATO membership”, echoing the wording of the earlier NATO summit. It thus closes the door for any settlement based on future Ukrainian neutrality. Diplomatic initiatives are not mentioned at all.

The resolution is testimony to a highly dangerous mixture of escapism from reality and unbridled militarism, reminiscent of the time of the “sleepwalkers” before the outbreak of the First World War. And yet it’s all over town that only negotiations offer a way out. Even Volodimir Selensky himself said after the failed Swiss peace summit, to which the Russian Federation was not invited, that Russia should be involved in talks next time. The much-vaunted argument that it is impossible to negotiate with someone like Vladimir Putin has long been refuted. Intensive negotiations took place between the two sides from the end of February to the beginning of April 2022 under Turkish mediation, which resulted in a 10-point plan that provided for Ukraine to renounce its NATO membership and for Russia to withdraw to the lines of February 23, 2022. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett also conducted secret negotiations at the time, in which the heads of state of Russia and Ukraine were involved. However, the negotiations were broken off after the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev on April 9. According to everything we know from (pro-Western) media reports, Johnson’s message at the time was that Ukraine should stop negotiating and continue fighting.

Still today, more than two years and many tens of thousands of deaths later, the EU states have committed themselves to a senseless program of rearmament and confrontation instead of diplomacy. Following the decisions taken at the NATO summit in Washington D.C., new medium-range missiles that can be equipped with nuclear warheads are to be stationed in Germany – for the first time since the 1980s. Instead of making Germany any safer, this will turn the country all the more into a potential target for attacks in the event of an escalation. There was no public debate or involvement of the German parliament on this momentous step. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose social-democratic party achieved just 13.9 percent in the EU elections and whose legitimacy has been massively weakened, has rubber-stamped another wave of armament with a wave of his hand. The possibility of reviving the INF Treaty on the dismantling and prohibition of medium-range missiles in Europe, which was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 and terminated by Donald Trump in 2019, has thus been abandoned.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snowden
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816950008828272966

 

 

 

 

Tigermom

 

 

Giraffe

 

 

Smart friends

 

 

Frens
https://twitter.com/i/status/1817233571238617530

 

 

Jordan

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 25 2024

Jul 252024
 
 July 25, 2024  Posted by at 8:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Claude Monet Hollowed Cliff near Étretat 1883

 

• Obama ‘Dumped’ Biden – Trump (RT)
• Decision To Leave Race Was About ‘Saving Democracy’ – Biden (RT)
• Team Trump Files Complaint to Block Harris’ Use of Biden Campaign Funds (Sp.)
• ActBlue Accused Of “MASSIVE Money Laundering Operation” (ZH)
• Secret Service Tells Trump To Stop Having Outdoor Rallies (ZH)
• Trump Shooter Studied JFK Assassination – FBI (RT)
• Court Rejects Bid to Throw Out Trump Case Against Pulitzer Board (ET)
• Re-Electing von der Leyen Tragic For Western Europe -Zakharova (TASS)
• Ukraine Top General Acknowledges Russian Air Superiority, Questions F-16 (Sp.)
• Slovakia President Issues Threat To Ukraine (RT)
• Russia Responds To Zelensky’s Talks Proposal (RT)
• Zelensky Has No Legitimacy – Kremlin (RT)
• The Berlin Wall Falls Again (John Helmer)
• The Stunning Audacity Of Yemen’s Drone Strike On Tel Aviv (Cradle)
• China Has Achieved Escape Velocity: It Is Now Unstoppable (Pepe Escobar)

 

 

 

 

Tack
https://twitter.com/i/status/1815929451256979636

 

 

Cart

 

 

Wray


https://twitter.com/i/status/1816145592566833544

 

 

Elon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1815768540097495385

 

 

Harris Obama

 

 

Biden letter

 

 

NKorea
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816196264935166412

 

 

MTG

 

 

 

 

“Obama can’t stand him, and he can’t stand Obama..”

• Obama ‘Dumped’ Biden – Trump (RT)

Former US President Barack Obama “can’t stand” President Joe Biden and was instrumental in killing his reelection campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump has alleged. Biden announced on Sunday that he was dropping out of the race for the White House and endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, to run in his stead. In the runup to the announcement, Obama was reportedly one of several top Democrats privately urging Biden to end his campaign, out of concern that the visibly infirm 81-year-old could not defeat former president Trump in November. “Obama can’t stand him, and he can’t stand Obama,” Trump told the New York Post on Tuesday. “Obama had a part because he said he wasn’t going to support him.” “Nancy Pelosi dumped him,” Trump continued, referring to the former House Speaker taking to cable news to cast doubts on Biden’s ability to serve.

“They all dumped him, and they said, ‘Either you get out nice or we’re going to go after you.’ And that’s what happened. And he had no choice. There’s no question about it.” Biden announced his departure from the race via a social media post, made while he was cloistered away at his Delaware home recovering from Covid-19. This reportedly shocked some of the president’s aides, who told Politico that they had no inkling he would leave the race until they saw the posts on X. Biden has not spoken to the public since the announcement, and slurred his words during a phoned-in message delivered to Harris’ campaign headquarters on Monday. “He was pushed out of power like a dog,” Trump said of Biden on Wednesday, in a post to his Truth Social platform. Prior to Biden’s announcement, most polls showed Trump leading the 81-year-old by between one and nine points. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday showed Harris beating Trump by 44% to 42%, although analysts have cautioned that this initial “bump” in support will likely subside in the coming weeks.

“She’s the same as Biden but much more radical,” Trump said of Harris. “She wants open borders. She wants things that nobody wants…so I think she should be easier than Biden, because he was slightly more mainstream, but not much.” Obama did not join Biden in endorsing Harris. In a statement on Sunday praising Biden for stepping aside, the former president did not mention Harris, and called on Democrats to “create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges” at the party’s convention in August. However, Harris has already won the support of enough Democratic delegates to secure the party’s nomination. Should she get the nod, she will be the first presidential candidate in 56 years to run for the White House without ever competing in a primary election. Harris dropped out of the race for the presidency in 2019 with her polling numbers between 1% and 2%.

Read more …

“If everyone acknowledges that he’s incapable of running a campaign, he’s clearly not capable of running the country..”

• Decision To Leave Race Was About ‘Saving Democracy’ – Biden (RT)

The election in November will be “an inflection point” for the country, US President Joe Biden has said in his first public speech after deciding not to seek a second term and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. Speaking from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening, Biden said he is determined to unite the Democratic Party and “pass the torch to a new generation.” “I revere this office, but I love my country more,” Biden said. “I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merit a second term. But nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.” Biden went on to stress the importance of the election, in which Harris is set to compete against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. “I ran for president four years ago because I believed and still do that the soul of America was at stake, the very nature of who we are was at stake. And that is still the case,” Biden said.

Initially defiant, Biden eventually succumbed to pressure from top Democrats and major party donors who argued that he is no longer capable of defeating Trump. Concerns over his age and deteriorating health increased rapidly after his disastrous performance during a televised debate with Trump last month, in which Biden appeared confused and struggled to finish his sentences. Biden announced the decision to withdraw his candidacy on Sunday, naming Harris as his successor. Harris is expected to officially become the nominee during the Democratic National Convention next month. The Republicans, meanwhile, have called on Biden to resign from the presidency. “If everyone acknowledges that he’s incapable of running a campaign, he’s clearly not capable of running the country,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters over the weekend.

Read more …

Interesting legal squabble.

• Team Trump Files Complaint to Block Harris’ Use of Biden Campaign Funds (Sp.)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission arguing that money raised for President Joe Biden’s reelection effort cannot be transferred to fund Vice President Kamala Harris’ election bid, CNN has reported. Legal experts had speculated an attempt to transfer funds raised by the Biden campaign to Harris could trigger a lawsuit. “Kamala Harris is seeking to perpetrate a $91.5 million dollar heist of Joe Biden’s leftover campaign cash — a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended,” read the document as revealed by CNN Tuesday.

The complaint is leveled against Biden himself, his election campaign, Harris and campaign treasurer Keana Spencer, accusing them of “flagrantly violating the Act by making and receiving an excessive contribution of nearly one hundred million dollars, and for filing fraudulent forms with the Commission purporting to repurpose one candidate’s principal campaign committee for the use of another candidate,” the report said. An FEC spokesperson declined to comment, citing the FEC’s policy on not discussing enforcement matters as the reason, the broadcaster reported. Charles Kretchmer Lutvak, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, said the complaint represented “baseless legal claims.”

“Republicans may be jealous that Democrats are energized to defeat Donald Trump and his MAGA [Make America Great Again] allies, but baseless legal claims – like the ones they’ve made for years to try to suppress votes and steal elections – will only distract them while we sign up volunteers, talk to voters, and win this election,” said Lutvak in a statement released Tuesday. Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 US presidential race Sunday and endorsed Harris to be the Democratic Party’s nominee. Trump, for his part, has said more than once that it would be easier to defeat Harris, while his campaign has argued she would be worse than Biden as president.

Read more …

“Kamala Harris is in the process of committing the largest campaign finance violation in American history and she is using the Commission’s own forms to do it.”

“$20 million [..] broken down into over 1,600,000 donations across 400,000 donors..”

• ActBlue Accused Of “MASSIVE Money Laundering Operation” (ZH)

Democrat donation platform ActBlue has been accused of a engaging in a “MASSIVE money laundering operation,” by which contributions from large donors are being funneled through hundreds of thousands of small donations made in the name of people who have no clue they’ve donated.

The accusation comes as the platform says it had its best day of 2024, and possibly of all time, in the wake of President Biden abandoning his reelection campaign on Sunday. ActBlue has been previously been fined for facilitating nearly $44,000 in illegal contributions. Meanwhile, journalist James O’Keefe approached alleged donors with hundreds of thousands of contributions listed in their name, who knew nothing about them. In related news, the Trump campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday accusing President Biden and VP Kamala Harris of violating campaign finance laws with the transfer of $91 million in fundraising cash to her new campaign.

According to the complaint, Harris is “seeking to perpetrate a $91.5 million dollar heist of Joe Biden’s leftover campaign cash.” Trump campaign general counsel David Warrington called the act a “brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended,” adding “Kamala Harris is in the process of committing the largest campaign finance violation in American history and she is using the Commission’s own forms to do it.””The Commission must not and cannot sit idly by while one candidate takes nearly one hundred million dollars from the authorized committee of another, in violation of the Act and the will of the donors who gave the money in the first place.” The complaint names Biden, Harris, “Biden for President (aka Harris for President) and Keana Spencer, as treasurer, for flagrantly violating the Act by making and receiving an excessive contribution of nearly one hundred million dollars, and for filing fraudulent forms with the Commission purporting to repurpose one candidate’s principal campaign committee for the use of another candidate.”

The complaint argues that if “Kamala Harris were a candidate for something in 2024, federal law requires her to have filed a Statement of Candidacy and for her name to have appeared in the name of her authorized committee. But Kamala Harris’s name does not appear in the name of her purported authorized committee, ‘Biden for President,’ and, until Sunday, no Statement of Candidacy existed for her. Then Sunday, rather than filing her own Statement of Candidacy, she merely altered Joe Biden’s to replace his name with hers. There is no mechanism under the Act for one individual to end another’s federal candidacy by simply amending the other’s Form 2. Moreover, in that purported amended Form 2 Harris designated ‘Biden for President’ as her principal campaign committee and then renamed it. Altering a document submitted to a federal agency is a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519.3.” -Fox News.

According to the Harris campaign, the complaint is “baseless.”

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Coming after a botched murder orchestrated by … the same Secret Service. Convenient.

• Secret Service Tells Trump To Stop Having Outdoor Rallies (ZH)

The Secret Service is turning near-assassination lemons into Deep State lemonade. Following its catastrophic failure to secure Donald Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service has come up with a “fix” that reeks of ulterior motives: the agency has advised the Trump campaign to stop holding large outdoor rallies altogether. Broken by the Washington Post, news of the agency’s pathetic prescription came hours after Secret Service Director Kimberley Cheatle resigned, following a marathon Monday grilling on Capitol Hill that saw her used as a punching bag by members of both major parties. Her agency’s multi-dimensional incompetence in Pennsylvania left a former president and two spectators wounded — and another dead.

The Secret Service’s recommendation undermines a cornerstone of Trump campaign culture. Trump fans have turned his sprawling outdoor rallies into daylong parties complete with tailgate barbecues, merchants selling Trump-branded gear, and vehicles decorated in tribute to the former president. Thousands who can’t get into the rally itself are content to soak up the festive atmosphere in the immediate vicinity. The rallies often provide stunning visual indicators of Trump’s support, serving as campaign ads in and of themselves. Given Trump came within an inch of a fatal head-shot thanks to the Secret Service’s inadequacy — which could take a long time to fix — his campaign is perhaps reasonably taking the agency’s recommendation to heart:

For upcoming events, Trump’s team is scouting indoor venues, such as basketball arenas and other large spaces where thousands of people can fit, people familiar with the request said. The campaign is not currently planning any large outdoor events, a person close to Trump said. — Washington Post. From a security perspective, indoor events have many obvious advantages, from a finite number of entrances to fewer opportunities for snipers — including those who might attempt a shot from much longer distances than the chip-shot, 400-foot opportunity Trump’s shooter was given. A source tells Axios that the change doesn’t necessarily mean Trump won’t have any outdoor rallies at all. Meanwhile, even indoors, the Trump campaign will still be able to put on some impressive displays of strength…

…however, nixing outdoor rallies will hit the Trump campaign squarely in the checkbook, since it’s much more expensive to rent a major indoor arena than an exurban fairground like the Butler Farm Show grounds. Smaller venues cost less, but give far fewer fans the opportunity to attend. According to his campaign’s event schedule, Trump’s next two venues are the 9,600-seat Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte tonight, and the 6,000-seat Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St. Cloud, Minnesota on Saturday.

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He googled it. Studied?! The FBI wants to promote the lone wolf.

• Trump Shooter Studied JFK Assassination – FBI (RT)

Would-be assassin Thomas Michael Crooks researched the assassination of John F Kennedy before opening fire on former President Donald Trump earlier this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers on Wednesday. Crooks shot Trump in the ear during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. Firing from a rooftop that Trump’s Secret Service detail had inexplicably left unguarded, the 20-year-old gunman killed one person in the audience and injured two others before Secret Service snipers shot him dead. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Wray said that an FBI examination of Crooks’ computer revealed that he began researching the JFK assassination on July 6, the same day he registered to attend the Trump rally. “He did a Google search for – quote – ‘how far away was Oswald from Kennedy’,” Wray said, referring to Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman accused of shooting Kennedy in 1963.

“That’s a search that’s obviously significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray said, adding that Crooks had become “very focused on President Trump and his rally” at the time. Wray’s testimony shed little light on Crooks’ motivation. The FBI chief insisted that the shooter was not in contact with any accomplices or co-conspirators, and did not speculate about his political leanings. Before becoming fixated on Trump, Crooks did “a lot of searches of public figures in general,” Wray said, warning that “it is, quite frankly, a dangerous time to be a prominent public official.” Wray did not comment on how many Secret Service snipers were present at the rally, nor did he comment on allegations that the agency had pulled some staff from Trump’s detail before the event. Wray did, however, reveal that Crooks visited the site in Butler on three occasions, and on the day of the rally “was flying the drone around the area” just two hours before Trump took to the stage.

Republicans have fiercely criticized the Secret Service for failing to secure Crooks’ rooftop vantage point, despite it being around 150 meters from the stage, and for apparently disregarding reports of an armed Crooks crawling around on the roof minutes before opening fire. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, a day after telling the Oversight Committee that she took responsibility for the “most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.”

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They hand their -formerly- coveted Prize to a bunch of liars, and then try to defend that. An insult to anyone who deserved it. It’s worthless now.

• Court Rejects Bid to Throw Out Trump Case Against Pulitzer Board (ET)

A court in Florida has rejected a bid from members of the Pulitzer Prize Board to throw out a case brought against them by former President Donald Trump. The board’s statement in 2022 standing behind its awards to several news outlets for reporting on former President Trump’s purported links to Russia is actionable because it is not merely opinion, Florida Circuit Court Judge Robert Pegg ruled on July 20. Defendants withheld valuable information from readers, including the process by which complaints against the awards were evaluated, according to the judge. In the July 18, 2022, statement, the board said that it “carefully reviewed” complaints against the awards, which were given in 2018 to The New York Times and The Washington Post. “Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other,” the board said at the time.

“The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.” The brief statement, though, was not pure opinion because the board failed to identify any of the reviewers, reveal whether the reviewers had any connection to the board, and share the reviewers’ qualifications, Judge Pegg said. “If the defendants’ statement had included the foregoing facts, an ordinary reader might have been able to evaluate whether they agreed with defendants’ decision not to revoke the prizes, and whether the underlying reporting had actually survived the factual disclosures of several subsequent government investigations unscathed,” the judge wrote. “Instead, the alleged defamatory statement implies no fewer than seven undisclosed sets of foundational facts, making the defendants’ statement actionable mixed opinion.”

Under Florida law, people cannot sue over pure opinion. The board did not respond to a request for comment. Former President Trump cheered the ruling in a post on Truth Social, writing that the judge “did not allow Pulitzer to hide behind the deeply outdated Times v. Sullivan case.” The 1964 New York Times Company v. Sullivan ruling, handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court, found that people who bring defamation cases must show that defendants knew the questioned statements were false or that the defendants were reckless in publishing the statements without looking into their accuracy. The case in Florida, being adjudicated in the 19th Judicial Circuit in Okeechobee County, concerns the board’s awarding of the 2018 Pulitzer for national reporting to The New York Times and The Washington Post for stories about purported links between President Trump and his campaign and Russia.

The stories, which largely relied on anonymous sources, included one article discussing the FBI’s willingness to pay the author of a dossier funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that consisted of a series of memorandums compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and another about comments from an aide for the Trump campaign that spurred the FBI’s Russia investigation. Subsequent government findings have undercut the stories; the findings include a report from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team that found no evidence of collusion between former President Trump or his campaign and Russia.

The Washington Post later corrected multiple stories about an individual who it said was one of Mr. Steele’s sources, acknowledging that its reporting was wrong. Reporters with the news outlet were among those who worked closely with Fusion GPS, an operative firm paid by Ms. Clinton’s campaign, the disclosed emails showed. Complaints from former President Trump’s campaign and others prompted the board’s 2022 statement, which then triggered the legal case. In a second ruling released over the weekend, Judge Pegg rejected a motion from defendants in the defamation case requesting that they be dismissed because they reside outside of Florida. The judge said that the former president had successfully alleged conspiracy among the defendants and that at least one of the defendants may have committed tortious acts in Florida to further the conspiracy.

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“..von der Leyen is a “committed supporter of maximizing US control over the European continent.”

• Re-Electing von der Leyen Tragic For Western Europe -Zakharova (TASS)

Re-electing Ursula von der Leyen to the post of European Commission (EC) president has become a tragic episode in the history of Western Europe, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. The diplomat noted that the Russian mission at the EU has already commented on “this tragic page in the Western European history.” “To summarize, I can say that, unfortunately, indeed it is simply not possible to expect anything good for the stability and well-being of the residents of EU member states, moreover, for democracy and freedom, including the issue of security in that part of the world, as a result of Ursula von der Leyen’s confrontational attitude,” Zakharova stressed. According to the diplomat, von der Leyen is a “committed supporter of maximizing US control over the European continent.”

“She is also the main mouthpiece of Russophobic policy currently conducted by the European Union. This includes calls to invest increasingly more in the spheres of defense and security in the EU, in the creation of the so-called defense union which presumes its even deeper subjugation to NATO in the future and support for the Nazi regime on Bankovaya (Ukraine’s presidential administration – TASS). The resolution of all these problems, apparently, takes a toll on the EU with quite murky prospects at that,” she added. On April 18, the European Parliament elected von der Leyen as European Commission president for the second term. She garnered 401 out of 720 votes. During the session, both the right-and left-wing opposition criticized her for not fulfilling her obligations during the first term, destroying the European economy and not taking measures against poverty.

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The F-16s will all be shot down.

• Ukraine Top General Acknowledges Russian Air Superiority, Questions F-16 (Sp.)

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky has complained about the Russian air superiority and conceded that there were limits to what the long-promised F-16 fighter jets could achieve on the battlefield, British media reported Wednesday. Syrsky said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper that Russia had “superior aviation” and “very strong” air defenses. Because of this Ukraine was forced to rely more on unmanned aerial vehicles. The general explained that F-16 fighters could only be used 40 kilometers (25 miles) or further away from the front-line due to the risks of being downed. On July 10, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the first batch of F-16 fighter jets would be handed over to Ukraine in summer.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned the United States and its NATO allies that Moscow saw the presence of nuclear capable F-16s in Ukraine as a nuclear threat. Syrsky also said that mobilization was needed to create necessary reserves and demanded that those evading the mandatory draft joined the military to “fulfil their constitutional duty.” Martial law was introduced in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The next day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on general mobilization. The martial law and mobilization have been extended repeatedly since then. Under martial law, men aged 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving Ukraine.

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it’s the Druzhba pipeline again. The US and EU think they can get Hungary and Slovakia “in line” this way.

• Slovakia President Issues Threat To Ukraine (RT)

Slovakia could take retaliatory measures against Ukraine if Kiev continues to stop Russian oil transiting via the Druzhba pipeline, President Peter Pellegrini has warned. Kiev stopped the flow of crude through the Druzhba pipeline to its energy-dependent neighbors – Hungary and Slovakia – last week, citing sanctions against Russia’s second-largest oil company Lukoil, thus depriving the two EU member states of oil that meets up to 40% of their needs. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Pellegrini described Kiev’s actions as a “very unpleasant interference in our good relations.” “I firmly believe that Ukraine will be able to put this in order as soon as possible, because Slovakia, as a sovereign state, will eventually have to take some kind of countermeasures,” he said without specifying the nature of a possible response.

