Orthodox Archives - The Automatic Earth

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The Democrats have betrayed their own values & have been completely taken over by neocons & have morphed into the party of Bush/Cheney & become warmongering corporatists serving Wallst/MIC/Big Pharma/Big Oil/Insurance companies/Silicon Valley/The Deep…

— Jimmy Dore (@jimmy_dore) August 24, 2024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1827454580537328111

MSNBC RFK

Every RFK Jr. supporter should watch this video.

This is how Nicolle Wallace from MSNBC covered RFK Jr. entering the 2024 race for President.

We must join together to defeat this. It is evil, corrupt, and anti-American. pic.twitter.com/1bzboVo57h

— MAZE (@mazemoore) August 24, 2024

Benz

Just got booted from the @MarioNawfal space so I’m gonna speak my peace here: what’s behind today’s arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov pic.twitter.com/FexLvJZK92

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) August 25, 2024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1827379854192603573

A trap, prepared well in advance.

“Pavel Durov was put on the wanted list literally minutes before landing in Paris and an arrest warrant was issued.” Durov reportedly used to get along fine with Macron. Why he became a French citizen.

“..complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, and fraud..”

• US Orchestrated Durov Arrest – Former Spokesman (RT)

Telegram founder Pavel Durov wouldn’t have “disregarded his own safety” and landed in Paris if he thought the French authorities were serious about arresting him, his former press secretary Georgy Loboushkin has told RT. Loboushkin believes that the order to detain Durov likely came from Washington. Durov was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday, immediately after arriving from Azerbaijan by private jet. According to French media, prosecutors in Paris plan to charge the 39-year-old with complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, and fraud, arguing that Telegram’s insufficient content moderation, its strong encryption tools, and its alleged lack of cooperation with police allow criminals to flourish on the app. “It’s a big mystery why he disregarded his own safety and decided to land in Paris,” Loboushkin told RT on Sunday.

“He has shown throughout his history that he is a pretty cautious person in that sense. He has said many times that there is no point in going to jail.” According to Loboushkin, the Russian-born businessman must have been unaware that a warrant was being prepared for his arrest, or thought – given Telegram’s compliance with local laws and sanctions – that he wouldn’t be in serious trouble. “I think the attack is coming neither from the EU nor from France,” Loboushkin said. “It’s most likely an attack from the United States, which has been after Pavel Durov for a long time, and Durov has always talked about it.”

“He said, for example in an interview with Tucker Carlson, that he and his employees are under pressure, or at least there’s some kind of surveillance conducted by the FBI,” the former spokesman continued. “I think the root causes are there, so it doesn’t make any sense to discuss the intentions of the French authorities who arrested him, because they don’t play any role here at all.” In an interview with Carlson in April, Durov said that he drew “too much attention” from law enforcement any time he visited the US, and claimed that American intelligence agents had attempted to recruit one of his employees to install a backdoor in the app that would have allowed them to spy on Telegram users.

Loboushkin is not the only commentator to suggest that the US was behind Durov’s arrest. “The Americans are behind the situation as a whole,” Ekaterina Mizulina, the head of Russia’s Safe Internet League, said on Sunday, alleging that Washington wanted both to restrict the free flow of information and attack TON, a blockchain platform originally developed by Telegram’s creators. With major Russian companies investing in TON, the arrest is essentially “a continuation of the US’ sanctions policy,” Mizulina wrote on Telegram. American investor David Sacks claimed on Sunday that Durov’s commitment to free speech and user privacy made him a target in Washington. Writing on X, Sacks declared that “using allied countries to circumvent First Amendment protections is the new Rendition,” referring to the US’ use of foreign airports and military bases to transport terror suspects in the years following the September 11 attacks.

“..Telegram’s insufficient content moderation, its strong encryption tools, and its alleged lack of cooperation with police allow criminals to flourish on the app..”

• How The EU Tightened The Noose On Telegram (RT)

The arrest in France of Telegram founder Pavel Durov is the latest escalation in an EU-wide campaign against the Russian entrepreneur and his privacy-focused messaging app. After limited bans in some member states, officials in Brussels announced earlier this year that they would bend their own laws to force censorship rules onto the platform. Durov was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday, immediately after arriving from Azerbaijan by private jet. According to French media, prosecutors in Paris plan to accuse the 39-year-old of complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, and fraud, arguing that Telegram’s insufficient content moderation, its strong encryption tools, and its alleged lack of cooperation with police allow criminals to flourish on the app. In the years leading up to Durov’s arrest, EU officials and individual member states have targeted Telegram with bans, regulations, and threats of legal action.

2021: Germany calls for action
After a group of radical anti-vaxxers were arrested for allegedly plotting on Telegram to kill the governor of the state of Saxony in 2021, German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann called for an EU-wide effort to restrict the platform. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, governors and regional interior ministers in Germany had expressed displeasure with Telegram’s refusal to ban anti-lockdown protesters, and Buschmann argued that common EU action would “make a bigger impression” on Telegram than “each country trying to do that on its own.” Telegram was and still is headquartered in Dubai, and Durov reportedly refused to communicate with the German authorities. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned at the time that Berlin was “not going to put up with” Durov’s refusal to cooperate.

2022-2024: Bans and restrictions
The Ukraine conflict gave national and local governments across the West an excuse to throttle Telegram, with the Norwegian Justice Ministry citing the platform’s “Russian origins” when it forbade government employees from installing the app on their work devices last year. Amsterdam’s municipal government also invoked the alleged threat of “foreign espionage” when it issued a similar ban for employees of the Dutch city last week, while France last year ordered civil servants to switch from Telegram and other messaging apps to locally-developed alternatives over security fears. In March of this year, Spain’s high court ordered the country’s mobile providers to block access to Telegram, while claims of copyright violations could be investigated. Although the ruling was overturned within days, the investigation is ongoing.

2024: Censorship crackdown
The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force earlier this year, lists platforms with more than 45 million monthly users as ‘Very Large Online Platforms’, requiring them to comply with a host of data protection and advertising-related rules. Such platforms are also required to “address the spread of disinformation,” a term that the DSA mentions more than a dozen times without providing a definition. While Telegram claims to have 41 million monthly users in the EU, European Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova told Bloomberg in May that the platform is a “special case,” and would be investigated and potentially placed on the list anyway.

Jourova accused Telegram of enabling the spread of Russian “disinformation,” and called it “an issue” that the platform is “especially active in the eastern member states where we have a Russian-speaking minority.” Ahead of this potential regulation, Telegram has appointed a Brussels-based company as its legal representative in the EU, meaning that Belgian authorities will be responsible for enforcing EU law against Durov’s company. Last week, the Belgian Institute of Post and Telecommunications (BIPT) announced that it still could not prove that Telegram had more than 41 million monthly users. The DSA allows the EU to fine platforms as much as 6% of their global annual turnover if they break its rules. The law also allows repeat offenders to be banned from operating in the bloc.

“..the DSA “does not contain personal or criminal liability, which means that the prosecution in France went much further.”

• Durov’s Arrest ‘In Spirit Of EUs Digital Services Act’ (RT)

The arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France is in line with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which stipulates that service providers are responsible for the content shared on their platforms, TASS reported on Sunday, citing a source in the bloc’s legal system. The Russian tech entrepreneur – who is also a citizen of France, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis – was detained upon landing in Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday. He is reportedly being accused of failing to curb criminal activities on his platform. Durov’s arrest is “fully in line with the spirit and the principles” of DSA, the TASS source said. “If the operator wants to avoid penalties, it must automatically take down the content banned by the European regulator. The source added, however, that the DSA “does not contain personal or criminal liability, which means that the prosecution in France went much further.”

The source added that Durov’s legal team would face “additional difficulties,” since the allegations against him could be tied to the issue of French national security and that it would be harder to arrange a public campaign in his support given his Russian origin. Durov left Russia in the mid-2010s over a disagreement with the government and has since mostly lived in the UAE. In 2021, he acquired French and Emirati citizenship. He insisted that it is his “principled position” to keep user data private and that he “would rather be free than take orders from anyone.” In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in April, Durov said he faced pressure from the US government to install a surveillance “backdoor,” which he refused to do.

Telegram issued a statement on Sunday, saying its content-moderation policies were “within industry standards.” Multiple public figures in Russia and abroad have condemned Durov’s arrest, describing it as an attack on freedom of speech and the free flow of information. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the consulate in Paris has demanded access to Durov.

“Liberté Liberté! Liberté?”

• “Musk Should Be Nervous” (ZH)

Russia is demanding answers following the arrest Pavel Durov, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram. He was detained by French authorities at the Bourget airport outside of Paris Saturday evening after arriving in his private jet. The Russian embassy in Paris has demanded that the French government explain itself, and has so far said that French authorities are being uncooperative. The latest reports say Durov is expected to appear before a judge Sunday evening. The embassy said of the 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire that “as soon as the news of Durov’s arrest broke, we immediately addressed the French authorities for clarification on the reasons for it and demanded that they ensure the protection of his rights and provide consular access to him.” He not only has Russian citizenship by virtue of his birth there, but also holds dual citizenship in France and the UAE.

Russian diplomats say there has been no reply from Paris: “The French side has so far been avoiding cooperation on this issue,” a statement said. Russian lawmakers have gone so far as to say he is now a “political prisoner”. Russian member of parliament Maria Butina said on Sunday, “Pavel Durov is a political prisoner – a victim of a witch-hunt by the West. “The arrest of Pavel Durov means there is no freedom of speech – it means that freedom of speech in Europe is dead,” she continued. “Now basically they have a hostage and they will try to blackmail Russia, they will try to blackmail all the users of Telegram and not only try to get control but also try to block the network here in Russia.” Additionally, deputy speaker of Russian parliament, Vladislav Davankov, described that the tech entrepreneur’s arrest “could be politically motivated and used to gain access to the personal information of Telegram users.”

And Dmitry Medvedev, who is the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said Durov is being targeted because he’s Russian. “He miscalculated,” Medvedev said. “For all our common enemies now, he is Russian – and therefore unpredictable and dangerous.” Medvedev asserted, “Durov should finally realize that one cannot chose one’s the fatherland.” One interesting angle is that the app, well-known for being highly secure as it provides end-to-end encryption, is widely used among the Russian military, as well as the common population. Durov was detained by the National Anti-Fraud Office (ONAF), over the alleged facilitation of various crimes including terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and fraud. “On his platform, he allowed an incalculable number of offences and crimes to be committed, for which he did nothing to moderate or cooperate,” a source told TF1 TV.

The arrest was characterized by Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom as part of the “crackdown against free speech.” Other prominent figures have voiced alarm over what this means for free speech, or even the question of who is next to be targeted by Western governments… And Elon Musk has been highlighting the implications of Durov’s arrest through Sunday… “Liberté Liberté! Liberté?” Musk added in another post. “Dangerous times.” Musk added a “FreePavel” hashtag when he shared a video of Durov praising Musk and his pro-free-speech outlook during an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this year. “It is vital to the support of free speech that you forward X posts to people you know, especially in censorship-heavy countries,” Musk wrote on X on Sunday. And in case you wondered, none other than deep state bagman Alexander Vindman makes it clear who the real target is…

While Durov holds French citizenship, is arrested for violating French law, this has broader implications for other social media, including Twitter. There s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be& https://t.co/GyPMquKtKV

— Alexander S. Vindman N’ (@AVindman) August 25, 2024

This adds “cyberbullying” to the list.

• US Trampling On Free Speech – David Sacks On Durov’s Arrest (RT)

The US has violated its own constitutional freedoms by forcing its NATO ally France to arrest Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, American investor David Sacks has suggested. Writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Sacks slammed the detention of Durov at a Paris airport, reportedly on charges related to his alleged complicity in fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, and promoting terrorism. In an apparent nod to the rumored US role in the arrest, Sacks wrote: “Using allied countries to circumvent First Amendment protections is the new Rendition.” The US Constitution expressly protects freedom of speech and makes no distinction between citizens and people from other countries. In April, Sacks denounced a US law that would ban the video-sharing platform TikTok if its China-based developer ByteDance refused to sell it within 12 months. At the time, the investor suggested that after the crackdown on TikTok, Telegram, X and the video platform Rumble could end up in Washington’s crosshairs.

One down. Three to go. pic.twitter.com/LBERkMjBOS

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) April 24, 2024

Meanwhile, the French move to arrest Durov was also criticized by Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk, who launched the hashtag #FreePavel, suggesting that the pressure on freedom of speech could worsen. “POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” he quipped. He also agreed with a user who wondered if X could be the next to come under fire. In an interview with conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson which was released several months ago, Durov recalled that he had been getting “too much attention” from US law enforcement agencies while he was in the country. He said that while he was not under any legal scrutiny, he had to regularly deal with US authorities eager to get more insight into how Telegram worked. The tech entrepreneur also claimed that law enforcement had attempted to recruit one of his employees to install a backdoor in the messenger that would allow them, or any other government, to spy on Telegram users.

Not France, Macron.

