Dec 032024
 
 December 3, 2024  Posted by at 10:06 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Johannes Vermeer The astronomer c1668

 

Trump And Musk Are Ready To Shake Up America (Ryumshin)
Delaware Judge Rejects (Again) Musk’s $56 Billion Pay-Package (ZH)
Musk Again Asks To Block OpenAI’s “Illegal” Conversion To For-Profit Model (CT)
Special Counsel Rejects Hunter Biden’s Pardon (ZH)
The Pardon (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Blob Has a Migraine (Kunstler)
The Democratic Diaspora (Turley)
West Won’t Return Russia’s Currency Reserves – Top Banker (RT)
The Long War To Reaffirm Western And Israeli Primacy (Alastair Crooke)
Moscow and Tehran Discuss Syria – Kremlin (RT)
China Vows Support For Syria (RT)
EU Has Turned Into ‘War Union’ – Russian Senator (RT)
Putin’s Global Influence Increasing – Kallas (RT)
Zelensky Willing To Cede Territory in Exchange for NATO Protection (Antiwar)
Ukrainians Could Disappear (RT)
Shall We Celebrate, the World Being as It Is? (Patrick Lawrence)
Orwell’s Forecast of a Tyrannical Britain Proven Correct (Paul Craig Roberts)
Sturgess Inquiry Ends In Foreign Office Whimper, Bang Of Novichok Lies (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1863370201581941005

 

 

Pardon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863598068039655604

 

 

Mike Davis

 

 

Kindness

 

 

 

 

View from Russia.

“What can we expect from the ‘bromance’ of the two billionaires?”

Trump And Musk Are Ready To Shake Up America (Ryumshin)

It’s often said that a king is shaped by his entourage. This saying may be as old as time itself, but it applies perfectly to US President-elect Donald Trump. Right now, however, there’s only one person truly pulling the king’s strings – Elon Musk. Since the November 6 election, the Tesla tycoon has become the most influential figure in America – and perhaps even the world. Musk’s road to power took four long years. Before 2022, Trump and the South African billionaire were rivals (in 2020, the Space-X founder even supported Biden). But when Musk bought Twitter, rebranded it as X, and gradually leaned into the Republican fold, the winds shifted. By early 2024, Musk had met Trump, publicly endorsed him in July, and begun campaigning. By the end of the year, the two had become inseparable. Now, Musk is basically joined at the hip with Trump. They attend MMA fights together, watch space launches, and share McDonald’s burgers.

Musk is now a fixture at the Mar-a-Lago estate, advising the future president on appointments, and even apparently speaking to foreign leaders on his behalf – he was allegedly present when Trump spoke to Vladimir Zelensky and is reported to have secretly met the Iranian ambassador. Trump’s old advisers are getting nervous. On November 18, Axios reported that Musk had clashed with Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump ally, over Matt Gaetz’s nomination for US Attorney General. After the dispute, Gaetz’s nomination was pulled and CNN claimed that Trump’s team have asked that Epshteyn be investigated for alleged fraud – over alleged bribes to lobby for positions within the new administration. Musk’s influence is undeniable, and the media has already dubbed him the “co-president of the United States” or more cheekily, the “broligarch.” Musk himself embraces the title of “first buddy” (a nod to the first lady).

This isn’t without controversy. Musk’s ruthless business tactics are legendary, and he has Trump’s full trust. The billionaire has promised to audit the entire US government, aiming to cut up to $2 trillion in spending. God only knows what he’ll come up with next. It’s fascinating to watch the American political establishment panic. And let’s be honest – this drama could work to Russia’s advantage. The more chaos in Washington, the better for Moscow. But don’t get too excited just yet. There are differing views on Trump’s leadership. Some see him as a weak head man, easily swayed by flattery, while others view him as a potential autocrat, quick to toss aside anyone who crosses him. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between. Trump runs his inner circle like a boss, with some figures holding much more sway than others.

Musk certainly falls into this inner circle. But he’s not alone. Trump’s family – especially Donald Trump Jr. – is also a key influence. Trump Jr. has been instrumental in connecting his father with allies like JD Vance, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, and he’s helping to handpick cabinet members. His influence is on par with Musk’s, even if it’s quieter. The Wall Street tycoons Trump has befriended also play a major role. In fact, for them, Trump has compromised on his conservative values, even proposing Scott Bessent, a former George Soros manager, for treasury secretary. Musk lobbied for Howard Lutnick to join the administration, but he eventually landed at the Commerce Department. These examples show that while Musk’s influence on Trump is substantial, it’s not all-encompassing –his power doesn’t extend beyond Trump’s inner circle.

There are also questions about how long the Trump-Musk partnership will last. Both are unpredictable, volatile personalities. Trump has a history of falling out with his favorites (just look at his rocky relationship with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis). Musk and Trump have plenty of potential points of conflict – from electric cars (Trump’s not a fan) to more serious matters like government spending cuts. But that’s a problem for the future. For now, let’s sit back, grab some popcorn, and watch this unfolding spectacle.

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In 2018, when it was first agreed, the pay package was worth $2.6 billion. In January 2024, when the judge first rejected it, it had risen to $56 billion. Today, it is $101 billion.

Why the increase? Well, Elon Musk.

Delaware Judge Rejects (Again) Musk’s $56 Billion Pay-Package (ZH)

Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick has once again sided against Elon Musk… After ruling against the billionaire in July 2022 when he tried to break his $44 billion contract to buy Twitter, and again in January 2024 when she initially rescinded Musk’s record (but “deeply flawed” according to her) $56 billion performance-based compensation package (determining that Tesla deceived shareholders when the all stock compensation was approved in 2018), she has once again ruled [against] that pay package. Musk’s legal team argued that McCormick should reverse her earlier decision because Tesla had conducted a shareholder vote to “ratify” the 2018 pay plan at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June, per CNBC.

In fact, 72% of Tesla shareholders voted in June to approve the company’s CEO’s pay package. The judge said Musk’s attorneys made an argument with multiple “fatal flaws,” including their argument that the shareholder vote was enough to validate the pay package after the fact. “The large and talented group of defense firms got creative with the ratification argument, but their unprecedented theories go against multiple strains of settled law,” McCormick said in her ruling. McCormick ruled that the vote on the payment package did not have a “ratifying effect” on the current case, because shareholders had not ratified the payment plan prior to her ruling.

“Were the court to condone the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising judgments, lawsuits would become interminable,” she wrote. In addition to rejecting the revisions, Quartz reports that Monday’s decision granted $345 million in attorney fees to the lawyers who successfully challenged Musk’s pay plan on behalf of Tesla shareholders. The court deemed this amount an “appropriate sum to reward a total victory.” Tesla has the option to pay this fee in either cash or by issuing stock that can be sold on the open market. While Musk could appeal the decision to the Delaware Supreme Court, this ruling could have broader implications for how companies structure executive compensation and the role of shareholder votes in such decisions.

Finally, the judge has some interesting ‘friends’… “Before becoming the head of the Delaware Chancery Court, McCormick worked at a Delaware law firm called Young Conaway. This firm and its employees have been major donors to President Joe Biden for decades. In 2016, Hunter Biden hosted a gubernatorial campaign event for Congressman John Carney, with then-Vice President Joe Biden as the guest speaker. This event took place at the Law Offices of Young Conaway in Wilmington, Delaware. Carney, a close friend of Joe Biden for the last four decades, later became governor and nominated Kathaleen McCormick, a partner at Young Conaway, to her position on the Delaware Chancery Court.

In a March 2018 email, Hunter Biden claimed to personally know every judge on the Delaware Chancery Court while threatening legal action against his Chinese business partners. “I will bring the suit in the Chancery court in Delaware – which as you know is my home state and I am privileged to have worked with and know every judge on the chancery court…. another clear example of the Biden administration and its allies weaponizing the American legal system against their political opponents.”Tesla issued a statement on X shortly after the decision, confirming that it will appeal her decision…. There is also the fact that Musk’s move to relocate his business to Texas (after telling people on X after the original ruling that “companies should get the hell out of Delaware”) which could change things, but it is is unclear how this will proceed for now.

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“No objective observer can look at OpenAI today and say it bears any resemblance whatsoever to what it promised to be..”

Musk Again Asks To Block OpenAI’s “Illegal” Conversion To For-Profit Model (CT)

Elon Musk filed another motion to block ChatGPT-creator OpenAI from converting to a for-profit enterprise, while also alleging that it has been engaging in anti-competitive practices. Musk accused OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman and stakeholder Microsoft of violating terms of Musk’s “foundational contributions to the charity,” according to his motion for a preliminary injunction filed on Nov. 30. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and was an early board member until he left the company in 2018. He has since launched xAI — the firm behind AI chatbot Grok — which he said is falling victim to OpenAI’s anti-competitive practices. “OpenAI’s path from a non-profit to for-profit behemoth is replete with per se anticompetitive practices, flagrant breaches of its charitable mission, and rampant self-dealing,” Musk’s lawyers wrote.

Through a “series of exclusive arrangements” with Microsoft, the two companies have engaged in “predatory practices,” enabling them to seize control of almost 70% of the generative AI market, lawyers for Musk said, adding: “Microsoft and OpenAI now seek to cement this dominance by cutting off competitors’ access to investment capital, while continuing to benefit from years’ worth of shared competitively sensitive information during generative AI’s formative years.” Allowing this to continue will hurt xAI and the public, which has become increasingly concerned about “rushed” and “unsafe” AI products, they added. California law allows a nonprofit to convert to a for-profit stock corporation, but not to a limited liability company.

OpenAI said it remains nonprofit at its core but has established a for-profit subsidiary capable of issuing equity to raise capital and hire world-class talent. Still, those tasks would be administered at the direction of the nonprofit. An injunction to preserve what is left of OpenAI’s nonprofit character is the only “appropriate remedy,” Musk’s lawyers said. “No objective observer can look at OpenAI today and say it bears any resemblance whatsoever to what it promised to be. Enough is enough.” An OpenAI spokesperson slammed Musk’s latest attempt in a note to Cointelegraph: “Elon’s fourth attempt, which again recycles the same baseless complaints, continues to be utterly without merit.”

In March, OpenAI leaked emails from Musk in 2015 showing support for the firm to find over $1 billion in funding to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook (now Meta). OpenAI claimed Musk was harassing the firm in a related October filing. “Since launching a competing artificial intelligence company, xAI, Musk has been trying to leverage the judicial system for an edge. The effort should fail; Musk’s complaint does not state a claim and should be dismissed,” OpenAI added. In June, Musk threatened to ban Apple devices at his companies when Apple touted integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems. Later, Apple launched Apple Intelligence on Oct. 28.