He added, however, that this “would not benefit either Ukraine or its citizens.” Pelligrini recalled that Slovakia had helped Ukraine with the reverse flow of gas and has also been sending electricity to the country. Slovakian Defense Minister Robert Kalinak echoed the president’s criticism and warned that Kiev was “risking a lot” with its “irresponsible” actions. While the EU banned seaborne oil imports from Russia in December 2022, pipeline deliveries have received exemptions from the embargo to allow land-locked EU countries, including Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, to secure stable oil supplies.

Lukoil provides some 50% of the oil shipped via the southern branch of Druzhba, which is one of the world’s longest pipeline networks. Other suppliers include Russian state-owned Tatneft, Gazprom Neft, the private company Russneft, and several small producers. On Tuesday, Hungary also pledged to punish Kiev for its blockade of oil deliveries from Russia, with Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto saying Budapest would block €6.5 billion ($7 billion) in funds that the EU has earmarked for Ukraine until Kiev resumes transit. Hungary’s foreign minister said his country supplied 42% of Ukraine’s electricity in June.

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“Everyone knows perfectly well that this is a man who can twist anything, who can lie, who can deny everything..”

• Russia Responds To Zelensky’s Talks Proposal (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky’s signal that Ukraine is ready to resume peace talks with Moscow is not credible, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. In recent weeks, Zelensky has said that Kiev wants to end the conflict “as soon as possible,” preferably “by the end of this year.” He has also insisted on holding a second ‘peace summit’ to achieve that goal. The last such event, hosted by Switzerland, focused on Kiev’s ‘peace formula’ – which demands that Russia withdraw its troops from all territory claimed by Ukraine. Moscow has dismissed the plan as detached from reality. Commenting on the possibility of peace with Ukraine, Zakharova told reporters on Wednesday that “nobody trusts [Zelensky].” “Everyone knows perfectly well that this is a man who can twist anything, who can lie, who can deny everything,” she said.

She recalled that neither Ukraine nor its Western backers have done anything to rescind Zelensky’s presidential decree barring Kiev from any talks with the current leadership in Moscow. The Ukrainian leader approved the document in the fall of 2022 after four former Ukrainian regions voted overwhelmingly to join Russia. Last week, however, Zelensky suggested that he saw “no difference” in whether he had to engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin, or someone else, to end the conflict. “We hear a lot of words, but we don’t see actions at all,” Zakharova noted, suggesting that Zelensky’s statements are no more than another attempt to promote Kiev’s ‘peace formula’ and dupe countries around the world into supporting the initiative.

The spokeswoman added that Zelensky’s unexpected “flexibility” on peace talks could be linked to recent major shifts in the US political landscape, in reference to the shooting of Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race. The GOP candidate has repeatedly vowed to end the conflict within 24 hours if elected and has criticized open-ended US support for Kiev. Zakharova’s comments come after Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that Kiev “is willing to engage in dialogue and negotiations with Russia,” which he said must be “rational” and aimed at achieving a just and lasting peace. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described Kuleba’s words as being “in unison” with Russia’s stance. “The Russian side has never refused negotiations, [but] the details that we do not know yet are important here,” he added.

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“..anyone who questions his legitimacy is “an enemy.”

• Zelensky Has No Legitimacy – Kremlin (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s status could pose a problem when Moscow and Kiev eventually agree to hold peace talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called into question Zelensky’s legitimacy, noting that his term in office has expired. “Our president has repeatedly said that President Zelensky definitely lost his legitimacy,” Peskov told journalists. Another issue that “could seriously hinder the peace process” is Zelensky’s 2022 decree that “banned any Ukrainian head of state from engaging in talks with President Putin,” Peskov said.

Zelensky’s presidential term formally expired on May 20. He refused to hold an election in March, citing martial law which was imposed due to the conflict with Russia. He argued that his term was de facto extended in accordance with Ukrainian law. Putin has stated several times in recent months that an analysis of the Ukrainian constitution and other legislation leaves no room for an interpretation that would allow Zelensky to remain in power. Citing Article 111 of the Ukrainian constitution, Putin argued in May that Zelensky’s powers should have been transferred to the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament.

Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, however, has insisted that Zelensky is the legitimate head of state and that anyone who questions his legitimacy is “an enemy.” Earlier on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told journalists that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba made it clear during a trip to Beijing that he is “ready and willing” to hold peace talks with Moscow. Russia responded by saying it would wait for details on the Ukrainian position. “We have not heard these statements from Kuleba himself,” Peskov said on Wednesday, adding that negotiations are preferable to continued hostilities. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine broke down in spring 2022, with each side accusing the other of making unrealistic demands.

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“Never again may we as Germans get involved in a war against Russia in any form. We need to unite and join to oppose this madness together.”

• The Berlin Wall Falls Again (John Helmer)

One of Germany’s most notorious prosecutions of free speech has collapsed, as the Berlin prosecutor’s office has dropped a case designed to stop Germans discussing the war against Russia in the Ukraine. Heinrich Buecher, owner of the COOP Anti-war Café on Rochstrasse, has been prosecuted in a Berlin district court and then in the higher regional court for statements he had made in a city park on June 22, 2022. On the anniversary of the German Army’s Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, Buecher had declared: “Never again may we as Germans get involved in a war against Russia in any form. We need to unite and join to oppose this madness together.” In the court proceedings which followed, the judges refused to allow Buecher to speak in his own defence. Instead, he published on the website of his café a re-statement of what he had been convicted of saying in June 2002.

“As an anti-fascist and anti-imperialist, I expressly oppose the policy of regime change, against wars of intervention and against any Interference in the internal affairs of independent states. I call on the German government to adopt a policy in the interest of International peace, in the interests of international security and peaceful coexistence of all peoples. The principles of the Charter of the United Nations must be respected and international law must be defended.” “I call for all arms deliveries and training programs for the Ukraine stop immediately. I demand diplomacy instead of weapons. I call for all efforts of our government to negotiate and allow opponents of war without preconditions. The sacrifice of the Ukraine for the geopolitical interests of the West, namely the strategic weakening of Russia, is a monstrous war crime and must have an end.”

The Buecher case has been followed by the Russian media but not the Anglo-American media. The mainstream German press has also avoided reporting the case. In January 2023, a Berlin district court judge named Tobias Pollman issued a summary judgement without hearing evidence or argument, ruling that Buecker’s crime came under Section 140 of the German Criminal Code, and had consisted of “publicly approving a crime of aggression (Section 138 of the International Criminal Code) in a manner likely to disturb the public peace at a meeting.” Pollman convicted Buecker of approving “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in violation of international law, the illegality of which you knew.” In German law, it wasn’t Buecher’s speech but the substance of what the judge said he meant which was judged illegal. He was sentenced to pay a €2,000 fine or 40 days in jail.

A radio interview of Buecher by John Helmer and George Eliason of April 15, 2023, was first published here, but subsequently erased by the broadcast company TNT. Buecher appealed, and on April 27, 2023, another Berlin judge named Marieluis Brinkmann ruled after a 90-minute proceeding in which she repeatedly stopped Buecher and his lawyer from testifying in defence. Brinkmann announced that the first judge had correctly applied the law in finding Buecher guilty of the crime of supporting Russia. But she dismissed the conviction and fine on the ground that Buecher’s speech had been a private one in front of his “fans”, not a public speech at all. The Berlin prosecutor, who refused to give her name in court or to allow photographs of herself, then appealed to the higher, Berlin region court. The higher court judges refused to reinstate Buecher’s conviction, and the prosecutors began new appeals. This month these appeals were dropped, and the prosecutors abandoned the case.

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2000 kilometers without being intercepted. What Iron Dome?

• The Stunning Audacity Of Yemen’s Drone Strike On Tel Aviv (Cradle)

On 19 July, a low-altitude drone breached Tel Aviv’s airspace from the sea and detonated, causing one fatality and injuring ten others. The incident sent shockwaves through the occupation state, with a panicked populace and bewildered policymakers grappling with the Israeli army’s “mega-failure” to intercept a single drone amid prolonged aggression against Gaza and the mounting tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The attack’s impact was magnified by its direct hit on Tel Aviv, the heart of Israel’s governmental and economic power, starkly exposing inadequacies in its defense strategies and further alarming a population that has for months been questioning the effectiveness of its military preparedness. It wasn’t long before the de facto Yemeni authorities in Sanaa claimed responsibility for the attack, calling the strike a retaliation for Israeli massacres and threatening more to come. But how did a Yemeni drone reach the heart of Israel’s most fortified region and strike a blow to Israeli military pride?

Suicide drones, as they are known, are a relatively modern weapon, posing significant challenges even for technologically advanced states like the US and Israel. These drones vary in range, warhead size, speed, and guidance methods. Analysis of the wreckage revealed that the “Yaffa” drone, an enhanced version of Yemen’s Sammad drones, was employed in the operation. The name is deeply symbolic as it references the ancient port city of Jaffa, also known as Yaffa in Arabic, which now forms part of modern-day Tel Aviv. Its rectangular wing shape and V-shaped tail distinguish it, but it is notably the more powerful 275 cc (16 kW) engine that sets it apart. This engine enables the drone to cover distances exceeding 2000 kilometers – sufficient to reach Tel Aviv from Yemen. Unlike with ballistic missiles, the difficulty in tracking drones lies in their ability to take unconventional paths, maneuver through winding routes, and hide behind terrain features, making them hard to detect by radar systems. This detection challenge is a daily issue in northern occupied Palestine, where drones operated by Lebanese resistance groups often go unseen by the increasingly blinded occupation army.

Moreover, drones are typically constructed from lightweight materials such as fiberglass, carbon fiber, or various reinforced plastics that do not reflect radar waves effectively, which is crucial for detection and tracking. Their low speeds reduce the need for the metallic compositions necessary in constructing conventional military hardware like missiles and fighter jets. Consequently, drones can be mistaken for birds by radar systems. This confusion has occurred regularly in northern occupied Palestine since the war’s onset, with Israel’s Iron Dome defense system spotted expending its limited supply of $50,000 projectiles shooting at birds during this conflict. The suicide drone likely took an unconventional path to evade detection. Previous Yemeni attempts have been intercepted in Egyptian Sinai airspace, with Israeli-allied Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt contributing to these detection and interception efforts.

On the night of the attack, however, no US aircraft carrier groups were in the Red Sea, and the nearest carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was positioned in the Indian Ocean. Israel’s air force has suggested that the drone may have taken a non-traditional route via Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt, crossing near the Suez Canal before entering the Mediterranean and turning east toward Tel Aviv. Some aspects of that route seem unlikely: the Suez Canal area is heavily patrolled by Egyptian air defense, with its 8th Brigade stationed there, so the Israeli announcement may have been an attempt to pressure Egypt. On 20 July, Israeli aircraft launched punishing airstrikes on the besieged Yemeni port of Hodeidah, specifically targeting areas designated for fuel and oil storage, as well as destroying port cranes used for loading and unloading cargo and a power station.

But these were civilian targets in a country already suffering from the effects of the Saudi-led coalition blockade, which has caused severe shortages of fuel and essential resources needed for power generation and transportation. The strike at these particular target banks, which killed at least six and wounded dozens of others, appears to be primarily aimed at creating significant explosions and large fires to help Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu score points at home. But the Israeli response against civilian targets also reveals that Tel Aviv suffers from a dearth of intelligence on potential Yemeni military targets. It was also evident that the selected targets were ones that Saudi Arabia and the US have refrained from striking due to fears of Yemeni retaliation, which could strike Saudi commercial ports or oil exports in one of the world’s most vital energy passages.

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“Will China pull it off? Of course it will.”

• China Has Achieved Escape Velocity: It Is Now Unstoppable (Pepe Escobar)

The four-day, twice-a-decade plenum of the Communist Party of China that took place last week in Beijing, designing an economic road map all the way to 2029, was a stunning affair in more ways than one. Let’s start with continuity – and stability. There’s no question after the plenum that Xi Dada, or The Big Panda, will stay on the helm until 2029 – the end of the current five-year economic drive. And if Xi is healthy enough, he stays up to 2035: the fateful and uber game-changing target year for China to exhibit a GDP per capita of $30,000, with massive around-the-world reverberations. Here we see the confluence between the progression of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and the defining contours if not of a Pax Sinica, at least of the non-Hegemon-centric, multi-nodal world. The proverbial U.S. Think Tankland/Sinophobia axis has been hysterical on China not being able to sustain a 5% a year growth rate for the next few years – the target once again stressed at the plenum.

A Russian analysis by the Center for Geopolitical Forecasts makes a crucial point: “The Chinese themselves have not bothered about the growth rate for a long time, since in 2018 they switched to a strategy of so-called qualitative development, that is, not at the expense of traditional industries, but on the basis of high technologies and the creation of new areas, such as the production of new energy sources and artificial intelligence.” That’s the rationale behind Made in China 2025 – which is being implemented at breakneck speed: high-tech development leading the way towards a “high-level socialist market economy”, to be consolidated by 2025 and fully constructed by 2035. The next step will be to attain the status of “modernized socialist power” by 2049, at the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The plenum proved once more that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” – or, for the recalcitrant, Chinese-modified capitalism – is “people-centric”. The supreme values are national interest and the people’s interests – attested by the fact that large private corporations remain under the strategic control of the CPC. It’s idle to try to find in the final communique at the end of the plenum any restrictions on private capital on the path to “universal prosperity”. The key point is that the role of capital should always be subordinated to the concept of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Everything is explained here in nearly didactic terms, chronicling the birth of the “Decision of the CPC Central Committee on further comprehensive deepening of reforms to promote Chinese modernization”. What is now already referred to colloquially all across China as “The Decision” spreads across 15 parts and 60 articles, divided into three main sections, proposing more than 300 important reforms.

“The Decision”, in full, has not yet been published; only the road map of how Beijing planners got there. Of course this is no mere policy paper: it’s a quintessentially CPC-style dissertation where the details of economic and political measures are obscured by clouds of images and metaphors. Take a look, for instance, at this passage: “To ensure that the reform ship sails forward steadily, the ‘Decision’ proposes that further comprehensive deepening of reform must implement the “six principles”: adhere to the party’s overall leadership, adhere to the people-centered approach, adhere to the principle of maintaining the integrity and promoting innovation, adhere to system building as the main line, adhere to the comprehensive rule of law, and adhere to a systematic approach.” Most of the “Decision” – 6 parts in a total of 13 – is about economic reform. Will China pull it off? Of course it will.

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Gethsemani
https://twitter.com/i/status/1815905100084437033

 

 

Smart

 

 

Wolf

 

 

Side eye
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816191336003068174

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 19 2024

Jul 192024
 
 July 19, 2024  Posted by at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh The red tree house 1890

 

• Trump Vows To Fight For Unity In First Speech Since Assassination Attempt (RT)
• ‘A Different Donald Trump’ Beams As Rivals Become ‘Converts’ (RCP)
• Providence And President Trump (Newt Gingrich)
• Secret Service Whistleblowers Emerge Following Trump Assassination Attempt (ZH)
• US Democrats Postpone Biden Nomination Process (RT)
• US Republicans Urge Harris To Announce VP Choice (RT)
• Marco Rubio Suggests Biden Resign as President if He Drops Out of Race (Sp.)
• Obama Privately Saying Biden Should ‘Seriously Consider’ Quitting – WaPo (RT)
• Pelosi Urges Biden to Pull Out From Presidential Race (Sp.)
• Biden Accuses Musk Of Trying To ‘Buy The Election’ (RT)
• Musk Trolls Biden Over Donations Plea (RT)
• Von der Leyen Secures Second Term At EU Helm (RT)
• Von der Leyen Commission Loses Covid Vaccine Case (RT)
• Von der Leyen Commission Loses Covid Vaccine Case (RT)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1814118673776316916
https://twitter.com/i/status/1814121692249067777

 

 

Gods hand

 

 

Rogan Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1813655504344015132

 

 

Tucker Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1814101953774792982

Tucker RNC
https://twitter.com/i/status/1814098702245515725

 

 

 

 

Tucker Boot
https://twitter.com/i/status/1814067146047078436

 

 

 

 

“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump said, recalling the details of the assassination attempt, as the audience began chanting, “Yes you are!”

• Trump Vows To Fight For Unity In First Speech Since Assassination Attempt (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump laid out the case to “Make America Great Once Again” in a speech accepting his nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.Thursday’s address was Trump’s first public appearance since last Saturday’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. The former president took the stage on the final day of the RNC to share his vision for the future of the United States, in a speech he completely rewrote following the shooting. “I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump said, recalling the details of the assassination attempt, as the audience began chanting, “Yes you are!”

“I stand before you this evening with a message of confidence, strength and hope. Four months from now, we will have an incredible victory, and we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country,” Trump told his supporters.We rise together, or we fall apart. I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.Trump had initially prepared “an extremely tough speech… all about the corrupt” administration of President Joe Biden, but “threw it away” after the assassination attempt. The former president indeed went more than 40 minutes before first referring to “the current administration” in his RNC speech, and has not mentioned his Democratic opponent by name. Trump concluded his lengthy speech with a vow to “very quickly make America great again.”

“We will save this country. We will restore the Republic, and we will usher in the rich and wonderful tomorrows that our people so truly deserve,” he stated. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, addressed the RNC the night before, officially accepting the vice-presidential nomination. During the half-hour speech, the lawmaker and Marine Corps veteran criticized Biden for backing trade deals that “destroyed” American manufacturing jobs and supporting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, promising that a second Trump administration would only send American troops to war when absolutely necessary.

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“Remember the birdcage? Trump had one delivered to her hotel room the day after dubbing her “Birdbrain.”

• ‘A Different Donald Trump’ Beams As Rivals Become ‘Converts’ (RCP)

Republicans always seem to come home. Some sooner than others. Vivek Ramaswamy never really ran against him. Ron DeSantis threw his weight behind him within an hour of dropping out of the primary. But Nikki Haley, the last woman standing, she took her time. The endorsement took three full months to arrive. Donald Trump didn’t mind. The former president did not need her support to lock down a third consecutive nomination. He may not need it to return to the White House either. But as Haley walked onstage at the Republican National Convention Tuesday, Trump beamed. He listened with a bandaged ear from a box overlooking the arena to his last rival, the member of his cabinet who went astray, bending the knee in prime time. “If there is one thing Donald Trump loves more than a Day One supporter,” Hogan Gidley, who served as a Trump White House aide, told RealClearPolitics, “it is a convert.”

Yet, if there is one thing Trump has notably not done this week, it is gloat. He has said comparatively little since the attempt on his life Saturday, exuding a gracious silence – perhaps even a magnanimous stoicism. A source who spoke with the former president at length the day after he dodged an assassin’s bullet reported talking to “a different Donald Trump, but in the best way possible.” Granted anonymity to speak freely, this individual, who has worked closely with Trump for nearly a decade, described a “weirdly counterintuitive” phenomenon whereby “he almost dies, he miraculously survives, and it becomes even less about him.” Perhaps that explains the last-minute invitation to Nikki Haley. She was not originally slated to speak at the RNC, but after the assassination attempt, the Trump campaign asked her to come speak. It was simultaneously an attempt at party and national unity, an overture made more remarkable considering the sheer bitterness of their rivalry. Remember the birdcage? Trump had one delivered to her hotel room the day after dubbing her “Birdbrain.” It only got worse from that moment on.

Haley had been the rare member of the Trump administration to leave the White House on good terms with the former president – and with her reputation intact. Her decision to challenge him was, therefore, seen by Trump and his loyalists as nothing short of a betrayal. And Trump held nothing back. He ridiculed her looks, suggested that there was something awry in her marriage, and dispatched his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to repeatedly call her “a warmonger.” Haley countered by calling him “unhinged,” calling for cognitive tests for all candidates while suggesting he had lost a step, and characterized a third Trump nomination as “suicide for our country.” But all now seems forgiven, or at least forgotten. At this convention, things just feel altered, said Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “And it feels different, which means people are hearing something different,” he told RCP. “That hasn’t happened for years.” What changed among the Republican faithful? “Their hero was almost taken away from them,” he replied, an occurrence that “humanized Trump and humbled his supporters.”

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“The concepts of divine intervention and providence have a long record in American history.”

• Providence And President Trump (Newt Gingrich)

I have known President Donald Trump for 30 years. Callista and I consider him a dear friend. Watching him get shot at his rally in Butler, Pa. was stunning and horrifying. President Trump’s reaction to being shot was immediately iconic. He stood up with blood running down his face, raised his fist, and said “fight, fight, fight,” and then “USA.” It was a tremendous vision of courage and power. It struck home all around the world. Within minutes images began to circulate on the internet tying President Trump’s courage to the courage of other historic figures and moments. There is even a Japanese anime about President Trump’s heroic reaction. When it was clear the President was going to be alright, Callista and I were deeply relieved. For me, that emotion was then immediately replaced by fury.

This assassination attempt was the result of the left’s nine-year effort to demonize our friend, President Trump. I had to take some time to get my emotions under control before going on Fox with Sean Hannity to talk about the event. During that cooling off period, my old friend Ambassador Randy Evans called to say that his Pastor, Michael Youssef, had told him it was a providential event. President Trump had turned to look up at a big sign behind him. The shooter took aim at his head while he was looking to one side. When the President turned back to look at the audience the bullet missed his head by less than an inch and hit his ear. If President Trump had not turned at exactly the right moment, he would have almost certainly been killed. When I told Hannity that I really believed President Trump’s survival was providential, that term went around the world.