• Durov Arrest Exposes ‘Tyrannical Face’ Of France – Party Leader (RT)

Florian Philippot, the leader of France’s Patriots (Les Patriotes) party, has slammed the government of French President Emmanuel Macron as “lunatics” over the detention of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov. According to French media, the Russian entrepreneur, who also has French and UAE citizenship, was detained at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday and is set to appear in court on Sunday evening. The French authorities had reportedly issued an arrest warrant for Durov, arguing that insufficient moderation allows for Telegram to be widely used by criminals. “France offers its tyrannical face to the world,” Philippot said of Durov’s arrest in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. “We must free ourselves from these lunatics,” he added, referring to Macron’s government.

The politician also wondered if X owner and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX “Elon Musk is [also] thrown in jail if he sets foot in France, for disobeying the European DSA (Digital Services Act) censorship regulations.” The head of Russia’s Safe Internet League, Ekaterina Mizulina, suggested earlier that the French authorities hadn’t acted independently in their decision to detain Durov. “It is obvious that the arrest is an attack on TON (a blockchain-based platform originally developed by Telegram’s creators) in which major Russian companies have invested. That is, in part, a continuation of the US sanctions policy” against Russia, she said. Also on Sunday, the deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, Vladislav Davankov, called upon the French authorities to release Durov. The tech entrepreneur’s arrest “could be politically motivated and used to gain access to the personal information of Telegram users,” which Moscow cannot allow, he warned in a post on Telegram.

“Moscow has sent an official note to Paris with a demand for consular access to Telegram’s founder. “But he [Durov] has French citizenship, which France perceives as precedential..”

• Russia Demands France Explains Durov Arrest (RT)

The Russian embassy in Paris swiftly demanded that French authorities explain the reasons for the arrest of Telegram messaging app founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, a senior diplomat has said. According to French media, the Russian tech entrepreneur, who also has citizenship of France, the UAE, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, was detained after landing at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday and is set to appear before a judge on Sunday evening. The French authorities had reportedly issued an arrest warrant for Durov, arguing that insufficient moderation on his platform allows for Telegram to be widely used by criminals. The Russian embassy said in a statement on Sunday that “as soon as the news of Durov’s arrest broke, we immediately addressed the French authorities for clarification on the reasons for it and demanded that they ensure the protection of his rights and provide consular access to him.”

However, there has been no reply from Paris yet, according to the diplomats. “The French side has so far been avoiding cooperation on this issue,” they stressed. The embassy also said that it remains in contact with Durov’s lawyer. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said later that Moscow has sent an official note to Paris with a demand for consular access to Telegram’s founder. “But he [Durov] has French citizenship, which France perceives as precedential,” she told RIA-Novosti news agency. Also on Sunday, Zakharova called upon international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to stand up for free speech and put pressure on France to release the Telegram founder.

The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, Vladislav Davankov, also urged Paris to release Durov. The tech entrepreneur’s arrest “could be politically motivated and used to gain access to the personal information of Telegram users,” which Moscow cannot allow, he warned. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested that the clampdown on Telegram’s founder could cost the French authorities dearly. “[French President Emmanuel] Macron, get out of France now! Durov’s army is out to get you,” he said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

GOP becomes the big tent party.

• How Democrats Make Republicans: RFK Should Be A Wake Up Call (Turley)

The withdrawal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the presidential race and his endorsement of former President Donald Trump was yet another extraordinary moment in an election that has been anything but predictable. Only a year ago, it would have been unthinkable that a sitting president would be effectively forced off a ticket and replaced by a candidate who did not secure a single vote for president. Now, the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of the Robert F. Kennedy has not just withdrawn from the Democratic Party but endorsed the Republican nominee. Amidst all of the claimed “joy” of the Democratic National Convention, there is a sobering reality that is being ignored by the ecstatic press and pundits: this is how Democrats make Republicans. There is an old expression that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.” Irving Kristol explained the neoconservative movement was built by Democrats “mugged by reality.”

Kennedy has not become a Republican but rather joined the roughly half of Americans now identifying as independents. While this country is solidly under the hold of a duopoly of power in the two main parties, only 25% of the country identify as Democrats, and 25% as Republicans. Kennedy’s departure from the Democrats has been mocked in the press. However, when he spoke on his withdrawal, many of us who have been lifetime members of the party identified with his remarks. I come from a politically active liberal Democratic family in Chicago. I spent much of my life working for liberals since I first came to Washington as a Democratic House page in the 1970s. I did stints on the Hill or on campaigns with Democrats ranging from Rep. Sid Yates (Ill.) to Sen. William Proxmire (Wis.) to Mo Udall (Arz.). I even worked on the campaign and ran for delegate for RFK Jr.’s uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Then the party changed. Where once they defended free speech, Democrats have rallied behind censorship and blacklisting of those with opposing views. They have sought to block dozens of Republicans from ballots, including former President Trump. To make matters worse, they have done so in the supposed name of democracy. Those actions were raised by Kennedy in his powerful and poignant withdrawal speech. He detailed how the Democratic party moved to stop him from running against President Biden in the primary, including efforts to block him from ballots. It was an ironic moment. After harassing candidates like RFK and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, the Democratic leadership then simply installed their choice at the convention in an unprecedented bait-and-switch. There could have been a substantive primary that exposed the diminished mental state of Biden and allowed for a democratic choice on the best nominee.

Instead, the Democrats prevented such choices from being made and selected a leader with all of the transparency and deliberation of a party Congress in China. Kennedy said that the Democratic Party has virtually shoved him and other voters into the arms of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Kennedy observed that “I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party which I pledged my own allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote.” He said that his party was the one that championed free speech, government transparency, and opposed unjust wars. “True to its name, it was the party of democracy.” He said that the party has turned its back on all of the values that once defined it. For former Democrats like Kennedy, running on “joy” is no substitute for these profound changes in the party.

“If you’re pro-Israel, great! So is she! And if you’re pro-Palestinian, great! So is she!”

“..their vacuous battle cry “We won’t go back!” With all due respect, what the hell does that mean? Kamala Harris already works in the West Wing! If she doesn’t want to go back, then why is she running for the job?”

• The Seduction of Kamala Harris: How the Democrats Are Attracting Voters (Pinsker)

Kamala Harris might not be as boring as a bookshelf, but until Biden dropped out a few weeks ago, nobody viewed her as a dynamic, engaging communicator. Even in a political party that cares mightily about personal identification, she was long on bio and short on charm. Thus, the entire Democratic National Convention was a protracted sales pitch — the launch of a new marketing campaign — where they reworked their messaging. They primarily relied on mirroring, which is a technique common in dating circles. We unconsciously mimic the people we admire and find sexually attractive. When she tilts her head, you tilt your head; your voice, tone, and even how often you breathe and blink will parallel the other person. It’s a psychological tool for establishing empathy and building trust.

Whoever you are and whatever you are, Kamala Harris is your mirror: When you look at her, she wants you to see yourself. If you’re pro-Israel, great! So is she! And if you’re pro-Palestinian, great! So is she! Salesmen love mirroring because it’s a cheat code for quickly cultivating a strong sense of intimacy. “Hey, you can trust me — I’m just like you! In fact, it’s really us against them, isn’t it? So yeah, you should definitely buy this beautiful Dodge Dart. Woo, what a ride!” But not just salesmen: Mirroring is a favorite tool of narcissists. There’s been a lot of literature about the linkage between the two. Among the highlights: “Mirroring is a tactic many narcissists and other manipulative people often employ to ingratiate themselves. They reflect idealized versions of their targets back to them. In a way, they get you to fall in love with a simulacrum of the best version of yourself.”

“Mirroring is how people learn to connect with others. …Narcissists are excellent at control and manipulation. While they lack a strong sense of self, one strength they do have is the ability to watch others closely and use this information in their favor. A narcissist seems to always know what you like, and they give this to you.” “Narcissistic mirroring is a manipulation tactic used by narcissistic individuals to create a false sense of connection with another person by mimicking their thoughts, feelings, interests, or behaviors.” Watch Kamala Harris and her messaging closely. She’s not making policy-based arguments. She has no ideological center. She’s not even attempting to campaign on anything substantial. Instead, she’s the ultimate Rorschach candidate: When you look at her, you can see whatever or whoever you want — just as long as you still see yourself. For the Harris campaign, policy positions only get in the way of their marketing.

In 2016, Donald Trump ran on big ideas: Drain the swamp! Build the wall! Free the economy! Make America great again! Agree or disagree, Trump’s shortcomings certainly weren’t a lack of ambition. In 2024, Kamala Harris is running on a platform of platitudes, identification, and empty sentiments. It’s the political version of Apple’s “I’m a Mac!” “And I’m a PC” campaign from nearly 20 years ago. In the Apple version, being a Mac was cool and awesome, whereas being a PC was for dorks in an uncomfortable business suit. Kamala ripped a page from the Apple playbook, but this time, the PC is an evil, scary, Hitlerish Orange Man. And the Mac is… you. The utter unseriousness of their platform is revealed in their vacuous battle cry, “We won’t go back!” With all due respect, what the hell does that mean? Kamala Harris already works in the West Wing! If she doesn’t want to go back, then why is she running for the job?

It just gets in the way of the “joy”.

• Democrats Avoid Any Concrete Policy Issues at Convention (Sp.)

The Democrats have projected an image of unity at the national convention in Chicago this week, going all-in on spectacle and positive vibes while avoiding real policy issues in order to win voters. However, it is unclear whether they will be able to maintain this momentum until November, experts interviewed by Sputnik believe. The US presidential election is scheduled for November 5. In July, President Joe Biden said he was withdrawing from the race in the best interest of the Democratic Party and the nation. On Tuesday, delegates at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) officially made Harris their nominee following a ceremonial vote. “The DNC accomplished its main objective — nominate the Presidential candidate and present a united front. But, there remain deep divisions in the party. The party is now under the control of the Progressive wing and there are many Americans who reject that agenda. They hope is that those who object don’t look too closely at the details,” Robert Weissberg, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said.

Political analyst Keith Preston suggested that the Democrats are planning to sway voters with positive energy as US elections are often decided by independent and non-ideological voters who are often motivated by personalities, appearances and vibes, rather than deeply held opinions on issues. “The Democrats are shrewdly turning their campaign into a hybrid of the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, and Coachella. Likewise, they are trying to present an aura of positivity and optimism instead of the negative campaigning and personal attacks of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Strategically, this is a very wise move on the part of the Democrats … The question is whether they can maintain this energy for the next few months before the election,” Preston said. Wilfred Reilly, political science professor at Kentucky State University, noted that it featured very little in terms of actual policy, with Harris talking a great deal about her family and background, giving the floor to her sister, calling the Republicans “weird” and other things of that sort.

“I do think that this will be typical of of the party’s focus until the election. Powerful Dem. figures have already said things like “you have to elect her – then we see the full platform.” My actual take here is that the Kamala Harris position on immigration, policing, abortion, and much else is very likely to be unpalatable to the median voter in (say) Iowa, and her staffers know that. I would expect as little detail as she can get away with until Election Day,” Reilly explained. Thousands of protesters demonstrated outside the DNC during the week to call for an end to US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, creating analogies with the last time the party held its national convention in the Windy City, when protests against the Vietnam War turned violent. When asked if the Democrats are more unified now than back in the late 60’s, Preston observed that many of the protesters are political outsiders, usually way to the left of the Democratic Party, which possess a high level of internal discipline.

[..] When Biden announced his withdrawal from the race, some questioned whether Harris will be a good replacement, citing her poor performance during the previous Democratic primaries as well as abysmal ratings during her vice presidency. However, recent polls show Harris doing well against Trump, meaning that the race is far from decided. “I think she is a fairly competent candidate. She is better than Joe Biden, who — as the U.S. joke goes — has been ‘dead for two years’ … Her DNC speech was good — B+. But, she is famously not all that impressive. She ran for President before, polled at 2%, and was lucky to be rescued even as VP by Biden – and that had a racial element to it. The media sensationalism around her is a new phenomenon based around hate of Trump,” Reilly said, adding that “if the honeymoon can last two months and a half, Harris will likely be President.”

“..a solution in search of a problem.”

• Dems Scramble To Walk Back Harris’ Price Control Scheme (ZH)

Democrats are in damage control mode after Kamala Harris’ communist price control scheme received a harsh rebuke – including from the Washington Post, which characterized it as “populist gimmicks.” Facing pressure to defend the plan, Democratic lawmakers are downplaying it as a pipe dream that has no chance of passing Congress, Politico reports. The plan, unveiled as part of Harris’ first big economic policy speech, has become a focal talking point for Donald Trump and allies, who continue to frame it as “communist price controls.” Meanwhile, food industry officials and some left-of-center economists have warned that price controls could be detrimental, according to the report. Central to the plan is a call for congress to pass the first-ever federal price gouging ban on food and grocery stores – mirroring legislation reintroduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) earlier this year, for which Warren was taken to task by CNBC’s Joe Kernen.

Now, six Congressional Democrats and five Democratic aides tell Politico that they’ve been privately telling critics that the plan isn’t viable – and is instead a messaging tactic to to divert blame over inflation from the Biden-Harris administration. Even many Democrats remain skeptical, or at least uncertain about how Harris would carry out her proposal, if elected. They’re still working on getting details, but many have left that for after the DNC. -Politico. “It’s clear to me these are very general, very lofty goals,” said one of the Democratic lawmakers. “I honestly still don’t know how this would work,” said a second Democratic lawmaker. According to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, “I think people are reading too much into what has been put out there,” adding that the proposal was intended to address the issue in “broad strokes.”