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“No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.”

Special Counsel Rejects Hunter Biden’s Pardon (ZH)

Last night Hunter Biden’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss his California tax fraud case after Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon absolving him of all crimes committed over a 10 year period.”The President’s pardon moots Mr. Biden’s pending and yet to occur sentencing and entry of judgment in this case and requires an automatic dismissal of the Indictment with prejudice,” wrote Hunter’s lawyer Abbe Lowell in the filing, adding that “this Court must dismiss the Indictment against Mr. Biden with prejudice and adjourn all future proceedings in this matter. “Special Counsel David Weiss isn’t having it. In a Monday response in opposition, Weiss argued that “The defendant’s motion should be denied since there is no binding authority on this Court which requires dismissal.”

“As a matter of past-practice in this district, courts do not dismiss indictments when pardons are granted,” Weiss wrote – citing cases involving Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Joe Arpaio and Ollie North, Above the Law reports. “Instead, it has been the practice of this court that once an Executive Grant of Clemency has been filed on the docket, the docket is marked closed, the disposition entry is updated to reflect the executive grant of clemency, and no further action is taken by the Court.” “Although Weiss purported not to have seen the pardon itself (which Lowell inexplicably failed to docket), he took particular umbrage at the suggestion that the prosecution was politically motivated, huffing that “The court similarly found [Biden’s] vindictive prosecution claims unmoored from any evidence or even a coherent theory as to vindictiveness.”

Judge Mark Scarsi of the Central District of California has taken no action, thus far. But in Delaware, Judge Maryellen Noreika said in a minute order that she intends to terminate the proceedings, and instructing the government to say by tomorrow if it objects to termination by dismissal. Presumably it does, although no objection has hit the docket as of this writing.” -Above the Law. Hunter pleaded guilty to the tax charges earlier this year, after a Delaware jury found him guilty of lying about his drug use on a background check form used to purchase a firearm.

In Weiss’ new filing, he writes: “The defendant did not docket the pardon nor has the government seen it. If media reports are accurate, the Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred. It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive. No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.”

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“You can see the pardon as a conservative act as protection of the family is the basis of society. But in our society so is equal standing under the law..”

The Pardon (Paul Craig Roberts)

Joe Biden said he would not pardon his son, but he did. Pardons reside with presidents and governors and are supposed to be used to correct an injustice or when a service has been done by the pardoned person that offsets the harm of the offense that is pardoned. But pardons are often used for non-legitimate reasons, such as Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich and Clinton’s half brother, Roger Clinton. Bill did not pardon Roger until after Roger had served his sentence. Rich, however, an international fugitive on the FBI’s ten most wanted list, was apparently pardoned in exchange for political donations and donations to the Clinton library. Donations continued for 15 years after the pardon. In other words, the pardon was purchased. Biden’s pardon of his son occurred prior to Hunter’s sentence and before a day was served. No doubt that many a mother and father wish they had the power to grant their son or daughter a pardon.

It is disturbing that Biden pretends that the charges against Hunter were politically motivated and designed to hurt President Biden, as if the FBI and DOJ committed to Biden’s protection would act against him. The charges were protective of Biden and were brought in order to get the focus off the more dangerous information in the laptop. The politically motivated charges were the ones brought against Trump. But I don’t really blame Biden from using his power to save his son from prison. In a way it shows Joe Biden more committed to his son than to his reputation. You can see the pardon as a conservative act as protection of the family is the basis of society. But in our society so is equal standing under the law, which took a hit from the pardon. What we should find more upsetting than the pardon is the protection that the FBI and Department of Justice provided for President Biden and his son from the evidence in Hunter’s laptop.

The FBI put out the story, quickly accepted by the presstitutes, that the laptop was a Russian attempt to discredit the US president. The prosecutions that Hunter has faced are limited to his false statement on his gun purchase application and to failure to pay income taxes on the profits from his and President Biden’s influence peddling ventures to which the FBI and Department of Justice (sic) have turned a blind eye–the same FBI and DOJ that gave Biden clearance on the documents charge for which Trump was indicted and prosecuted. In other words, under the Democrats justice in America was totally corrupted and still 45% of American voters voted for Democrats in the last election.

This tells us that close to half of the voting population either is too insouciant or ignorant to know what is going on, or is indifferent or unconcerned whether law serves justice or political, ideological, and personal agendas. The damning conclusion is that close to half of the American population accepts law as a political weapon. That the personnel in the FBI and DOJ do not resign in protest at the perversion of law and prosecution indicates that they, too, accept the abuse of law by their superiors. Can the transformation of law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the state be reversed when the entire federal law enforcement system is corrupt to the core? Can such a giant task be accomplished when Trump is simultaneously attempting to restore integrity to all other aspects of government? Is this a bridge too far?

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“It’s a beautiful thing to watch the Biden family destroy the Democrat Party.” — @Mazemoore on “X”

The Blob Has a Migraine (Kunstler)

You can be sure the blobists have seen this coming from years away. The boys and girls in the agencies have behaved more than just a little badly, and they know it. They committed serious crimes against our country and its citizens under color-of-law since 2015, ranging from seditious conspiracy clear up to treason (say, just for instance, the case of Col. Alexander Vindman using his Ukraine connections to lever Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office in the 2019 impeachment scam.)

You have whole C-suites of agencies teed-up on RussiaGate for felonies, misprision of felonies, abuse of power, deprivation of rights, lying under oath, conspiracy to commit fraud, and much more. You have Judge James Boasberg playing games in the FISA Court he presided over; Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann running a two-and-a-half-year Chinese fire drill to cover-up years preceding of FBI / DOJ misconduct; John Brennan, James Clapper, and Gina Haspel abusing the “Five Eyes” intel arrangements to turn the CIA on innocent citizens at home; the fifty-one current and former intel agents colluding to bury Hunter’s Laptop to sway the 2020 election; the antics of Judge Emmet Sullivan in the Flynn case. . . .

And then on to a whole new round of frolics under “Joe Biden” including the malicious prosecutions of J-6 protesters; the pipe-bomb caper at the DNC; the use of several agencies to censor speech and manage the news media; the treasonous negligence of Alejandro Mayorkas on the nation’s borders; the DOJ-coordinated lawfare hounding of Mr. Trump and his adjacent lawyers; the Ukraine War project ginned up by the State Department’s Victoria Nuland and cohorts; and the sinkhole of greed, malice, and medical homicide that was the Covid-19 operation, millions killed and disabled, and likely more of that yet to come from the vaccines, trillions in wealth purloined or just plain lost, and businesses destroyed in lockdowns. It’s not a mere “swamp,” it’s a whole forbidden planet of turpitude.

Then there are the floaters and freelancers who move from one blob venue to the next, like lawfare artists Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, David J. Kramer, or the girl-band of Lisa Monaco, Fiona Hill, Kathryn Ruemmler, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Nellie Ohr. And finally, there are the real big fishes: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, Chris Wray, Merrick Garland, General Milley, and “Joe Biden.”

Add William Barr to that list for failing to reveal that he was in possession of Hunter’s laptop as early as the fall of 2019. Of course, it was crammed with exculpatory evidence that could have ended impeachment No. 1 on day one of the initial hearings, yet he never alerted President’s lawyers to its existence. Weird, a little bit. And also, for the effrontery of allowing Jeffrey Epstein to be killed in his Manhattan jail, and never offering the public a coherent account of how the cameras on the cellblock failed, or why the guards who fell asleep on-duty were disciplined with only 100 hours of “community service.”

My Gawd, they must be eating Xanax like tic-tacs in their drawing rooms and boudoirs as the name Kash Patel floats across their social media screens. Kash Patel, a real-live exterminating angel, will finally step in to the FBI Director’s office and turn the investigative powers of the FBI on. . . the FBI! And its parent, the DOJ. The poetic justice is sublime. You must wonder: how does Mr. Patel get through the RINO-infested Senate confirmation process? Start with: what have they got on him? Answer: probably not a goshdarn thing, not a hair out of place. More to the point: what has Mr. Patel got on them? (Especially Messers Thune, Barrasso, Cornyn, and let’s just throw in the Democrat Mark Warner, VA, who was up to his eyeballs in RussiaGate as chair of the Senate Intel Committee.)

And were Mr. Patel to land in the FBI Director’s office 49 days from now, what additional info might he uncover about years of weaponized government with assistance from John Ratcliffe at the CIA and Tulsi Gabbard as DNI — who will access a pipeline to the vast national security server farm out in Bluffdale, Utah. So, in case you think that the document-shredding party currently underway in DC will conceal all that criminality, consider what lives forever in the alternate universe of cyberspace.

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“They are unlikely to improve themselves by receding further into that safe space to rave about the “f—ing morons” who make up the majority of America..”

The Democratic Diaspora (Turley)

Democrats who campaigned on the need for “joy” and “saving democracy” are strikingly unjoyful about the results of the democratic process in 2024. Before the election, slips like the one of President Joe Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage” were immediately denied or deflected. But once voters had given the Republicans control of both houses of Congress, the popular vote and the White House, leading Democratic figures and celebrities dropped all pretense of civility. They are now being open about their contempt for voters, calling them “f—-ing morons” and “arrogant, ignorant” adolescents. After calling for Americans to come together for Kamala Harris, MSNBC’s Joy Reid sent out a heart-warming holiday message to those who voted for the GOP to “make your own dinner, MAGA. Make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears.”

Those not wallowing in Reid’s anger are increasingly voicing themes of isolation, insurrection and secession. For years, the contempt for Trump voters has been open and obvious in much of the media. The “Let’s Go Brandon” movement captured the lunacy of the press and politicians simply denying what citizens could see, hear and experience for themselves. When asked for answers on issues like the economy and immigration, Harris paraded an army of celebrities to tell the public how to vote — shiny objects that they thought would be enough for shallow American voters. They were wrong. Now that the public has made its choice, leading figures are condemning the majority of voters as a mix of misogynists, self-haters and fascists. Whoopi Goldberg, 69, even joined the “4B” sex strike against men. Others seem to be morphing into exactly what they said Trump would become as president: isolationist and insurrectionist.