The concepts of divine intervention and providence have a long record in American history. When young George Washington went west with Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock’s British army in the French and Indian War, they were ambushed on July 9, 1755. Braddock was wounded when the battle began. The Army began to panic and fall apart. Washington, then-23 years old, took control and rallied the British troops saving them from annihilation. Washington wrote his brother, “by the All-powerful Dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me; yet escaped unhurt, altho[ugh] Death was leveling my Companions on every side of me.”

Washington’s belief in providence was further expressed in his farewell address to the troops after the success of the Revolutionary War: “The singular interpositions of Providence in our feeble condition were such, as could scarcely escape the attention of the most unobserving.” When President Ronald Reagan met with Pope John Paul II to determine how to defeat the spread of communism, one of the unifying facts was that both had been shot in assassination attempts. Coming to grips with why God had spared them – and finding a common mission in defeating the Soviet Empire – were inextricably intertwined. Callista and I talked about this our documentaries “Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny” and “Nine Days that Changed the World.” President Trump now joins the list of historic figures who have been saved from almost certain death. When President Trump came to the Republican National Convention, I could tell that he was already calmer, more deliberative, and grateful to be alive.

There was a humility and gratitude in his attitude that showed the act of having been spared had a deep impact. Virtually anyone who had been within a half-inch of being killed would have a deep and sobering reaction. “But for God, I would have been dead,” is a legitimate sentiment. President Trump’s courage and determination after having been shot has created new level of affection – and a new intensity of support – among those who believe in him. He was always the champion of a movement rather than a traditional candidate. Now he has become a symbol of courage, defiance, and determination. Neither America – nor President Trump – will ever be the same after Saturday’s nights assassination attempt. We are on the edge of a new stage in American history. The combined sense of gratitude, awe, and historic challenge make this convention different from any of the nine others I have attended. The next few days will be remarkable.

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“What actions did the USSS take to remove or cover President Trump after a threat was known or detected?”

• Secret Service Whistleblowers Emerge Following Trump Assassination Attempt (ZH)

US Secret Service whistleblowers have approached the House Judiciary Committee, claiming that there were limited resources to cover former President Donald Trump last weekend due to the North Atlantic Treato Organization (NATO) summit in Washington DC, as well as first lady Jill Biden’s campaign rally in Pittsburgh, PA. Chairman Jim Jordan has demanded answers FBI Director Christopher Wray, according to the Daily Caller. “Whistleblowers have disclosed to the Committee that the USSS led two briefings regarding the July 13 campaign rally on July 8, 2024, with the Western Pennsylvania Fusion Center (WPFC) and other stakeholders, to discuss the upcoming, unrelated visits by President Trump and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden,” reads a Thursday letter from Jordan to Wray.

“The USSS Special Agent in Charge Tim Burke reportedly told law enforcement partners that the USSS had limited resources that week because the agency was covering the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Washington, D.C. FBI personnel were present at those briefings. While the Committee recognizes that the FBI is one of many agencies represented in the WPFC, it is the lead federal investigative arm and a key source of intelligence on potential threats for special events in its area of responsibility,” he continued. “The Committee has several unanswered questions about the failures that led to the attempted assassination of a president—the first in over forty years—as well as the FBI’s ability to conduct a rapid, transparent, and thorough investigation in the wake of its recent scandals. Accordingly, to ensure that the Committee can effectively evaluate these matters during your testimony on July 24, 2024.”

Jordan seeks the following information from Wray:
• How many agents, analysts, and support personnel has the FBI dedicated to the investigation?
• Was there coordination between the FBI, USSS, and the WPFC prior to President Trump’s event on July 13?
• How many buildings had to be secured inside and outside of the security perimeter for President Trump’s event on July 13?
• Why was the roof of the AGR International building left unsecured?
• How much time elapsed between identifying the shooter as a potential threat and the attempted assassination?
• How much time elapsed between the local police officer encountering the shooter on the sloped roof and the attempted assassination?
• Has the FBI interviewed the local police officer who encountered the shooter?
• What does the FBI’s evaluation of the shooter’s phone and digital activity show about his actions and movements in the days and hours leading up to the attempted assassination?
• Was the security posture at President Trump’s event limited due to resource constraints with the NATO Summit and/or First Lady Dr. Jill Biden’s event in Pittsburgh?
• Is the FBI’s investigation limited to the shooter and his motivations or does it include the security failures that led to the attempted assassination?
• How did communications breakdowns between various law enforcement entities affect the ability of local law enforcement and USSS to identify the shooter as a potential threat and mitigate the threat before he took action?
• What actions did the USSS take to remove or cover President Trump after a threat was known or detected?

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Indefinitely.

• US Democrats Postpone Biden Nomination Process (RT)

The US Democratic Party has significantly delayed its candidate nomination process for the 2024 presidential election. A virtual roll call to nominate President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ 2024 candidate which was scheduled for the coming week will now happen sometime in August, the party has announced. The Democratic National Committee was supposed to meet on Friday and finalize the rules for the procedure, first proposed in May to ensure ballot access. In recent days, however, some party members have objected to “rushing” the process before the convention. “None of this will be rushed,” said Leah Daughtry and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, leaders of the DNC rules committee, in a letter seen by CBS News. Sent to 186 members of the committee on Wednesday, the letter confirms that “no voting will begin before August 1,” but notes that the virtual roll call will still happen before the in-person Democratic National Convention starts on August 19.

Meeting state ballot deadlines and avoiding potential lawsuits “is the driving reason for conducting a virtual voting process,” the letter added. The roll call is a traditional procedure by which state delegations deliver primary votes to the nominee at the convention. The Republicans did so on Monday, arranging for former President Donald Trump’s children to announce the Florida votes that officially made him the party’s pick in November. Dozens of House Democrats had circulated a draft letter earlier this week opposing the virtual vote, arguing that it would stifle debate, undermine morale and party unity, and foreclose any changes to the ticket “at the worst possible time.” At least 21 congressional Democrats have publicly called on Biden to drop out of the race, citing his abysmal performance in the June 27 debate with Trump, advanced age, and possible neurological issues.

Senior party figures like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have urged Biden to step down in private, according to the New York Times. About 70% of Democrats in a recent poll backed Biden’s exit. After the president retreated to his Delaware home with a Covid diagnosis, Axios reported he might drop out as early as this weekend. Campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo sought to dismiss the rumors on Thursday, however. “Joe Biden is his party’s nominee. He’s the President of the United States. He’s running for reelection. Baseless conjecture from anonymous sources isn’t a scoop,” Ducklo said on X (formerly Twitter). Most polls currently show Trump winning the election against Biden, but also against Vice President Kamala Harris, should she get bumped to the top of the ticket.

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“a group of Democrat megadonors were “dangling money to members of Congress” willing to publicly call on Biden to step aside..”

• US Republicans Urge Harris To Announce VP Choice (RT)

There can be no vice presidential debate until the Democrats decide who will be on their ticket, the Republican campaign said on Wednesday, in a thinly veiled reference to calls for US President Joe Biden to step down. The Republican Party formally nominated former President Donald Trump on Monday, while he announced Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vice President Kamala Harris reached out to Vance with an offer to debate, to be hosted by CBS News. “We don’t know who the Democrat nominee for Vice President is going to be, so we can’t lock in a date before their convention,” Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes said in a statement on Wednesday evening. “To do so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, or whoever Kamala Harris picks as her running mate.”

The governors of California, Illinois, and Michigan, respectively, have been floated as possible replacements for Harris should Biden withdraw from the ticket. Many Democrats have been clamoring for the 81-year-old to do so since his disastrous showing in the June 27 debate against Trump. California Congressman Adam Schiff, formerly a key player in the House Intelligence Committee, was the latest to urge Biden to “pass the torch.” While Biden has refused to drop out of the race – or resign from the presidency – in a recorded interview aired on Wednesday, he revealed the circumstances under which he might do so. “If I had some medical condition that emerged,” this might make him reconsider, Biden told BET. He insisted he is still fit for the job, however.

Speculation about ousting Biden from the ticket was temporarily relegated from the headlines by the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday. The Republican candidate narrowly escaped death at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The US Secret Service has yet to give a satisfactory explanation of how a shooter was able to get into position to open fire on the stage, killing one rallygoer and seriously injuring two more. However, efforts by some Democrats to oust the president have apparently continued, with the New York Times claiming on Wednesday that a group of Democrat megadonors were “dangling money to members of Congress” willing to publicly call on Biden to step aside. Harris has proposed three dates for the VP debates: July 23, August 12, and August 13. The Democrats are scheduled to hold their convention in Chicago on August 19, but want to nominate Biden via a ‘virtual roll call’ before then.

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“The question is, if he’s not going to be their nominee because he’s not up to it, how can he be our president for the next six months?”

• Marco Rubio Suggests Biden Resign as President if He Drops Out of Race (Sp.)

US Senator Marco Rubio suggested that President Joe Biden should resign if he drops out of the 2024 election race amid mounting pressure on him to step down, Politico reported on Thursday. Rubio made the comment while talking to reporters at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee following the news that Biden had been diagnosed with COVID-19, the report said. “The question is, if he’s not going to be their nominee because he’s not up to it, how can he be our president for the next six months?” the report quoted Rubio as saying. “If there’s something wrong with you that doesn’t allow you to run for president, how can you still be there as president? If they’re going to remove him as a nominee, they’ve got to remove him as president, and that’s really bad for our country.” Rubio also noted that he is worried about who is actually running the United States if the Democrats knew about Biden’s cognitive decline and deliberately hid this fact from the public.

“They knew Joe Biden — I don’t mean this to be cruel, but they knew the condition that he was in, and they deliberately hid it from the world. And it makes you wonder who’s running our country. That’s what I worry about,” the senator said. At the same time, Rubio said he does not see how the Democratic Party could bypass Vice President Kamala Harris if Biden withdraws from the race. Numerous Democrats have called on Biden to end his campaign and step aside for an alternative nominee, following a dismal debate performance against Republican nominee Donald Trump last month. The Biden campaign has said that they are not planning for a scenario in which Biden is not the Democratic presidential candidate.

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Biden is now toxic.

• Obama Privately Saying Biden Should ‘Seriously Consider’ Quitting – WaPo (RT)

Former US President Barack Obama is privately telling Democrats that President Joe Biden’s path to reelection has “greatly diminished,” and that the 81-year-old should “seriously consider” ending his campaign, the Washington Post has reported. Amid a party-wide effort to convince Biden to drop out of the race, Obama had largely stayed on the sidelines. Other than posting a message of support when the president flubbed his debate with Donald Trump last month, Obama has not weighed in on Biden’s apparent cognitive decline, even though he reportedly chose not to stop his friend, actor George Clooney, from penning an op-ed calling on Biden to quit earlier this month. In private, however, Obama “has been deeply engaged in conversations about the future of Biden’s campaign,” the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing “multiple people briefed on his thinking.”

These conversations have reportedly included former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Biden this weekend that he cannot hope to beat Trump in November, according to CNN and ABC News. “In some conversations, Obama… has told people he is concerned that the polls are moving away from Biden, that former president Donald Trump’s electoral path is expanding and that donors are abandoning the president,” the Washington Post claimed. Obama spoke to Biden in the days after last month’s debate, as Biden insisted he was “not going anywhere.” However, Biden continued to fumble during subsequent appearances – at one point calling Vice President Kamala Harris “Vice President Trump” – and “Obama’s concerns about Biden’s candidacy have only grown deeper,” the Post claimed.

While a spokesperson for Obama declined to comment on the report, the article is being treated by pundits as a de-facto public statement by the former president. “This does not show up by accident,” Fox News commentator and former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Thursday. “He has green-lighted, in my opinion as someone who has worked in press, his aides to share this with the Washington Post.” Biden is currently in quarantine in his Delaware home, after testing positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday. With public events off the table for the coming days, Biden’s friends and allies believe that he will withdraw his candidacy as early as this weekend, Axios reported on Thursday.

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“..While she does not wish to call on Biden to resign, Pelosi will do everything she can to make this happen..”

• Pelosi Urges Biden to Pull Out From Presidential Race (Sp.)

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has urged US President Joe Biden to make a decision to give up his bid for reelection, the Politico website reported, citing sources. Media previously reported that US Democratic House representatives are hoping that Pelosi will convince US President Joe Biden to withdraw as the Democratic presidential nominee. Pelosi reportedly talked with Biden last week, saying that some Democrat lawmakers will only become louder in their complaints about the president’s alleged political weakness, according to Politico. The former speaker also asked Biden to make a decision about stepping down in the near future. Per one of Pelosi’s allies, she could potentially go public with the demands for Biden to resign his candidacy. While she does not wish to call on Biden to resign, Pelosi will do everything she can to make this happen, this person said.

On June 27, Biden, 81, appeared confused and incoherent throughout his first debate with Trump, 78, reinforcing rather than alleviating ongoing concerns about his cognitive abilities. His poor performance has led some Democratic politicians and donors to call for his removal as a candidate. There have been growing calls among Democrats to nominate another candidate to replace Biden after his failure in the debate. Theoretically, the party will have such an opportunity at its convention in August, but in practice, it will be difficult to remove the primaries-winning candidate from the race if he does not refuse to participate. So far, Biden is saying he intends to stay in the race.

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“Fake Gnus”.

• Biden Accuses Musk Of Trying To ‘Buy The Election’ (RT)

Joe Biden has accused Elon Musk “and his rich buddies” of trying to “buy” the US presidential election, following claims that the billionaire is planning to make major contributions to a group that supports Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. “I am sick,” a post on Biden’s personal social media account said on Wednesday, in an apparent reference to his positive Covid-19 test announced the same day. In a reply, the US president continued the sentence: “of Elon Musk and his rich buddies trying to buy this election.” The post called on Americans to pitch in to Biden’s campaign through ActBlue, the Democratic donation platform. The fundraising platform has been in the spotlight because Thomas Crooks, the man who tried to assassinate Trump at a rally on Saturday, made a small donation to it when he was 17.

Reacting to Biden’s pitch, Musk said: “I’m living rent-free in his head.” Biden has faced allegations that he secured his Democratic nomination in 2020 thanks to an “elite conspiracy.” Critics have claimed that powerful party operators, wealthy donors, and the media coalesced around his candidacy to undercut progressive Senator Bernie Sanders, who was leading in the primary race. As broad sections of the Democratic establishment pressure Biden to drop out of this year’s race, citing his mental state and concerns that he will be unable to beat Trump again, the president is posing as an anti-elite crusader.

“I’m getting so frustrated by the elites – now I’m not talking about you guys – the elites in the party, ‘Oh, they know so much more.’ Any of these guys that don’t think I should run, run against me. Announce for president, challenge me at the convention,” Biden told MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ program last week in an audio-only phone call. Biden came under increased scrutiny after a disastrous debate against Trump last month, in which he often appeared absent-minded and sounded incoherent, adding fuel to the perception that he is mentally incapable to hold office for four more years.

Musk is openly supportive of some conservative policies, such as increased border security and opposition to “wokism.” This week he declared that he would move his businesses from California to Texas, after a law prohibited teachers in the Golden State to inform parents if their children identify as transgender at schools. Media have reported that Musk plans to donate around $45 million a month to a new super political action committee (PAC) backing Trump. He reacted to the claim by posting a “fake gnus” meme on social media.

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Zuckerberg-funded group the Center for Tech and Civic Life gave out $420 million to election offices in 2020.

• Musk Trolls Biden Over Donations Plea (RT)

Elon Musk has ridiculed US President Joe Biden for appealing to supporters for donations by casting the billionaire as part of a ballot-fixing elite. The plea published on Wednesday on Biden’s personal X (formerly Twitter) account said the president was “sick of Elon Musk and his rich buddies trying to buy this election.” When he was shown a screenshot of the post, the entrepreneur responded: “I’m living rent-free in his head,” adding some emojis. He also shared a meme praising him as a “f**king legend” for buying Twitter and backing Donald Trump “during the erosion of the republic.” Biden’s reelection bid was undermined in late July by his poor performance in a debate with Trump, the Republican nominee. The Democrat has blamed the debacle on tiredness and being “overprepared.” He has rejected calls from inside the party to drop out of the race.

”I’m getting so frustrated by the elites – now I’m not talking about you guys – the elites in the party, ‘Oh, they know so much more.’ Any of these guys that don’t think I should run, run against me. Announce for president, challenge me at the convention,” Biden told MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ program last week via telephone. The president has described ‘Morning Joe’ as his favorite show on American television. Co-host Joe Scarborough was among the Biden backers who urged him to end his reelection bid following the disastrous debate. But the media heavyweight later made another U-turn and now supports Biden’s candidacy again. Earlier this week, the US media claimed that Musk was going to donate $45 million a month to a new pro-Trump super political action committee (PAC). He declined to comment on the claim directly, but posted a “fake gnus” meme in response to the coverage.

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That will be expensive: “..turning the EU into a “defense union” with a “single defense market.”

• Von der Leyen Secures Second Term At EU Helm (RT)

Ursula von der Leyen has been reelected for a second term as European Commission president, following a vote at the European Parliament on Thursday. The German politician secured a majority of the vote, with 401 out of 707 MEPs in favor of appointing her for another five years at the helm of the bloc. A total of 284 MEPs voted against the move, while 15 abstained. In her nearly hour-long speech at a plenary session ahead of the vote, von der Leyen pledged to fight for a democratic and “strong” Europe, promising to make housing, competitiveness, and defense the priorities for her new term. She also focused on plans to boost bloc-wide defense capabilities and outlined her aim of turning the EU into a “defense union” with a “single defense market.”

The climate agenda and environmental protection, which were at the heart of von der Leyen’s bid for a first term in 2019, will also be among the focal points, she said. The newly-reelected commissioner has also vowed that the bloc will continue “to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes,” and signaled that Kiev’s bid to join the bloc may be realized during her tenure. Regarding domestic EU policy, von der Leyen has pledged to overhaul the bloc’s common budget and make it more efficient, as well as supporting small and medium-sized businesses and protecting farmers across the bloc. In addition, she has proposed the creation of a ‘European Democracy Shield,’ while aiming to increase cooperation between member-states on tackling cyber threats and foreign interference.

Analysts say her address aimed to appeal to MPs across the political spectrum, as they reflected the suggestions expressed by the main parliamentary groups. “We are in a period of deep anxiety and uncertainty for Europeans [but] I am convinced that Europe, a strong Europe, can rise to the challenge… I am convinced that this version of Europe since the end of World War II, with all its imperfections and inequalities, is still the best version of Europe in history,” von der Leyen stated.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1813887120081035311

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To reward her MIC sponsors.

• Von der Leyen Planning To Turn EU Into ‘Defense Union’ (RT)

Ursula von der Leyen has said she plans to turn the EU into a “defense union,” should she secure a second term as European Commission president. The German’s vision for the 27-nation bloc includes creating a single defense market. In a speech ahead of a vote on her position in the European Parliament on Thursday, von der Leyen stated that “Russia is still on the offensive in eastern Ukraine” and claimed that Moscow is “banking on Europe and the West going soft.” She pledged that “Europe will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes,” warning that “for the very first time our liberty is at stake.”

“We must do everything we can to protect our citizens, it is our duty. I do believe it is now time to build a veritable European union of defense,” von der Leyen added. Outlining her vision for the EU, the former German defense minister said the bloc must keep control of its security and armies within the hands of member states, while NATO will remain “the pillar of our collective defense architecture.” Her vision, however, entails a single market for defense, joint arms-related investment programs, and common defense projects such as an EU-wide air defense system. According to von der Leyen, the EU’s defense sector in its current form is too “dependent on foreign allies,” with “spending on defense too low and ineffective.”

Separately, she also pledged to boost cooperation on tackling cyber threats and foreign interference, and triple the number of European border and coast guards to 30,000. Von der Leyen further signaled that the EU under her leadership would welcome the addition of new members such as Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and countries in the West Balkans. Russia has accused the West of prolonging the Ukraine conflict by continuing to send weapons to Kiev. Moscow has also rejected allegations that it is planning to attack EU countries as “horror stories” and “nonsense.” The European Parliament will decide later on Thursday whether to appoint von der Leyen for another five years at the helm of the bloc. While she is the only candidate for the post, she must still win a majority, or 361 votes out of 720, to hold on to her seat.

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She very actively tried to hide it. Unforgivable.

• Von der Leyen Commission Loses Covid Vaccine Case (RT)

The EU Commission concealed details of multibillion-euro Covid vaccine deals with pharma giants Pfizer and AstraZeneca without legitimate reason to do, the European Union’s second highest judicial body has found. The ruling by the bloc’s General Court covers purchase agreements struck by the EU Commission in 2020 and 2021, at the height of the pandemic, and worth “approximately €2.7 billion” ($2.95 billion), according to the court’s statement published on Wednesday. In 2021, MEPs requested access to the documents detailing the terms of the deals to make sure that the public interest was protected and the members of the EU negotiating team had no personal conflict of interest.

Brussels bosses only provided them with partial access to redacted documents and refused to reveal the identities of the negotiating team’s members. The Commission argued that was necessary to protect commercial interests and the decision-making process. The MEPs then brought the issue to the court. “The Commission did not give the public sufficiently wide access to the purchase agreements for COVID-19 vaccines,” the court said in its statement. “The Commission did not demonstrate that wider access to those clauses would actually undermine the commercial interests of those undertakings.”

The court also ruled that “the Commission did not take sufficient account of all the relevant circumstances in order to weigh up correctly the interests at issue, related to the absence of a conflict of interests and a risk that the right of privacy of the persons concerned might be infringed.” The ruling partly upheld two cases against Brussels and annulled the Commission’s decisions to withhold the data from the public, arguing that such decisions “contain irregularities.” Brussels promptly reacted to the judgement, which came just two days before a European Parliament vote on Ursula von der Leyen’s bid for a second term as the EU Commission head. She has controversially claimed she deleted key SMS messages between her and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, and will be the subject of a European Court of Justice ruling on the matter expected this year.