Harris has been under pressure to provide more detail on her policy priorities, after four years largely toeing the line set by President Joe Biden and his aides. The rollout of her plan to combat food inflation, however, has sparked concerns among business leaders over which economic advisers are driving her policy decisions. Pieces of her plan, like increasing competition in the meat sector, are straight from the Biden playbook under his former top economic adviser Brian Deese — who is now advising Harris’ campaign. But the broad price gouging language that’s triggered so much backlash signals a more progressive agenda. That backlash has tempered Harris allies’ initial push to paint the proposal as a bold, progressive idea.

Since introducing the price gouging plan, her advisers have sought to soften criticism of the proposal by downplaying its overall impact on the market — and emphasizing that the goal is simply to target a small cohort of potential “bad actors,” rather than generate the kind of sweeping overhaul suggested by the plan’s initial rollout. -Politico Harris’ plan does have its defenders, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). Top Harris economic adviser Brian Nelson told reporters at the DNC in Chicago that the plan was ‘simply’ aimed at matching federal standards with so-called price gouging guardrails that already exist in 37 states – something Warren attempted to argue with Kernen. That said, the existing rules only apply during emergencies such as the COVID pandemic. “She’s going to work with Congress to ensure that it is directed at bad actors, bad activity,” said Nelson.

“It’s not meant to set prices or price levels or anything like that. And that is not the way current state laws around price gouging are.” When pressed during a Bloomberg News roundtable to elaborate, Nelson failed to provide any specific examples of price gouging – and deflected by describing Harris as simply trying to outline her own principles on the issue. “One of the principles is really to make sure that the federal legislation aligns with those state laws,” he said. Meanwhile, the National Grocers Association – an industry group that represents the independent supermarket sector, called Harris’ plans “a solution in search of a problem.” “Rather than proposing new legislation far-off in the future,” the government should focus on enforcing antitrust laws already on the books, the group said. “I’m sure it polls well,” said one food industry official granted anonymity. “But it’s an obvious effort to deflect blame from her administration on inflation.”

“If you try to find the American economy, it is not here. It has been moved to China and other parts of Asia..”

• The Fed Returns to Liquidity. Will It Elect Kamala? (Paul Craig Roberts)

[..] in America truth no longer matters. The narrative, not truth, is in control, and the narrative was that a hot job market driven by 818,000 non-existent jobs was driving inflation. I pointed out that shortages cannot be rectified by high interest rates. High interest rates simply raise the cost of production. High interest rates contribute to inflation when businesses are destroyed and supply chains are disrupted and destroyed by lockdowns. Supply reductions cannot be immediately rectified, and high interest rates are the last thing that helps. Economists should understand this, but they also understand that going against the official narrative is bad for their career.

Now that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has erased 818,000 jobs from its data list, thus deleting the excuse for high interest rates, the Federal Reserve says that in the US employment and inflation depict a changing situation in the economy, which the Fed says indicates that “the time has come for Fed policy to adjust.” Fed chairman Powell and Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank president Raphael Bostic announce interest rates cut as our future. Suddenly the job market is “no longer overheated,” and the Fed is concerned about unemployment. What is the stock market’s response to the Fed’s concern that the economy is weakening and the job market is worsening? The market goes up. Why? Not from the prospect of a good economy, but from the injection of liquidity that makes lower interest rates possible. In other words, it is liquidity, not reality, not performance, that drives the stock market. Or to put it differently, liquidity is reality.

Liquidity is the reason price/earning ratios rise, because where else can money go except into stocks and real estate. So the main result of Fed liquidity is to drive up stock prices and home prices. This is great for those who own these assets, but it prices non-homeowners out of the market, because house prices rise faster than their service sector incomes. Policymakers, principally the Federal Reserve and the Jews on Wall Street who imposed offshoring of manufacturing jobs, have destroyed the ladders of upward mobility in the US economy–small businesses and manufacturing jobs. While the ladders that permitted people to rise were destroyed, the Democrats’ Open Borders Policy imports yearly a minimum of 3.6 million illegal immigrant-invaders whose job prospects do not extend beyond the chicken and cattle slaughter houses, and these jobs will disappear when we are restricted to a diet of bugs.

The Democrats’ DEI policy tries to elevate them, but there just aren’t that many who speak English and are sufficiently educated to be cabinet secretaries and CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations. This is a prescription for a Third World Economy, not for a superpower. If you try to find the American economy, it is not here. It has been moved to China and other parts of Asia. Years ago I explained how to get it back, and no one payed the slightest attention. As time passes America loses a disciplined work force that knows how to get up in the morning, report to work on time, and perform competently the expected tasks. Supply chains, such as local machine shops disappear from lack of manufacturing customers. The ability to produce is lost, and the country becomes Third World.

Screwing up your own member states.

• Hungary Accuses Brussels Of Disrupting Oil Supplies From Russia (RT)

The European Commission (EC) is behind the stoppage of flows of Russian crude oil to Hungary and Slovakia through Ukraine, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Saturday, citing Brussels’ refusal to mediate in their dispute with Kiev over the blockage as proof that the EC wants the stoppage. In June, Ukraine halted the transit of crude supplied by Russian energy giant Lukoil via the Druzhba pipeline, citing its own sanctions on the company. The measure has directly hit landlocked Hungary and Slovakia, depriving them of oil previously exported by the company through Ukrainian territory. I think that the fact that the EC has declared its unwillingness to help Hungary and Slovakia to resolve the issue of securing energy supply proves the fact that Brussels instructed Kiev to cause challenges and problems in the energy sector for the two nations, Szijjarto said, during an address at the political festival Tranzit, held in Hungary.

On Friday, the Commission declined Hungary and Slovakia’s request to intervene in the dispute between Budapest/Bratislava and Kiev, saying that Brussels had no indication that Ukraine’s sanctions had caused a risk to the security of Europe’s energy supply. “Commission services have preliminarily concluded that urgent consultations do not appear to be warranted,” the spokesperson said, adding that Russian oil was still flowing through the Druzhba pipeline that connects Russia with the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary via the territory of Ukraine. “It appears that the sanctions imposed by Ukraine on Lukoil do not affect ongoing oil transit operations via Druzhba carried out by trading companies, as long as Lukoil is not the formal owner of the oil,” the spokesperson said. Last week, Politico reported that Budapest proposed a solution for the restoration of halted Russian oil flow by rebranding Lukoil’s products.

That way the crude shipped via Ukraine could be officially sold to Hungarian energy giant MOL before it crosses the border. The arrangement could reportedly mean paying an additional $1.50 per barrel to secure transit outside of previous agreements. Brussels prohibited transport of Russian crude oil by sea in December 2022 as part of the EU large-scale sanction campaign against Moscow. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have been granted exemptions by Brussels as they source alternative supplies. Slovakia and Hungary are the only EU member states that have rejected the bloc’s policies on supplying Kiev with military aid amid the ongoing conflict with Moscow. Both states have repeatedly called for the crisis to be solved through diplomacy.

Last month, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow is unsurprised that the EU has failed to resolve the issue for its member states surrounding Russian oil supplies to them, claiming that Brussels is using energy resources to blackmail Bratislava and Budapest.

There’s only one church. The one Zelensky invented is not real.

• Pope Francis Condemns Ukraine’s Ban On Country’s Largest Orthodox Church (ZH)

Pope Francis has condemned the Ukrainian government’s move to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) which maintains communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. His Sunday remarks emphasized that “churches are not to be touched” and come the day after President Volodymyr Zelensky signed parliament’s newly passed bill into law identified as Bill 8371. “In thinking of the law recently adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the liberty of those who pray,” the pope said. He explained that the state must not be involved in religion. “One does not commit evil by praying. If someone commits harm against their people, they will be guilty of that, but they cannot have done harm because they prayed,” Pope Francis said following a Sunday service. “Let those who wish to pray in what they consider their Church be allowed to do so,” Francis added.

Throughout the war Pope Francis has consistently called for the two sides to immediately enter peace negotiations, while saying that ultimately the winners are the arms manufacturers and those who don’t care about the suffering of innocent people. He has come under criticism, including from Kiev officials, for not just condemning one side (the Russians) like the West does. As for Christianity in Ukriane, Orthodox clergy members have seen jail time or have been placed under house arrest, or else harassment by mobs of far-right Ukrainian nationalists, for merely calling for peace between the two countries. According to Ukrainian media: Over 100 UOC-MP clergy members have come under criminal investigation since the outbreak of the full-scale war, the Security Service of Ukraine’s (SBU) press service told the Kyiv Independent. Almost 50 of them have been charged, and sentences have been issued in 26 cases, the SBU said.

Likely these numbers are about to be a lot higher, as the new law targeting the UOC is expected to enter force 30 days after its publication. The UOC is being pressured (and now forced) to join a state-sponsored church approved by Zelensky, despite the fact that the majority of the population is loyal to the UOC. Even a remote or potential ‘Russian connection’ – be it related to culture, music, language, or religion – has put ordinary Ukrainians under the suspicion of the state and the military of late. This despite that some one-third of the country has always spoken Russian as their first language, especially in the east and parts of the south. All of this has also gone hand in hand with the Zelensky government’s efforts to eliminate the Russian language altogether from public life.

RFK food
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827434772756623760

Bull

Bull bamboozled with an elegant backflippic.twitter.com/5p7JG83h0Q

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 25, 2024

Goose
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827778014530380136

Hammer

Todavia tengo fé en la humanidad pic.twitter.com/QbNeoPgnpp

— Somos Vida!!! (@Ncardiacos_2) August 25, 2024

Engineer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827407511210668071

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Debt Rattle April 3 2023

Apr 032023

April 3, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 7:55 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Bakhmut, Bragg, CIA, Erdogan, evil force, OPEC, Orthodox, Sevastopol, Trump, vaccine 53 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Bull – Plate 4 1945

• Bakhmut “Technically Captured” – Prigozhin (ZH)

• Zelensky’s Government Is An ‘Evil Force’ – Orthodox Priest (RT)

• The Everything Collapse (Egon von Greyerz)

• Oil Prices Surge After Surprise OPEC+ Production Cut (RT)

• Lavrov Tells Blinken: Up To Court To Decide About US Journalist Future (TASS)

• ‘Lower the Rhetoric’ on China, Says Milley (D1)

• Eastern Europe ‘Drowning’ In -Cheap- Ukrainian Grain – Le Figaro (RT)

• Russian Official Ridicules Ukrainian Plan To Rename Crimean Port (RT)

• Erdogan Tells US Ambassador To ‘Know His Place’ (RT)

• US Allows Migrants To Pick Their Gender (RT)

• Banana Time for the Rule of Law (Kimball)

• Leaks From Bragg’s Grand Jury Are A Crime (Dershowitz)

• Germany To Have Enough Covid mRNA Vaccine To Last Into The 24th Century (Eugyp)

• El Pais Reveals How CIA Spied On Assange (RT)

• Rep. Rashida Tlaib Demands DOJ Drop Charges Against Julian Assange (Fox)

Who and what will be the future of Ukraine?

Taibbi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1642384601418199040

Five alarm

ICC
https://twitter.com/i/status/1642416905897099264

Trump

BREAKING: President Trump has recorded a video for his supporters like YOU, responding to the indictment. Not even the fake news has seen this.

Please make a contribution to SAVE OUR COUNTRY – for 1,500% impact:https://t.co/nOTPwmH2KZ pic.twitter.com/GqgejsCEhB

— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) April 2, 2023

Trump numbers
https://twitter.com/i/status/1642615856625594369

Why vaccinate the young?

Ukrainian history 101 according to school text books. In a nutshell:

– the state of Ukraine is 7500 yo
– French, Spanish, Portuguese and even Jews are descendants of ancient Ukrs
– progenitor of Scythians was Hercules, a native of Crimea who’s roots go back to a Dnepr island
-… pic.twitter.com/jUBBs3rFzW

— Donbass Devushka (@PeImeniPusha) April 2, 2023

It’s over.

• Bakhmut “Technically Captured” – Prigozhin (ZH)

Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group in the overnight hours on Monday has claimed victory (or at least a partial victory) over Bakhmut by raising the Russian flag as well as its own PMC Wanger Group flag over central government administration buildings of Bakhmut. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin described that the key city in Donetsk is “ours” but only in a “legal sense”. He wrote on Telegram: “The commanders of the units that took city hall and the whole center will go and put up this flag,” he said in reference to a Russian flag being raised in the accompanying video. “This is the Wagner private military company, these are the guys who took Bakhmut. In a legal sense, it’s ours.”

About two weeks ago Prigozhin claimed that Wagner and Russian forces controlled 70% of the utterly destroyed town, and as the Ukrainians were mounting a stiff defense, pouring more resources into the months-long fight. Hours prior to Prigozhin video showing the flag-raising against a dark night sky, the Ukrainian general staff acknowledged that “the enemy has not stopped its assault of Bakhmut… Ukrainian defenders are courageously holding the city as they repel numerous enemy attacks.” The announcement was meant to convey that the Ukrainian Army still considers that it “holds” Bakhmut. Russian sources say Ukrainian fighters are still concentrated on the Western outskirts. However, going into the weekend it was already clear that Wagner fighters were on the cusp of taking the city center…

On Sunday President Zelensky was still sounding somewhat optimistic regarding the fate of Bakhmut: “I am grateful to our warriors who are fighting near Avdiivka, Maryinka, near Bakhmut… Especially Bakhmut! It’s especially hot there today!” Zelensky said in his own post to Telegram. Near Bakhmut, about 27 kilometres (17 miles) away in Kostyantynivka, a “massive attack” of Russian missiles left three men and three women dead and eleven wounded Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said. Zelensky said the affected zones are “just residential areas”, where “ordinary civilians of an ordinary city of Donbas” were targeted. Zelensky in an interview last week suggested that he may be forced to negotiate with Russia if his forces are definitively defeated at Bakhmut, while also hinting at huge losses.