Some have responded to the losses by retreating further into echo chambers protected from opposing views. Many dumped X in favor of BlueSky, a new social media safe space for liberals who fear being triggered by opposing views. Notably, censorship advocates such as Nina Jankowisz have fled to BlueSky. The site is portrayed as a return to the good old days when liberals controlled all of the social media and maintained a massive censorship and blacklisting system over political discourse. New York Times tech reporter Kevin Roose wrote a column last week that offered the familiar “I can breathe again” account: “After an hour or so of scrolling through Bluesky the other night, I felt something I haven’t felt on social media in a long time: free.” It is the ultimate irony. This election shocked many on the left precisely because they were writing and commenting on each other within their hardened media and political silos.

They are unlikely to improve themselves by receding further into that safe space to rave about the “f—ing morons” who make up the majority of America. Other Democratic politicians have moved beyond the chest-pounding of leaders like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) to pledges of more direct obstruction or inflammatory rhetoric. Denver mayor Mike Johnson (D) declared that he was preparing the Mile-High City for its “Tiananmen Square moment” to fight the federal government in any attempt to deport unlawful migrants. Johnson warned that he would have not only Denver police “stationed at the county line to keep [ICE] out” but also “50,000 Denverites.” Not long ago, Democrats were calling similar protests an “insurrection.” Johnson later walked back his remarks but insisted that his city would fight federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws. Rather than such trench warfare, most Democratic governors and mayors are simply pledging not to cooperate with federal authorities, which is a lawful choice. The concern, however, is how others will react to the overheated rhetoric for months that this will be “our last election” and that Trump is the new Hitler.
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Both sides hold frozen assets. Equal amount. An exercise in futility.

West Won’t Return Russia’s Currency Reserves – Top Banker (RT)

The West will not return any of the Russian sovereign assets frozen as part of sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, the CEO of major Russian lender VTB, Andrey Kostin, has predicted, as cited by Reuters. The US and its allies have immobilized around $300 billion of assets belonging to the Russian central bank since 2022 as part of Ukraine-related sanctions. The funds deposited in Brussels-based clearing house Euroclear have generated billions in interest, which the EU has decided to use to finance Kiev. “In the West, they say, let’s pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine from the reserves. And they will draw up such a bill that even the reserves will not be enough,” Kostin, the CEO of Russia’s second-largest lender, told Reuters in an interview published on Monday.

The new president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, said on Sunday that the EU will continue to provide economic and military aid to Ukraine in the coming year, using the interest accrued on frozen Russian money. “Starting next month, we plan to provide, for a full year, every month, €1.5 billion [$1.58 billion] of assistance. This money comes from the proceeds of Russia’s frozen assets and can also be used for military purposes,” Costa said during a visit to Kiev on day one of his mandate. Earlier this year, the EU decided to give Ukraine a chunk of the interest generated by Russian assets. In July, the European Commission announced it would allocate €1.5 billion to Kiev, mainly for weapons, as the first tranche of aid. The second tranche, expected to amount to €1.9 billion, could reportedly be disbursed next spring. In October, the European Parliament also approved a loan of up to €35 billion to Ukraine to be repaid with future revenues from frozen Russian assets.

The loan is the EU’s part of a package the Group of Seven (G7) agreed in June to provide Kiev with up to $50 billion in financial support. Approximately €210 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank is being held in the EU. The US has not yet made public the amount of funds it holds. According to Reuters’s calculations, at the start of 2022, Russia had $67 billion in US dollar assets. Russia has repeatedly accused the West of “stealing” its money. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned in October that Moscow would respond in kind to the West’s use of the income generated by its frozen central bank reserves. Last month, he said Russia would use income from the frozen assets of Western investors. While the finance minister did not elaborate on the amount of Western assets currently held in Russia, previous calculations by RIA Novosti put the figure at roughly equal to the size of the Russian funds frozen abroad.

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“Kennan’s thesis from 1946 was that the United States needed to work patiently and resolutely to thwart the Soviet threat, and to enhance and aggravate the internal fissures in the Soviet system..”

The Long War To Reaffirm Western And Israeli Primacy (Alastair Crooke)

The long war to reaffirm western and Israeli primacy is undergoing a shape-shift. On one front, the calculus in respect to Russia and the Ukraine war has shifted. And in the Middle East, the locus and shape of the war is shifting in a distinct way. Georges Kennan’s famed Soviet doctrine has long formed the baseline to U.S. policy, firstly directed toward the Soviet Union, and latterly, towards Russia. Kennan’s thesis from 1946 was that the United States needed to work patiently and resolutely to thwart the Soviet threat, and to enhance and aggravate the internal fissures in the Soviet system, until its contradictions triggered the collapse from within. More recently, the Atlantic Council has drawn on the Kennan doctrine to suggest that his broad outline should serve as the basis of U.S. policy towards Iran.

“The threat that Iran poses to the U.S. resembles the one faced from the Soviet Union after World War II. In this regard, the policy that George Kennan outlined for dealing with the Soviet Union has some applications for Iran”, the Atlantic report states. Over the years, that doctrine has ossified into an entire network of security understandings, based on the archetypal conviction that America is strong, and that Russia was weak. Russia must ‘know that’, and thus, it was argued, there could be no logic for Russian strategists to imagine they had any other option but to submit to the overmatch represented by the combined military strength of NATO versus a ‘weak’ Russia. And should Russian strategists unwisely persevere with challenging the West, it was said, the inherent contrariety simply would cause Russia to fracture. American neocons and western intelligence have not listened to any other view, because they were (and largely still are) convinced by Kennan’s formulation.

The American foreign policy class simply could not accept the possibility that such a core thesis was wrong. The entire approach reflected more a deep-seated culture, rather than any rational analysis – even when visible facts on the ground pointed them to a different reality. So, America has piled the pressure on Russia through the incremental delivery of additional weapons systems to Ukraine; through stationing intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles ever-closer to Russia’s borders; and most recently, by shooting ATACMS into ‘old Russia’. The aim has been to pressure Russia into a situation where it would feel obliged to make concessions to Ukraine, such as a to accept a freezing of the conflict, and to be obliged to negotiate against Ukrainian bargaining ‘cards’ devised to yield a solution acceptable to the U.S. Or, alternatively, for Russia to be cornered into the ‘nuclear corner’.

American strategy ultimately rests on the conviction that the U.S. could engage in a nuclear war with Russia – and prevail; that Russia understands that were it to go nuclear, it would ‘lose the world’. Or, pressured by NATO, the anger amongst Russians likely would sweep Putin from office were he to make significant concessions to Ukraine. It was a ‘win-win’ outcome – from the U.S. perspective. Unexpectedly however, a new weapon appeared on the scene which precisely unshackles President Putin from the ‘all-or-nothing’ choice of having to concede a bargaining ‘hand’ to Ukraine, or resort to nuclear deterrence. Instead, the war can be settled by facts on the ground. Effectively, the George Kennan ‘trap’ imploded.

The Oreshnik missile (that was used to attack the Yuzhmash complex at Dnietropetrovsk) provides Russia with a weapon, such as never before witnessed: An intermediate range missile system that effectively checkmates the western nuclear threat. Russia can now manage western escalation with a credible threat of retaliation that is both hugely destructive – yet conventional. It inverts the paradigm. It is now the West’s escalation that either has to go nuclear, or be limited to providing Ukraine with weapons such as ATACMS or Storm Shadow that will not alter the course of the war. Were NATO to escalate further, it risks an Oreshnik strike in retaliation, either in Ukraine or on some target in Europe, leaving the West with the dilemma of what to do next.

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“They expressed “unconditional support” for steps taken by Damascus “to restore constitutional order and territorial integrity of the country.”

Russia has started bombing the “Islamist militants”, whoever they are or who supports them. If Iran follows suit, who knows what happens?

Moscow and Tehran Discuss Syria – Kremlin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday, according to a statement issued by the Kremlin. The main focus of the conversation was on the “escalating situation” in the Syria, the statement outlined. The ongoing large-scale attack by Islamist militants around Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, is aimed at undermining the sovereignty, political and socio-economic stability of the Middle Eastern nation, the two leaders concluded. They expressed “unconditional support” for steps taken by Damascus “to restore constitutional order and territorial integrity of the country.” Putin and Pezeshkian also stressed the importance of coordinating efforts within the framework of the ‘Astana format’ with the participation of Türkiye.

Assorted Syrian ‘rebels’ and terrorists, including Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS), staged a large-scale attack on government forces in northwest Syria last week. Formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, HTS is considered a terrorist organization by Syria, Russia, Iran, the US, and several other countries. The militants claim to have captured considerable chunks of the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, with some units reaching as far as the center of the city of Aleppo. Damascus has reportedly succeeded in halting the insurgents near the city of Hama in central Syria after receiving reinforcements. Syrian President Bashar Assad has pledged to “eliminate terrorists” and to punish their “sponsors and supporters.” The Syrian military acknowledged that dozens of its troops had been killed during the offensive while estimating terrorist losses at around 1,000.

Government forces were also backed by waves of Russian airstrikes which also targeted terrorist headquarters, weapons, and ammunition depots. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Monday that Russian warplanes stationed in Syria had conducted strikes on militant forces in recent days. Peskov reiterated Russia’s support for the Syrian government, stating that Moscow and Damascus had been in contact and were analyzing ongoing developments. Russia intervened in the Syrian conflict in 2015, helping to inflict heavy defeats on numerous terrorist groups, most notably al-Nusra and the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). Russia maintains a significant military presence in the country and has bases in Hmeimim and Tartus. Last week’s Islamist attack was the first major clash between Syrian rebels and government forces since March 2020, when Russia and Türkiye brokered a ceasefire in the country.

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Russia, Iran and China.

“As Syria’s friend, China is willing to make an active effort to avoid further deterioration of the situation in Syria..”

China Vows Support For Syria (RT)

China is “deeply concerned” about developments in Syria, where jihadist militants launched a surprise offensive last week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Monday. As Damascus’ “friend,” Beijing is prepared to take steps to prevent a further deterioration of the situation, he said. The Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and allied militias launched a large-scale attack on government-controlled territory in northern Syria last Wednesday. The militants took over a number of towns and villages in the Aleppo, Idlib and Hama provinces. Syrian government forces, backed by Russian fighter jets, launched a counteroffensive on Thursday and successfully liberated several settlements over the weekend, reportedly eliminating hundreds of militants and thwarting their advance into central Syria.

However, dozens of Syrian army service members were lost amid the heavy fighting, the Syrian General Command said in an earlier statement. “China is deeply concerned over the situation in northwestern Syria, and supports its effort to uphold national security and stability,” Lin told a press briefing on Monday. “As Syria’s friend, China is willing to make an active effort to avoid further deterioration of the situation in Syria,” the official said. The Chinese embassy in Syria “is closely following the local situation” and has issued a security alert for Chinese citizens residing in the country, advising them to take extra security precautions and, if possible, move to safer areas, Lin said. China’s ties with Syria have been growing closer in recent years.