“In general, the Commission grants the widest possible public access to documents, in line with the principles of openness and transparency,” the court said in a statement, adding that it “only partially upheld the legal action on two points” and “confirmed that the Commission was entitled to provide only partial access.” Brussels also stated that it would “carefully study” the decision and that it “reserves its legal options.” The EU Commission can still appeal the decision to the European Court of Justice – the bloc’s highest judiciary body.

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Kids

 

 

Serval Ice

 

 

Dog hole
https://twitter.com/i/status/1814031597957709884

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 2 2024

Jul 022024
 
 July 2, 2024  Posted by at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


René Magritte Man in a bowler hat 1964

 

• US Supreme Court Rules Trump Has Presidential Immunity (RT)
• Trump Says Immunity Ruling ‘Big Win For Democracy’ (ZH)
• Biden Reacts To Trump Immunity Ruling (RT)
• Biden ‘United Democrats And Republicans’ With Debate Performance – Musk (RT)
• Obama Telling People Biden Can’t Win – Tucker Carlson (RT)
• Biden’s Family Urges Him To Fight On (ZH)
• DNC Weighs Early Nomination For Biden To Quash Internal Party Dissent (ZH)
• Surprise, Surprise! (Kunstler)
• Too Clever By Half (Turley)
• The Resurrection of French Nationalism? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The West – Indubitably – Has Lost Russia, And Is Losing Eurasia Too (Crooke)
• ‘Unipolar US Dollar’ Mutated Into ‘Politically Weaponized’ Tool (Sp.)
• Charles Nenner Warns “Very Hard Times Are Coming” (USAW)

 

 

 

 


https://twitter.com/i/status/1807804054136856803
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807766810130796737

 

 

Tapper

 

 

Plan B
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807876540648047090

 

 

 

 

“The President is not above the law. But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers..”

• US Supreme Court Rules Trump Has Presidential Immunity (RT)

American presidents have “absolute immunity” for their official actions, the US Supreme Court ruled on Monday, addressing a series of charges against former President Donald Trump. Federal prosecutors have charged Trump with four criminal counts related to the 2020 presidential election, alleging that he “conspired” to overturn the results by spreading “knowingly false claims” of fraud to obstruct the collection, counting, and certification of the results. “Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” the court said in a 6-3 decision. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which saw the six conservative-leaning justices opposed by the three liberal ones.

The decision favors the former president in terms of his tweets to the American public on January 6 and conversations with then-Vice President Mike Pence about his presiding over the certification of election results, as both of those clearly fell within the scope of official duties. However, the verdict allows lower courts to hold evidentiary hearings to determine which actions by Trump may have been unofficial, such as when he contacted state and local election officials about the 2020 vote. “In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives,” the court warned. “The President is not above the law. But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts,” said the ruling.

The Supreme Court saved the immunity case for the last day of its term. The long-awaited decision puts a dent in the plans for special counsel Jack Smith to prosecute Trump in the federal court in Washington, DC before the November election. Trump challenged the 2020 election – marked by a series of unusual procedures, ostensibly adopted due to the Covid-19 pandemic – as irregular and possibly tainted by fraud, pointing to delays in counting mail-in votes that suddenly went in Democrat Joe Biden’s favor after the polls closed in a handful of states. Democrats have insisted that the election was the most secure and legitimate ever and that any questioning of the result is an attack on democracy.

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“.. ‘all but ensures’ that a trial won’t happen in Trump’s classified documents case before the November election..”

• Trump Says Immunity Ruling ‘Big Win For Democracy’ (ZH)

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in a 6-3 vote that former presidents, including Trump, enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct involving official acts during tenure in office, but he’s not immune from unofficial acts. As Bloomberg notes, the decision – which kicks the ball back to the lower court – ‘all but ensures’ that a trial won’t happen in Trump’s classified documents case before the November election.The justices, voting 6-3 along ideological lines, said a federal appeals court was too categorical in rejecting Trump’s immunity arguments, ruling for the first time that former presidents are shielded from prosecution for some official acts taken while in office. The majority ordered the lower courts to revisit the case to decide the extent of the allegations that are off limits to prosecution.

“Just as former presidents have immunity from civil liability for official acts, they have immunity from criminal prosecution unless they are impeached and removed from office for the crime alleged. This decision is supported by the writings of the framers of the Constitution, the text of the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent,” wrote X user Martin Harry. As constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley notes, now “the issue is whether what constitutes official acts,” adding that the ruling will “further delay the lower court proceedings, but Trump will have to argue that his actions fall within these navigational beacons.” “The lower court judge has been highly favorable for Jack Smith in the past. Yet the court is arguing that there is a presumption of immunity for their official acts beyond the absolute immunity on core constitutional powers.” Meanwhile, Justice Thomas called into question the legality of Smith’s office:

In a blistering dissent, Justice Sotomayor writes that the ruling “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.” “Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom… the court gives former President trump all the immunity he asked for and more.” Special counsel Jack Smith is leading two federal probes against Trump, both of which led to criminal charges. In Washington, Trump has been targeted over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, while a Florida case revolves around the mishandling of classified documents – for which Trump has claimed presidential immunity. In response to the ruling, Trump said on Truth Social that it was a “”BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY.”

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No president should attack the Supreme Court.

• Biden Reacts To Trump Immunity Ruling (RT)

US President Joe Biden has attacked the Supreme Court, urging citizens to “dissent” against its ruling that American presidents have “absolute immunity” for their official actions. In a 6-3 decision on Monday, the highest US court ruled that under “our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts.” Biden criticized the decision in a brief statement, calling it “a fundamentally new principle” and a “dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law.”

“There are no kings in America. Each, each of us is equal before the law. No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” Biden claimed – even as the Supreme Court ruling specifically stated that “the President is not above the law” and that “there is no immunity for unofficial acts.” Federal prosecutors have charged former President Donald Trump with four criminal counts related to the 2020 presidential election, alleging that he “conspired” to overturn the results. The Supreme Court verdict allows lower courts to hold evidentiary hearings to determine which actions by Trump may have been unofficial. Trump called the ruling – which puts a dent in the Democrats’ plans to prosecute him in the federal court in Washington, DC before the November election – a “big win for our constitution and democracy.”

Biden warned Americans about a possible presidential return for Trump, saying that “people must decide if they want to entrust … the presidency to Donald Trump, now knowing that he’ll be even more emboldened to do whatever he pleases whenever he wants to do it.” Biden went on to quote Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, in which she wrote: “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.” “So should the American people dissent, I dissent,” Biden added, concluding his prepared remarks and taking no questions from the press.

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Very presidential…

• Biden ‘United Democrats And Republicans’ With Debate Performance – Musk (RT)

US President Joe Biden has united Democrats and Republicans in a common recognition of his cognitive decline, following a debate with Donald Trump last week, businessman Elon Musk has argued. The billionaire, who is a vocal critic of some Biden administration policies, such as on border security, supported an assessment made on Sunday by vlogger Farzad Mesbahi on X (formerly Twitter). The Spanish-born YouTuber and self-proclaimed troll said: “America seeing Biden’s cognitive decline at the debate feels like one of the most uniting things this country has experienced in a long, long time.” “True, first time I’ve seen Republicans & Democrats agree on something in a long time,” Musk responded, adding an emoji of a face with tears of joy. The entrepreneur also weighed in immediately following the debate after former 2024 GOP hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said that Biden’s presentation made him wonder who runs the US government. Musk replied: “Maybe nobody.”

This election cycle’s first faceoff between Trump and Biden took place last Thursday in Atlanta, Georgia. Political observers have widely agreed that the incumbent failed to counter the perception that he has neither the energy nor mental acuity to lead the country for four more years. Some Democrats, either publicly or in private communications with journalists, have said Biden should stop his campaign after his dismal performance. By contrast, former President Barack Obama maintained his support for Biden’s bid despite the flop, posting on Friday: “bad debate nights happen” and that “last night didn’t change,” the stakes in the November election. Former President Bill Clinton echoed that sentiment, stating that he will relegate “the debate rating to the pundits.” The US president’s family, who reportedly are among the few who could convince him to quit, urged him to stay in the race during a meeting on Sunday, CNN sources have claimed.

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“Carlson also claimed that relations between Obama and Biden – who served as vice president between 2009 and 2017 – have never been warm, and were at times even “hostile.”

• Obama Telling People Biden Can’t Win – Tucker Carlson (RT)

Former US President Barack Obama is telling Democrats that incumbent Joe Biden has no chance of being reelected after his recent debate against GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, American conservative journalist Tucker Carlson has claimed. According to Carlson, Obama’s recent public endorsement of Biden was not sincere. Biden and Trump faced off in an open debate on Thursday night, with the president’s performance widely seen as “incoherent” and “fumbling,” underscoring concerns about his age. Following the showdown, many Democrats and their donors reportedly scrambled to find a replacement for Biden as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. Publicly, however, many Democratic heavyweights, including Obama, reaffirmed their support for Biden. While admitting that “bad debate nights happen,” the former president insisted that “this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”

Writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, Carlson said, citing an “unusually good source,” that Obama’s post had been “disingenuous.” “In private, Obama is telling people Biden can’t win, and he is therefore in favor of an open convention,” the journalist claimed. He added Obama is not saying whom he supports, but recently met with Biden in person to deliver the message. Carlson also claimed that relations between Obama and Biden – who served as vice president between 2009 and 2017 – have never been warm, and were at times even “hostile.” According to the journalist, those ties “recently… deteriorated further,” mostly due to First Lady Jill Biden, who allegedly “kept her husband cloistered away from anyone who might convince him to drop out” of the race for the White House after the disastrous debate.

Carlson added that Biden’s wife remains “the driving force behind her husband’s reelection campaign,” echoing a recent NBC report naming her as the only person who could convince the president to “change course.” However, CNN reported on Monday that Biden’s family, including Jill, had urged him not to end his campaign, blaming his poor performance on his team. While the Biden-Obama relationship has often been described as a “bromance” to the point of becoming meme material, numerous media reports indicated that things have been much more complicated. An Axios report in March suggested that Biden “often measures himself” against his predecessor, with a rivalry dynamic present in their relations. According to Politico, Obama also shared serious concerns about Biden’s ability to win the 2020 election.

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“..not telling Biden which camera would be on him as he blankly stared a thousand miles into space with his mouth agape..”

• Biden’s Family Urges Him To Fight On (ZH)

At a Camp David gathering on Sunday, President Biden’s extended family urged him to ignore the growing number of voices asking him to quit the race — and many of his loved ones blamed his disastrous debate on his advisors. According to Politico, the two who most forcefully encouraged the 81-year-old Biden to continue were his wife Jill and his son Hunter — the two people whose opinion he reportedly values most. The reports will strengthen a growing sense that Jill Biden is putting her own interests above that of her humiliated and failing husband. As one Democratic advisor told the New York Post over the weekend, “Jill Biden likes being First Lady…she doesn’t want to give that up.”

Meanwhile, Hunter, who doesn’t exactly have strong reputation for sound judgment, is said to long for Americans to see a version of his father that — as paraphrased by the Times — is “scrappy and in command of the facts.” Much as he once was in denial about his drug problem, Hunter now seems incapable of admitting that that version of his father is gone forever: Biden family members are said to have blamed the debate debacle on three advisors: Anita Dunn, her husband Bob Bauer — who played the role of Trump in practice sessions — and Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain, who was in charge of the debate training. Aides to Biden denied these reports from multiple outlets.

With Biden having spent a full week at Camp David gearing up for the debate, his family members and others are claiming the team worked the 81-year-old too hard, and tried to pack him full of too many statistics. They even fault advisors for a debate-night makeup job that transformed his summer-tanned face to one that was pale and unhealthy-looking. Relatives also blamed debate-host CNN for not “fact-checking” Donald Trump and not telling Biden which camera would be on him as he blankly stared a thousand miles into space with his mouth agape.

Jill

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“Democrats had already planned to nominate Biden, 81, before the convention in order to ensure he appears on the ballot in Ohio..”

• DNC Weighs Early Nomination For Biden To Quash Internal Party Dissent (ZH)

Bloomberg reports that the Democratic National Committee is considering formally nominating Joe Biden as early as mid-July to ensure that the president is on November ballots, while helping to stamp out intra-party chatter of replacing him after last week’s poor debate performance. Democrats had already planned to nominate Biden, 81, before the convention in order to ensure he appears on the ballot in Ohio, which had an Aug. 7 deadline for candidates to be certified. A potential date for Biden’s nomination is July 21, when the Democratic convention’s credentials committee meets virtually, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.nThe panel is meeting to finalize procedures before the party’s convention in Chicago starts on Aug. 19.

Interestingly, former President Trump’s sentencing hearing is set for July 11th, so he may well be in prison by then given the amount of pressure we assume is being placed on Judge Merchan’s shoulders to “lock him up”. Additionally, July 21 is just three days after Trump is scheduled to accept his party’s nomination at the Republican convention in Milwaukee. The desperate attempted message from all this narrative-shaping is simple – …nothing to see here, move along. Except we all saw the fireworks factory exploding with our own eyes. [..] At a Camp David gathering on Sunday, President Biden’s extended family urged him to ignore the growing number of voices asking him to quit the race — and many of his loved ones blamed his disastrous debate on his advisors. According to Politico, the two who most forcefully encouraged the 81-year-old Biden to continue were his wife Jill and his son Hunter — the two people whose opinion he reportedly values most.

The reports will strengthen a growing sense that Jill Biden is putting her own interests above that of her humiliated and failing husband. As one Democratic advisor told the New York Post over the weekend, “Jill Biden likes being First Lady…she doesn’t want to give that up.” Meanwhile, Hunter, who doesn’t exactly have strong reputation for sound judgment, is said to long for Americans to see a version of his father that — as paraphrased by the Times — is “scrappy and in command of the facts.” Much as he once was in denial about his drug problem, Hunter now seems incapable of admitting that that version of his father is gone forever: Biden family members are said to have blamed the debate debacle on three advisors: Anita Dunn, her husband Bob Bauer — who played the role of Trump in practice sessions — and Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain, who was in charge of the debate training. Aides to Biden denied these reports from multiple outlets.

With Biden having spent a full week at Camp David gearing up for the debate, his family members and others are claiming the team worked the 81-year-old too hard, and tried to pack him full of too many statistics. They even fault advisors for a debate-night makeup job that transformed his summer-tanned face to one that was pale and unhealthy-looking. Relatives also blamed debate-host CNN for not “fact-checking” Donald Trump and not telling Biden which camera would be on him as he blankly stared a thousand miles into space with his mouth agape. John Morgan, a top donor and friend of Biden’s brother Frank, was not at the family meeting, but joined the delusional pile-up on Biden’s advisers, telling the Times that the week-long debate prep — which involved rehearsals at various times of the day — was excessive: “It would be like if you took a prizefighter who was going to have a title fight and put him in a sauna for 15 hours then said, ‘Go fight.’ I believe that the debate is solely on Ron Klain, Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn.”

Unlike his family, the president is said to still hold confidence in the trio. Klain assured the Times that Biden will see the race through, saying, “He is the choice of the Democratic voters…We had a bad debate night. But you win campaigns by fighting — not quitting — in the face of adversity.” Of course, Biden is “the choice of Democratic voters” largely because the Democratic National Committee made sure he was the only choice available. A post-debate CBS News poll found that just 54% of registered Democrats think Biden should be in the race. The poll found 41% of Democrats think Biden lacks has the requisite mental and cognitive health. More importantly, 72% of all voters give him a failing grade on mental health. The family gathering at Camp David was reportedly scheduled before the debate, with the expectation that it would be a celebration of his performance and an opportunity for the extended Biden family — including his children and grandchildren — to be photographed by famed celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.

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“The Bidens flew off to the Hamptons Saturday to milk the showbiz cows and hedge-funders for a campaign that might not still exist..”

• Surprise, Surprise! (Kunstler)

Since his hiding-in-the-basement campaign in 2020 “Joe Biden’s” Party of Chaos has pretended that he is fit and alert for the job and now all of sudden they pretend to be shocked to see how far gone in the head he really is. The bullshit shovelers of the mainstream news media were especially rocked, not by the truth of the situation per se, but at being unmasked as the contemptible, confabulating tools that they’ve become. The New York Times wheeled around on a dime from their servile lionizing of the presidential hologram they helped create to its editorial board abjectly yelling for him to drop out and get gone. They were joined instantly by a long list of other opinion-shapers, campaign donors, political celebs, and Beltway players.

Right after the debate, First lady Dr. Jill led a cheerleading session before a roomful of partisans that went beyond cringeworthy into uncharted territory of mortification. (“You were great, Joe! You answered all the questions!”). By the time the entourage moved to a pre-planned event at a nearby Atlanta Waffle House, “JB” had gone full-on zombie. If all that was intended to be reassuring, the effect was the opposite. Someone handed the blank-faced old grifter a milkshake and they beat it out of there. The Bidens flew off to the Hamptons Saturday to milk the showbiz cows and hedge-funders for a campaign that might not still exist. “Everyone paid in advance. . .so it could be an opportunity to encourage him to drop out,” an invited guest told a New York Post reporter. “I wanted to go and see the train wreck,” another donor said. “I’d rather choose someone from a phone book than have Biden.”

That was generally the tone among the woke-gay-communist echelons all over the land — surprisingly vehement, considering that just forty-eight hours before they were all in on re-election. Some could probably see their lucrative hustles whirling around the drain, and others might fret about just how far and wide prosecutions under a Trump Attorney General might loom. “JB” and his family circle attempted to regroup over the weekend at Camp David where first son, Hunter (“the smartest man I know,” the president often says), led the buoying-up session, perhaps mindful of the many bank accounts set up by his lawyers in the name of Biden family members (including little grandchildren) for receipt of influence-peddling revenue gathered sedulously from entities abroad during “Joe Biden’s” post-veep high-earning years. The family emerged from that meet-up triumphantly, ready to forget the one bad evening and jump back into the election game.

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“Smith has long tended to push the law to the breaking point to bag defendants..”

• Too Clever By Half (Turley)

The Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. United States rejecting the use of obstruction of legal proceedings against January 6th defendants will potentially impact hundreds of cases. For some, it may lead to dismissals or, in the cases with multiple charges, resentencings. One of those cases that will be impacted is the pending prosecution of former president Donald Trump who is facing four charges, including two obstruction counts. However, it is not clear if Special Counsel Jack Smith will yield to the decision or possibly take the dubious path laid out by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her concurrence. Smith has long tended to push the law to the breaking point to bag defendants. That was the case when his conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell was unanimously reversed as overextending another law.

It is doubtful that he will go quietly into the night after the Fischer decision. In most cases, a prosecutor would go back and secure a superseding indictment in light of the loss of the obstruction claims. Those claims were central to the narrative of the government under the current indictment. That is not Smith’s style. He may decide to push even harder for a trial before the election on the remaining counts. Smith has made the trial before the election an overriding priority throughout his appointment. He also has a very favorable and motivated judge in United States District Judge Tanya Chutkan. He could also take a not-so-subtle hint from Jackson in her concurrence. Jackson supported the majority in finding that the obstruction provision, Section 1512(c), was enacted after the Enron case to address the destruction of documents and records.

Section 1512(c)(1) prohibits corruptly obstructing an official proceeding by altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a record, document, or other object with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding. However, a second provision under subsection (c)(2) allowed for charges that would “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding. The Court held that the obstruction cases under Section 1512(c)(2) must be tied to impairing the integrity or availability of evidence. However, in a single justice concurrence, she added a way that Smith and other prosecutors might still be able to shoehorn January 6th into a Section 1512 offense:

“That official proceeding [Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote] plainly used certain records, documents, or objects—including, among others, those relating to the electoral votes themselves. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 65–67. And it might well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding “in ways other than those specified in (c)(1).” Ante, at 8. If so, then Fischer’s prosecution under §1512(c)(2) can, and should, proceed. That issue remains available for the lower courts to determine on remand.” Notably, no other justice joined Jackson in the concurrence. However, Smith and Chutkan could reason that it was not expressly rejected and presumably, the three justices in dissent would support the broader reading since they were willing to sign off on the ultimate extension of the obstruction of justice statute. That includes Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

However, that still leaves less than a majority and an application that runs against the grain of the opinion. Just saying that a proceeding involves “certain records” is transparently artificial and forced. Even the submission of an alternative slate of electors is not the destruction of electors certified by the secretaries of state. The federal law allows for challenges in Congress, which Democrats previously utilized without claims of insurrections or attacks on democracy. J6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), voted to challenge the certification of the 2004 results of President George W. Bush’s reelection; committee member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to challenge Trump’s certification in 2016. Both did so under the very law that Trump’s congressional supporters used in 2020. And Pelosi and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the challenge organized by then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in 2004.

Those challenges under the same loose theory could have been viewed as attempting to negate or destroy certifications from the states. It would likely, in my view, result in another reversal. It is, in my view, too clever by half. That may not concern Smith who may still want to use the obstruction counts to increase the likelihood of convictions on the other counts. In such a circumstance, the overturning of the two obstruction convictions might still leave the conviction for conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy against the rights of citizens. We will see in the coming weeks, but Smith is likely waiting for the other shoe to drop in the Trump immunity case. That could add additional complications if the case is remanded by the Court for further proceedings. There is little time for a trial before November if the district court must hold hearings on claims that statements or actions were taken by Trump as part of his office.

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“If Putin does not immediately use sufficient force to terminate the conflict, World War Three seems certain..”