❗️"Legally we took Bakhmut" – Evgeny Prigozhin confirmed that PMC "Wagner" occupied the administrative buildings of Artemovsk

The head of the Wagner PMC confirmed that the orchestra had occupied the administrative buildings of Bakhmut. The Russian flag and the banner of Wagner… pic.twitter.com/8RRwZh6luC

— Donbass Devushka (@PeImeniPusha) April 2, 2023

“..those who persecute them, “will not get any advantage earthly or heavenly, either physically or mentally… They will be hurt. They will be condemned..”

• Zelensky’s Government Is An ‘Evil Force’ – Orthodox Priest (RT)

The “evildoers” who persecute Christians will derive no benefit from such action either on Earth or in the afterlife, Kesis Mezgebu, a prominent Ethiopian Orthodox priest, has told RT. Mezgebu, who serves at the Holy Trinity Theological University in Addis Ababa, was commenting on the attempts by the government of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to evict the monks of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) from the country’s Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery. On Saturday, Metropolitan Pavel, the abbot of the Lavra, was placed under house arrest on accusations of “inciting religious hatred” and “justifying” Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. The abbot has vigorously denied those allegations.

What’s happening in Ukraine is a “catastrophic event,” perpetrated by an “evil force,” Mezgebu said in an interview on Sunday. “This is atrocity…hatred… completely evil spirit,” he added, describing the actions of the Kiev authorities. Christians tend to help others and are always a stabilizing factor in a society, so those who persecute them, “will not get any advantage earthly or heavenly, either physically or mentally… They will be hurt. They will be condemned,”he said. According to Mezgebu, followers of the UOC in Ukraine “might be in danger soon” because they may be left with no other choice but to tell the “evildoers” to stop what they’re doing. He urged believers to stay “peaceful [and] remain within the Church” to avoid escalation.

Ukraine has experienced religious tensions for years, with two entities claiming to be the country’s true Orthodox Church. The Kiev government is supporting the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which was created only in 2014 and which the Russian Orthodox Church considers schismatic. Zelensky has explained the moves against the UOC by the need to protect Ukraine’s “spiritual independence”and deprive Russia of an opportunity to “to manipulate the spirituality of our people” amid the conflict between the two countries.

However, the Ethiopian priest suggested that “nationalist xenophobia” can only lead to suffering. “This will never take us anywhere. We have a lot of things to do together in harmony and collaboration, rather than destroying one another in the name of nationality or whatever kind of patriotic feeling. This is not how you reveal your patriotism,” he explained. Mezgebu also suggested that the West is aware of the religious persecution in Ukraine, but – despite having the ability to intervene – it remains silent on the issue because it shares a “similar agenda” with Kiev.

“..we must remember that 2006-9 was just a rehearsal. The finale is starting now..”

• The Everything Collapse (Egon von Greyerz)

Sadly, gold is now on its way to heights which are unthinkable for most people. To all the people who have asked me over the years why gold doesn’t go up, I have replied: “Don’t wish for gold to go up substantially for when it does, your quality of life will deteriorate remarkably.” And we are now at the point in the world when this is likely to happen. [..] I came to the conclusion early in this century that a sick financial system was not going to survive the infestation of vermin in the form of debt that started just over 50 years ago. Nixon’s closing of the gold window in 1971 was the signal that this currency system was going to end like all currency systems in history. And for the ones who haven’t studied the history of money, let me tell you that NO FIAT MONEY HAS EVER SURVIVED IN HISTORY IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM. So with all money going to ZERO, it has never been a question of if but only of when the dollar based currency system would die.

[..] At the beginning of the Ukraine conflict I and some others made the analogy with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 (which I remember well) when Kennedy gave an ultimatum to Khrushchev to withdraw the nuclear missiles pointing towards the US or face war. In the same way as with Cuba, Russia was never going to accept Ukraine becoming a Nato country. But sadly the US Neocons have seen this conflict as the last chance to save the US military, political and economic hegemony from total collapse. Defeating Russia was the last stand for the US. But it now looks like they will fail which seals the fate of the US empire. The US neocons forced a much too willing Europe to not only agree to the sanctions against Russia but also make direct contributions to the war both with money and equipment. This fatal mistake by Europe and especially Germany is totally crushing the European economy. But what the US neocons never understood is that the US sanctions would affect the whole world and in particular the debt infested US and the West.

[..] we must remember that 2006-9 was just a rehearsal. The finale is starting now. The debt which has built up has now reached levels which means the financial system is now too big to survive. Three US banks and one Swiss went under 2 weeks ago although two of the four were rescued temporarily at a high cost. The Swiss government could not afford to let Credit Suisse go under and is supporting the UBS takeover of the Credit Suisse at a potential extraordinary cost of CHF 209 billion. Central banks are on standby to stop the next bank run. Many expected Deutsche Bank to be next. Governments will stop major banks from going under for as long as they can, to stop global contagion. But they will of course fail.

The FDIC (Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation) currently has a capital of $128 billion dollars to support a total of $18 trillion deposits. So with 0.7% cover, it is guaranteed that the US government will soon need to step in as the next lot US of banks fail. Same in Europe where the most EU banks and the ECB are in a terrible shape. Total central bank assets are $25 trillion which is less than 10% of global debt before derivatives. Default rates in coming years are likely to exceed 50% which means much more money printing to come.

The US has lost Saudi Arabia.

• Oil Prices Surge After Surprise OPEC+ Production Cut (RT)

An unexpected announcement by the OPEC+ group of oil producing countries of a plan to slash their combined output by another 1,15 million barrels per day pushed the prices of crude up as much as 6% in early Monday trade. The oil producers who control roughly 50% of global oil supplies reached a decision to reduce their output starting from May until the end of 2023, in a move designed to “stabilize” the markets, according to a series of announcements on Sunday night. Riyadh said it would cut its output by 500,000 barrels per day, while Baghdad announced a cut of 211,000bpd. The UAE will reduce production by 144,000 bpd, Kuwait will cut 128,000bpd, Kazakhstan 78,000bpd, Algeria 48,000bpd and Oman 40,000bpd.

Crude prices jumped on the news, with the international benchmark Brent rising more than 5.5% to $84.30 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures soared 5.6% to $79.90 a barrel as of 3:30am GMT on Monday. Russia already voluntarily cut oil output by 500,000bpd back in March in retaliation for an oil-price cap introduced by the West, which it said would eventually result in scarce supply and trigger uncertainty on the global market. On Sunday, however, Moscow announced it will synchronize with OPEC in extending its cut until the end of the year. Moscow believes the move would contribute to a stabilization of crude oil prices, which fell sharply on concerns that the Western banking crisis could weaken global energy demand.

The Saudi Ministry of Energy called the move a “precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the oil market.” Last month, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman warned Western states against capping the price of crude oil supplied by the kingdom, adding that any attempts to impose a ceiling would be met with a halt of sales and production cuts. The move left Washington disappointed as it comes in defiance of US pressure on oil producers to increase their production and lower the prices. President Joe Biden even traveled to Riyadh last July to petition Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman directly, to no avail. “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty – and we’ve made that clear,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council told Reuters on Sunday.

“..respect the Russian authorities’ decision made in conformity with law and Russia’s international commitments..”

• Lavrov Tells Blinken: Up To Court To Decide About US Journalist Future (TASS)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that it is up to court to decide about the future of The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich who was detained on espionage charges in Russia, the Russian foreign ministry said on Sunday after their telephone conversation. “In light of the established evidence of the US national’s illegal activities, his future will be determined by court. The American embassy in Moscow was duly notified about his detention,” the ministry said. “In the context of the discussion of the issue of the detention of US national Gershkovich in Russia on suspicion of espionage, which was raised by the Secretary of State, Blinken’s attention was drawn to the necessity to respect the Russian authorities’ decision made in conformity with law and Russia’s international commitments,” the ministry said.

“Lavrov stressed that Gershkovich had been detained red-handed when he was receiving secret data and was collecting data constituting a state secret acting under the guise of a journalist’s status.” The Russian top diplomat also told his US counterparts that it is inadmissible to fan hysteria around the journalist’s arrest. “It was stressed that it is inadmissible for Washington officials and Western mass media to stir up hysteria with an obvious aim of giving a political overtone to this case,” the ministry said. According to the ministry, Lavrov and Blinken also touched upon several other bilateral matters. The call was initiated by the US side. Lavrov and Blinken had a ten-minute meeting on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty meeting in New Delhi. According to the Russian minister, the meeting was quite constructive. The topics included the situation in the sphere of strategic stability in the context of the New START treaty and Ukraine.

The Public Relations Center of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said earlier that Evan Gershkovich, “acting at the behest of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of an enterprise within Russia’s military-industrial complex.” The reporter was detained in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. The FSB investigators opened a criminal case against the US citizen under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Espionage”). On March 30, Moscow’s Lefortovo district court sanctioned Gershkovich’s arrest until May 29. In light of this, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a statement expressing deep concern for the safety of Gershkovich. According to the WSJ, Gershkovich covers Russia from his post at the newspaper’s Moscow bureau.

You first.

• ‘Lower the Rhetoric’ on China, Says Milley (D1)

Everyone needs to calm down about war with China, Gen. Mark Milley said on Friday. The Joint Chiefs chairman warned against the rise of “overheated” rhetoric of a looming U.S. war with China, and he said he doubts China’s chances of “conquering” Taiwan. But, he added, the United States should continue to quicken arms shipments to the self-governing nation and its own military capabilities, just in case. Following this year’s Chinese balloon scare, the China heat is on. In the last two weeks, members of Congress in hearings aimed a list of concerns about China—everything from nuclear weapons to computer chips, invading Taiwan, and allying with Russia—at Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Milley has taken to telling lawmakers that war with China—and Russia—is “not imminent or inevitable.” It’s part of an effort to lower the heat, he said.

“I think there’s a lot of rhetoric in China, and a lot of rhetoric elsewhere, to include the United States, that could create the perception that war is right around the corner or we’re on the brink of war with China,” Milley said in an interview with Defense One. “And that could happen. I mean, it is possible that you could have an incident or some other trigger event that could lead to uncontrolled escalation. So, it’s not impossible. But I don’t think at this point I would put it in the likely category,” said Milley. “And I think that the rhetoric itself can overheat the environment.” Still, Milley said he agrees with calls for the United States to send arms into Taiwan as quickly as possible, to beat China’s Xi Jinping to any punch.

Xi has said he wants the People’s Liberation Army armed and ready to take Taiwan by force, if necessary, by 2027. “So if you think about it, that’s only four years away,” Milley said. “So, one of the elements of deterrence is to make sure that your opponent knows that the cost exceeds the benefit. So, for Taiwan, we’ve—my guess is we’ve got three or four years to get Taiwan in a position where they will create the perception in the minds of the Chinese decision makers that the cost exceeds that.” Milley said Taiwan needs air defense, anti-ship cruise missiles, and anti-ship mines. But he said the island itself, its population of 23 million—including 170,000 active duty military and 1-to-2 million reserves,—and China’s lack of experience make a takeover unlikely. “It favors the defense. It would be a very difficult island to capture,” he said.

“Ukrainian operators did everything to monetize the situation. In European ports..“

• Eastern Europe ‘Drowning’ In -Cheap- Ukrainian Grain – Le Figaro (RT)

Anger is mounting across Eastern Europe as farmers in the region protest a glut of cheap grain from Ukraine threatening their businesses, Le Figaro reported earlier this week. Struggling to sell their crops, producers in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria have suffered substantial losses due to the surge in imports from Ukraine. Farmers in nations that had previously agreed to help get grain out of Ukraine and on to global markets now face unfair competition, they say. They also are not subject to the same regulatory requirements. Last May, the European Union suspended customs duties on all agricultural produce imported from Ukraine for one year to support the economy of the war-torn nation.

However, grains and other produce leaving Ukraine settled in the EU instead of being sent outside the bloc, putting competitive pressure on domestic production. “Instead of going to international markets, to Africa, as politicians promised us, Ukrainian cereals remained in Poland,” Polish farmer Marcin Misiak told the media, adding that his regular buyers opted to purchase cheaper maize from Ukraine. According to Misiak, he could sell wheat for €340 per ton in August 2022, but at the beginning of March 2023, it cost just €220.

“The EU was unable to anticipate the rapid effects of competition from Ukrainian grains,” said Sebastien Abis, a researcher at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS) and director of the Demeter Club think tank, as cited by Le Figaro. “Ukrainian operators did everything to monetize the situation. In European ports, competition was fierce and produce imported from Ukraine would have been favored.” Last month, the European Commission announced plans to provide financial support to farmers from member-states neighboring Ukraine to compensate for their losses and limit the impact of market imbalances. Brussels tapped a crisis reserve totaling €56.3 million, financed from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

“.. lustration,” or a vetting process to determine who would lose their political rights over ties to the Russian state..”