Last September, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad inked a “strategic partnership” deal, pledging to work together in order to “jointly safeguard international fairness and justice” in the face of the “unstable and uncertain international situation.” Xi told Assad at the time that Beijing supported Syria in “opposing foreign interference and unilateral bullying, safeguarding national independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.” A number of other nations, including Russia, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, have expressed support for Damascus over the past few days, commending it for fighting against terrorism. Moscow has slammed the militants’ offensive as a “direct violation of Syria’s sovereignty,” and mobilized air force units stationed in the country to aid the Syrian army. Tehran has urged Islamic countries to unite in helping Syria defeat the militants, placing the blame for the escalation on Israel and the US.

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“The contemporary European Union is the main factor in dividing Europe and provoking conflicts. [It’s] a union of war..”

EU Has Turned Into ‘War Union’ – Russian Senator (RT)

The European Union has morphed into an “aggressive political bloc” and a “war union,” the Vice Speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper chamber, Konstantin Kosachev, has said. The senator criticized the EU in a Telegram post on Tuesday, pointing to the bloc’s support for the ongoing turmoil in Georgia, which has been hit by mass anti-government, pro-EU protests. The unrest has been going on since Thursday, when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that he would freeze accession talks with the bloc until 2028. He accused Brussels of persistent “blackmail and manipulation” of Georgia’s internal affairs in justifying the decision.

“The first Molotov cocktails were thrown by protesters at Georgian police immediately after the new EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, publicly called the crowd’s protests legitimate and the response of the authorities – illegal,” Kosachev wrote. The vice speaker was apparently referring to remarks made by Kallas during her visit to Kiev, where she threatened Georgia with “consequences” and openly took the protesters’ side. “It is clear that using violence against peaceful protesters is not acceptable, and the Georgian government should respect the will of the Georgian people,” she stated.

Members of the bloc’s foreign service are acting as “instigators” of the unrest, according to the Russian lawmaker. Kosachev recalled the 2020 Capitol Hill rioting in the US, stating that the EU kept silent on it at the time and did not mention any “citizens’ right to protest.” The bloc has grown out of its original economic cooperation framework into an “aggressive political bloc with military inclinations,” acting as the main divisive force in Europe, Kosachev said. “The contemporary European Union is the main factor in dividing Europe and provoking conflicts. [It’s] a union of war,” he stressed.

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Kallas is as bad as Ursula. They’re like evil twins. Where do they find these specimens?

Putin’s Global Influence Increasing – Kallas (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence in global affairs is growing, new EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said. Speaking to reporters in Kiev during her first official visit on Sunday, Kallas, who stepped down as Estonia’s prime minister to take the EU post, reiterated that the European Union “wants Ukraine to win this war.” She doubled down on support for military aid to Ukraine, insisting that providing the country more weapons is not “charitable aid,” but an investment in the security of the EU, since Russian President Vladimir Putin “shows no signs of abandoning his goals.” Kallas has advocated tougher sanctions on Russia and is known for her strident stance against Moscow. She also stated Sunday that supporting Ukraine is in the interests of the US.

“If America is worried about China, it should be worried about Russia first,” Kallas claimed, according to the outlet Suspilne, adding that Russia, Iran, North Korea and China are working together. She also admitted that despite Western efforts to isolate Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin’s political influence has been amplified. “And we also see what Putin is doing in other countries, really increasing his influence. So, if the United States wants to be the strongest state in the world, they will eventually have to deal with the Russian Federation. And the easiest way to deal with this is to support Ukraine so that it wins the war,” the diplomat concluded. Kallas also did not rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine.

“So far, the discussion has centered on which countries are ready to send soldiers to Ukraine and which are not,” she told reporters. “I believe that nothing can be ruled out.” The remarks come as the UK and France have revived debates about sending forces to Ukraine, according to a recent report in Le Monde. In February, French President Emmanuel Macron caused controversy by refusing to rule out sending ground troops “to prevent Russia from winning this war.” The statement was quickly disavowed by NATO officials, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters that Ukraine’s Western backers were “unanimous” in their opposition to the idea. Russia has long claimed that Western special forces personnel are already active in Ukraine as military advisors and mercenaries. Putin maintains that NATO troop deployments in Ukraine cannot not change the situation on the battlefield.

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Ukraine can’t become a NATO member. So they want NATO to occupy the country.

Zelensky Willing To Cede Territory in Exchange for NATO Protection (Antiwar)

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was willing to temporarily cede territory to Russia to bring an end to the war in exchange for NATO protection over Ukraine. “If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under [the] NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” Zelensky told Sky News. “That’s what we need to do fast, and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.” Zelensky’s suggestion is almost certainly a non-starter for Russia since the invasion was launched to keep Ukraine out of NATO, but it does reflect a shift in his position. Zelensky previously maintained that his war goals included driving Russia out of all of the territory it has captured since February 2022, as well as Crimea.

In a recent conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to a speech he made earlier this year that outlines his conditions for peace, which include a Ukrainian withdrawal from all territory Russia has annexed, Ukrainian neutrality, and the lifting of all Western sanctions on Russia. Ukrainian neutrality was Russia’s main demand during short-lived negotiations that took place in the early days of the invasion. Ukrainian and Russian officials held talks in March and April of 2022, but the negotiations were discouraged by the US and its allies.

In the interview with Sky News, Zelensky said Ukraine wouldn’t agree to a ceasefire without guarantees of NATO protection. “We need [NATO protection] very much, otherwise [Putin] will come back. Otherwise, how are we going to go to a ceasefire? So for us, it’s very dangerous,” he said. While Zelensky and Putin’s terms are extremely far apart, the Ukrainian side could be forced to make more concessions if President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his campaign promise to end the war and pressures Zelensky to negotiate.

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“With just such a birth rate and mortality, the Ukrainian nation will be reduced to nothing in 180 years..”

Ukrainians Could Disappear (RT)

The Ukrainian ethnos could be extinct in less than two centuries, Olga Bogomolets, a renowned Ukrainian medical expert, warned this week. Extremely low birth rates and high mortality could lead to the nationality’s demise in about 180 years, she said. Bogomolets holds a post-doctoral degree in medicine, as well as the title ‘distinguished physician of Ukraine’. According to the expert, the nation is facing an “insane, catastrophic” rise in mortality rates combined with a continued decline in the number of newborns. “If this model persists, without even taking into account the war-associated losses and emigration… With just such a birth rate and mortality, the Ukrainian nation will be reduced to nothing in 180 years,” Bogomolets told the Vechir.Live show, which aired on YouTube.

The country has only six generations’ time to reverse the trend, the health professional warned. Otherwise, “zero [Ukrainians] will remain,” she said, adding that the territory of Ukraine would be inhabited by some other people “who will no longer be Ukrainians.” The conflict with Moscow has taken a heavy toll. Ukrainian military losses alone have amounted to more than half a million since February 2022, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Around 6.6 million people had fled the country as of July 2024, according to German data aggregator Statista. The Ukrainian media has reported that the country’s population could have fallen by a whopping 10 million over almost three years of fighting, considering both conflict-linked losses and emigration. A quarter of Ukrainians who fled abroad also have no interest in going back, the news outlets said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) currently estimates Ukraine’s population at just over 37.7 million people as of 2023, down from 44.3 million in 2021 and almost 50 million in 2000. The international body says that number was in steady decline even before the conflict with Russia, and is projected to fall further to less than 32 million by 2050. In October, Florence Bauer, the Regional Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), described the situation in Ukraine as a “demographic crisis,” explaining that “the birth rate plummeted to one child per woman – the lowest fertility rate in Europe and one of the lowest in the world.” She added that the nation’s population had declined by over 10 million since the start of the 2014 crisis following the Maidan coup in Kiev.

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“There are moments when you understand your thoughts only when you speak them to others.”

Shall We Celebrate, the World Being as It Is? (Patrick Lawrence)

Is it all right to be happy over a holiday that has “Happy” in its name? The genocide of a long-suffering people to which our purported leaders have made us accomplices, a senile president who leaves us living with the danger of a nuclear conflict, fear and want and disorder everywhere you look: Can we allow ourselves happiness? Can we permit ourselves merriment in a few short weeks? And the most pressing query of all: What are we supposed to do? We must act, but how? As another holiday season begins, I merely repeat questions many millions among us have asked for more than a year now. I know this because I recently conducted an extensive survey indicating that the world as we have made it leaves us, we Americans and other dwellers in the Western post-democracies, a chronically troubled people.

I made sure the poll covered a wide geographic spread: I surveyed my household; the respondents were two, including myself. So let us not argue: The results are unambiguously representative. I found frustration at a record level, and there must be a record somewhere. I found suggestions of anger and despair. I found that the questions just noted were posed not quite incessantly, but nearly. The survey’s margin of error is zero. We are a perplexed people apart from everything else we are. And our questions are the very most right questions a troubled and perplexed people ought to ask as 2024 draws to a close and year-end holidays are upon us. In mid–December a year ago, we were guests in the home of one of my kindly editors.

This was in the village of South Egremont, at the southern end of the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts. There was a tree at the foot of the stairs, the fire was lit, there were drinks on the coffee table. The kindly editor, the KE, stood before the tree with a glass ornament in her hand. We were about to begin the decorate-the-tree ritual. Then the KE paused and turned. “Should we be doing this?” she asked. I vividly recall the unsettled look on her face. “Should we be celebrating?” Israel was then several months into its sadistic barbarism in Gaza, and the government that is supposed to represent us but no longer does was profligately sustaining the Zionist regime’s terrorizing troops. There was no misunderstanding the KE’s question. “Yes!” I replied with alacrity and not much reflection. There are moments when you understand your thoughts only when you speak them to others.

And so I continued, “We must insist on honoring the feasts that matter to us. Celebration: We can’t surrender it. We owe it to ourselves to refuse the temptation of learned helplessness and despair.” I paused. Then: “But that’s not the most important thing. We owe it most of all to the people of Palestine. It is for them we must demonstrate that the human spirit lives despite all, and that humanity’s shared capacity for joy is not extinguished.” The KE nodded. I seem to have brought her around. The KE’s son, a 30–something with a lightning wit and a quick, acute intelligence, considered the point carefully. His name is Stephen. After a moment Stephen said, “Yes, but a conscious ‘Happy’ and ‘Merry.’ A knowing ‘Happy’ and ‘Merry,’ a ‘Happy’ and ‘Merry’ that are fully aware—that refuse to avert their eyes, refuse to lose sight of anything.”