• The Resurrection of French Nationalism? (Paul Craig Roberts)

France was the last European nation to lose its sovereignty, and France might be the first to recover its sovereignty. In the 1960s France was still a nation of ethnic French as contrasted with the tower of babel and a geographical entity that it is today. During the ten-year presidency of Charles De Gaulle (1959-69) France’s policy was one of national independence. DeGaulle refused to join NATO, and he opposed a supranational Europe in which nations would subordinate themselves to a European Union.French independence could be on the point of return judging from the success of Marine Le Pen’s party yesterday in the current French elections. Her nationalist party has in the first round of the parliamentary elections taken 34% of the votes with President Macron’s centrist coalition receiving only 21% support. If the second round produces similar results, a restoration of French independence is possible.

For many years European governments have worked consistently to overwhelm their ethnic populations with third world immigrant-invaders. It has reached the point where ethnic European women raped by immigrant-invaders fear to report the crime as it can result in a charge of racism or worse against the victim. For example, in response to a gang-rape of an ethnic German female, a 20-year old ethnic German female citizen called one of the gang rapists a “disgraceful rapist pig.” The German citizen was sentenced to jail for defaming an immigrant-invader, a protected species under German law, while the rapist was given a suspended sentence and served no jail time. For many years the European working class has experienced their living standards reduced in the name of economy. Not long ago the French were protesting the rise in the retirement age, which forces them to work longer for their pension.

The French have noticed that economy measures only apply to their living standards and not to the vast sums that Macron pours into the West’s war against Russia in Ukraine. Now all of Europe hears continually that they must prepare, and cough up money for, war with Russia. The French don’t want war with Russia. Nor do the Germans, or the Italians. Only “their” governments do, and war is what Washington’s puppets have put on the agenda. Europeans don’t want the high energy cost and lost profit and employment opportunities imposed on them by Washington’s “Russian sanctions.” It seems to Europeans that the purpose of Washington’s sanctions is to make Europe more dependent on Washington, essentially reducing them to serfs. Finally, after suffering decades of abuse, insult, and total disregard by their leaders, Europeans protested in the recent European Union parliamentary elections. The ruling parties were repudiated across the board.

The Belgian prime minister had to resign. The French president had to call national elections. I wrote that if the repudiation carries over into the national elections, we could see the unravelling of NATO, the European Union, and a return of sovereign European nations. World War II gave control of Europe to the US instead of to Germany. The Soviet collapse gave Washington control over the Warsaw Pact, placing NATO on Russia’s border. Washington’s policy was to de-Germanize Germany and to destroy a national awareness. Washington controlled German education and indoctrinated Germans that nationalism was racist, produced Hitler and the Holocaust. Legislation was passed essentially criminalizing a positive attitude toward German nationalism. It meant that you were a Nazi. It still does. It is unclear if a German state can ever be resurrected.

Rid of the Germans, Washington turned its efforts on France. De Gaulle’s departure weakened France. It took time, but eventually Washington controlled who the French president would be. With France, Germany, and the British in Washington’s pocket, the rest of Europe went along. Today European nations that shared the rule of the world are puppets of a criminal regime in Washington. The notion that there is any military power in these puppet states is laughable. The self-confidence that made the British the ruler of the world has long departed. It was destroyed at Oxford and Cambridge. No Western country has a positive opinion of itself. All are being keyed for war with Russia, China, Iran, while they themselves are being overrun by immigrant-invaders who are paid tribute for their support and permitted to rape European women as a form of restitution.

The Kremlin does not understand the hollowed out, empty, West where there is no support for any government. Western peoples are brainwashed into impotence and cannot even protect their constitutional rights. Why would anyone fight for these governments, and if forced, with what spirit? Putin sits there in his legalistic way accepting insult after insult, provocation after provocation, as his way of avoiding war with the West. It is not only Western provocations that are widening the Ukraine conflict into World War III. Putin has permitted the conflict to go on and on and on, and this has enabled Washington to get more and more and more involved, thus widening the conflict. If Putin does not immediately use sufficient force to terminate the conflict, World War Three seems certain. There is hope that if Le Pen wins France and does not sell out to Washington, the unravelling of NATO and resurrection of European independence will begin. But this can be a slow process, while the developments in Ukraine toward wider war are accelerating. The time is rapidly ending during which Putin can use sufficient force to end the conflict before it results in World War Three.

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“The West has ‘lost’ Russia much more profoundly than is understood..”

• The West – Indubitably – Has Lost Russia, And Is Losing Eurasia Too (Crooke)

There perhaps was a momentary shrugging-off of slumber in Washington this week as they read the account of Sergei Lavrov’s démarche to the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow: Russia was telling the U.S. – “We are no longer at peace”! Not just ‘no longer at peace’, Russia was holding the U.S. responsible for the ‘cluster strike’ on a Crimean beach on last Sunday’s Pentecost holiday, killing several (including children) and injuring many more. The U.S. thereby “became party” to the proxy war in Ukraine (it was an American-supplied ATACM; programmed by American specialists; and drawing on U.S. data), Russia’s statement read; “Retaliatory measures will certainly follow”. Evidently, somewhere an amber light flashed hues of pink and red. The Pentagon grasped that something had happened – ‘No going around it; This could escalate badly’. The U.S. Defence Secretary (after a pause since March 2023) reached for the phone to call his Russian counterpart: ‘The U.S. regretted civilian deaths; the Ukrainians had full targeting discretion’.

The Russian public however, is plain furious. The diplomatic argot of ‘there now being a state of betweenness; not war and not peace’ is but the ‘half of it’. The West has ‘lost’ Russia much more profoundly than is understood. President Putin – in his statement to the Foreign Ministry Board in wake of the G7 sword-rattling – detailed just how we had arrived at this pivotal juncture (of inevitable escalation). Putin indicated that the gravity of the situation demanded a ‘last chance’ offer to the West, one that Putin emphatically said was to be “No temporary ceasefire for Kiev to prepare a new offensive; nor a freezing the conflict – but rather, needed to be about the war’s final completion”. It has been widely understood that the only credible way to end the Ukraine war would be a ‘peace’ agreement emerging through negotiation between Russia and the U.S. This however is rooted in a familiar U.S.-centric vision – ‘Waiting on Washington …’.

Lavrov archly commented (in paraphrase) that if anyone imagines we are ‘waiting for Godot’, and ‘will run for it’, they are mistaken. Moscow has something much more radical in mind – something that will shock the West. Moscow (and China) are not simply waiting upon the whims of the West, but plan to invert completely the security architecture paradigm: To create an ‘Alt’ architecture for the ‘vast space’ of Eurasia, no less. It is intended to exit the existing bloc zero-sum confrontation. A new confrontation is not envisaged; however the new architecture nevertheless is intended to force ‘external actors’ to curtail their hegemony across the continent. In his Foreign Ministry address, Putin explicitly looked ahead to the collapse of the Euro-Atlantic security system and to a new architecture emerging: “The world will never be the same again”, he said.

What did he mean? Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s principal Foreign Policy adviser (at the Primakov Readings Forum), clarified Putin’s ‘sparse’ allusion: Ushakov reportedly said that Russia increasingly has come to the view there is not going to be any long-term re-shaping of the security system in Europe. And without any major re-shaping, there will be no ‘final completion’ (Putin’s words) to the conflict in Ukraine. Ushakov explained that this unified and indivisible security system in Eurasia must replace the Euro-Atlantic and Euro-centric models that are now receding into oblivion. “This speech [of Putin at the Russian Foreign Ministry], I would say, sets the vector of further activities of our country at the international stage, including the building of a single and indivisible security system in Eurasia,” Ushakov said.

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“.. the United States has massively over-extended itself and damaged its own reliability as a global trade partner.”

• ‘Unipolar US Dollar’ Mutated Into ‘Politically Weaponized’ Tool (Sp.)

“In essence, the more the United States prints and spends USD, the more the rest of the world is expected to invest in US government paper, and subsidize this debt-spending. The BRICS nations and their adherents are advocating for the use of national currencies for cross-border trade, eventually de-linking from the increasingly unipolar and visibly unreliable US Dollar,” Goncharoff explained. Furthermore, analysts at the Russia’s Pivot to Asia website wrote that two “main global financial evolutionary events” are unfolding right now. These involve changes to the role of the US dollar, and “technology and the digitization of financial transactions.” America has itself to blame for the loss of the greenback’s credibility as a global currency, mainly due to the mind-boggling US-dollar issued debt – a whopping $32.72 trillion.

“It has created a scenario where foreign governments are increasingly wary of investing in additional US dollar debt until a management system is put in place that will be able to support such a load,” Goncharoff noted. He forecasts that the US dollar “will become prone to increasing shocks, leading to uncertainty and mistrust on the global financial markets.” If the US were to default on its debt, American bondholders would carry losses on their investments, and the negative impacts on global trade would be huge, he warned. He underscored that the US treasury norm of printing of more dollars to cover up the fiscal debt “debases the actual value of the currency and encourages inflation.”

While Moscow has effectively “inoculated” itself from looming future problems with the US economy, other countries, like China, are doing the same. The trade focus is shifting away from the United States, fueling a geopolitical evolution of trade blocs like BRICS, the Eurasian Economic Union and Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with some like BRICS discussing alternative currency platforms. “One proposal for a unified BRICS trade unit is the “BRICS Bridge” allowing the ten current members to exchange units based 60% of their sovereign currencies and 40% backed by their gold reserves,” noted Goncharoff, and summed up:. “For Russia, and most other nations, there is a far bigger picture – where non-US dominated, global trade opportunities beckon.” Furthermore, the US has used the dollar as a trade and geopolitical weapon, said the pundit, seeking to abuse economies of Venezuela, Iran, Turkey and Russia amongst others.

“It has done this in two main areas, firstly by manipulating the US dollar currency exchange rates in order to damage other national currencies when the US wants to inflict fiscal punishments or seek trade advantages,” remarked the analyst, adding that Washington “has also used the global SWIFT payment network as a switch to turn US dollar trade on and off according to its policies.” “Other governments are becoming concerned that these punishments could in future be meted out to them, which also creates mistrust and fear of US dollar over-exposure. Any one of these problems are serious. It appears ultimately unlikely the United States will be able to fend off the repercussions of them all. In short – the United States has massively over-extended itself and damaged its own reliability as a global trade partner.”

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“The children here have not gone to school for a year, and we are under rocket fire day and night. It is a very strange situation.”

• Charles Nenner Warns “Very Hard Times Are Coming” (USAW)

This week, Nenner’s war cycle “turned straight up” and his economic cycle “turned straight down.” The next big conflict is not going to be in Ukraine or Taiwan–just yet. On Saturday, this headline: “Iran Threatens Israel With ‘Obliterating War’ If It Attacks Lebanon.” Nenner says all hell is about to break loose. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran and Turkey are key players in an escalating war with Israel. Nenner, who lives on the border with Lebanon in Northern Israel, interviewed with USAW just after a barrage of 100 rockets hit near his location. Nenner reports, “The children here have not gone to school for a year, and we are under rocket fire day and night. It is a very strange situation. What I don’t understand is the Arab resistance, led by Iran, did not see what happened in Gaza. If this really goes, Lebanon is going to disappear from the map…

How do I know these things? I know these things because I work with several governments in the world… In the 1960’s, there was a war, and half of Cypress ended up Turkish and half of Cypress is Greek. Turkey never accepted that. . . . Israel is using airfields in Cypress. . . . If this really gets going, Turkey is going to take over Cypress because they support Hamas (and Hezbollah). Turkey will invade Cypress, and this will lead to a war between Greece and Turkey. Of course, Iran is going to be involved also. Big boats are heading to Israel, so America is going to be involved. Russia has its ideas too… I don’t think Americans have any clue what is going on there, and they have no background. They are only busy with trying to win the Election, and it’s going to lead to catastrophe. If there is a war, Turkey is going to be involved, Cypress is going to be involved, NATO is going to be involved, and it is going to be much more serious than people think.”

Nenner says, “We are already in the next big war cycle.” Nenner still thinks China is going to be a big problem and says, “I would say if the world is busy with all this nonsense, then this is a time for China to take Taiwan over. The war cycle is extra up, so we have to be very careful. A lot of my wealthy clients are busy trying to get visas . . . to Caribbean islands. I know many wealthy people busy trying to get visas and trying to get out of America. This is what is going on below the surface, and most small investors don’t know what is going on… They are worried about a nuke strike or terrorists blowing stuff up left and right because they came through the border. This is a very dangerous situation. They are not leaving right now, but they are preparing now… The war cycle has turned up, and it is going to be extra dangerous from the 3rd of July on.”

Nenner says his big clients are also leaving the cities and buying houses in rural locations. Nenner told me this is a trend that has been going on for about 5 years, but it has picked up speed in the last year and a half. Nenner says his economic cycles have turned straight down. In NYC, Nenner points out, “I have very wealthy clients that just got out of commercial real estate with a 67% loss. I also know the banks, they are holding all these bad loans.” “The banks have US bonds coming to maturity that they have lost a fortune on. So, the banks, especially the regional banks, are going to be in big trouble… The regional banks are very weak. A lot is burning below the surface, which nobody tells you about.” Nenner still likes gold, but it’s going to consolidate here. Inflation is getting ready to take off again, and Nenner says, “Layoffs are coming soon. . . . Very hard times are coming.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807746047541694893

 

 

Thomas

 

 

Issa

 

 

Silicone

 

 

Wave

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 29 2024

Mar 292024
 
 March 29, 2024  Posted by at 9:39 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Christ and St Mary Magdalene at the Tomb 1638

 

• Washington Crossed a Fatal Red Line with the Crocus Attack (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Statements By Alexander Bortnikov, Director of FSB (Doctorow)
• FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison (ZH)
• Avenatti: Michael Cohen Was Having Affair With Stormy Daniels Since 2006 (GP)
• Putin Friendship Could Help End Ukraine Conflict – Ex-German Chancellor (RT)
• Ukraine Needs Air Defense To Boost Birth Rate – Zelensky (RT)
• ‘Russia for Russians’ Slogans Alarming – Putin (RT)
• China Opposes US Practice of Creating Enemies Out of Thin Air (Sp.)
• Who’s Running the EU? Big Global Corporations Which Aren’t Even European! (Jay)
• UN Court Orders Israel To Let Food Into Gaza (RT)
• UK Won’t Extradite Assange While Risk of Death Penalty Remains – Tory (Sp.)
• The Crucifixion of Julian Assange (Chris Hedges)
• Biden To Host Star-studded NYC Fundraiser With Obama And Clinton (BBC)
• Maori King Calls For Recognizing Whales As People (RT)

 

 

 

 

Trump stocks

 

 

Trump Bragg
https://twitter.com/i/status/1773034485077921940

 

 

Watters Diddy

 

 


Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. – John W. Gardner

 

 

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1773336445173829641

 

 

Scott Ritter

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Television talk is suddenly very violent with talk of flattening Kharkiv and Kiev and bringing a quick end to the conflict..”

• Washington Crossed a Fatal Red Line with the Crocus Attack (Paul Craig Roberts)

Gilbert Doctorow Now Confirms with his own analysis my prediction that Putin’s toleration of provocations is spinning the Ukraine conflict out of control. Doctorow is a careful analyst never overstating a situation. In this interview he says that the FSB statement implicating the US and UK governments in the Crocus attack had to have been approved by Putin and that implicating the US and UK in the Crocus attack has brought us to the level of danger of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Doctorow reports that Russian television has undergone a massive change following the Crocus attack. Commentators are unwilling to accept any longer Putin’s nonresponse to attacks on Russians. Television talk is suddenly very violent with talk of flattening Kharkiv and Kiev and bringing a quick end to the conflict that has been permitted to endure for far too long. It seems that a fatal red line has been crossed.

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“..Russian state security on 8 March was too tight for the terrorist mission to succeed and the United States decided to pull the plug on that operation..”

• Statements By Alexander Bortnikov, Director of FSB (Doctorow)

To the uninitiated, I explain first that the FSB is the successor organization to the Soviet Union’s well-known and much feared KGB. However, the FSB today might be better compared with the FBI in the United States. It deals with domestic criminality of all kinds and with threats to Russian civilians such as terrorism. The agency and its head are rarely in the news. In this respect, the FSB is less visible both at home and abroad than the Foreign Intelligence Service headed by Sergei Naryshkin, a state figure who spent five years of this millennium as chairman of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of the legislature, and also three years as head of the Presidential Administration. In both positions Naryshkin was very often seen on television performing his duties.

By contrast, Bortnikov spent the past 15 years in his FSB offices out of sight. However, the spectacular attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue has propelled him to center stage and yesterday he met with the Russian state television journalist Pavel Zarubin for an interview and then allowed himself to be questioned further by a gaggle of other journalists on his way out along a corridor. This spontaneous Q&A was later broadcast on the television news. What Bortnikov had to say was extraordinary and bears directly on whether you and I should now be looking for bomb shelters. Regrettably you will not find any of it in the lead stories of today’s mainstream media. The Financial Times, for example, features an account of Xi’s meeting with CEOs of American businesses to mend ties: interesting, but not very relevant if we are at the cusp of WWIII.

*****
Bortnikov is by definition a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle of advisors. He, Putin and Naryshkin are all roughly the same age. At 72, Bortnikov is just several years older. I was struck in particular by his poise and prudent, carefully weighed choice of words while setting out where the investigation is heading with transparency and a ‘let the chips fall where they may’ unaffected demeanor. The journalists were all probing the question of who stood behind the terror attack. Bortnikov told them…and us: standing behind the terror act committed by Islamist extremists are the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine.

Bortnikov said that the preliminary findings indicate that the four perpetrators of the slaughter were headed by car to the border with Ukraine where they were awaited on the other side. He very calmly explained that the involvement of foreign powers is being clarified and that he will say nothing out of pure emotion now but will wait for the facts to be solidly collected before being presented. Nonetheless, it was entirely newsworthy that he named the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine as the likely puppet masters of the terror act. Let us remember that following the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, the most significant attack on critical civilian infrastructure globally in the last 50 years, Russian officials did not point the finger directly at any country. There was innuendo but no direct accusations such as we heard from Bortnikov yesterday.

*****
Meanwhile, quite apart from Mr. Bortnikov’s chat with journalists, a lot of new elements to the terror attack at Crocus City Hall were posted yesterday on the Russian state television news and analysis program Sixty Minutes. In particular, we learned that in the last days of February and first couple of days of March two of the four attackers were in Istanbul. The departure and arrival of one at a Moscow airport was recorded on video. We were told which hotels they stayed in, and the selfies and other photos taken by one in Istanbul were put up on the screen. It is still not clear with whom they met in Turkey. However, the timing itself is very important, because the point was made that they returned to Moscow to carry out a terror attack on 8 March, International Women’s Day, a sacred date on the Russian calendar. Had they done so on that day, the effect would have been catastrophic for the presidential elections in Russia one week later.

However, per Sixty Minutes, it was determined that Russian state security on 8 March was too tight for the terrorist mission to succeed and the United States decided to pull the plug on that operation. Note that this is approximately the time when Victoria Nuland tendered her resignation at the State Department (5 March). The possible causal link here surely deserves attention by my peers in the U.S. ‘dissident’ community. In any case, the scenario which was explored later in the day on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show is that the Ukrainians decided to proceed with the terror attack a week after the Russian presidential elections, when it lost most of its rationale. They did so over the objections of Washington.

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SBF donated many millions to the Democrats. His victims would like that money back, please.

• FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison (ZH)

And there it is – Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison – more than Elizabeth Holmes, less than Bernie Madoff, same as Bernie Ebbers. SBF will also have to forfeit more than $11 billion. Judge Kaplan did not hold back during his sentencing: “When not lying, he was evasive, hair splitting, trying to get the prosecutors to rephrase questions for him. I’ve been doing this job for close for 30 years. I’ve never seen a performance like that.”

Update (1105ET): Just before the federal judge was about to sentence Bankman-Fried in his fraud case, the former FTX founder said that he was “sorry.” “I know a lot of people feel really let down,” he said at his sentencing hearing Thursday morning in lower Manhattan. “I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage.” “All of the company followed me across the earth, across continents, burning the midnight oil working until 2 a.m., 4 a.m., dedicated to FTX,” he said in a plea for leniency. “I remember so many of them.” He said the staff “all built something really beautiful. They threw themselves into it and then I threw that all away. It haunts me every day. I made a series of bad decisions. They weren’t selfish decisions, they were bad decisions.” Bad decisions indeed Sam.

[..] in November 2023, as Michael Washburn reports via The Epoch Times, jurors decided to convict Mr. Bankman-Fried on all seven of counts of conspiracy and fraud with which government lawyers charged him. Mr. Bankman-Fried and his attorneys have repeatedly argued that he didn’t intentionally do anything wrong and that he deserves no more than 6 1/2 years in jail. In his trial testimony in October 2023, Mr. Bankman-Fried insisted he used sophisticated analytics to try to keep track of the state of FTX’s finances and suggested that subordinates acting without his knowledge or imprimatur made costly mistakes. But prosecutors, citing testimony from Alameda Research head Caroline Ellison, who was at times romantically involved with Mr. Bankman-Fried, vehemently disagreed with the more charitable view and are pressing for a sentence of half a century or longer.

The government’s tough stance has found support from the current CEO of FTX, John Ray III, the former chair of the recovery corporation in another high-profile insolvency: that of Enron, which imploded in December 2001. In a letter to Judge Kaplan, Mr. Ray denounced the “categorically, callously, and demonstrably false” claims that Mr. Bankman-Fried and his lawyers have put forth in the hope of getting a lighter sentence. [..]

[..]The verdict in November 2023 came exactly one year after a Nov. 2, 2022, report in the cryptocurrency publication Coindesk began to stoke wide concern about the state of FTX’s finances. The report cited a leaked balance sheet of FTX’s hedge fund trading affiliate, Alameda Research. According to Coindesk’s analysis, a bulk of Alameda’s $14.6 billion of assets was in the form of FTX’s own crypto token, FTT, rather than a fiat currency. This not only suggested that Alameda’s wealth was potentially less fungible than many had assumed but also pointed to extensive commingling of FTX customer deposits with the hedge fund affiliate. Whether or not Coindesk was correct to impute instability and weakness to FTX on the basis of its position in FTT, the reaction in the market was swift. On Nov. 6, 2022, Changpeng Zhao, then-CEO of Binance, one of the other leading cryptocurrency exchanges, sent out a sharply worded post on Twitter.