• Russian Official Ridicules Ukrainian Plan To Rename Crimean Port (RT)

The idea of renaming Sevastopol as part of Kiev’s plan to retake Crimea from Russia should not be taken seriously, the governor of the port city, Mikhail Razvozhaev told TASS news agency on Sunday. Earlier in the day, Aleksey Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, took to Facebook to post what he called “12 steps for the de-occupation of Crimea.” One of the proposed steps was to rename Sevastopol – first simply to “Installation No.6” and then to Akhtiar, after a small settlement that used to exist in the area. The re-branding would be necessary to “break the historic perception [of Sevastopol] as a city of Russian military glory,” the Kiev official stated.

Danilov also suggested that if the peninsula became Ukrainian again the Crimean Bridge connecting it to mainland Russia would be destroyed, while the local population would undergo so-called “lustration,” or a vetting process to determine who would lose their political rights over ties to the Russian state. Reacting to Danilov’s plan, Razvozhaev said that “the news from Ukrainian politicians is more like entries in the medical record from Ward No.6.” He was likely referring to the 1892 short story ‘Ward No. 6’ by iconic Russian author Anton Chekhov, which depicts events at a provincial mental asylum. “One can’t take statements and comments of sick people seriously. They need to be treated, which is what our military is doing right now,” the Sevastopol governor pointed out as cited by TASS news agency. Sevastopol, in the south of the Crimean peninsula, serves as the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. It is one of three federal cities under Russian law, together with Moscow and St Petersburg.

The name Sevastopol, which was given to the city when it was founded by the Russian Empire in 1783, is composed of Greek words “sebastos,” which means “venerable,” and “polis,” which means “city.” For months, Ukraine has been mulling a major counteroffensive aimed at restoring control over all territories lost to Russia, including Crimea. Former Russian president and current deputy head of the country’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said earlier this week that the claims by Ukrainian officials were just “propaganda” and shouldn’t be treated seriously. However, Medvedev warned that if the peninsula, which reunited with Russia as a result of a referendum in 2014, is actually attacked, it could become “the basis for the use of all means of protection, including those provided for by the fundamentals of the Doctrine of Nuclear Deterrence.”

“We need to teach America a lesson in these elections,” Erdogan said..

• Erdogan Tells US Ambassador To ‘Know His Place’ (RT)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that from now on his “doors are closed” to the US Ambassador to Ankara, Jeffry Flake, blasting the diplomat’s recent meeting with his rival at the upcoming presidential elections. Erdogan attended a ceremony in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul on Sunday, dedicated to the official opening of nearly 100 houses and other facilities constructed in the wake of a series of devastating earthquakes. In a follow-up meeting with a group of officials from the Grey Wolves far-right movement, he heavily focused on the May 14 elections and Washington envoy’s alleged abuse of his diplomatic authority. “We need to teach America a lesson in these elections,” Erdogan said, as cited by Anadolu.

Ambassador Flake met with the leader of Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kilicdaroglu, on March 29, “as part of continuing conversations with Turkish political parties on issues of mutual interest between our two countries,” according to a tweet from the US Embassy. “Our doors are closed for him, he can no longer come in. Why? He needs to know his place,” Erdogan said. “Shame on you, think with your head. You are an ambassador. Your interlocutor here is the president.” Erdogan’s remarks come less than six weeks before presidential and general elections take place in Türkiye on May 14, with Kilicdaroglu put forward by the alliance of six opposition parties as his main opponent after months of political infighting. The Turkish president and his ruling AK Party are expected to face a tough challenge following a devastating earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in the country in early February.

What could go wrong?

• US Allows Migrants To Pick Their Gender (RT)

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services marked the Transgender Day of Visibility with an announcement that will begin accepting “self-identified gender markers” from foreign individuals who seek legal immigration services and benefits, without requesting any supporting documents. While the only two options on existing forms are still “male”and “female,” the Homeland Security’s legal immigration branch will now allow applicants to select and change their preferred gender at will, according to a policy update alert issued on March 31. The policy change, effective immediately, states that “benefit requestors may self-select their gender marker (in an initial filing or a subsequent change to a prior gender selection), without the need to provide supporting documentation or to match the gender listed on their identity documents.”

President Joe Biden officially proclaimed March 31 as a Transgender Day of Visibility back in 2021, as part of his wider push for equity and inclusivity. In his 2023 proclamation, Biden statedthat “Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul.” The immigration agency said it removed the documentation requirement in line with “priorities”set by Biden’s executive orders on advancing LGBTQI equality, combating discrimination, and “restoring faith” in American legal immigration systems. USCIS argued that the requirement to submit proof of gender identity had created extra barriers and delays to travel and employment, and abolishing it will help prevent “discrimination and harassment due to inconsistent identity documents.” Last year, the US State Department began offering an ‘X’ gender option on passports which stands for those with “unspecified or another gender identity,”without the need to provide any medical documentation to prove that they are neither male nor female.

Very disturbing.

• Banana Time for the Rule of Law (Kimball)

The Czech novelist Milan Kundera published The Joke, his first novel, in 1967. It traces the fortunes of Ludvik, a young student, after his politically correct girlfriend shows the Communist authorities a postcard he had written to her as a joke: “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky! Ludvik.” As a result of this whimsy, Ludvik finds himself expelled from the Communist Party, the university, and is eventually conscripted to work in the mines. That’s the way things are in totalitarian societies. No jokes allowed, especially not jokes told at the expense of the regime. Thus it is that North Korea banned sarcasm and irony. Poor Ludvik suffered for his joke. But he got off easy compared to Douglass Mackey, a social media “influencer” who wrote under the pen name “Ricky Vaughn.”

During the 2016 election cycle, Mackey/Vaughn posted a funny meme urging Hillary voters to “avoid the line and vote from home” by texting “Hillary” to a certain number. Who would be stupid enough to fall for such a joke? No one. But his satire was effective enough to get him banned from the pre-Elon Musk era Twitter. And the feds thought—or said they thought—that it was part of a “plot to disenfranchise black and women voters.” I guess that shows you what they think of black and women voters. It sounds stupid. It is stupid. But Mackey was charged with a felony and on Friday was convicted in the Eastern District of New York. He faces up to 10 years in jail for (as an official announcement crows) “his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.”

Yes, that’s right. A Trump supporter posts a silly (but amusing) meme that mocks Hillary voters and he is tried and convicted of a felony. In the course of that official announcement, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District called Breon Peace continues with this stomach churning bit of agitprop: Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election. . . . Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote. In fact, that verdict proved nothing of the sort. It merely confirmed the corruption and politicization of our judicial system. The real moral of this sorry episode is this: Make a joke, go to jail.

“..even the misdemeanor allegation involving false entries is unprecedented and represents selective prosecution..”

• Leaks From Bragg’s Grand Jury Are A Crime (Dershowitz)

It is likely that a serious felony has been committed right under District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s nose and he is not investigating it. Under New York law, it is a felony to leak confidential grand jury information, such as whether the jurors voted to indict. The protection of secrecy is as applicable to President Trump as it is to anyone else. We know that the information was disclosed while the indictment itself remains sealed and before any official announcement was made or charges brought. It is unlikely that the leak came from the Trump team, which seemed genuinely surprised. The most likely, though uncertain, scenario is that a person in Mr. Bragg’s office or a grand juror unlawfully leaked the sealed information. That would be a class E felony, subject to imprisonment.

It is possible of course that an investigation is underway, but it seems more likely that Mr. Bragg is too busy making up a crime against the man he promised in his campaign to get than investigating a real crime that took place on his watch. In my new book, “Get Trump,” I predicted that partisan prosecutors would try to get Trump regardless of the lack of evidence or law. That prediction has come true. Since the indictment itself has not been leaked — at least not yet — we don’t know its specifics. We do know, based on leaks, that it involves multiple counts, almost certainly involving the payment of hush money to a porn actress. Under Mr. Bragg’s likely theory, Mr. Trump should have disclosed in his public corporate records that he paid the hush money to avoid his adulterous affair from becoming public.

But no one in history has ever publicly disclosed the reason he paid money for a non-disclosure agreement. Why would Mr. Trump pay the money in the first place if he had to publicly disclose the embarrassing reason? Furthermore, no one in history has ever been indicted for listing “legal expenses” for setting a potentially embarrassing payment of hush money. Thus, even the misdemeanor allegation involving false entries is unprecedented and represents selective prosecution. It is also almost certainly barred by the two-year statute of limitations. In order to elevate this bookkeeping case into a felony, Mr. Bragg must also prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the reason Trump made the false entry — if he himself did it — was solely as a campaign contribution to help him win his election.

If Mr. Trump was motivated in part by his desire to protect his wife, children, and business interests from harmful disclosures, that would not constitute the crime of making an undisclosed campaign contribution. So this too is a stretch. It is a fundamental tenet of American law that criminal law should not be stretched to fit targeted defendants. Criminal statutes must be clear and unambiguous. If there is any doubt, the age-old concept of “lenity” requires that these doubts be resolved in favor of the defendant.

“..having concluded some of the most insanely stupid pharmaceutical contracts in the world.”

• Germany To Have Enough Covid mRNA Vaccine To Last Into The 24th Century (Eugyp)

You could not have invented a stupider pandemic: “According to the German Ministry of Health, the federal government at the end of February had amassed a reserve of 116 million doses of Corona vaccine. 111 million more doses, valued at around 2.5 billion Euros, are slated for delivery. According to an answer given by the Ministry on 28 March to a question by Thomas Dietz, a Bundestag member of Alternativ für Deutschland, EU treaties oblige the German government to take delivery of these doses. “In view of the current state of the pandemic, the federal government is working to make these EU treaties more flexible,” the answer continues.”

Tucker vaccine

$PFE
pic.twitter.com/FKzgyN1539

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) April 2, 2023

Another paper does the maths, and notes that if vaccination continues at the current rate of 2,000 jabs per day, the 227 million doses which Germany has procured will last for 311 years. Of course, all of these doses will expire well before then, so Germany will merely receive all of this useless product, store it at substantial expense in freezers for around eighteen months, and then throw it away. This hurts Corona. In related news, Welt reports on the curious failure of Lauterbach’s Health Ministry to finish work on the so-called National Reserve for Health Protection, which Merkel’s government planned three years ago. The Reserve was supposed to be a massive depot for masks (but of course), other personal protective equipment and medicines, which would in theory free Germany from reliance on China the next time somebody is stupid enough to cry wolf about a respiratory virus.

So far, the only thing anybody has done to realise this Reserve, is put 245 million masks in it, a substantial portion of which will expire by the end of the year. A Ministry spokesperson explains that the project has devolved from a Health Reserve into a National Trashbin for Worthless Masks that Nobody Wants, because it has received no funding. It appears politicians have lost enthusiasm and now prefer that the manufacturers and the federal states maintain their own “decentralised” reserves. This obviously means that they have quietly written off the project but hope that nobody will realise. Despite all that you hear from WEF conference attendees and virus pests like Lauterbach about the importance of “pandemic preparedness”, the will to actually do anything about pandemics – even at the highest reaches of government – has never been lower. Perhaps we’re not the only ones who have concluded, after all that happened since March 2020, that it is indeed best to think less about viruses.

Malhotra
https://twitter.com/i/status/1642046182305177600

Should be enough to throw out the case.

• El Pais Reveals How CIA Spied On Assange (RT)

The CIA used private Spanish security company UC Global to secretly install microphones inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to monitor WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, El Pais reported on Wednesday, citing the company’s internal communications. UC Global was hired to provide security for the embassy. Assange, who was granted asylum by Ecuador at the time, resided in the diplomatic compound from 2012 to 2019. The Spanish company’s alleged links to US intelligence agencies were first reported by El Pais in 2019. According to the newspaper, UC Global founder and head David Morales first came into contact with the CIA in 2017. Around that time, Morales informed his employees that the company would have to provide a new American client named ‘X’ with remote access to the server that collected the data from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which was referred to as the ‘Hotel’.

“Regarding the Hotel work, I would like to offer our information collection and analysis capability to the American client,” Morales wrote in a September 2017 email. “We must… try to make it attractive and easy to interpret.” The information shared reportedly included profiles of Assange’s visitors, including lawyers and diplomats, as well as cell phone data. Morales was quoted as saying in a chat message that “the people in control are our friends in the USA.” One of microphones that Morales’ team secretly planted inside the embassy was hidden in the base of a fire extinguisher in order to listen in despite Assange’s habit of using a white noise machine to prevent surveillance, El Pais said. Stickers were attached to window corners to avoid vibrations and allow sound to be recorded through laser microphones. “I know it is of the utmost interest and that the USA wants to do it,”Morales reportedly wrote to his employees.

According to El Pais, UC Global’s work helped Washington foil a plan to sneak Assange out of the embassy in December 2017. Lenin Moreno, Ecuador’s president at the time, allegedly wanted to grant the WikiLeaks co-founder Ecuadorian citizenship and get him out of Britain in a diplomatic car. Morales’ team reportedly recorded a conversation between Assange and Ecuadorian officials and then quickly sent it to the US. Washington responded by issuing an arrest warrant for Assange to Britain, which apparently prompted organizers to abort the plan. In 2019, the Spanish authorities launched an investigation into Morales’ company and briefly detained him. He has since been released on bail.