It was the best thing anyone said that evening. We decorated the tree just as these things always and wonderfully go: Put that silver bulb here. No, up a little. Now to the left. The pine cones should be in the front. The big red one goes on that side…. Stephen’s thought has stayed with me ever since. In a certain way I have lived by it.

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“Once a civilization becomes amoral, it succumbs to evil. When a civilization succumbs to evil it becomes impossible to defend.”

Orwell’s Forecast of a Tyrannical Britain Proven Correct (Paul Craig Roberts)

When George Orwell’s 1984 was published in 1949 everyone believed the dystopia he described was Soviet communism. Orwell said it was a description of Britain in the future. It took 75 years instead of the 35 years that Orwell estimated judging by his book’s title, but tyranny as great as he imagined now has Britain in is grip. If you doubt this, read this very short report–https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/great-reset/silent-prayer-prohibited-in-the-uk/— and watch the short video in which two policemen confront an Englishman who is silently praying in public. The police, both white and British, tell him that he is in violation of an ordinance that protects abortion clinics from anyone praying within 150 feet of the premises. The man says he is praying for his deceased son. It is not revealed whether his son was aborted by the mother or whether the death and prayer are unrelated to abortion.

What strikes me is that two white British policemen think they need to confront a person over a tyrannical ordinance that in the US is unconstitutional as it violates the 14th Amendment by creating special legal privileges for abortion clinics that are denied other service providers. The ordinance violates the requirement of equal protection of law. If Christianity or the right to protest still existed in Britain, the tyrannical ordinance would simply be ignored by police. Indeed, if Christianity existed in Britain the ordinance could not have been introduced, much less passed. Christianity is one of the foundations of Western civilization. Its demise indicates the demise of Western civilization.

In Britain where laws and police take it very easy on criminals as long as they are dark-skinned immigrant-invaders, a white British citizen can get in more trouble for praying silently within a proscribed distance of where abortions, that is, murders, are performed than an immigrant-invader faces for rape, robbery, and assault. Notice that a majority of British Members of Parliament thought that abortion clinics needed protection from prayer. By passing the ordinance the MPs shielded abortionists from ethical and moral protest. What crime will the MPs next shield? It is extraordinary, isn’t it, that the British are willing to take the entire world to nuclear war by firing missiles into Russia and find the danger instead in a person praying outside an abortion clinic. This tells us that the Western world no longer exists in a moral context. Once a civilization becomes amoral, it succumbs to evil. When a civilization succumbs to evil it becomes impossible to defend.

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“All we are left with is an assumption covered up and concealed in secret. The scientific name for that is a lie.”

Sturgess Inquiry Ends In Foreign Office Whimper, Bang Of Novichok Lies (Helmer)

The Novichok show trial ended its public hearings last week in London with the revelation that it will not name the chemical constituents of the poison used in the attempted killing of Sergei and Yulia Skripal on March 4, 2018, and in the cause of death of Dawn Sturgess on June 30, 2018. By doing this, by keeping the chemical formula combination of the poison a state secret, independent British toxicologists say there is no evidence that a Russian-made Novichok was used; and that, instead, a British or US-made Novichok was readily available in 2018, and this was as likely to have been the killer weapon. Revealed earlier in the hearings by a doctor at Yulia Skripal’s bedside four days after the attack, Skripal believed she and her father had been hit by a poison spray as they ate lunch at a restaurant just before they collapsed outside.

Skripal’s evidence pointed to a British operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal before he escaped back to Moscow, and then cover up by planting fabricated Russian clues at the crime scenes, and in the blood test reports of the victims. Weapon, crime scene, victim pathology, killer identification, motive – all faked. The toxicology experts point out that in 2018 scientists working on this type of organophosphate poison had revealed synthesis, production, testing and stocking of A232 and A234 Novichok in the US Army’s chemical warfare centre, known by its location as the Edgewood Arsenal; and at its British counterpart and partner, the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), known as Porton Down. The Iranian military establishment had also done the same by 2016. After the Skripal case in 2018, military chemists in South Korea and the Czech Republic revealed how they had produced and tested their own formulas for Novichok.

By openly publishing their Novichok chemistry, the Americans, Iranians, South Koreans, and Czechs have proved that making, detecting and naming Novichok is a transparent process, not difficult to verify forensically in a criminal investigation or court. This, British scientists now say, means that the refusal of government officials and the Sturgess Inquiry judge, Anthony Hughes, to name the Novichok alleged to have been the Russian murder weapon, is evidence of a scheme of British fabrication and coverup. Mark Allen of the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was the last witness to testify before Hughes at the Inquiry’s public hearings. As head of defence and intelligence, he was also the official in charge of coordinating the intelligence and military units involved in the attack on the Skripals; and then in the police and media coverup employed to pin the crime on the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, and on President Vladimir Putin.

Allen’s testimony on November 28 identified as his direct superior Sir Mark Sedwill, the national security advisor reporting to then-Prime Minister Theresa May and then-Foreign Minister Boris Johnson. “As SRO [Senior Responsible Owner] for Russia,” Allen said, “when we’re dealing with Russia strategy, the Government strategy towards Russia, I bring together all government departments, including representatives of the agencies as well, to ensure that we’re all essentially using all of our levers, all of our information, all of our understanding is pointing in the same direction and we’re being coherent. Then where there are situations where something unexpected arises, what you might call a crisis of some sort, then I will also chair that sort of grouping to work out what our collective response should be.”

“I act, not as the Foreign Office’s DG [director-general], but as the government’s senior official. Page 17 Asked to substantiate public statements at the time by May, Johnson and Sedwill that only Russia could have made and used the Novichok weapon, Allen was unable. “… it is safe to say that any modern chemical laboratory is capable of synthesising Novichok. In contrast to what you have said about it being a state — really only something that can be done at the state level. Is there anything that you can add to this debate, Mr Allen? A. I don’t think that is a view that is shared in the scientific community, or in the OPCW.” Page 41. This was a lie; Hughes let it go unchallenged. “LORD HUGHES: As far as you know, is it something which has been asserted either by Mr Mirzayanov or by the other publications of American, Czech, Italian, et cetera, researchers?

“A [Allen]: I haven’t read those in detail, sir, so I couldn’t say.“LORD HUGHES: All right, thank you.” Page 41. “What’s in a name like Novichok? Why the coverup?” responds an independent British chemist and expert on organophosphates. “If the full molecular readout was exposed publicly from the blood sampling of the Skripals and Sturgess — also later of [Alexei] Navalny — then it would be obvious that some constituents are missing. And because they are missing from the name or the reported chemical formula, then identification of Novichok cannot be made. All we are left with is an assumption covered up and concealed in secret. The scientific name for that is a lie.”

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Masterpiece

 

 

Dog ball
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863627051221000445

 

 

Happy husband
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863284451158999371

 

 

Elephants
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863382783952883864

 

 

Motorcycle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863242158439878695

 

 

Trap
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863387612053897620

 

 

Crab-rice

 

 

 

 

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Jul 112023
 
 July 11, 2023  Posted by at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  65 Responses »


Gustave Doré Over London — By Rail 1872 (woodblock)

 

China Ready To Contribute To Build Stable World Jointly With Russia – Xi (TASS)
41+ Countries Returning To Gold Standard (QTR)
Anti-Russian Sanctions Spooking Countries Into Repatriating Gold Reserves (RT)
US, Europeans Depleted Their Weapons Stockpile Fighting Russia in Ukraine (Sp.)
Vaudevillian Visitors in Vilnius (Sp.)
Zelensky Can Expect Military Aid Guarantees From NATO Summit at Best (Sp.)
Ukraine In NATO Is ‘Path To Peace’ – FM (RT)
US State Dept Has Become ‘Ministry Of Truth’ – Moscow (RT)
Erdogan Ties Sweden’s NATO Bid To Türkiye’s EU Membership (RT)
Putin Held Meeting With Prigozhin, Wagner Commanders June 29 -Kremlin (Sp.)
Prigozhin’s War (Lauria)
US Cluster Munitions to Ukraine Can Lead to Humanitarian Problems – China (Sp.)
Ukraine Stepping Up Mercenary Recruitment Effort – Russian MOD (RT)
Welcome to Zuckerberg’s Vision of Internet “Kindness” (Turley)
UK Parents Prosecuted for Refusing to Pay for Transgender Treatments? (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Baby myocarditis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678475139841662996

 

 

 

 

Luft
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678528304616226816

 

 

BRICS

 

 

 

 

“..mutual assistance, deep integration, innovation and pioneering, as well as mutual benefit.”

China Ready To Contribute To Build Stable World Jointly With Russia – Xi (TASS)

Beijing is ready to join efforts with Moscow to contribute to building a prosperous, stable and just world order, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said on Monday. “China is ready to continue working with Russia <…> in order to contribute to developing and reviving both countries as well as to build a prosperous, stable and just world order,” China’s CCTV quoted Xi as saying at a meeting with Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko in Beijing. Xi said that, in the new era, his country was ready to continue developing the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation with Russia which imply “mutual assistance, deep integration, innovation and pioneering, as well as mutual benefit.”

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“That’s one she’s going to want to take back at some point, I’m certain.”

41+ Countries Returning To Gold Standard (QTR)

Remember back when the Russia/Ukraine war had just started, and I predicted that Russia and China would launch their own gold backed currency? At the time, this idea sounded completely foreign, and I was ridiculed for bringing it up. Today, it just become reality. 41+ countries look like they could be returning to a gold standard. The images plastered all over RT this weekend had headlines like “New Money, New World” and “Gold Standard Will Be Of Great Benefit To Strengthening New Singly Currency”. “The official announcement is expected to be made during the BRICS summit in August in South Africa,” Kitco reported over the weekend. “At first glance, a new transaction unit, backed by gold, sounds like good money – and it could be, first and foremost, a major challenge to the US dollar’s hegemony,” Thorsten Polleit, chief economist at Degussa, said.

He continued: “For making the new currency as good as gold, a truly sound currency, it must be convertible into gold on demand. I am not sure whether this is what Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have in mind. Using gold as money, the unit of account would be a true game changer, no doubt about it. It could lead to a sharp devaluation of many fiat currencies vis-à-vis the yellow metal (including the BRICS fiat currencies), and it could catapult up goods prices in terms of fiat currencies. It could be a shock to the global fiat money system. I am not sure that this is what the BRICS wish to achieve.” The official announcement of the new currency is expected in August during the BRICS summit in South Africa.