Mr. Zhao alluded to the fact that Binance had been distancing itself from FTX over the past year and had received the equivalent of about $2.1 billion in U.S. dollars in the form of both cash and the FTT token. “Due to recent revelations that have come to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books. We will try to do so in a way that minimizes market impact,” Mr. Zhao wrote.Despite that assurance, Binance’s move, and forthright public announcement, immediately helped fuel a run on the bank during which customers pulled $6 billion from FTX in three days. The exchange would never recover; some $9 billion of customer funds are still lost through the commingling of funds and Bankman-Fried’s lavish spending.

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Avenatti and Michael Cohen. What a pair.

• Avenatti: Michael Cohen Was Having Affair With Stormy Daniels Since 2006 (GP)

Tony Seruga is a very popular commentator on Twitter. In his profile, the conservative commentator with over 77K followers, Mr. Seruga, states that he’s an Intel Ops CIA/NSA Contractor/Whistleblower. This afternoon, Mr. Seruga dropped a bombshell, and if true, it could blow up the whole Stormy Daniels affair with Trump lie that the mainstream media and Democrats have been clinging to since 2015. Tony Seruga claims he used to share office space with the convicted felon and former attorney, Michael Avenatti, who represented porn star Stormy Daniels in her case alleging that then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump paid her hush money to keep their alleged “affair” out of the public. [..] Here’s where Seruga’s story gets to be very interesting as it relates to Stormy Daniels and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, “In any case, Avenatti shared details of his client Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, case and the fact that her and Michael Cohen were actually having an affair since 2006.”

And then, Seruga drops a bombshell: “The whole hush money scheme was cooked up by Michael Cohen to extort the Trump Organization before the 2016 election. Avenatti seemed pleased at how deviant Michael Cohen was.” Seruga followed up his first tweet by explaining how the shady lawyer Michael Avenatti bragged about the scheme more than once and even bragged about it to former NBA star Dennis Rodman on the patio in Corona Del Mar, CA. In addition to being one of the all-time best defensive players in the NBA, Dennis Rodman is known for his relationship with Madonna and his unusual friendship with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un. So, it’s pretty easy to believe Rodman could be friends with the flamboyant CA lawyer Michael Avenatti.

“Understand, Michael Avenatti is a serial liar, but he did speak about his client (that he would later steal from) and Michael Cohen’s affair touching on their scheme to bilk the Trump Organization out of money. He spoke about it on more than one occasion. He was very passionate that Trump had not signed the NDA making it null and void. One time, in fact, he was bragging about it to Dennis Rodman at the Port Restaurant out on the patio, in Corona Del Mar, CA. I was only half listening as I had heard it all before, but Dennis Rodman seemed engaged in the conversation.” Another popular Twitter personality from California, who goes by “SL,” had this to say about the Dennis Rodman and Michael Avenatti conversation that allegedly occurred at the Port Restaurant in California.

“Interesting. I know Dennis Rodman visits Port Restaurant on occasion since I had a conversion [conversation] [with] him there around 2015/2016. Likely to be a true story.” On Monday, when asked by reporters, President Trump said that he would testify in the alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels’ trial in NYC that was brought against him by the rabidly anti-Trump,] but soft-on-actual criminals DA Alvin Bragg. “I would have no problem testifying,” Trump said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Trump also suggested that he’s planning to appeal the trial date set for April 15 and said he’s unsure if there will even be a trial following his appeals.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1773436810229694731

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Schroeder persists.

• Putin Friendship Could Help End Ukraine Conflict – Ex-German Chancellor (RT)

Talking to Moscow is the only way to end the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told the press agency dpa in an interview published on Thursday. His personal friendship with President Vladimir Putin could play a role in stopping the bloodshed, Schroeder said. The former chancellor and Russian leader are known to have close ties that stretch back to when Schroeder headed the German government in the late 1990s. In 2014, Putin attended Schroeder’s birthday party in St. Petersburg. Later, Schroeder joined the boards of directors of the Russian operator of the Nord Stream gas pipeline and energy giant Rosneft. He faced a backlash over his ties to Moscow after the conflict between Russia and Ukraine erupted in February 2022 – and resigned from the Rosneft board in May of that year. Asked about maintaining his friendship with Putin amid the Ukraine conflict, the former chancellor insisted the two matters were entirely distinct.

“I think it would be completely wrong to forget all the positive things that have happened between us in politics in the past,” he told the German news agency, adding that breaking relationships with friends was “not his style.” Contacts with the Russian leadership could still prove crucial in the future peace talks, Schroeder believes. “We have worked together sensibly for many years. Perhaps that can still help to find a negotiated solution,” he said, telling dpa that he saw “no other way” to end the conflict. “It is obvious that the war cannot end with the total defeat of one side or the other,” Schroeder said. The former chancellor has repeatedly called for a negotiated solution to the conflict and accused the US of forcing Kiev to reject a peace deal with Moscow. In October 2023, he also said that Western Europe had “failed” to seize the opportunity to push for peace in March 2022.

Schroeder himself traveled to Istanbul and Moscow on a “peace mission” in the spring of 2022 and also met Putin in July of the same year. His efforts yielded no results at that time. In Germany, Schroeder was ostracized by his own party, which deprived him of his parliamentary privileges, but failed in an effort to expel him over his ties to Russia. In 2023, he relinquished his honorary citizenship of Hannover before the city could strip him of it. Moscow has repeatedly said it is ready for peace talks as long as the situation on the ground is taken into account. Ukraine has insisted on Russian troops withdrawing from all the territories it claims as its own, including Crimea and the four former Ukrainian territories that joined Russian following a series of referendums in autumn 2022. Russia has dismissed such demands as “absurd.”

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No. It needs peace.

• Ukraine Needs Air Defense To Boost Birth Rate – Zelensky (RT)

Kiev needs more air defense systems to help Ukrainians have more children, President Vladimir Zelensky said on Thursday. Ukraine currently has the lowest fertility rate in the world. The issue of demographics came up during Zelensky’s meeting with students in Sumy, a city near the border with Russia, when someone asked him if there were plans to financially support new parents. “We need not only financial incentives, because in my opinion, finances help, but they do not stimulate birth itself during war,” Zelensky said. “Help, yes. But as for births, it seems to me that it’s mainly a matter of security.” The government should put air-raid shelters in schools and kindergartens, he added, as well as getting “the latest technologies when it comes to air defense” from foreign partners, manufacture them domestically, and “inform the society about this.”

Zelensky further argued that there would be a “baby boom” after the conflict is over and millions of Ukrainians who left the country return from abroad “confident in a better tomorrow and the future of Ukraine.” Ukraine’s total fertility rate – the average number of babies per woman of child-bearing age – is currently 0.7, the lowest in the world. The country’s demographics have been further affected by a mass exodus to the West and significant casualties on the battlefield, to the point where the very survival of the nation is in question, a government-funded think tank told The Times earlier this year.

“Male life expectancy has decreased from 66-67 before the war to 57-58,” said Ella Libanova, head of the Institute for Demography and Social Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Only four African countries – Chad, Nigeria, Lesotho and the Central African Republic – have lower life expectancies. Last June, the Ukrainian Institute for the Future (UIF) estimated that only 29 million people remained in the country – down from 52 million in 1991, when Ukraine declared independence. These estimates also included residents of the regions that joined Russia. The number of Ukrainian refugees abroad has been estimated by the government at over six million. While Kiev has been hopeful that most of them would come back eventually, the UIF estimated that the majority had no interest in returning.

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“And they treat both their small Motherland and our common big Motherland in a way that, I think, no one in other parts of the world treats their homeland..”

• ‘Russia for Russians’ Slogans Alarming – Putin (RT)

Nationalist ideas are concerning for a multicultural country like Russia, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday during a visit to Tver Region. He was referring to the slogan, “Russia for Russians,” which promotes the idea that the ethnic majority deserves more rights than other nationalities in the country. Russia is a multinational and a multi-confessional state, and the violation of rights of any citizens will only lead to a collapse of the country, the president warned, adding that all religions are treated with respect in teh country. He noted that 190 ethnic groups currently live in Russia, with some nationalities comprising millions of people. “When I listen to hurrah-patriots – and there are such people everywhere, in any society, including those who say that ‘Russia is only for Russians,’ you know, I get a feeling of anxiety,” Putin said.

He emphasized the importance of persevering with the multinational Russian state and warned that “destructive thoughts such as everyone else is a foreigner here” would ruin the country. Representatives of all religious denominations, all peoples of Russia, are “showing their best side on the battlefield today,” Putin said. “And they treat both their small Motherland and our common big Motherland in a way that, I think, no one in other parts of the world treats their homeland,” he concluded. Putin made the comments during a visit to Torzhok air force base in Tver Region, home of the 344th Training Center for Russian combat pilots, where personnel are being trained to take part in the Ukraine military operation.

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“The US practice of artificially creating enemies out of thin air for the sake of boosting its military budget..”

• China Opposes US Practice of Creating Enemies Out of Thin Air (Sp.)

The US practice of artificially creating enemies out of thin air for the sake of boosting its military budget is strategically extremely dangerous, and China firmly opposes it, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Thursday. The United States had repeatedly used China as a pretext for increasing its military budget, inflating a non-existent “Chinese military threat,” Wu said at a briefing. “This practice of artificially creating enemies out of thin air is extremely dangerous from a strategic point of view, and China is firmly opposed to it,” the spokesman added. He also said that China did not wish to threaten anyone, but it was also not afraid of anyone’s threats, and no amount of force can stop the development of the Chinese army.

On Saturday, US President Joe Biden signed into law an appropriations package that includes the $825 billion defense spending bill for fiscal year 2024. The act doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan. The United States would counter China by maximizing its production of critical munitions and by spending more than $66 billion for the US Indo-Pacific Command capabilities, including $42 million to bolster its military capabilities in the region, the House Appropriations Committee said in a summary of the package.

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“..the elitist payroll which you might be fooled into thinking was the EU itself. Oh you thought he was talking about the West in general and its population? Is it April 1st yet?”

• Who’s Running the EU? Big Global Corporations Which Aren’t Even European! (Jay)

If you can get your head around the Moscow attacks or the British foreign minister’s recent video monologue where he explains how the UK is sanctioning a number of Chinese officials, have a thought about the European Union, a Rubik’s Cube which has all its faces painted one colour as its real identity is so opaque. With just weeks away from its own elections – yes, the most undemocratic organisation in the world even organises elections for its own fake parliament – the EU itself is about to redefine itself. Already there are signs that even EU leaders are growing tired of its foibles and delusional dreams about its identity on the international circuit as a geopolitical contender, but people, humble voters, will soon deliver a message to the elites which run the EU soon: reform or crumble. Just recently, EU nerds in Brussels noticed that when all of the EU’s leaders descend on the grey, depressing Belgian capital – a city many associate with industrial scale paedophilia, graft, chocolate and a pissing urchin – that they show anyone who’s paying attention who ultimately runs the EU: member states.

Or at least that’s the theory. In the last few days EU leaders attended a meeting at the European Council of Ministers building and voted to “condemn” illegal West Bank settlers in Israel. Most editors of UK newspapers didn’t even understand what was happening. It was reported as “EU slams Israel’s West bank settlers” or “EU mulls sanctions against violent settlers” in a number of exclusive, European high-brow journals but completely unreported in the UK or US. Perhaps the British press didn’t understand the significance of EU leaders – rather than the European Commission or the parliament – taking this initiative? EU leaders themselves, in theory, have the power. They hold the aces. And when they decide on a line or a certain policy, the European Commission has no choice but to go along with it – affirming the old hacks’ dinner party circuit rambling that “the EU Council of Ministers is the most powerful institution in Brussels”. Perhaps it is. Or was. But what were EU leaders really trying to say with the stunt?

Simply that they object to Ursula von der Leyen’s repulsive, uncompromising support for the genocide in Gaza and send a signal that Jewish settlers’ violence when they steal Palestinians’ land is unacceptable. Just keep on stealing and looting as much as you can, but please do it peacefully, seems to be the message. This in itself is a clear message who really runs the so-called EU “foreign policy” rather than the Spanish gimp in Brussels otherwise known as Josep Borrell. EU member states own this domain and every now and again need to remind the elite in Brussels that they, member states, humour the EU hierarchy with this fantasy of being a geopolitical dick swinger with its own hegemony. But even being the guardian of such a dossier, where does it get the EU or its “members” when both are so impotent, hesitant and ultimately cowardly on the international stage? Ultimately, all the EU can do is make statements. That’s it. It has proven over and over again that it is powerless against anything that Israel does, regardless of that old chestnut often known as “international law”.

And the call from EU leaders for violence in the West Bank to stop is also an indicator to who are the super elites around the world who really control David Cameron or pay for Boris Johnson to fly out to Kiev recently and bang on the “let’s never give peace a chance” drum: Jewish money and power. And that Jewish money – American Jewish money – which controls the UN banking system, the federal exchange, World Bank, IMF, Hollywood, both houses in U.S. politics and most of big business in America is worried about anti-Semitism growing in the West. And so they inform their servants to go to the garden and find the lost jewels of the lady in the house while the rest of the world burns. Priorities. EU leaders didn’t meet in Brussels to thrash out a peace plan as they don’t have the instructions to do so. Hatred towards Jews in the West is the most important issue as it could be the thin end of the wedge which removes power from the elites who own Sunak, Scholz, Macron et al not to mention the European Union project which serves their global interests most admirably.

And you can always tell when these powerful hidden elites are fretting over their power base being slightly shaken. Their surfs start whining. Just listen to Josep Borrell recently talk about the Ukraine war and Russia. “We cannot afford for Russia to win this war. Otherwise the U.S. and European interests will be very damaged” he gushed. “It is not a matter of generosity alone … of supporting Ukraine because we love Ukrainian people. It is in our own interest”. Of course, when he spoke of “our own interest” he literally meant his own interest and a few of his cronies on the elitist payroll which you might be fooled into thinking was the EU itself. Oh you thought he was talking about the West in general and its population? Is it April 1st yet?

Read more …

Binding.

• UN Court Orders Israel To Let Food Into Gaza (RT)

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Israel to allow uninterrupted shipments of food into Gaza. Before issuing the legally-binding order, the Hague-based court warned that “famine is setting in” in the besieged enclave. Issued on Thursday, the order commands Israel to take “all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision…of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance,” including food, water, and medicine. The ruling comes two months after the court ruled that “the state of Israel shall take all measures to prevent the commission of genocide in Gaza,” including by blocking humanitarian aid shipments.

“The court observes that Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine … but that famine is setting in,” the judges wrote in Thursday’s ruling. Israel can help alleviate this looming famine “by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary,” they noted. The Israeli military controls all entry and exit points to Gaza except the Rafah crossing between the enclave and Egypt. However, Cairo allows Israel to determine when the crossing can be opened, and Israeli troops inspect every truck that passes. Every other crossing has been shut since Israel imposed a siege on Gaza immediately after Hamas militants attacked the Jewish state on October 7, and aid groups say that the trickle of supplies passing the Rafah crossing is insufficient to feed Gaza’s starving population.

A UN-backed report warned last week that more than 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are facing “catastrophic hunger,” and that famine conditions now exist in the northern part of the enclave. At least 27 children have already starved to death, the ICJ judges noted on Thursday. Thursday’s order was requested by South Africa, which filed a legal action last year accusing Israel of committing “systematic” war crimes and genocide in Gaza. Israel denies that it is committing genocide and insists that its military campaign against Hamas – which has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children – is legitimate self defense.

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“..their judgment is about the law as it stands not as some might like it to be..”

• UK Won’t Extradite Assange While Risk of Death Penalty Remains – Tory (Sp.)

The government of the United Kingdom will not want to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States as long as he could still face the death penalty there, Lord Richard Balfe, a Conservative member of the UK Parliament’s House of Lords, told Sputnik. On Tuesday, the High Court of Justice in London ruled that Assange has a real prospect of success on three of the nine grounds of appeal. The court asked the US government to provide assurances that the WikiLeaks founder would be able to claim the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedoms related to religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. The court also asked to ensure that Assange would not be prejudiced at his trial due to his nationality, and that he would not face the death penalty. The next hearing is scheduled for May 20 if the parties submit the necessary documents.

“I am sure that the lawyers of Julian Assange will pursue appeals for as long as they can. It is my belief that the UK Government will be unwilling to extradite without a clear undertaking that the death penalty will not be imposed,” Balfe said. When asked about the High Court’s decision, Balfe stated that the UK-US extradition treaty signed by the Blair government has a reputation of being flawed and placing uneven responsibilities on the UK as opposed to the US. “The job of the High Court is to interpret the existing law, not to invent new laws. As such their judgment is about the law as it stands not as some might like it to be,” Balfe said.

The lawmaker stated that he in no way supports the past actions of Assange, stressing the importance of passage of confidential information between governments for conducting international diplomacy and that “sometimes difficult decisions need to be taken and examples need to be made.” Assange, an Australian citizen, was transferred to London’s high-security Belmarsh prison in April 2019 on bail breach charges. In the US, he faces prosecution under the Espionage Act for obtaining and disclosing classified information that shed light on war crimes and human rights violations committed by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. If convicted, the WikiLeaks founder could face up to 175 years in prison. One of the last means of preventing his transfer to the US may be an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Assange lost his previous appeal at the UK High Court last June.

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“..the British court could order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction, or decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard there.”

• The Crucifixion of Julian Assange (Chris Hedges)

Prosecutors representing the United States, whether by design or incompetence, refused — in the two-day hearing I attended in London in February — to provide guarantees that Julian Assange would be afforded First Amendment rights and would be spared the death penalty if extradited to the U.S. The inability to give these assurances all but guaranteed that the High Court — as it did on Tuesday — would allow Julian’s lawyers to appeal. Was this done to stall for time so that Julian would not be extradited until after the U.S. presidential election? Was it a delaying tactic to work out a plea deal? Julian’s lawyers and U.S. prosecutors are discussing this possibility. Was it careless legal work? Or was it to keep Julian locked in a high security prison until he collapses mentally and physically? If Julian is extradited, he will stand trial for allegedly violating 17 counts of the 1917 Espionage Act, with a potential sentence of 170 years, along with another charge for “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” carrying an additional five years.

The court will permit Julian to appeal minor technical points — his basic free speech rights must be honored, he cannot be discriminated against on the basis of his nationality and he cannot be under threat of the death penalty. No new hearing will allow his lawyers to focus on the war crimes and corruption that WikiLeaks exposed. No new hearing will permit Julian to mount a public-interest defense. No new hearing will discuss the political persecution of a publisher who has not committed a crime. The court, by asking the U.S. for assurances that Julian would be granted First Amendment rights in the U.S. courts and not be subject to the death penalty, offered the U.S. an easy out — give the guarantees and the appeal is rejected.

It is hard to see how the U.S. can refuse the two-judge panel, composed of Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson, which issued on Tuesday a 66-page judgment accompanied by a three-page court order and a four-page media briefing. The hearing in February was Julian’s last chance to request an appeal of the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel, and many of the rulings of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in 2021. If Julian is denied an appeal, he can request an emergency stay of execution from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But it is possible the British court could order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction, or decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard there.

[..] Julian did not, unlike Daniel Ellsberg, leak the documents. He published documents leaked by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Three of the nine legal grounds were accepted by the judges as potential points for appeal. The other six were denied. The two-judge panel also rejected the request by Julian’s lawyers to present new evidence. Julian’s legal team asked the court to introduce into the case the Yahoo! News report that revealed, after the release of the documents known as Vault 7, that the then-director of the CIA Mike Pompeo, considered assassinating Julian. Julian’s lawyers also hoped to introduce a statement from Joshua Dratel, a U.S. attorney, who said that Pompeo’s use of the terms “non-state hostile intelligence service” and “enemy combatant” were phrases designed to give legal cover for an assassination.

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“Hundreds of deranged Hollywood liberals will be in attendance, and they will open their wallets to fund the destruction of country!”

“Mr Trump is also in the New York area on Thursday, attending the wake of a police officer, Jonathan Diller, who was shot and killed in the line of duty..”

While there, Trump offered to pay off the mortgage for his widow.

• Biden To Host Star-studded NYC Fundraiser With Obama And Clinton (BBC)

US President Joe Biden is set to host a record-breaking fundraiser in New York City, alongside his predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. The event is projected to raise over $25m (£20m) for the Democrat’s re-election campaign – the most ever for a single political event, says his team. The event looks set to extend a growing cash gap between Mr Biden and his Republican challenger Donald Trump. The Biden campaign recently declared it had $155m cash to hand. Mr Trump is also in the New York area on Thursday, attending the wake of a police officer, Jonathan Diller, who was shot and killed in the line of duty. Despite the Republican’s lower cash pile and legal troubles, a number of national polls indicate he could still beat Mr Biden in their November rematch. Over 5,000 people are expected to attend the star-studded Democratic fundraiser on Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall, with many more watching online.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1773401980355944563

Late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert will moderate a conversation with the three presidents. The event will be hosted by actress Mindy Kaling and feature musical performances from Lizzo, Queen Latifah and Lea Michele. First Lady Jill Biden will host an after-party for 500 guests. The president’s son, Hunter Biden, and his family are also attending. The tickets are priced between $225 and half-a-million dollars. For $100,000, guests can get a picture with all three presidents, with star photographer Annie Leibovitz taking the snaps. President Biden was joined on the Air Force One flight to New York by Mr Obama, whom he served as vice-president from 2009-2017. Mr Obama, wearing a casual dress shirt, briefly came back for an off-the-record chat with reporters on the presidential jet. New York ground to a halt for their arrival as the two men’s huge motorcade cut across Manhattan in the pouring rain. Hundreds of onlookers jostled to take pictures.