Well, it’s something. Bit late perhaps?

• Rep. Rashida Tlaib Demands DOJ Drop Charges Against Julian Assange (Fox)

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is asking her fellow House members to sign a letter calling on the Justice Department to end its prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is accused of publishing classified documents. The letter, which was obtained by The Intercept, is currently circulating among members as they are urged to sign it and has not yet been sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman, N.Y., Ilhan Omar, Minn., and Cori Bush, Mo., have signed the letter. The office of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said she intends to sign the letter. “I know many of us have very strong feelings about Mr. Assange, but what we think of him and his actions is really besides the point here,” Tlaib’s letter to her colleagues reads.

“The fact of the matter is that the [way] in which Mr. Assange is being prosecuted under the notoriously undemocratic Espionage Act seriously undermines freedom of the press and the First Amendment.” The letter comes just ahead of the fourth anniversary of Assange’s April 11, 2019, detention. Assange is facing a legal battle over his potential extradition to the U.S. regarding the publication of classified materials detailing war crimes committed by the U.S. government in the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp, Iraq and Afghanistan. The materials also expose instances of the CIA engaging in torture and rendition. If he is extradited to the U.S., Assange would face 17 charges for receiving, possessing and communicating classified information to the public under the espionage act and one charge alleging a conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

He could be sentenced to as many as 175 years in an American maximum security prison. The Wikileaks founder has been held at London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2019 for breaching jail conditions. He had sought asylum at the embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations he raped two women. The investigations into the sexual assault allegations were eventually dropped. Tlaib’s cites last year’s open letter from the editors and publishers of U.S. and European news outlets that worked with Assange on the publication of excerpts from more than 250,000 documents he obtained in the Cablegate leak.

“The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel have taken the extraordinary step of publishing a joint statement in opposition to the indictment, warning that it ‘sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press,’” Tlaib wrote to House members. The congresswoman also warned that major news outlets could later be prosecuted for publishing accurate information using classified materials if the case against Assange is successful. “Mr. Assange’s prosecution marks the first time in US history that the Espionage Act has been used to indict a publisher of truthful information,” she wrote. “The prosecution of Mr. Assange, if successful, not only sets a legal precedent whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted, but a political one as well. In the future, the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution.”

Hidden within a section of a Colombian newspaper lies a clever three dimensional layout of a kitchen

Stonefish

Synanceia is a genus of fish of the family Synanceiidae, the stonefishes, whose members are venomous, dangerous, and even fatal to humans

[read more: https://t.co/LiBOZRBEF2]pic.twitter.com/mi9gnTgaQT

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 2, 2023

Photographer Pavan Tavrekere used multiple flashes to bring out the multicolors of the so called ‘world’s most colourful spider. The tiny peacock spider measures just 0.75cm in length (0.3 inches)

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Debt Rattle December 16 2022

Dec 162022

December 16, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: Arctic sea ice, China, CIA, doormat, Elon Musk, flying insects, JFK, Orthodox, Qatar scandal, SBF, Twitter, Vatican 84 Responses »

Paul Gauguin When are you getting married? 1892

• Twitter Nukes Liberal Pundits From Platform (ZH)

• Matt Taibbi Discusses Ongoing ‘Big Picture’ Review of Twitter Files (CTH)

• EU Allows US To Wipe Its Feet On The Bloc – Putin (RT)

• Kiev Seizes Assets of Russian Orthodox Clerics (LI)

• Vatican Apologizes For Pope’s Remarks – Moscow (RT)

• European Parliament’s ‘Qatar Scandal’ Tip Of A Corruption Iceberg (Marsden)

• Germany Resorts To Record Borrowing (RT)

• Germany Spends $500 Billion To ‘Keep The Lights On’ – Reuters (RT)

• China Downgrades Omicron Risks To Seasonal Cold (ZH)

• Thousands Of Unedited Government JFK Assassination Files Released (BBC)

• “Effective Altruism”: Could SBF’s Parents Be the Key to a Plea? (Turley)

• Don’t Fall For It (Denninger)

• Arctic Summer Sea Ice Stopped Declining a Decade Ago (DS)

• Flying Insect Numbers Plunge 64% Since 2004 – UK Survey (G.)

Mr. Wonderful

JUST IN: Kevin O’Leary testifies at Senate hearing and says #Binance intentionally put FTX out of business. pic.twitter.com/90pYPYrU5J

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) December 14, 2022

Biden 2006

Joe Biden on gay marriage in 2006… pic.twitter.com/ZhoOkpPYwM

— Carrie ❤️ America (@FarmGirlCarrie) December 14, 2022

Pie

This one might just be my angriest yet: Strikes!

Full version here: https://t.co/4zGK80cK0n pic.twitter.com/w2SBQ3oT8n

— Jonathan Pie (@JonathanPieNews) December 15, 2022

Xfiles
https://twitter.com/i/status/1603512101485805569

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
– Dostoevsky

Open season has been declared on Musk. He and his family are fair game. They paint a target on him and when he wipes it off, they say: see, he doesn’t really advocate free speech!

• Twitter Nukes Liberal Pundits From Platform (ZH)

Twitter on Thursday evening began purging reporters from major media outlets, just one day after new owner Elon Musk changed the platform’s “anti-doxxing” policy in response to a “crazy stalker” who climbed on the hood of a car carrying his two-year-old son. Those kicked off the platform include: Keith Olbermann of MSNBC • Ryan Mac of the NY Times • Anthony Webster of Bellingcat • Donnie O’Sullivan of CNN • Micah F. Lee of The Intercept • Matt Binder of Mashable • Drew Harwell of the Washington Post • Aaron Rupar of his mom’s basement. Also booted was the official account for Twitter competitor Mastadon, which earlier in the day posted a link to track Musk’s private jet. It was unclear what prompted the suspensions, though it appears they are related to doxxing – current or in the past.

“Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else,” Musk said on Thursday evening, adding “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.” “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service,” Musk said in a subsequent tweet. [..] Aaron Rupar said in a statement to CNN’s Oliver Darcy: “I never posted anything Elon Jet related or that could violate the policy about disclosing locations. Unless the policy is that you criticize Elon and you get banned.” Except…

UPDATE: Rupar posted screenshots of the location of Elon Musk's private plane

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 16, 2022

Corporate media has framed this as Twitter suspending journalists “who have been covering Elon Musk and the company.” A spokesperson for the NY Times said that the suspensions were ‘questionable and unfortunate,’ and said that no explanation was provided. “We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action,” said Charlie Stadtlander, communications director for the Times.

“..Taibbi notes the current data set does not include access to the inbound requests and instructions from government officials..”

• Matt Taibbi Discusses Ongoing ‘Big Picture’ Review of Twitter Files (CTH)

During a podcast Matt Taibbi describes the big picture takeaway of the data they have been permitted to review so far. Interestingly, Taibbi notes the silo effect within Twitter as the division in charge of taking action on requests is not necessarily the division that receives the requests. There is an inflection point between two silos. Taibbi notes the current data set does not include access to the inbound requests and instructions from government officials, they are limited to only seeing what happens after the request is received.

They are also limited in only seeing the activity that is taken within the action division where the accounts are restricted. The division within Twitter that was in the process of amplifying or boosting accounts, is a different silo. Additionally, as Taibbi also notes, if the scale of what they are seeing in Twitter is representative of outside contacts to other social media platforms, then he is sure Facebook, YouTube, Google, Microsoft, Instagram, Apple etc. also have a process to receive and act upon these inbound DHS/FBI instructions.

Doormat.

• EU Allows US To Wipe Its Feet On The Bloc – Putin (RT)

The current economic troubles in the EU, and the unfriendly attitude displayed by the US towards Europe, are a direct consequence of the weakness shown by the union’s leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. He made the remarks during a meeting of Russia’s council for strategic development and national projects. “Today, the EU authorities themselves say the policy of their main partner, the US, is leading directly to the de-industrialization of Europe. They are even trying to complain about that to their American overlord. Sometimes there are even words of resentment: ‘Why are you doing this to us?’ I want to ask: ‘What did you expect?’ What else happens to those who allow feet to be wiped on them?” Putin said.

Earlier this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sounded the alarm over US economic policies, urging the EU to “take action” if it wanted to be able to compete with the US government-subsidized green industry. Von der Leyen blasted the tax breaks for consumers who buy American products, introduced under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by President Joe Biden in August. She warned that such initiatives could “lead to unfair competition, could close markets, and thus fragment critical supply chains.” Other top EU officials have repeatedly voiced concern about an impending recession and potential decades-long deindustrialization. Early in October, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said that unless Brussels were to somehow fix the situation with soaring energy prices, it was “risking massive deindustrialization of the European continent and the long-term consequences that might actually be very deep.”

The economic crisis in the EU largely stems from the bloc’s own actions, targeting Russia with a multitude of sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, Putin noted. “What exactly has Europe itself achieved by imposing the restrictions? First of all, there has been an unprecedented, as economists say, jump in inflation in their own home, the eurozone. In November, it amounted to 10% in the eurozone as a whole, with some countries showing extreme figures of more than 20%, even 25%,” Putin noted. At the same time, the collective West, unlike Russia, continues its efforts to grab any resources for itself, the Russian president stated. “Unlike Western countries, which shamelessly pull all of the blankets for themselves, Russia helps the poorest states in Africa, Asia and other regions, delivering food and other goods,” he said.

Dangerous to go after (1,000 years of) religion.

• Kiev Seizes Assets of Russian Orthodox Clerics (LI)

Ukraine has ratcheted up its campaign against a branch of the Eastern Orthodox church with ties to Russia. On the order of President Volodymyr Zelensky, seven senior clerics from the Russian Orthodox church will have their assets seized and face bans on a range of economic and legal activities. During his nightly video address on Sunday, the Ukrainian president said “by decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, sanctions were applied against seven people,” adding that his administration is “doing everything to ensure that the aggressor state does not have a single string of Ukrainian society to pull.”

According to Reuters, the new penalties mean that the seven clerics will have “their assets seized and are subject to a ban on a range of economic and legal activities as well as a de facto travel ban.” The vast majority of Ukrainians belong to Eastern Orthodox churches, with many worshiping in parishes that take direction from the Moscow Patriarchate. On December 1, Zelensky announced that Kiev would attempt to expel all religious institutions with ties to Russia, arguing the move would make “it impossible for religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine.”

The president went on the claim that the Russian Orthodox Church poses a threat to Ukrainian culture, saying “we will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul.” He additionally denounced Ukrainians who continue to attend the allegedly Russia-controlled parishes as succumbing to “the temptation of evil.” Kiev has conducted a series of raids on Russian Orthodox parishes and claims to have uncovered clerics attempting to subvert the Ukrainian government, though has provided little evidence to support its assertions. Nonetheless, Kiev sanctioned 10 top clerics of the church last week, suggesting they threatened ”the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

“This is no longer Russophobia, it’s a perversion on a level I can’t even name..”

• Vatican Apologizes For Pope’s Remarks – Moscow (RT)

The Vatican has issued a formal apology to Russia for derogatory remarks made by Pope Francis last month about some ethnic groups in the country, according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The ministry received the message on Thursday from Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. It expressed the Holy See’s respect for “all peoples of Russia, their dignity, faith and culture, just like all other nations and peoples of the world,” Zakharova told a press briefing. “The capacity to recognize one’s mistakes is becoming more rare in international relations today. This situation shows that, behind the Vatican’s calls for dialogue, there is a knack for having such a dialogue and hearing the other side,” the Russian diplomat noted. She added that Moscow considered the incident to be over.

Pope Francis made a negative generalized assessment of the character of Buryats and Chechens, two of the many ethnic groups living in Russia, in an interview published in late November. He described them as “of Russia but… not of the Russian tradition” and claimed that such people were “the cruelest” of the Russian troops in Ukraine. Moscow responded by issuing a formal note of protest to the Vatican, while many Russian officials, including Zakharova, expressed outrage about the remarks. “This is no longer Russophobia, it’s a perversion on a level I can’t even name,” the spokeswoman said at the time. The Vatican and Pope Francis personally offered mediation in the conflict in Ukraine. The pontiff previously angered Kiev by publicly recognizing that NATO’s expansion in Europe was a contributing factor in the conflict, which is part of Moscow’s position on the origin of the violent standoff with Kiev and its foreign backers.

The EU has so far pretended there is no corruption at all.

• European Parliament’s ‘Qatar Scandal’ Tip Of A Corruption Iceberg (Marsden)

In a corruption scandal that strikes at the heart of European Union governance, a vice-president of the European Parliament, Eva Kaili, of Greece, has been stripped of her responsibilities by the EU Parliament, had her assets frozen, and has been charged after police alleged to have found “bags of cash” at her residence. There also was a raid on the home of a Belgian MEP, Marc Tarabella, the vice-chair of the EU’s delegation for relations with the Arab peninsula. Belgian authorities paid another no-knock visit to the home of an assistant to yet another MEP. Earlier this week, authorities searched the EU Parliament offices like it was a common crime scene, reportedly seizing data.