Even more shocking than the announcement is the cavalier attitude that United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appears to be taking to the news. In statements I can only describe as completely delusional, Yellen said this weekend: “I just want to reiterate what I’ve said in the past, which is I think the United States can rest assured that the dollar is going to play the dominant role in facilitating international transactions and serving as a reserve currency in the years ahead. I don’t see that role being threatened by any development including the one that you’ve mentioned [BRICS common currency].” That’s one she’s going to want to take back at some point, I’m certain.

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“’If it’s my gold then I want it in my country’”

Anti-Russian Sanctions Spooking Countries Into Repatriating Gold Reserves (RT)

An increasing number of countries are bringing home their bullion reserves in the wake of unprecedented sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, Reuters reported on Monday, citing an Invesco survey of central bank and sovereign wealth funds.According to the report, widespread losses for sovereign money managers resulting from last year’s financial market rout made them “fundamentally”rethink their strategies amid fears of higher inflation and further geopolitical tensions. The survey showed that over 85% of the participating 85 sovereign wealth funds and 57 central banks believe that inflation will now be higher in the coming decade than in the last.

A “substantial share” of central banks were reportedly concerned by the precedent set by sanctions on Russia. Almost 60% of respondents said it had made gold more attractive, while 68% were keeping reserves at home, compared with 50% in 2020. “’If it’s my gold then I want it in my country’ (has) been the mantra we have seen in the last year or so,”according to Invesco’s head of official institutions, Rod Ringrow, who oversaw the report. Confirming Ringrow’s assessment, one central bank told Reuters anonymously: “We did have it (gold) held in London… but now we’ve transferred it back to [our] own country to hold as a safe haven asset and to keep it safe.”

Nearly half of Russia’s $640 billion worth of gold and forex reserves were frozen by the West last year, included in numerous rounds of sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine. Moscow has condemned the freezing of its assets, describing the West’s plans to expropriate those funds as theft and warning of retaliatory measures. The Ivesco study showed that geopolitical concerns, combined with opportunities in emerging markets, have also triggered a shift among some central banks away from the US dollar. Of those surveyed, 7% reportedly believe that mounting US debt is also negative for the greenback, but most still see no alternative to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

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The military industrial complex is making a killing.

US, Europeans Depleted Their Weapons Stockpile Fighting Russia in Ukraine (Sp.)

The US and Europe may have the military budgets which far outstrip those of their global rivals, but there are multiple factors helping to explain their depletion and inability to expand production, retired. Major General Vallely, the chairman of the Stand Up America Foundation, a US advocacy and non-profit, told Sputnik. “As you know, when the Americans surrendered in Afghanistan, we left $85 billion-worth of equipment, ammunition, guns, tanks, helicopters, artillery. $85 billion is a lot. That would arm an entire country for years,” Vallely explained. Secondly, the US defense sectors “sells a lot of equipment to other countries – some 50 different countries,” which means not all its resources can be concentrated on one task, like flooding arms into Ukraine.

“And the third reason is the amount that we have sent into Ukraine, including what we called ‘prepositioned’ equipment in Europe. Those resources are depleted. So the American defense industry can’t keep up with demand now. We don’t have the manufacturing capability to keep up with what’s being used and what is needed in the future. The same goes for the European countries,” the senior officer said, pointing out that much of the weapons and equipment given to Kiev over the past year-and-a-half have been destroyed. Vallely also pointed to political, economic and social factors to account for the shortfall, saying many NATO countries, particularly in Europe, “are sort of reluctant” to keep pumping their military equipment into Ukraine with no end in sight.

Instead, they’ve actually “slowed down their production, I think, and also the amount of supplies that they’re giving Ukraine, because they want to keep a lot of that, at least some for themselves. So those are all reasons why we see this shortage and it’s going to continue,” he said. Major European NATO powers such as Germany, Italy and the UK have spent months warning that the stocks of weapons they have left after splurging on Ukraine would be enough to withstand just “48-72 hours” of combat in the event of a surprise invasion or other major conflagration. In the UK, defense officials complained privately back in January that the military had been “hollowed out” by arms shipments to Kiev, and London’s reluctance to up defense expenditures.

In spite of talk among NATO members about record defense budgets, Vallely doesn’t expect the alliance to be able to substantially ramp up production capabilities over the coming months and years. “I don’t think they want to. It costs the countries a lot of money to build this equipment. And you have an ailing economy in Europe and the United States. They can print all the money they want to, but still you have to build these things and it takes a lot of time,” he said. On top of that are resource constraints, including the rare-earth minerals the US has come to rely on China for but which Beijing has recently indicated it would be trimming down amid the ongoing trade war with Washington, Vallely said.

Read more …

NATO must deliver this week. But all they have is words. Bonuspoint for the headline.

Vaudevillian Visitors in Vilnius (Sp.)

The crisis in Ukraine is in many respects the consequence of the Western alliance’s decade-and-a-half long quest to pull Kiev into the bloc, despite repeated warnings by Russia that Ukrainian NATO membership was a “red line” for Moscow. The alliance first welcomed Ukraine’s “Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership” at its 2008 summit in Bucharest, Romania. Two years later, the pro-Western government in Kiev was replaced in democratic elections by the government of Viktor Yanukovych, who pledged Kiev’s bloc neutrality. Four years after that, in 2014, Yanukovych was overthrown in a US-backed coup d’etat, with the crisis prompting Crimea to break off from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, and sparking a bloody conflict in Donbass. Moscow attempted to mediate the crisis over eight years through the Minsk peace accords, a comprehensive, 12-point peace deal calling for broad autonomy for Donbass as part of Ukraine.


Successive governments in Kiev dragged their feet on the Minsk deal’s implementation. In the meantime, in 2019, Ukraine’s parliament amended the country’s constitution to cement Kiev’s aspirations to join NATO and the European Union. In December 2021, as war clouds gathered over Donbass, Moscow attempted one final push to prevent the escalation of the Ukraine crisis into a Russia-NATO proxy conflict, proposing comprehensive security agreements to the US and the alliance to reduce tensions, including a request for a commitment from the Western alliance not to allow Ukraine to join the bloc. The alliance refused, saying it would never reject its “open door” policy. Several weeks later, amid Russian intelligence reports that Kiev would try to resolve the Donbass crisis by force, Moscow kicked off its special military operation.

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“NATO member states cannot use security guarantees as an alternative to Ukraine’s membership in the bloc.”

Zelensky Can Expect Military Aid Guarantees From NATO Summit at Best (Sp.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky can expect from the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius on Ukraine’s admission to the alliance is guarantees of further military aid at best, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation at the military security and arms control talks in Vienna, said in an interview with Sputnik. Zelensky continues to bend his line that he needs Western weapons and military equipment under the pretext of a confrontation with Russia, the diplomat said, adding that is why Zelensky has long hinted that he would like an accelerated process of joining NATO. The UK and the US, however, have made it clear that the necessary criteria must be met for this.


“The best that Zelensky can expect [from the summit] is guarantees of further military assistance and supplies of ammunition,” Gavrilov said, adding that “the fact that a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council will be held during the NATO summit is just a nod to Kiev and nothing more.” On Monday Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that “NATO member states cannot use security guarantees as an alternative to Ukraine’s membership in the bloc.” The Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius will host the NATO summit from July 11-12. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will chair the meeting. Discussions on Ukraine’s NATO prospects, strengthening the alliance’s eastern flank and defense spending are expected to top the summit’s agenda. On June 19, Stoltenberg said that the summit would not discuss a formal invitation, but rather ways to “move Ukraine closer to NATO.”

Read more …

War is peace.

Ukraine In NATO Is ‘Path To Peace’ – FM (RT)

Inviting Kiev into NATO will create peace in Europe, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba argued on Monday, during an interview with the German public broadcaster ARD. Kiev was “promised entry” in 2008, but Germany and other Western European countries got cold feet, Kuleba told the Tagesschau newscast on Monday. The upcoming Vilnius summit of the US-led military bloc is the time to correct that “mistake,” he added.“We appreciate everything that Germany and the US are doing for Ukraine to support us in this war,” Kuleba added, but disagreed with Berlin that the invitation into NATO would drag the West into open war with Russia. The invitation is simple “a political message to Ukraine” and Article 5 – the mutual defense clause – “only applies if Ukraine is a member country.”

“Ukraine’s NATO membership is a path towards peace. Once Ukraine can join NATO, there will be no more wars in Europe,” Kuleba claimed, because “Russia will no longer dare to attack the alliance.” Although Kiev’s bid is strongly supported by the Eastern European and Baltic states, the leaders of Western Europe and the US have opposed making Ukraine a full-fledged NATO member. In a CNN interview over the weekend, US President Joe Biden reiterated that Washington is against admitting Ukraine into NATO and offered “Israel-like guarantees” instead. “Why does everyone always want to put Ukraine in a separate pot?” lamented Kuleba. “Why are people always looking for alternative solutions? Why can’t we simply develop a holistic solution for a European security architecture in which Ukraine sits in the NATO boat?”

He went on to insist that Ukraine is “a win” and not a burden, because “without our army, the eastern flank [of NATO] could not be defended at all.” Kiev will not accept guarantees as a replacement for membership, Kuleba added, but only as an interim measure. The US and its allies have spent over $100 billion just in 2022 to provide Ukraine with weapons, equipment, ammunition and even cash, while insisting they were not a party to the conflict with Russia. Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov has argued on multiple occasions that his country was already “de facto” a member of the Western alliance and “carrying out NATO’s mission” with theblood of Ukrainian soldiers.

No NATO membership for Ukraine was one of the key demands in Russia’s collective security proposal sent to Washington and Brussels in December 2021. Biden also revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had presented that condition at their July 2021 summit in Switzerland – but that he refused, citing NATO’s open-door policy. Moscow considers NATO’s eastward expansion as a threat to Russia’s national security and has cited Kiev’s ties to the bloc as one of the root causes of the current armed conflict with Ukraine. Russian officials have argued that Ukraine’s neutrality would be one of the necessary prerequisites for a lasting peace between the two countries.

Read more …

Yup, more Orwell.

US State Dept Has Become ‘Ministry Of Truth’ – Moscow (RT)

US authorities are urging the country’s media outlets to propagate falsehoods about Russia in a bid to undermine its stability amid the ongoing stand-off between Moscow and the West, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed. In a statement on Monday, the agency quoted its director, Sergey Naryshkin, as saying that “the US State Department … basically dictates to the American media what exactly they should write and say,” adding that it “has finally turned into the ‘Ministry of Truth’.” The comment was an apparent reference to the fictional ministry tasked with falsifying historical events from George Orwell’s world-renowned dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.