Mr Biden’s previous best single-day fundraising effort was the $10m he raised in 24 hours after his State of the Union address this month. His fundraising has also been boosted by the advantage of incumbency. “Biden raising a lot of money is probably a function of him not having any real primary challengers,” Joseph Campbell, a communications professor at American University, told the BBC. “There’s no competition for Democratic donor money.” The $155m million in cash his campaign has is the most of any Democratic candidate in history at this point in an election cycle, according to his campaign. Mr Trump and his political action committees reported having $74m.

The Republican candidate raised $20m in the whole of February, less than what President Biden expects to receive just from Thursday’s event.In addition to Mr Trump’s fundraising challenges, his campaign and committees have spent millions of dollars in legal fees fighting four criminal cases against him. Mr Trump, 77, blasted the Democratic fundraising event in a fundraising email of his own, sent out by his campaign on Thursday morning. “Hundreds of deranged Hollywood liberals will be in attendance, and they will open their wallets to fund the destruction of country!” the message said.

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“The sound of our ancestor’s song has grown weaker..”

• Maori King Calls For Recognizing Whales As People (RT)

The king of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people has signed a ‘Declaration for the Ocean’ that calls for whales to be granted legal personhood as part of a plan to protect them, AFP reported on Thursday. The declaration reportedly recognizes the mammals as legal persons with the inherent right to freedom of movement, natural behavior, and expression of their unique cultures. The declaration has been made with the intent of helping whales recover their depleted population. “The sound of our ancestor’s song has grown weaker, and her habitat is under threat, which is why we must act now,” King Tuheitia Potatau te Wherowhero VII was quoted as saying. He was echoed by high chief Travel Tou Ariki, who said: “We can no longer turn a blind eye. Whales play a vital role in the health of our entire ocean ecosystem … We must act with urgency to protect these magnificent creatures before it’s too late.”

Whales have traditionally had cultural significance for the Maori as supernatural beings and as harbingers of spiritual growth. Some tribes see the mammals as the descendants of Tangaroa, the god of the ocean. Whales are some of the largest mammals on earth, with blue whales reaching up to 30.5 meters (100 feet) in length and weighing up to 200 tons. Many of the species are endangered. The move to grant whales personhood would not be without precedent. In 2017, New Zealand passed a groundbreaking law granting personhood status to the Whanganui River and Mount Taranaki volcano, both of which are important to the Maori people. The Maori are the second-largest ethnic group in New Zealand and currently make up about 17% of the country’s total population, or about 900,000 people.

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Cancer: A Food-Borne Illness
https://twitter.com/i/status/1773126285633507786

 

 

Camelemon

 

 

Cats

 

 

Swan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1773217153363181623

 

 

 

 

Shoal

 

 

Puppy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1773473225487389036

 

 

Moose
https://twitter.com/i/status/1773228532237214034

 

 

Boji
https://twitter.com/i/status/1773417411372597563

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 29 2024

Feb 292024
 
 February 29, 2024  Posted by at 10:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


Paul Gauguin A Day of No Gods 1894

 

• Illinois Judge Rules Trump Disqualified From Ballot (ET)
• Trump Asks Judge to Block Testimony From Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels (ET)
• EU Leaders ‘Scared To Death’ By Trump – Biden (RT)
• Follow the McCaskill Rule on the Biden’s Use of False Story (Turley)
• Biden Needs Legal Authority From Congress to Act on Russian Assets – White House (Sp.)
• Hunter Biden Planned Global Hedge Fund to Benefit Joe (Sp.)
• Joe Biden ‘The Closer’ In Hunter’s Corrupt Schemes (Fox)
• The Obamas are RUNNING the Country (VDH)
• Israel, Hamas Contradict Biden Claim That Gaza Ceasefire Is Close (Sneineh)
• Ukraine In ‘Catastrophic Situation’ – Zakharova (RT)
• Media’s Selective Coverage Of Navalny and Lira (Macleod)
• The October 7th America Has Forgotten (Mazzarino)
• China’s Unexpected Gains From The Red Sea Crisis (Cradle)
• Explosive Truth of US’ Nord Stream Sabotage Could ‘Destroy’ NATO (Sp.)
• Elon Musk Slams US-Mexico Border Security (RT)

 

 

 

 

Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1763001928554860831

 

 

Tom Fitton: In a massive loss for Biden regime/Jack Smith and the rabid anti-Trump DC courts, Supreme Court GRANTS Trump request to pause proceedings so it can decide whether a former president can be prosecuted for official acts:

The application for a stay presented to The Chief Justice is referred by him to the Court. The Special Counsel’s request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, and that petition is granted limited to the following question: Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. Without expressing a view on the merits, this Court directs the Court of Appeals to continue withholding issuance of the mandate until the sending down of the judgment of this Court. The application for a stay is dismissed as moot.

The case will be set for oral argument during the week of April 22, 2024. Petitioner’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support or in support of neither party, are to be filed on or before Tuesday, March 19, 2024. Respondent’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support, are to be filed on or before Monday, April 8, 2024. The reply brief, if any, is to be filed on or before 5 p.m., Monday, April 15, 2024.

 

 

Turley: “The order setting argument on immunity for April 22 is a blow to Smith on the calendar. Rather than granting a stay, it has constructively created such a stay by scheduling the argument. Keep in mind, even if Smith prevails, pre-trial work must wait for the return of the mandate..”

 

 

Star witness

 

 

KJP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“In the meantime, President Trump remains on the Illinois ballot, is dominating the polls, and will Make America Great Again!”

• Illinois Judge Rules Trump Disqualified From Ballot (ET)

Ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on whether former President Donald Trump can be disqualified as a candidate by individual states under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, an Illinois judge ruled President Trump ineligible for the ballot. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Tracie Porter, following other jurisdictions, stayed her order to remove the former president pending an appeal. The ruling came a week after the judge heard arguments regarding Illinois statutes. “This Order is stayed until March 1, 2024 in anticipation of an appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, or the Illinois Supreme Court. This Order is further stayed if the United States Supreme Court in Anderson v. Griswold enters a decision inconsistent with this Order,” the ruling reads.

On Feb. 8, the day the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding Colorado’s disqualification of President Trump, mail-in ballots were sent out in Illinois with President Trump’s name on them. This puts the state in a position to potentially have to not count votes cast for him. If the order is not stayed and reversed, the state elections board will be tasked with removing “Donald J. Trump from the ballot for the General Primary Election on March 19, 2024, or cause any votes cast for him to be suppressed, according to the procedures within their administrative authority.” Much of the judge’s opinion and order dealt with state law and whether the state elections board had the jurisdiction to rule on this matter. The judge found that Illinois law allowed petitioners to bring this kind of a challenge and that President Trump was “disqualified by engaging in insurrection,” noting that this finding was echoed by the hearing officer of the state election board and the Colorado Supreme Court.

“This Court shares the Colorado Supreme Court’s sentiments that did not reach its conclusions lightly. This Court also realizes the magnitude of this decision and it (sic) impact on the upcoming primary Illinois elections,” the order reads. Both of those jurisdictions based the “insurrection” conclusion on records that plaintiffs presented drawn largely from the controversial Jan. 6 Select Committee report. Judge Porter determined that Section 3 was self-executing, applied to presidents, and could be applied by individual states even in the event of a national election. These legal issues are all currently before the Supreme Court, which on Feb. 8 questioned attorneys representing President Trump and six petitioners from Colorado on the ramifications of states applying Section 3 at length and spent little time discussing whether an insurrection occurred.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to the decision by highlighting that the judge was acting against the decision of the state’s board of elections and other relevant rulings, and called Judge Porter an “activist Democrat judge.” “The Soros-funded Democrat front-groups continue to attempt to interfere in the election and deny President Trump his rightful place on the ballot,” he said. “Today, an activist Democrat judge in Illinois summarily overruled the state’s board of elections and contradicted earlier decisions from dozens of other state and federal jurisdictions. “This is an unconstitutional ruling that we will quickly appeal,” he added. “In the meantime, President Trump remains on the Illinois ballot, is dominating the polls, and will Make America Great Again!”

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“The judge in President Trump’s civil fraud trial said that Mr. Cohen’s testimony was “significantly compromised..” “Arthur Engoron, who fined President Trump $355 million for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get better loan terms, said he found Mr. Cohen’s testimony “credible.”

• Trump Asks Judge to Block Testimony From Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels (ET)

Former President Donald Trump has asked the judge in his so-called “hush money” case to issue pretrial rulings that would block certain evidence and witness testimony that the former president says his opponents want to exploit to undermine his 2024 presidential campaign. The case centers on allegations that President Trump falsified business records to hide $130,000 in payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford) in exchange for keeping quiet about her allegations about an affair. President Trump has repeatedly denied any affair or wrongdoing, while calling the case a politically-motivated ploy to hurt his chances of winning the race for the White House.

With trial scheduled to start on March 25, President Trump is now ramping up his rhetoric, accusing prosecutors in a 47-page motion filed on Monday of planning to put forward “improper arguments” and “inadmissible evidence” in order to bolster their “listless ‘zombie’ case” and interfere in the upcoming presidential election. At the top of the list of what President Trump wants New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to block is any new testimony from his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who has admitted to lying to Congress. Other demands include blocking testimony from Ms. Clifford, former Trump doorman Dino Sajudin, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as other requests related to evidentiary and procedural matters. President Trump’s motion challenges the credibility of the witnesses, including calling Mr. Cohen a “liar” and suggesting Ms. Clifford would offer “false” testimony.

“The People should be precluded from suborning additional perjury by Michael Cohen,” President Trump’ attorney, Todd Blanche, wrote in the filing. He said Mr. Cohen lied to lawmakers in 2017 and, more recently, perjured himself while testifying at President Trump civil fraud trial in October. The judge in President Trump’s civil fraud trial said that Mr. Cohen’s testimony was “significantly compromised” by his misleading statements to Congress and by some “seeming contradictions” in what he said at trial. Still, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who fined President Trump $355 million for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get better loan terms, said he found Mr. Cohen’s testimony “credible.” Mr. Blanche wrote in the filing that prosecutors have an obligation to ensure that testimony presented to judges and juries is truthful. He argued that it was a “troubling” violation of prosecutors’ ethical and constitutional obligations for them to push for testimony from Mr. Cohen, whom he called a “serial liar.”

President Trump’s attorney also asked the judge to issue a pretrial ruling that would render as inadmissible testimony from Ms. Clifford. “The People should be precluded from offering testimony from or regarding Stephanie Clifford, who has made clear through public statements that she intends to offer false, salacious, and unduly prejudicial testimony relating to President Trump,” Mr. Blanche wrote in the filing. Ms. Clifford wrote a tell-all memoir that included salacious details of her alleged tryst with the former president at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California, in 2006. She then promoted the book in a series of media interviews and talk show appearances, in which she claimed she was pressured to sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for $130,000 in hush money payments. Ms. Clifford has also expressed enthusiasm to take the stand against President Trump.

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“You got to pay your bills,” Trump recalled telling the unnamed ally..”

• EU Leaders ‘Scared To Death’ By Trump – Biden (RT)

US President Joe Biden has criticized his predecessor Donald Trump’s comments on NATO as “absolutely bizarre,” after the Republican frontrunner said Washington should not defend its European allies who refuse to fulfill their military spending commitments. President Biden slammed his Republican rival during a “surprise” guest appearance on NBC’s ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers’ on Monday, insisting that Trump’s idea that the US is not obliged to protect its allies was “totally against our interest.” “I’ve known every major foreign leader for the longest time, and I know all these guys extremely well. They’re scared to death. What it means for them, for them, what it means if we walk away.” Biden said. “It is just outrageous what he is talking about.”

Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail was in line with his NATO-skeptic stance during his term in the White House. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina earlier this month, Trump recalled an encounter in which he supposedly told a European leader that unless that nation met the spending threshold, the US would consider it “delinquent” and not defend it in the event of a Russian attack. “In fact I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills,” Trump recalled telling the unnamed ally. Facing criticism for this “dangerous” and “un-American” stance, Trump doubled down with his verbal attack on low-spending members of the military bloc, arguing that the rest of NATO needs to send at least as much aid to Ukraine as the US does.

Trump also called on his loyalists in the US legislature to oppose any future assistance for Ukraine unless it includes a means to recoup the money. “They want to give them $60 billion more,” Trump said. “Why should you just hand it over to them? Do it as the form of a loan… If they can make it, they pay us back.” With Sweden clearing the final hurdle for accession this week, the trans-Atlantic alliance now has 32 member states, only two of which are located in North America. The organization recommends that each country spend at least 2% of GDP on military purposes, but even the wealthiest members such as Germany, France and Italy, have failed to meet the target for decades. However, smaller EU nations did ramp up their military spending during Trump’s presidency, something he has claimed as a personal diplomatic achievement.

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“Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, “suggested that it’s actually Trump, not President Biden, who seems to be showing signs of mental decline.”

• Follow the McCaskill Rule on the Biden’s Use of False Story (Turley)

We recently discussed the call by MSNBC contributor and former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill for the media to stop fact checking Joe Biden before the election. Some in the media appear to have gotten the McCaskill memo in running the false story repeated by Biden in his interview this week on NBC. What is particularly striking is that the President is again being accused of spreading disinformation, the very basis used by his Administration to censor critics and groups. His Administration even pushed LinkedIn to bar those who have spread disinformation. President Joe Biden’s interview on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” has produced the usual diametrically opposite reviews. On the left, he was witty, spontaneous, and fun. On the right, he was wooden, scripted, and feeble. However, there is a new controversy over the President repeating a debunked claim that his leading opponent, Donald Trump, cannot remember the name of his wife. He was not alone.

The usual media outlets repeated the false claim and then refused to correct their false stories. It follows a familiar pattern of media adopting the most absurd interpretation of remarks while ignoring the obvious meaning. President Biden has long been challenged over false statements that range from accusing mounted border agents of whipping migrants to claiming that his son died in Iraq to embellishing his own history. He was recently called out for falsely accusing Special Counsel Robert Hur for raising his son’s death. It was the President who raised the death. What is striking about this incidence is that the falsity of this story was immediately called out and some in the media had the integrity to identify it as disinformation. Yet, it did not matter to Biden or his staff. The interview seemed highly scripted and it appeared that the questions were given to Biden in advance by NBC (as demonstrated by Biden holding his aviator glasses in anticipation of a line from Meyers as a prop). If so, it appears that his staff also did not care that the story was untrue.

Biden is trying to control the damage after a special counsel cited his diminished faculties as a reason for not indicting him. On the show, this issue of the President’s age was gently raised and Biden responded: “Well, a couple things. Number one, you got to take a look at the other guy. He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name!” It was a reference to the claim that Trump called his wife Melania “Mercedes” during the keynote speech at a recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event. However, many pointed out that he was addressing Mercedes Schlapp, the wife of CPAC founder Matt Schlapp. The usual suspects spread the false claim such as Independent, Metro, and other sites as well as many on social media. Some liberal sites joyfully reported the false statement, opining “calling your wife by another woman’s name in bed or anywhere else is near most always a death sentence.

Trump called his wife, on stage and in front of a room full of people, Mercedes. Maybe he just confused to two because they’re both expensive to keep up when they get older.” Even for some of the outlets, the fact that it was untrue was only mentioned in passing while seemingly praising Biden for going on the attack on Trump. Salon ran an article entitled “He can’t remember his wife’s name!”: Biden turns the tables on Trump over age attacks, it then buried the fact that he was referring to Schlapp deep in the column. “Turning the tables” was using something that his own administration would consider malicious disinformation. Forbes said the President “flipped the script” on Trump with the attack. The usual experts came forward to issue medical judgments. Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, “suggested that it’s actually Trump, not President Biden, who seems to be showing signs of mental decline.”

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Doesn’t stop him from starting wars either.

• Biden Needs Legal Authority From Congress to Act on Russian Assets – WH (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden requires legal authority from Congress to take action on frozen Russian assets, White House National Security Communications adviser John Kirby said on Tuesday. “I want to make a couple of things clear. Number one, we still need more legislative authorities from Congress for the President to be able to act on that [unlocking assets],” Kirby said during a press briefing. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said earlier in the day that the Group of Seven countries should work together to explore different approaches to utilizing frozen Russian assets, including seizing and using them as collateral to borrow on global markets. Russia said it would view any move to seize or use its frozen assets as an “escalation of economic aggression” and would respond harshly.

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“The younger Biden proposed a list of billionaire investors for the new venture, including tycoons from China, Spain, Kazakhstan, Russia, South America, Africa and the Middle East.”

• Hunter Biden Planned Global Hedge Fund to Benefit Joe (Sp.)

US president Joe Biden’s son Hunter plotted to set up a shadowy fund to cash in on his influence — so says a former business partner. Independent US media outlet Just the News has obtained a recent statement by Hunter Biden’s business associate Jason Galanis to the House impeachment inquiry.He said Hunter and his business buddies planned to build a global hedge fund with Joe Biden as its “central asset.” “The entire value-add of Hunter Biden to our business was his family name and his access to his father, Vice President Joe Biden,” Galanis told the House impeachment investigators. “Our objective was to build a diversified private equity platform, which would be anchored by a globally known Wall Street brand together with a globally known political name.” Hunter Biden sought “strategic relationships to the venture” with tycoons from all over the world, including from post-Soviet space.

Just the News quoted emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous “laptop from hell” which allegedly confirm the ambitious plan. “This is a global cooperation group that will assist each other in our respective regions in whatever manner possible,” Hunter’s other associate, Jeff Cooper, wrote in March 2014. The younger Biden proposed a list of billionaire investors for the new venture, including tycoons from China, Spain, Kazakhstan, Russia, South America, Africa and the Middle East. One of Hunter’s partners, Chinese businessman Xuejun “Henry” Zhao, showed interest in the plan based on the prospect that Joe Biden would join the venture after his vice presidential term ended. “Mr. Zhao was interested in this partnership because of the game-changing value add of the Biden family, including Joe Biden, who was to be a member of the Burnham-Harvest team post-vice presidency, providing political access in the United States and around the world,” Galanis said.

Galanis’s lawyer provided a draft email backing up the businessman’s testimony. “Michael, please also remind Henry [Zhao] of our conversation about a board seat for a certain relation of mine,” Hunter reportedly wrote. “Devon [Archer] and I golfed with that relation earlier last week and we discussed this very idea again and as always he remains very very keen on the opportunity.” According to Galanis, the “certain relation” was none other than Joe Biden. Even though the phrase was removed from the final email, it remained in Galanis’ records. The group’s plan to assemble a “dream team” of international billionaires and create a global Biden business empire took a serious knock when Archer and Galanis were charged and convicted of a plot to steal $43 million in tribal bonds. Hunter Biden avoided scrutiny despite “then-available documentation that we were partners, were involved in the decision making that involved illegal self-dealing, and all of us had financially benefited from these schemes,” Galanis claimed.

Galanis told House investigators that the illegal tribal bond scheme was part of a larger effort to create a financial platform for the Biden hedge fund. “In an effort to build this financial platform, I engaged in unlawful conduct. Our companies were entrusted with $11 billion of union members’ pension fund money whose trust I betrayed,” Galanis stated. “I pleaded guilty. I have had eight years in federal custody to reflect on my actions and I am profoundly sorry for my role.”

Gaetz

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“What Harvey sells at a high price is his outsized reputation —the prospect of power and influence..”

• Joe Biden ‘The Closer’ In Hunter’s Corrupt Schemes (Fox)

In the hit TV series “Suits,” the lead character Harvey Specter is known as “the closer.” His underlings construct the lucrative agreements, but Harvey’s mere appearance in a room or a timely phone call always closes the deals. What Harvey sells at a high price is his outsized reputation —the prospect of power and influence. That appears to have been Joe Biden’s role in the numerous overseas schemes that netted tens of millions of dollars for his son and family. The elder Biden adopted a Specter-like modus operandi, according to evidence uncovered by the House impeachment investigation. That is, Hunter Biden solicited deals with foreign actors by selling access to his powerful dad and promises of influence. Joe would attend meetings or show up at dinners arranged with the benefactors. Sometimes he’d simply join in on a phone call. His presence signified his assent and participation, thus closing the deals.

Enormous sums of cash would immediately flow into Hunter-controlled banks accounts where the payola was funneled through a complex web of shell companies. Some of it was then distributed to Biden family members. In legal terms, the House Oversight and Judiciary committees portray Joe Biden as a witting accessory who actively aided and abetted the influence-peddling schemes by helping to sell the “Biden Brand.” Hunter associates Devon Archer and Tony Bobulinski have already testified in detail how the Bidens enriched themselves by marketing their own brand as the Washington DC power version of a Nike sports brand. The first son put it best in a WhatsApp message to his Chinese business partners when he bragged, “The Bidens are the best at doing exactly what (the) Chairman wants.”

As Harvey Specter liked to say, “It’s not bragging if it’s true.” And the Chinese knew that better than anyone. In one deal alone with the Beijing conglomerate CEFC China Energy, the Bidens hauled in $5 million. The money was wired only after Hunter sent an urgent missive armed with a thinly veiled threat, “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.” For emphasis, Hunter then added, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”

The CEFC transaction is especially illuminating because there are coded references to Joe Biden receiving a 10 percent cut of future profits that could have reached hundreds of millions of dollars. Two of Hunter’s former partners confirmed that Joe was “the Big Guy.” The IRS whistleblowers also verified it, although they complained that Biden’s Department of Justice tried to cover it up. Recently, Bobulinski testified, “The only reason any of these transactions took place…was because Joe Biden was in high office. The Biden family business was Joe Biden, period.” Bobulinski explained that the Vice President would call or meet with Hunter’s overseas partners “to demonstrate the ‘Biden Brand’ to whoever was in that meeting, whether it was the Ukrainians, the Romanians, the Russians, Colombians, Chinese, whoever it was. That’s all he had to do.”