So far, €1.5 million has been seized from private homes, with the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office accusing the four people arrested and charged with “participation in a criminal organization, money laundering and corruption.” It turns out that the officials alleged to have been involved are accused of also lobbying for visa-free EU-Qatar travel and whitewashing Qatar’s labor rights record. For an institution like the European Union, which constantly preaches to other countries about how to clean up their act, you’d think they’d have some strong guardrails in place to prevent the kind of things that these charges allege. That isn’t the case. “The allegations are of utmost concern, very serious,” said an uncharacteristically measured European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. She proposed an independent ethics body to set rules for EU institutions “where there are very clear rules,” adding that it “would be a big step forward.” You mean that didn’t already exist? Why not?

Those who believe that Western democratic institutions practice what they constantly preach might be surprised to learn that the lack of checks and balances to prevent corruption at home is actually pretty staggering. Earlier this year, for example, three US congressional representatives introduced bipartisan legislation to close loopholes allowing foreign funding of think tanks, government officials, and elections. “Right now, foreign governments are able to secretly fund think tanks to push their own agendas, hire former public officials and military officers to lobby for their interests, and have their agents raise millions of dollars for political campaigns,” explained bill sponsor, Congressman Jared Golden. It’s almost like systemic corruption is just an open secret that benefits from an omertà as very few officials actually seem to want to acknowledge or address the issue.

When von der Leyen had the opportunity to address the matter with the Brussels press corps on Monday, she stonewalled journalists – much to their frustration, which they weren’t shy about expressing on Twitter. According to Politico, one journalist even shouted at von der Leyen as she was leaving, “You didn’t answer a single one of the questions.” It’s not exactly the kind of behavior you might expect from someone who routinely speaks of holding others accountable for corruption, a lack of transparency, and other undemocratic practices.

“..the German government has set out a €200 billion “defensive shield” to protect households and businesses from soaring prices..”

• Germany Resorts To Record Borrowing (RT)

Germany’s federal government intends to issue a record volume of debt next year to fund costs associated with the energy crisis, the German Finance Agency has revealed. According to the plan released on Wednesday, debt issuance will balloon to about €539 billion ($573 billion) in 2023 from €449 billion this year. The previous record was in 2021, when the government was attempting to offset the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. Borrowing next year will reportedly include federal bonds worth €274 billion and a further €242 billion to be sold on the money market. In addition, between €15 billion and €17 billion will be raised via green federal securities and between €6 billion and €8 billion via inflation-linked federal securities, the agency said.

The plan is “dramatic,” according to Elmar Voelker, a senior fixed-income analyst at LBBW Research in Stuttgart. He told Bloomberg that “on the one hand, yields on longer-dated [bonds] could come under additional upward pressure as investors demand compensation for taking up the additional supply. On the other, the structural shortage of [bonds] could ease a good deal as a result of the additional supply.” According to Reuters, the country’s spending is expected to exceed revenues in the coming year, when the federal government will also have to repay securities worth more than €325 billion to investors.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has been struggling to cope with skyrocketing gas and electricity costs. The nation, which relies mainly on natural gas to power its industry, has vowed to replace imports from its major supplier Russia by as early as mid-2024. However, the attempts to diversify gas supplies have contributed to the current energy crunch. EU sanctions pressure, maintenance issues, as well as the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, have further exacerbated the problem. In response to the energy crisis, the German government has set out a €200 billion “defensive shield” to protect households and businesses from soaring prices.

“Where does the German economy stand? If we look at price inflation, it has a high fever.”

• Germany Spends $500 Billion To ‘Keep The Lights On’ – Reuters (RT)

Germany has reportedly allocated nearly $500 billion to shore up its energy supplies and “keep the lights on” since the Russia-Ukraine conflict began last February, but the spending binge might not be enough to weather the crisis. The estimated total shows the “cumulative scale” so far of energy bailouts and other schemes that Berlin has employed amid surging oil and natural gas prices and the loss of imports from Russia, Reuters reported on Thursday. The media outlet called the various outlays an “energy bazooka” – equating to $5,400 per resident in Germany, 12% of GDP and an estimated $1.6 billion per day since the conflict in Eastern Europe started – and it added that still more spending may be needed.

“How severe the crisis will be and how long it will last greatly depends on how the energy crisis will develop,” Michael Gromling, head of macroeconomic research at the German Economic Institute, told Reuters. The economic effects of the conflict stem largely from anti-Russia sanctions imposed by the US, Germany and other NATO members. Despite Western efforts to punish and isolate Moscow, Russian government revenue from oil and gas exports has more than doubled from a year earlier to 10 trillion rubles, about $160 billion, in 2022’s first 11 months. Over the same period, rising energy earnings helped push the government budget surplus to 557 billion rubles.

However, as Reuters noted, Europe’s biggest economy now finds itself “at the mercy” of the weather. “Energy rationing is a risk in the event of a long cold spell this winter, Germany’s first in half a century without Russian gas,” the outlet pointed out. Stefan Kooths, vice president at Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, said uncertain energy supplies have pushed the country’s economy to a “very critical phase.” He added, “Where does the German economy stand? If we look at price inflation, it has a high fever.” Reuters based its calculation of Germany’s spending on bailout packages for energy companies, LNG import infrastructure and funding to help utilities and traders buy gas and coal. “Despite these efforts, there is little certainty over how the country can replace Russia,” the outlet said.

From sealing people into their apartments to ‘it’s just a cold’ in no time flat. Something must have spooked Xi.

• China Downgrades Omicron Risks To Seasonal Cold (ZH)

Although easing zero Covid restrictions in China will be met with reopening hardships as infections soar, earlier this week, one of the top medical advisers in the country said that the omicron variant of the virus is no worse than the flu. Now some Chinese cities are downgrading Covid even further, saying it’s the same as the seasonal cold, and there is no need to panic. We pointed out earlier this week that China’s renowned respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan downplayed the risks of the omicron subvariant of Covid-19. He said the death rate from omicron is .1%, equivalent to the common flu, and the infection doesn’t reach the lungs, adding most healthy people recover in less than ten days.

Zhong’s comments come as Beijing pivots from zero Covid to reopen the economy and prevent further economic deceleration. Officials are now telling people they must learn to live with Covid — a similar move that worked in Western countries. According to Shanghai Morning Post, Guangzhou health authorities have assured the public that Covid is less severe than the flu and no more serious than a seasonal cold: s”The virulence of the new coronavirus [Omicron] has now evolved to the level of the seasonal flu, and some are even less virulent than the flu, so you really don’t need to panic,” said Tang Xiaoping, director of the No 8 People’s Hospital in Guangzhou and head of the national key clinical department of infectious diseases.

China downplaying the severity of Covid from flu to cold is the latest sign Beijing is attempting to calm fears and quickly reopen the economy. And why would they be doing that? Well, check out overnight economic data: Overnight, a slew of economic data led to a decline in business activity in November. Retail sales fell 5.9% last month from a year earlier — the biggest decline in consumer spending since May — caused mainly by lockdowns. The unemployment situation also worsened to 5.7% last month, the highest level in six months. And industrial production only rose to 2.2%, about half of October’s figures.

Stones

Rolling Stones to fans on Covid19 vaccines: "We've all had the shot and you better get one too" pic.twitter.com/Or0kHLMUvS

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) December 15, 2022

Coming clean? Tucker Carlson has far more interesting info than the MSM.

• Thousands Of Unedited Government JFK Assassination Files Released (BBC)

The White House has ordered the release of thousands of documents on the murder of US President John F Kennedy in full for the first time.With the publication of some 13,173 files online, the White House said more than 97% of records in the collection were now publicly available. No huge revelations are expected from the papers, but historians hope to learn more about the alleged assassin. Kennedy was shot during a visit to Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963. A 1992 law required the government to release all documents on the assassination by October 2017. On Thursday, President Joe Biden issued an executive order authorising the latest disclosure. But he said some files would be kept under wraps until June 2023 to protect against possible “identifiable harm”. The US National Archives said that 515 documents would remain withheld in full, and another 2,545 documents would be partly withheld.

A 1964 US inquiry, the Warren Commission, found that Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a US citizen who had previously lived in the Soviet Union, and that he acted alone. He was killed in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters two days after his arrest. JFK’s death spawned decades of conspiracy theories, but on Thursday the CIA said the US spy agency had “never engaged” Oswald, and did not withhold information about him from US investigators. Long-time JFK academics and theorists have hoped the latest release would reveal more information about Oswald’s activities in Mexico City, where he met a Soviet KGB officer in October 1963. In its latest statement, the CIA said that all information held by the agency relating to his trip to Mexico City had previously been released, adding: “There is no new information on this topic in the 2022 release.”

Tucker JFK

Today we spoke to someone who had access to the still-hidden JFK files, and is deeply familiar with their contents. We asked this person directly: did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy?

Here’s the reply: "The answer is yes. I believe they were involved." pic.twitter.com/3EURZcsaR2

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 16, 2022

“The parents have the misfortune of looking like the type of low-hanging fruit prosecutors find irresistible..”

• “Effective Altruism”: Could SBF’s Parents Be the Key to a Plea? (Turley)

As Sam Bankman-Fried faces an eight-count indictment for his alleged massive crypto-fraud, his case could take a sudden turn toward resolution. The prosecutors may have the ultimate inducement for a plea to dangle over Bankman-Fried — actually two: Bankman and Fried. SBF, as he’s known, is not the only person at risk here, particularly with prosecutors making repeated references to unnamed “co-conspirators.” Two at risk could prove his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried. While there’s no proof of criminal acts on their part, Bankman-Fried surprisingly involved his parents in aspects of his alleged fraudulent operation. If so, the case could bring new meaning to the doctrine of in loco parentis, when people act “in place of a parent” or “instead of a parent.”

Federal prosecutors are notorious for targeting family members as a quarry’s vulnerability; do they see such an opening in Bankman-Fried’s parents’ role in litigating this massive alleged fraud? Both parents of SBF and his close associate and ex-girlfriend, Alameda Research head Caroline Ellison, 28, are professors at leading universities. Ellison’s parents are Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors; Bankman-Fried’s parents are Stanford Law professors. Both children are obviously bright, precocious “fac brats” who spoke of using investments for good deeds. Ellison has said she had only one job before moving over to Alameda and finding herself making huge decisions. Ellison is an obvious target for a cooperation agreement, and her counsel may be moving quickly to get her a chair before the music stops on the next round of indictments.

The more intriguing prospect, however, is using SBF’s parents as his most vulnerable pressure point. The Justice Department has previously targeted family members, as in the Michael Flynn case, to muscle defendants into pleas. While we’ve seen Justice give targets sharply different treatment in past cases, there’s ample reason for the parents to be concerned. Joseph Bankman, a longtime Stanford Law School tax professor, was a paid employee of his son and helped promote the company. He spent considerable time in the Bahamas with Sam during the critical periods of alleged fraud. He and his wife may have benefited from some of the lavish expenditures the Justice Department cited in its indictment, including staying in a $16.4 million house in Old Fort Bay, a gated community in Nassau.

Stanford Law prof Barbara Fried didn’t appear to work for the company but reportedly used money from her son in her Democratic political-advocacy network. Fried, 71, resigned last month as board chairwoman of a political-donor network, Mind the Gap, which she’d helped start to support Democratic campaigns and causes. Fried, who retired this year from Stanford, is an expert on the intersection of law and philosophy. She has notably written about effective altruism, the charitable movement her son and Ellison embraced. SBF pursued effective-altruism models while studying at MIT and later co-founded Alameda. The left heralded Bankman-Fried as showing that effective altruism had “real and growing political power, and an increasing ability to noticeably change the world.”

[..] The parents have the misfortune of looking like the type of low-hanging fruit prosecutors find irresistible. In an ordinary case, they would be on top of the targets list. Reports the parents are concerned they could be financially ruined by legal costs may only increase the interest in using them to pressure their son.

SBF

I made a full video of CNBC pumping SBF, so they don’t even have to do any work. Just put this on air and press play!pic.twitter.com/ym05G5TXui

— Eric @ Grabien (@Grabien_Eric) December 12, 2022

“..even if the energy from the fusion reactions exceeds the energy from the lasers, it’s still only around one percent of the total energy used..”

• Don’t Fall For It (Denninger)

Breathlessly, I tell you, breathlessly, over-unity fusion has been achieved! Don’t buy that bullshit; they’re lying. Specifically its crap until you can show me all of the following: A sustainable reaction that continues for hours, not microseconds. I can’t make power out of a single microsecond event. I can make power out of a reaction that continues for hours and evolves energy while doing so. Until you can do the latter you have nothing and nothing in the current results, assuming they’re real, nor anything in prior results suggests progress toward that. The over-parity ratio of energy output to input is exponentially (that is, by at least 10x) high. A conventional nuclear fission plant requires about 10% of the output nameplate rating in input power just to operate.

This is why you can’t black-start such a plant [..] and this also, to a large degree, applies to other conventional energy such as coal. The scrubbers, conveyors, grinding apparatus for the input fuel and similar all require a lot of energy input, so you have to get a lot back out to make it worth it. Coal, natural gas, nuclear fission and oil all do. Until fusion can produce 10x as much energy on the output side as you put in to cause the fusion its a laboratory curiosity piece, not a source of commercial power. Exactly zero progress has been made toward that in the last 50+ years. The energy produced has to be able to be captured and converted into usable power of some form, either chemical, mechanical or electrical, and thus the above point must be measured after said conversion.