The SVR, citing intelligence data, claimed that last month the department sent instructions to several major media holdings, including AT&T, Comcast Corporation, Graham Media Group, Nash Holdings, Newsweek Publishing and The New York Times Company, telling them to “reflect events in and around Russia in a distorted manner.” According to the agency, these outlets were tasked with convincing Russian citizens that there was a need for a “forceful struggle against the authorities, up to an armed rebellion.” They also wanted to “involve the population in protest actions” by “actively circulating falsehoods” about Russia’s purported weakness and its “inevitable defeat in the stand-off with the West,” the statement read.

To achieve this goal, Washington has told media organizations to focus on packaging certain narratives to young Russians, as well as hailing Russian opposition figures and other nationals engaged “in sabotage and terrorist actions” against Moscow as heroes, the agency claimed. “There is nothing new in freedom of speech being trampled on in the West. It is unfortunate that the State Department, which used to be a sober-minded and rational agency … has turned into a stinking landfill of informational garbage,” the SVR added. The statement comes after Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov predicted in April that the level of “external interference” into Russia’s domestic affairs would only grow amid the Ukraine conflict. He also suggested that the West would be interested in derailing Russia’s presidential elections, which are scheduled for March 2024.

Read more …

The EU will never accept a muslim nation as a member.

Erdogan Ties Sweden’s NATO Bid To Türkiye’s EU Membership (RT)

Ankara will sign off on Sweden’s accession to NATO if the EU “opens the way” to membership for Türkiye, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. Erdogan has reportedly asked US President Joe Biden to help pressure Brussels into accepting Türkiye into the European bloc. “Türkiye has been waiting at the door of the European Union for over 50 years now, and almost all of the NATO member countries are now members of the European Union,” Erdogan told reporters before flying to NATO’s summit in Lithuania. “Come and open the way for Türkiye’s membership in the European Union. When you pave the way for Türkiye, we’ll pave the way for Sweden as we did for Finland,” he added.

Sweden, Finland, and Türkiye agreed last summer that Ankara would approve the two Nordic nations’ applications for NATO membership if both granted a number of key concessions to Ankara. Sweden and Finland promised that they would lift arms embargoes on Türkiye, extradite alleged Kurdish and Gulenist terrorists, and crack down on the activities of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) within their borders. Türkiye’s parliament signed off on Finland’s application in March, but Erdogan maintains that Sweden hasn’t fulfilled its end of the bargain. In a phone call with Biden on Sunday, the Turkish president claimed that Sweden still allows “terrorist organizations” – referring to the PKK – to demonstrate on its streets, according to a readout of the call from Ankara.

Erdogan also told Biden that Türkiye expects a “clear and strong message of support” from NATO leaders for its EU membership at this week’s summit in Lithuania. A readout of the call from the White House made no mention of this request. Erdogan is set to hold talks with Biden and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson while in Lithuania. sAsked about Erdogan’s comments, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told the Associated Press that Türkiye’s accession to the EU was not a part of the deal that Sweden, Finland, and Türkiye signed last year.

Stoltenberg insisted that Sweden has fulfilled its obligations, and that it is “still possible to have a positive decision” on its accession to the military bloc during this week’s summit. Türkiye applied for EU membership in 1987 and was recognized as a candidate in 1999. Membership negotiations opened in 2005, but progress was slow, and no talks have taken place since 2016. Brussels has since condemned Erdogan over alleged human rights abuses, and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament warned in a 2017 report that constitutional reforms strengthening his powers could run afoul of EU law and threaten Ankara’s membership bid.

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“Putin listened to the explanations of the commanders and offered them further employment options..”

Putin Held Meeting With Prigozhin, Wagner Commanders June 29 -Kremlin (Sp.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting in the Kremlin with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner PMC and the group’s commanders to discuss the events of June 24, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. “Indeed, the president had such a meeting. He invited 35 people to it. All group commanders and company management, including Prigozhin. This meeting took place in the Kremlin on June 29 and lasted almost three hours,” Peskov told a briefing. The details of the meeting are confidential, but both Putin and Wagner commanders gave an assessment of the June 24 events, the spokesman said.

“The only thing we can say is that the president gave an assessment of the company’s actions at the front line during the special military operation, and also gave his assessment of the events of June 24. Putin listened to the explanations of the commanders and offered them further employment options,” Peskov said. Commanders of Wagner told Putin that they are his staunch supporters and are ready to continue fighting for Russia, the spokesman concluded. On June 23, forces of the Wagner Group (PMC) seized the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District in the city of Rostov-on-Don, following accusations leveled against the Russian Ministry of Defense for allegedly striking the group’s camps. Both the Russian military and the Federal Security Service have denied the allegations.

The next day, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko revealed that he had spent the entire day negotiating with Yevgeny Prigozhin, as agreed upon with Russian President Vladimir Putin. As a result of the talks, the Wagner group leader accepted Lukashenko’s proposal to stop the movement of his troops in Russia and take measures to de-escalate the situation. Putin guaranteed that the Wagner group fighters would have the opportunity to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, return home, or move to Belarus.

Read more …

“..Western governments and pundits clearly suffered more embarrassment from this episode than Putin did..”

Prigozhin’s War (Lauria)

MacGregor disagreed that the former Wagner chief was in cahoots with Russia’s enemies. He said: “I see no evidence that Mr. Prigozhin was made an agent by MI6 or the CIA or anybody else. Anybody who knows the Russians knows that any senior officer or commander or leader is surrounded by numerous FSB informants. The idea that he could have sold out even if he wanted to seems ludicrous.” Ritter pointed out in his CN piece that the Russian government is investigating the matter. If Prigozhin was indeed working for Western or Ukrainian intelligence they clearly did not get what they paid for. Lessons: For Russia: Don’t repeat the mistake of hiring a private army. Several analysts pointed to a 500-year old lesson from Niccolo Machiavelli that Russia ignored:

“Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful. … I wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms [i.e., mercenaries]. The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions; but if the captain [i.e., the leader of the mercenaries] is not skillful, you are ruined in the usual way [i.e., you will lose the war].”

MacGregor disputed the whole idea. He told Galloway: “I reject the notion that these people are mercenaries. I would compare them to the French Foreign Legion. The French Foreign Legion consists of large numbers of non Frenchmen in many cases, but they have sworn allegiance to the French state and the French nation, and no one has fought harder and more loyally for France than the French Foreign Legion. I would say you have something very similar in the Wagner group.= These are still Russians overwhelmingly, but there are numbers of Serbs or some Germans or others in the group, and they too have sworn allegiance to the Russian state. And as far as we can tell, none of them thought that they were marching on Moscow to remove Putin.

On the contrary, they saw themselves as going to Moscow to rescue Putin from what was widely considered bad advisors, bad councilors who have held up the Russian offensive and caused this war to drag out beyond the point of reason.” Whether they were mercenaries or not, the Kremlin and the MOD tried to get away with a dodgy legal maneuver and it caused them international embarrassment and nearly a bloody civil conflict. Lessons: For the West: Wait until an operation is over before popping the corks. Cries about a Russian civil war being under way, such as tweets from former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, which blared that “The fight is now on. This is now a civil war,” blew up in their faces when Prigozhin turned tail.

The bigger lesson would be not to meddle in other nations’ internal affairs but that would be too much to ask. The entire Russian nation had rallied around Putin, leaving him in a much stronger position, exposing the continuing line that Russia is now a dangerously unstable nation. Western governments and pundits clearly suffered more embarrassment from this episode than Putin did. But ideologues rarely learn any lessons.

Read more …

A soft warning. China speaks in whispers.

US Cluster Munitions to Ukraine Can Lead to Humanitarian Problems – China (Sp.)

Last week, the US unveiled a new military assistance package for Ukraine that includes cluster munitions. The weapons are banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which has been ratified by 123 countries, excluding the US and Ukraine. Supplies of cluster munitions by the United States to Ukraine may lead to humanitarian problems, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Monday. “Many countries have spoken out against it [cluster munition supplies], irresponsible transfers of cluster munitions can easily lead to humanitarian problems. Humanitarian issues and military security issues must be dealt with in a balanced manner, and the transfer of cluster munitions must be treated with restraint and caution,” Mao told reporters.

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“..a recruitment drive is underway in Argentina, Brazil, Afghanistan, Iraq, and areas of Syria that are “under American control.”

Ukraine Stepping Up Mercenary Recruitment Effort – Russian MOD (RT)

Ukrainian units formed from foreign mercenaries have suffered high battlefield casualties, forcing Kiev to change its approach to finding hired fighters, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Monday. In a statement, the ministry alleged that the Ukrainian military command views foreign fighters as cannon fodder, sending them into the riskiest missions and placing them at the back of the line when it comes to the evacuation of injured troops. This has made recruiting fighters in European countries such as Poland much harder for Kiev, the assessment claimed. Ukraine has consequently ramped up efforts to find candidates in other parts of the world, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, which stated that a recruitment drive is underway in Argentina, Brazil, Afghanistan, Iraq, and areas of Syria that are “under American control.”

The reference to Syria likely concerns the predominantly Kurdish northeastern part of the country. The US supplied Kurdish militias with weapons, training and air support when they served as ground forces for the Washington-led coalition in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). The Pentagon also maintains a military base in eastern Syria, despite the objections of the government in Damascus. The Russian Defense Ministry further claimed that Ukraine’s diplomatic missions in the US and Canada are actively hiring fighters with the help of the CIA and private military contractors under its influence.

Ukraine created the so-called International Legion for what it describes as foreign volunteers fighting for its cause. Moscow considers the fighters to be mercenaries and has repeatedly said that the regular laws of war do not apply to them. The Russian Defense Ministry’s assessment on Monday put the number of foreign mercenaries currently employed by Kiev at 2,029. There are numerous accounts from foreign fighters describing the perils of joining the Ukrainian ranks, including mismanagement by military leaders, corruption with logistics, and the overwhelming risks of engaging Russian forces.

Read more …

I’m seeing Orwell eveywhere today:

“..they were unwilling to allow the safety of others “to go to the winds so that people can speak freely.”