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X thread. “Obama’s responsible for the border. He’s responsible for the whole crime epidemic. This is what he wanted. And Biden was very useful.”

• The Obamas are RUNNING the Country (VDH)

“The Obamas are RUNNING the Country,” says military historian Victor Davis Hanson. Barack Obama said he wanted to serve a third term “in my basement in my sweats.” And he’s “living his dream” using Joe Biden as a “cardboard person they cut out,” declared @VDHanson. “Obama never moved the country as left as he wanted to. He was too timid, and he felt that he wasn’t yet ready. He would hurt his legacy if he didn’t get reelected. It was too dangerous. So now, with Joe Biden, he’s living his dream.” In November 2020, Barack Obama said to Stephen Colbert:

“And I used to say, ‘You know what, if I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or a front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement with my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, I would be fine with that.’” “That’s what he’s doing right now,” remarked Hanson. “The Obamas are running the country. When my point is – they want Joe Biden the way he is because he’s a construct. He’s just a cardboard person they cut out and they plopped him down in the basement, and they make him move once in a while, and then they run all of the agency. Obama’s responsible for the border. He’s responsible for the whole crime epidemic. This is what he wanted. And Biden was very useful.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762901089995587931

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“..we do not understand what the American president’s optimism is based on.”

• Israel, Hamas Contradict Biden Claim That Gaza Ceasefire Is Close (Sneineh)

U.S. President Joe Biden said that he hopes a ceasefire will be reached between Israel and Hamas by next week, which would end Israel’s aggression on Gaza and secure the release of the Israelis taken captive on October 7, 2023. “Well, I hope by the beginning of the weekend, by the end of the weekend,” he told reporters. His comment came as an Israeli delegation flew for intensive talks to Qatar, which plays a mediator role along with Egypt. “My national security adviser tells me that we’re close. We’re close. We’re not done yet. My hope is, by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden added while visiting an ice cream shop in New York on Monday. Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been going on since December, but so far, they have not borne fruit. They have been hindered by the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Saleh Aruri in January, the ground invasion of Khan Younis, and most recently, the threats to invade Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians are currently sheltering.

Biden also said that Israel“agreed” to end its military operations in the Gaza Strip for almost six weeks, which include the months of Ramadan that starts on March 10 and ends on April 9. “Ramadan’s coming up, and there’s been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out,” Biden said. There have been a few frameworks for a deal between Israel and Hamas that have been leaked since December. The most recent one, but yet to be confirmed by either Israeli or Hamas officials, is a temporary truce for 40 days, the release of 40 Israeli hostages, five female soldiers, and 35 civilians, in return for 400 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel’s air force will cease flights over Gaza for eight hours a day, withdraw from several areas, and allow the gradual return of Palestinians to north Gaza, except men “who are at the age of enlistment for Hamas,” Yediot Ahronoth reported. The deal involves the entry of 500 trucks of humanitarian aid daily into Gaza, 200,000 tents for displaced families, and 60,000 mobile homes. In addition, Israel agreed to an American proposal to free 15 Palestinian national figures from Israeli jails in return for the release of five Israeli soldiers.

However, Israeli and Hamas officials met Biden’s optimistic language less enthusiastically. A senior Israeli official told Yedioth Ahronoth that “we do not understand what the American president’s optimism is based on.” Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas political chief, said the movement “will not allow the enemy to use negotiations as a cover for this crime”. Previously, Hamas described the optimism of reaching a deal as “far from the truth.” Biden’s comment seems to be more about the U.S. presidential race and less about ending the Israeli assault on Gaza. His campaign is attempting to win Muslim and Arab American voters in states such as Michigan, which votes today in a Democratic primary to choose the party’s presidential candidate, and where anger over the administration’s firm support of Israel’s war on Gaza is profound.

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“.. the French leader’s statement has had the opposite effect, especially after a large number of NATO representatives publicly stated that they were in no way considering sending their own soldiers to fight for Ukraine..”

• Ukraine In ‘Catastrophic Situation’ – Zakharova (RT)

The current frontline situation is “monstrous” and “catastrophic” for Kiev and nothing can save it at this stage, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview with Sputnik radio station on Monday. According to her, even promises by French President Emmanuel Macron to send Western troops into Ukraine will not be enough to change the minds of the Ukrainian people, who have started to wake up to the fact that they have been betrayed by the West. The French leader had said this at a meeting of representatives from 20 Western nations, when Paris proposed the scenario of sending Western ground forces to Ukraine. Although a consensus on the proposal was not reached during that meeting, Macron has said that, in the future, such a scenario could not be ruled out.

Zakharova suggested that Macron’s statement was an attempt to send out a “bright” and “powerful statement that would somehow inspire people in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and in the ranks of Ukrainian citizens being driven to slaughter” that the West would help them. However, according to the spokeswoman, the French leader’s statement has had the opposite effect, especially after a large number of NATO representatives publicly stated that they were in no way considering sending their own soldiers to fight for Ukraine. “The signal was exactly the opposite – that they betrayed Ukraine and will continue to use and betray it,” she said. Countries that have officially dismissed any notion of sending their troops to fight for Kiev include the UK, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Finland and Sweden, among others.

NATO’s own Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, has also shot down Macron’s statement, insisting that there are “no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.” Moscow, meanwhile, has warned that a direct conflict between Russia and NATO would become “inevitable” if the members of the US-led bloc decided to deploy their forces to Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that those who have opposed the move appear to have arrived at a “sober assessment of the potential risks” and realized that such a decision would be “absolutely against the interests of those nations” and their people. Russia has repeatedly stated that it considers the Ukraine conflict to be a Washington-orchestrated proxy war against Moscow, and has repeatedly warned that by supplying increasingly sophisticated weapons to Kiev, NATO members are drawing closer to a direct confrontation.

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“Navalny was a controversial character. Earlier in his political career, he was a prominent leader in xenophobic, far-right marches. He also appeared in a political video where he described the Muslim people of the Northern Caucasus as an “infestation of cockroaches.”

• Media’s Selective Coverage Of Navalny and Lira (Macleod)

MintPress conducted a quantitative analysis of the media coverage of two political figures who recently died in prison: Alexey Navalny and Gonzalo Lira. Both were controversial characters and critics of the governments that imprisoned them. Both died under suspicious circumstances (their families both maintain they were effectively murdered). And both died in the past six weeks, Navalny in February and Lira in January. A crucial difference in their stories, however, is that Navalny perished in an Arctic penal colony after being arrested in Russia (an enemy state), while Lira’s life ended in a Ukrainian prison, abandoned by the pro-Kiev government in Washington, D.C. The study compared the coverage of Navalny and Lira’s death in five leading outlets: the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News, and CNN. These outlets were chosen for their reach and influence and, together, could be said to reasonably represent the corporate media spectrum as a whole.

The data was compiled using the Dow Jones Factiva news database and searches on the websites of the news organizations. This study takes no position on the matter of Navalny, Lira, or the Russia-Ukraine war. In total, the five outlets collectively ran 731 articles or segments that discussed or mentioned Navalny’s death, including 151 from the Times, 75 from the Post, 177 from ABC, 215 from Fox, and 113 from CNN. This means that each organization studied ran more than one piece per hour. This media storm stands in stark contrast to the Lira case, where the entire corporate media coverage of his death boiled down to a single Fox News article. Moreover, the article in question described him as “spreading pro-Russian propaganda” in its headline, did not inform readers that there was anything suspicious about his death, and appeared to be doing its best to justify his treatment in the body of the article. Aside from that, there was radio silence.

It is perhaps understandable that Navalny’s death was covered in much greater detail than Lira’s. Navalny was a political leader known across Russia and the world who died just weeks before the country’s presidential elections. Yet Lira was far from unknown. News anchor Tucker Carlson, for example, devoted an entire show to his imprisonment, while high-profile figures like Twitter owner Elon Musk took up his cause. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller has been repeatedly asked about Lira’s case and has failed to offer concrete answers. As an American living in Ukraine who took a pro-Russian line on the invasion, Lira built up a following of hundreds of thousands of people across his social media platforms.

As an American citizen who died while in the custody of a government that the U.S. has provided with tens of billions of dollars in aid, it could be argued that Lira’s case is particularly noteworthy for an American audience and should be given special attention. Moreover, Lira died more than one month before Navalny, meaning that the study compares more than 40 days of Lira coverage to just six days of coverage of Navalny’s death, making the disparity all the more glaring.

Alexey Navalny was a lawyer, activist and the leader of the opposition Russia of the Future Party. A fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, for many, especially in the West, he became a symbol of the struggle for human rights and democracy in Russia. In 2021, he released a documentary film alleging that Putin was building an enormous $1 billion palace on the Black Sea for himself. Navalny made many enemies and was allegedly poisoned in 2020. Although most in the West believe the Kremlin was behind the incident, this is not a commonly held view in Russia. After returning from Germany for medical treatment in January 2021, he was incarcerated. On. February 16, 2024, he died at the notorious Polar Wolf penal camp in Russia’s far north. “Vladimir Putin killed my husband,” Navalny’s wife, Yulia, said in a statement, adding, “The most important thing we can do for Alexey and for ourselves is to keep fighting more desperately and more fiercely than before.”

Western leaders are largely of the same opinion. President Joe Biden said that, while the details are still unclear, “there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did.” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said that he was “brutally murdered by the Kremlin.” That’s a fact, and that is something one should know about the true nature of Russia’s current regime,” he added. Other politicians were more cautious. “Why this hurry to accuse someone?” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) asked. “If the death is under suspicion, we must first carry out an investigation to find out why this person died,” he said. Despite Lula’s warning, Western nations are already taking action against Russia. Both the U.S. and the U.K. have announced new rounds of “major sanctions” against Moscow, although it is far from clear to what extent previous sanctions actually hurt Russia.

Although he enjoyed a good reputation in the West, in his homeland, Navalny was a controversial character. Earlier in his political career, he was a prominent leader in xenophobic, far-right marches. He also appeared in a political video where he described the Muslim people of the Northern Caucasus as an “infestation of cockroaches.” While bugs can be killed with a slipper, in the case of human infestations, “I recommend a pistol,” he said before mimicking shooting one. According to a 2023 poll, just 9% of Russians held a positive view of him, compared to 57% who disapproved of his activities.

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“..something more sinister may be at play in shaping what violence we choose to focus on and condemn, and what violence we choose to overlook.”

• The October 7th America Has Forgotten (Mazzarino)

We Americans have been at war now since October 7th, 2001. That was when our military first launched air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan in response to al-Qaeda’s September 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. That’s 22 years and counting. The “war on terror” that began then would forever change what it meant to be an Arab-American here at home, while ending the lives of more than 400,000 civilians — and still counting! — in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In the days after those September 11th attacks, the U.S. would enjoy the goodwill and support of countries around the world. Only in March 2003, with our invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, would much of the world begin to regard us as aggressors.

Does that sound like any other armed conflict you’ve heard about recently? What it brings to my mind is, of course, Israel’s response to the October 7th terror assault by the Islamic militant group Hamas on its border areas, which my country and much of the rest of the world roundly condemned. Many Americans now see the destruction and suffering in Gaza and Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank as the crises of the day and I agree. It’s hard even to keep up with the death toll in the Palestinian territories, but you can certainly give it a college try. More than 29,000 Gazans have already been killed, more than 12,000 of them reportedly children. The scale of the loss of civilian life has been breathtaking in what are supposed to be targeted missions.

For example, in mid-February, in an ostensible attempt to free two Israeli hostages in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where more than one million civilians are now sheltering under the worst conditions imaginable, Israeli troops killed 74 Palestinians. Between December 2023 and January 2024, four strikes there had already killed at least 95 civilians. And on and on it goes. Anyone with concerns about Israel’s response to Hamas’s bloody attacks has ground to stand on.

But if war deaths among people of color in particular are really that much of a concern to Americans, especially on the political left, then there are significant gaps in our attention. Look at what’s happening in the 85 countries where the U.S. is currently engaged in “counterterrorism” efforts of one sort or another, where we fight alongside local troops, train or equip them, and conduct intelligence operations or even air strikes, all of it in an extension of those first responses to 9/11. Ask yourself if you’ve paid attention to that lately or if you were even aware that it was still happening. Do you have any idea, for instance, that our country’s military continues to pursue its war on terror across significant parts of Africa?

Given Israel’s October 7th tragedy, my mention of that date in 2001, which marked Washington’s first military response to the worst terrorist attacks on our soil, is more than a play on words. Like Israel, the U.S. was attacked by armed Islamic extremists who sought to make gruesome spectacles of ordinary Americans. Some of them, like the Israeli families smoked out of their saferooms only to be shot, flung themselves from their office buildings in New York’s Twin Towers, essentially choosing the least awful deaths under the circumstances. Yet after decades of America’s war on terror, whose benefits have been, to say the least, questionable, our tax dollars continue to fund the longest and bloodiest response to terrorism in our history. Our own October 7th and its seemingly never-ending consequences suggest that something more sinister may be at play in shaping what violence we choose to focus on and condemn, and what violence we choose to overlook.

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“Prior to the sending of the 46th fleet of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, Beijing’s response to Ansarallah’s maritime attacks had been relatively muted.”

• China’s Unexpected Gains From The Red Sea Crisis

The Gaza war’s expansion into the Red Sea has created an international maritime crisis involving a host of countries. Despite a US-led bombing campaign aimed at deterring Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned navy from carrying out missile and drone strikes in the Red Sea, the armed forces continue to ramp up attacks and now are using “submarine weapons.” As these clashes escalate dangerously, one of the world’s busiest bodies of water is rapidly militarizing. This includes the recent arrival to the Gulf of Aden of a Chinese fleet, including the guided-missile destroyer Jiaozuo, the missile frigate Xuchang, a replenishment vessel, and more than 700 troops – including dozens of special forces personnel – as part of a counter-piracy mission. Beijing has voiced its determination to help restore stability to the Red Sea.

“We should jointly uphold the security on the sea lanes of the Red Sea in accordance with the law and also respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries along the Red Sea coast, including Yemen,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasized last month. As the largest trading nation in the world, China depends on the Red Sea as its “maritime lifeline.” Most of the Asian giant’s exports to Europe go through the strategic waterway, and large quantities of oil and minerals that come to Chinese ports transit the body of water. The Chinese have also invested in industrial parks along Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coasts, including the TEDA–Suez Zone in Ain Sokhna and the Chinese Industrial Park in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan City for Primary and Downstream Industries. Prior to the sending of the 46th fleet of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, Beijing’s response to Ansarallah’s maritime attacks had been relatively muted.

China has since condemned the US–UK airstrikes against Ansarallah’s military capabilities in Yemen, and refused to join the western-led naval coalition, Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG). China’s response to mounting tension and insecurity in the Red Sea is consistent with Beijing’s grander set of foreign policy strategies, which include respect for the sovereignty of nation-states and a doctrine of “non-interference.” In the Persian Gulf, China has pursued a balanced and geopolitically neutral agenda resting on a three-pronged approach: enemies of no one, allies of no one, and friends of everyone. China’s position vis-à-vis all Persian Gulf countries was best exemplified almost a year ago when Beijing brokered a surprise reconciliation agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, in which it played the role of guarantor. In Yemen, although China aligns with the international community’s non-recognition of the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa, Beijing has nonetheless initiated dialogues with those officials and maintained a non-hostile stance – unlike many Arab and western states.

Overall, China tries to leverage its influence in West Asian countries to mitigate regional tensions and advance stabilizing initiatives. Its main goal is ultimately to ensure the long-term success of President Xi Jinping’s multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and keep trade routes free of conflict. Often labeled by the west as a “free rider,” China is accused of opportunistically benefiting from US- and European-led security efforts in the Persian Gulf and the northwestern Indian Ocean without contributing to them. But given China’s anti-piracy task force in the Gulf of Aden and its military base in Djibouti, this accusation isn’t entirely justified. Beijing’s motivations for staying out of OPG were easy to understand: first, China has no interest in bolstering US hegemony; second, joining the naval military coalition could upset its multi-vector diplomacy vis-à-vis Ansarallah and Iran; and third, the wider Arab–Islamic world and the rest of the Global South would interpret it as Chinese support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

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“The center is self-destructing and virtually now ushering in the far-right to take its place..”

• Explosive Truth of US’ Nord Stream Sabotage Could ‘Destroy’ NATO (Sp.)

On Monday, Denmark became the second European country to officially close its investigation into the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. for Ukraine’s proxy war against Russia. Lazare lists a number of figures benefiting from the phenomenon, including Donald Trump in the US, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. In September 2022 a series of explosions disabled both branches of the Nord Stream pipeline between Russia and Germany. Completed in 2012, for almost a decade the pipeline provided Russian natural gas to Western Europe. Although the United States expressed unease over the act of cooperation between Russia and its European allies, the Nord Stream played a crucial role in fueling German industry and providing low-cost energy throughout the continent.

Observers immediately blamed the United States for the act of industrial sabotage, pointing to US President Joe Biden’s cryptic promise to “bring an end” to the project if Russia moved to intervene in Ukraine’s attacks on the ethnically Russian Donbass region. Denmark’s inquiry indeed found the explosions were an act of “deliberate sabotage,” although Danish officials refused to investigate who bore responsibility. Investigative journalist Dan Lazare joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program on Wednesday to comment on the US ally’s report. “It’s just absolutely farcical,” said the iconoclastic author. “I don’t know how much longer this can go on. I mean, Denmark investigated, came up with a conclusion, and everybody knows it was obviously sabotage – that was obvious from the very start. And [Denmark] refrains from pointing a finger at a likely culprit.” “And the reason, of course, is the likeliest culprit – in fact, I’m 100% convinced that it is the culprit – is the United States,” he claimed. “But, Denmark, Sweden, everybody is afraid to say it. It’s extraordinary.”

Sweden, likewise a US ally, ended its own investigation into the Nord Stream disaster earlier this month, also without commenting on the culprit of the sabotage. Lazare said the United States’ guilt is obvious, but frequently ignored in order to safeguard relations between the US and Europe. That dynamic is playing to the benefit of far-right parties across the continent who are the only ones willing to openly acknowledge the US role in the act, according to Lazare. “The man or woman on the street knows perfectly well who did this, but the liberal centrist parties try to bottle it up, try to deny reality,” he explained. “Which means that the only parties talking about it [are] other parties, the populist parties on the far-right, like the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in Germany. And the AfD actually is riding this issue rather hard.” “So if the AfD is climbing in the polls they have Joe Biden to thank because Joe Biden blew the pipeline up, and everyone’s afraid to admit it,” Lazare concluded.

The Alternative for Deutschland is one of a number of rightwing forces currently enjoying increased support in the West amidst economic hardship and the political establishment’s increasingly unpopular support for Ukraine’s proxy war against Russia. Lazare lists a number of figures benefitting from the phenomenon, including Donald Trump in the US, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. “The center is self-destructing and virtually now ushering in the far-right to take its place,” he said, claiming establishment lawmakers “are going to pay a terrible, terrible price for covering this [Nord Stream sabotage] up.” But Lazare insisted that liberal political parties are not the only institutions likely to be damaged by the explosive reality of the Nord Stream disaster. “The US engaged in an act of war against a fellow NATO member,” he claimed bluntly. “NATO members aren’t supposed to engage in war against one another. They’re supposed to guard against attacks by outsiders.”

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“..anyone, even a literal serial killer, can toss away the ID they used to get into Mexico from anywhere in the world, then claim asylum, say they have no documents and be ushered into America.”

• Elon Musk Slams US-Mexico Border Security (RT)

The fact that illegal migrants can cross the US-Mexico border and claim asylum without any identification has effectively turned the US into a “refuge” for criminals, Elon Musk stated in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. His comments came in response to a recent Bloomberg article, shared by the X user EndWokeness, reporting that Venezuela is experiencing its lowest homicide rate in 22 years, now that many criminals and gangs have left as part of a massive wave of emigration prompted by economic hardship. EndWokeness commented on the report, stating “Venezuela has its lowest homicide rate in 22 years because their gangs are coming here.” Musk agreed and claimed that “the ability to discard your identification documents (from any country), walk across the southern border and claim ‘asylum’ has turned America into a refuge for the world’s worst criminals.”

In another post later that day, the billionaire doubled down on his statement, writing that “anyone, even a literal serial killer, can toss away the ID they used to get into Mexico from anywhere in the world, then claim asylum, say they have no documents and be ushered into America.” On Wednesday, the Tesla CEO also slammed a bill proposed by Democratic Senator Laphonza Butler, asking the Biden administration for more federal taxpayer money to provide beds for immigrants in San Diego after the county shelter ran out of funding. The senator warned that between 800 and 1,000 people residing in the shelter would be released per day otherwise.

“Dams are bursting all over the country,” Musk responded, noting that “America is only 4% of Earth’s population” and if just 1% of the rest of the Earth moves to the US, it would crush all of the country’s essential services. “I am ringing the alarm bell, because the flood of illegals is crushing the country,” he wrote. The state of the US-Mexico border has become one of the key issues in US politics over the past year amid a historic influx of millions of immigrants. Republican lawmakers have been demanding tighter controls and more money to be set aside to deal with the border crisis, prompting them to block a multi-billion-dollar aid package for Ukraine.

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Holes
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762790920200614146

 

 

Groucho

 

 

45

 

 

Friends
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762776196276785614

 

 

Osprey

 

 

Blue whale

 

 

Look
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762925969705189497

 

 

 

 

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