Gamma rays are energy but they’re not usable thus until and unless you can transform them into one of those forms they don’t count. Yes, on a physics level energy is energy but in terms of practical use that is not true and it is fraudulent to represent that which is not the case to others. You must be able to source the reactants with the product energy and have enough left over to be operationally viable as a business. This is non-trivial as well because the fusion we have achieved thus far requires deuterium and/or tritium. Both are exceedingly rare hydrogen isotopes (about ~150 per million for deuterium) and because they are chemically the same as ordinary hydrogen separating them is a five-alarm pain in the neck that requires a great deal of energy itself. In addition tritium is atomically unstable (that is, it decays) so you can’t store it permanently either (deuterium is atomically stable, on the other hand, so with deuterium you can.) Let me know when there’s a viable engineering pathway to the above.

Until then keep they breathless exclamations to yourself; you’re making a fool of yourself promoting and cheering on crap, beyond continuing work on possibly reaching those above points — at some far, far into the future and only after someone pulls a “Scotty” in terms of a breakthrough that today we have no engineering path that places it within reach. And incidentally, if you think they actually got back more than they put in, even leaving the externalities above aside, you were conned on that too. Here’s the salient statement from the article itself: But that changed in the dead of night on Dec. 5. At 1 AM local time, researchers used laser beams to zap a tiny pellet of hydrogen fuel. The lasers produced 2.05 megajoules of energy, and the pellet released roughly 3.15 megajoules.

Sounds great, right? Uh, no…. “It is a big scientific step,” says Ryan McBride, a nuclear engineer at the University of Michigan. But, McBride adds, that does not mean that NIF itself is producing power. For one thing, he says, the lasers require more than 300 megajoules worth of electricity to produce around 2 megajoules of ultraviolet laser light. In other words, even if the energy from the fusion reactions exceeds the energy from the lasers, it’s still only around one percent of the total energy used.

“What they are doing is not science but propaganda..”

• Arctic Summer Sea Ice Stopped Declining a Decade Ago (DS)

Arctic summer sea ice stopped declining a decade ago, but green activists have spared no effort to continue promoting the poster scare that humans will cause it all to disappear within a few years. In his recent BBC Frozen Planet II agitprop, Sir David Attenborough claimed it might all be gone by 2035. In an excellent piece of investigative reporting titled Lies, Damned Lies and Arctic Graphs, the climate writer Tony Heller recently lifted the lid on many of the tactics used to keep the scare in the headlines. “They bury all the oWhat they are doing is not science but propaganda,”lder data and pretend they don’t notice sea ice is increasing again. he charges. he Daily Sceptic has written a number of articles of late noting that summer sea ice extent in the Arctic is recovering. In Greenland, I recently reported, the ice sheet may have increased in the year to August 2022. Invariably, social media commentators reply by publishing the sea ice graph below, compiled by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

This is reproduced from Heller’s YouTube work and shows a linear decrease in September (the lowest point of annual sea ice) from 1979. There is something wrong with this graph, notes Heller, since the minimum is actually higher now than 10 and 15 years ago, but the crude straight black ‘trend’ line tricks the eye into missing this. He plots the data as a moving average to show the real trend more clearly. We see here the end of the decline in summer sea ice started a decade ago. The low point on which most fanciful forecasts of a North Pole passage are based is 2012. Heller notes that sea ice changes are cyclical, not linear. And he is right. Drawing a straight line down from a 1979 high point to a lower point tells us nothing about current trends.

Poison.

• Flying Insect Numbers Plunge 64% Since 2004 – UK Survey (G.)

The number of insects splattered on vehicle number plates in Britain fell by 64% between 2004 and 2022, according to a survey. Each summer citizen scientists record the number of insect splats on their number plates on an app after a journey. The latest Bugs Matter report, produced by Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife, found another drop in 2022 compared with 2021, with the long-term decrease jumping by five percentage points. The survey supports other scientific studies showing major and ongoing declines in flying insects in western Europe this century that potentially imperil food chains, plant and crop pollination and ultimately life on Earth. Andrew Whitehouse of Buglife said: “For the second year running, Bugs Matter has shown potentially catastrophic declines in the abundance of flying insects.

Urgent action is required to address the loss of the diversity and abundance of insect life. We will look to our leaders at Cop15 for decisive action to restore nature at scale – both for wildlife and for the health and wellbeing of future generations.” The study found continued declines from 2021 to 2022 in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, but this summer appears to have been a better season for flying insects in Scotland. The decline since 2004 in Scotland was 48.5% in 2021 but just 40.3% in 2022. The Bugs Matter survey data is collected when people download a free app and record the insects splattered on their number plates during car journeys over the summer. Nearly 7,000 volunteers have signed up and 4,140 journeys were analysed in 2022’s data. Short journeys and trips in the rain are excluded.

The project is keen to recruit more participants for the 2023 recording, which starts on 1 June next year. Evan Bowen-Jones, the chief executive of Kent Wildlife Trust, said: “Thanks to citizen scientists across the country, we are building a better picture of the health of our insect populations and already we are seeing some concerning patterns in the data. “However, we need more citizen scientists to take part in the Bugs Matter survey next year and into the future, to understand whether we are seeing actual long-term trends or the impact of the extreme temperatures we faced in 2022.”

Edward Dowd

Edward Dowd – scary… pic.twitter.com/V0U61euCyt

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) December 15, 2022

In 1992, around 29,000 rubber ducks fell off a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean. This is where they made landfall.

Ice deer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1603334418705567744

An aurochs from a cave in Calabria, made between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago. The wild ancestor of domesticated cattle. The last aurochs died in 1627, one of the first recorded cases of an extinction.

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A Virgin, A Pastor and Two Soldiers

Aug 152018

August 15, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:53 am Finance Tagged with: Brunson, coup, courts, Erdogan, Greece, Orthodox, pastor, pawns, release, soldiers, Trump, Tsipras, Turkey, Virgin Mary 1 Response »

Salvador Dali The Madonna of Port Lligat 1950

On August 15, Greeks celebrate the “Dormition (or the Assumption) of the Virgin Mary (in Greek: Koimisis tis Theotokou). The holiday commemorates the “falling asleep” or death of the Theotokos (Mary, translated as “God-bearer”). August 15, one of the most important holidays in the Orthodox calendar, is celebrated across the country, and is a date when many Greeks leave the towns and cities where they live and work to return to their home villages.”

Stole that bit from the local Kathimerini paper. And I would add: while most Athenians leave for the islands, along with about 2 billion tourists. Thought I’d bring up the national holiday because in Turkey, they celebrate the same. The orthodox church is still going strong in both countries. Even if Turkey is leaning increasingly towards Islam. And even then: the House of the Virgin Mary shrine in Turkey, which the Apostle John is supposed to have built for her, on a mountain overlooking the Aegean, the place where Mary is said to have spent her last years, sees both Christian and Muslim pilgrims.

All this can’t be seen apart from some recent developments between the two countries. Turkey had been holding two Greek servicemen in jail after they crossed a border in bad weather early March. And then yesterday evening, this happened according to Kathimerini:

Greek Soldiers Released From Turkish Jail Pending Trial

Two Greek servicemen who had been detained in Turkey since early March for accidentally crossing the border in bad weather have been released from jail pending trial, Anadolu agency reported on Tuesday evening. According to Anadolu, a court examined the request for their release and ruled there are no reasons to keep them behind bars. The ruling does not mention any measures restricting their movement which means the soldiers can return to Greece.

Lieutenant Angelos Mitretodis and Sergeant Dimitris Kouklatzis had been held in a high security prison in Edirne for 167 days. It is not clear what charges they are facing. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a tweet the release of the servicemen “is an act of justice which will contribute in boosting friendship, good neighborly relations and stability in the region.” “I would like to congratulate and thank our two officers and their families for their courage, patience and confidence in our efforts, which were ultimately vindicated,” he added.

On Monday, Greece’s top military announced it was suspending some confidence-building activities with Turkey for the remainder of the year, as a response to the prolonged detention. The measures under suspension extend to the the exchange of military academy graduates as well as sporting and cultural activities, which have already been scaled down over the detention of the two soldiers, who were arrested after accidentally crossing a borderline between the two countries.

And mere hours later there was this:

Two Greek Soldiers Released From Turkish Jail Return Home

Two Greek soldiers freed after months in a Turkish prison returned to Greece by government jet early Wednesday after their unexpected release by a provincial court. Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said he phoned his Turkish counterpart to express his satisfaction with the soldiers’ release and invite him to visit Greece. “This is a great day for our motherland, the day of Our Lady, the day of Tinos in 1940,” Kammenos told reporters, referring to the Feast of the Dormation, which falls on August 15 and to the Italian torpedoing on a Greek warship on this day in 1940. “I hope that their release … will herald a new day in Greek-Turkish relations. We can live together peacefully, for the benefit of both our peoples.”

The soldiers [..] were met by Kammenos, the army chief of staff and an honor guard after their arrival at 3 a.m. at the airport in the northern city of Thessaloniki. “All I want to say is thank you,” Mitretodis told reporters. The men were arrested on March 1 for illegally entering Turkey after crossing the heavily militarized land border. Greece strongly protested their long detention in the western town of Edirne, arguing that they had strayed across during a patrol of a trail of suspected illegal immigration amid poor visibility due to bad weather.

[..] The men’s arrest had considerably strained Greek-Turkish relations. Kammenos had claimed that they were being held “hostage” by Turkey, which is trying to secure the extradition of eight Turkish servicemen who fled to Greece after the 2016 failed military coup in Turkey. Ankara accuses its servicemen of involvement in the coup, but Greek courts have refused to extradite them, arguing they would not get a fair trial in Turkey and their lives would be in danger there.

Athens got a phone call from Ankara, probably to Kammenos, not Tsipras, that said: you come get them. Whether that call was before or after the court decision we’ll probably never know. A bit of a shame, because it could tell us a lot of where the decisions are made in Turkey. Then again, we do have an idea. A mere provincial court that could make decisions that go completely against what Erdogan desires? What are the odds? But stick around.

Here’s what’s interesting about this: the two soldiers, who had been in detention for almost half a year, were released by a provincial court, and got back home on a joint Turkish/Greek national holiday. What’s not to like?

But then this: a few hours after they arrive home on PM Tsipras’ own government jet at 3pm, another Turkish court decides that an appeal for American pastor Brunson to be released, is denied. Brunson is the guy Trump wants freed. John Bolton has said there’ll be no more talks until that is done. But if one court takes a decision that at least on the face of it goes against supreme ruler Erdogan’s demands, and another decides differently, Erdogan can claim the pastor’s fate is out of his hands: it’s the court system that decides.

That victory over Trump, concerning not freeing the pastor, is apparently worth more to him than the defeat of not exchanging the soldiers for the 8 Turkish servicemen who have gotten asylum in Greece. Something Erdogan is allegedly very angry about, because he accuses them of being party to the 2016 ‘coup’. He’s trying to play chess with Trump. We can discuss how good of an idea that is. Here’s AFP:

Turkey Court Rejects New Appeal To Free Detained US Pastor

A Turkish court on Wednesday rejected a new appeal to free US pastor Andrew Brunson, whose detention has sparked a major row between Turkey and the United States, local media reported. The court in the western city of Izmir ruled that Brunson, who faces 35 years in jail over terror and espionage charges, will remain under house arrest, the state television TRT reported. Brunson’s jail term had been converted to house detention for health reasons.

His detention has soured relations with Washington, with US President Donald Trump doubling aluminium and steel tariffs for Turkey in punitive actions against Ankara’s refusal to release Brunson. The crisis has sent the Turkish currency into free fall since Friday. “The president has a great deal of frustration (about) the pastor not being released,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday. The statement came after US embassy charge d’affaires Jeffrey Hovenier visited Brunson in Izmir.

Brunson’s lawyer Cem Halavurt told AFP that a higher court would also discuss his appeal for Brunson’s release. Turkey’s ambassador to Washington Serdar Kilic on Monday held private talks with US National Security Advisor John Bolton in a meeting to discuss the pastor’s status.

And then Reuters has this just now:

Erdogan Spokesman Says Problems With US Will Be Resolved

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Wednesday he expected problems with the United States, which helped drive the lira to record lows, to be resolved but Washington must stop trying to influence Turkey’s judiciary. Ibrahim Kalin also told a news conference that Turkey would exercise its rights if the U.S. does not deliver F-35 jets to Ankara. The lira, which has rallied after hitting a record low of 7.24 to the dollar, would continue to recover, he said.

A masterstroke? Did Erdogan just succeed in making everyone, including Trump, believe the Turkish judiciary system is impartial, and he’s not the one keeping Brunson from leaving the country? Sure looks like he tried. “Sorry, Mr. Trump, it’s out of my hands.. A judge let the Greek soldiers go, and I didn’t want that either..”

Problem is, everyone knows Erdogan fired half the judiciary system and 90% or so of the press, accusing them of being part of the same coup plot as Gülen and the pastor Brunson. It’s almost amusing. Almost, because innocent people’s lives are being played out on some primitive chess board and sacrificed against dreams of ever more power. Only a pawn in their game.

The lira is recovering a little today. Got to wonder how long that will last, and what it’s cost Turkey. To be continued.