Welcome to Zuckerberg’s Vision of Internet “Kindness” (Turley)

“Threads’s rollout coincides with a court ruling that the government’s interventions to censor people on social media represented “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Now, Facebook is offering an alternative to Twitter, with the assurance that users will be protected against any thoughts that Meta’s staff finds problematic. While free speech on Twitter is portrayed as harmful, the company has promised to “prioritize kindness.” That sounds eerily familiar to some of us as a way to deprioritize free speech. Recently, former Twitter executive Anika Collier Navaroli testified on how she and her staff would remove anything they considered “dog whistles” and “coded” messaging. Rather than using “kindness,” Twitter used undefined standards of “safety” to cancel free speech.

Navaroli declared that they were unwilling to allow the safety of others “to go to the winds so that people can speak freely.” Facebook has long tried to get the public to embrace its role as some kind of speech overlord. Years ago, Facebook rolled out an Orwellian commercial campaign to get the public to embrace censorship. The commercials showed young people heralding how they grew up on the internet and how the world was changing, creating a need for censorship under the guise of “content moderation.” Facebook, they promised, was offering the “blending of the real world and the internet world.”

Facebook is not alone in trying to get people to accept censorship. Recently, after the court ruling, various figures assured the public that they are better off letting corporate and government censors protect them from harmful thoughts. On CNN, Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly went so far as to state that it simply “makes sense” for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands. After this week’s decision, the New York Times immediately issued a panicky tweet that the resulting outbreak of free speech could “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.” For his part, Zuckerberg prefers to just offer “kindness” and “sanity” with few details. Of course, there is a very simple way for Zuckerberg to show that he is committed to free speech: He can release the Facebook Files.

One of the reasons many of us in the free-speech community still support Musk is that he transformed the debate over government censorship by releasing the Twitter Files. For years, politicians and pundits dismissed objections from some of us to government-corporate coordination of censorship as unproven. In Congress, Democratic members attacked witnesses for supposedly lacking proof of censorship, even as they fought to block any investigation that might uncover that evidence. Musk changed all that by showing the public an extensive network of government interventions to support censorship and blacklisting of private citizens. Much of what we know today is derived from the Twitter Files, but surely there is more to learn.

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“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.”

UK Parents Prosecuted for Refusing to Pay for Transgender Treatments? (Turley)

According to the UK’s Code for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), abusive conduct now includes “withholding money for transitioning [and] refusing to use their preferred name or pronoun.” So a parent with familial or religious objections to the transitioning of a child would be required under the law to fund operations or treatments. According to the guidance material, this is not even “an exhausted list,” but some of the first “examples” of potentially criminal conduct that comes to mind. The guideline would suggest that parents with deep-seated religious convictions against transgender status would either have to fund an operation that they consider immoral or face arrest for failing to do so.

To potentially prosecute a parent for refusing to use an adopted pronoun of their child is chilling and wrong. Nevertheless, a CPS spokesperson doubled down with a comment to Fox News that “domestic abuse is a severe crime and leaves victims with a lasting impact . . . This assists prosecutors to ensure that any victim, regardless of who they are, can get justice for the abuse they have faced.” This follows the erosion of free speech and religious rights in Britain, including English courts upholding the criminalization “toxic ideologies.” It was Sir Edward Coke in The Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628 who declared “For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].” William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham later added:

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.” That no longer appears the case when misusing pronouns or failing to write a check for a child’s transitioning, which will now be treated as the same as physical child abuse. As the definition of abuse is broadened, the state derives greater control and direction over family affairs and relations. Moreover, leaving enforcement to the discretion of police in this “nonexhaustive” list only further undermines this long-standing protection over internal family matters. The question is what the limiting principle will be as the state defines a wider array of conduct to be child abuse. The default assumption of Pitt appears to have flipped in the United Kingdom.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678544638334967809

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jun 072023
 


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Arcadian or Pastoral State 1834

 

 

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 tried to explain the (consequences of the) uncertainty principle, defined by Werner Heisenberg as a core theme of Albert Einstein’s view of quantum mechanics, to … Albert Einstein. The latter must have been thrilled. Even though he did not like the uncertainty principle (God does not play dice). The thought experiment became known as “Schrödinger’s cat”. Since you cannot know both a particle’s position and its speed -and that’s just one example-, you have to assume all possible outcomes are valid (superposition). Only when you “look” does one particular outcome become the “reality”. It’s all part of the subatomic “world”.

Wikipedia: “In Schrödinger’s original formulation, a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor (e.g. a Geiger counter) detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison, which kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation implies that, after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality resolves into one possibility or the other.”

 


Dhatfield

 

As I’m trying to explain this, I very much have to wonder if I get it right. And I always thought that follows the uncertainty principle too: I can understand it and not understand it both at the same time. A physicist might fare a bit better, but it won’t come easy.

 

This is what I was thinking of with regards to the war in Ukraine. Before the fighting started, all possible outcomes seemed equally possible. If you did not look too closely at numbers of soldiers and weaponry, that is. But once it did start (when Schrödinger’s box was opened), it became clear very rapidly that Ukraine had no chance of winning. So why are we still acting as if the box remains closed? Because that way we get to spend billions more on armory, and we get western people to support Zelensky and his neo-nazis as those same people suffer from high prices for everything. Any outcome is still possible!

Take the Kakhovka dam narrative, or Nord Stream or any of the numerous other examples. When both sides accuse each other of perpetrating a certain event, Schrödinger’s box remains closed. Which is exactly what our politicians and arms makers desire. They don’t want us to know that they’ve been beaten by Russia, because you would no longer support their policies and their arms purchases. They want “superposition”. They can’t very well declare victory -though they try-, but they don’t need to either. They need uncertainty. Politicians, arms makers and media. They all profit from keeping you in the dark.

The best comment on Kakhovka I’ve seen perhaps comes from @CheburekiMan on Twitter: “Restoring water flow to the North Crimean Canal was top priority for Russia, the very first act of the SMO. Before Kiev shut off the flow in 2014, the canal was supplying 85% of Crimea’s water. So much depended on it, from crops to industry to drinking water, that’s how important it is. Now the pro-Ukraine bleating sheep want people to believe that Russia would wreck the dam, empty the reservoir and cause serious harm to its own people by running the canal dry. It’s so bonkers that one has to seriously consider such ideas are the result of brain damage, or perhaps fetal alcohol syndrome.”

 

Where Orwell comes in is in the terminology. Where “War equals Peace”. The EU pays its member states for the second hand weapons they “donate” to Kiev, through something called the European Peace Fund (aka Facility). Mass weapons deliveries that get huge numbers of people killed, are labeled “Peace”. Zelensky touts a plan labeled a Peace Plan, which demands Russia give back all territories, pay war reparations, deliver Putin et al to some international criminal court etc. The chance of that happening is of course zero, but as long as Schrödinger’s box remains closed, anything is possible. Still, it is a War Plan, not a Peace Plan.

Similarly, Zelensky and his international backers are organizing a Peace Summit, where everybody is invited except Russia. That makes it a War Summit. The suggestion made to westerners is that this is a globally supported initiative, but it is only a small part of the world population (10%?) that supports it. NATO+Japan+Australia. Did I leave anyone out? New Zealand? Ha ha ha, I read that Jacinda Ardern was made a dame. If you know a better illustration of how deep we’ve sunk, I’m game.

 

All the rest of the world is much more interested in the economic developments that involve BRICS+. 31 and counting nations have expressed interest in joining. And they’re not going to risk their potential role in that over a local fight far away that they know is long decided. US/NATO, in provoking this war, have lost not only the fight, but much more importantly, their economic power. Recently, the G7 were talking about what they were going to do in Central Asia. Which is basically all the “-Stans” left over after the Soviet Union dissolved. But the G7 is not going to do anything, it has no power there anymore. All these countries want to join the BRICS+. Why would you join a waning power if you have a shot at joining a power in its ascendancy, that all your neighbors are also joining?

The same attitude is prevalent in Africa, South America, East Asia, etc. Full of countries that remember how they were treated through the years by first Europe and then the US. The world has changed beyond recognition since the start of Russia’s SMO, and the “globalist west” is the only “region” that doesn’t recognize this. The USD won’t be replaced tomorrow as the reserve currency, but it doesn’t have to be. The process goes step by step, and is unstoppable. Hemingway’s famous words about how you go bankrupt (first gradually, then suddenly) have us on the wrong foot here. We only look at the “suddenly” part when it comes to the reserve currency, and ignore all the “gradually” steps. And then one day we will wake up and everything’s changed.

The rest of the world sees Schrödinger’s box as open. Only the west thinks that it’s still closed, and all possible outcomes are still viable.

 

 

 

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Mar 152022
 
 March 15, 2022  Posted by at 9:42 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Salvador Dali Memory of the child woman 1932

 

China Has Already Decided To Send Economic Aid To Russia, US Fears (G.)
White House Threatens China Will Pay for Support for Russia (Antiwar)
Biden Blames Putin, Covid For Record-high Inflation In US (Fox)
Stop Putin’s War! (CP)
Stocks Give Up Gains Following Kremlin Comments (ZH)
Germany To Buy Dozens Of US Stealth Jets (Y!)
Orwell Was Right (Taibbi)
Playing Dumb (Kunstler)
France Lifts Covid-19 Rules On Unvaccinated, Mask Wearing (AP)
Ed Dowd: 25 To 44 yo Experienced An 84% Increase In Excess Mortality (Kirsch)
Triple Vaccinated Just Weeks Away From Developing AIDS (DE)
UK Supreme Court Slams Door On Assange Appeal (Gosztola)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Tulsi

 

 

 

 

Majewski

 

 

The Guardian is the ideal voice of empire. But that means a lot of things must be igored. China doesn’t see the world through US/NATO eyes. It doesn’t think the Ukraine conflict started 3 weeks ago (but 30 years). And it doesn’t think not parroting the US means turning its back on Washington. China is its own nation.

China Has Already Decided To Send Economic Aid To Russia, US Fears (G.)

China has already decided to provide Russia with economic and financial support during its war on Ukraine and is contemplating sending military supplies such as armed drones, US officials fear. The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, laid out the US case against Russia’s invasion in an “intense” seven-hour meeting in Rome with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, pointing out that Moscow had feigned interest in diplomacy while preparing for invasion, and also that the Russian military was clearly showing signs of frailty. The US delegation in Rome had not expected the Chinese diplomats to negotiate, seeing them as message deliverers to Beijing.

“It was an intense seven-hour session, reflecting the gravity of the moment, as well as our commitment to maintaining open lines of communication,” a senior administration official said. “This meeting was not about negotiating specific issues or outcomes, but about a candid, direct exchange of views.” Asked if it had been successful, the official replied: “I suppose it depends on how you define success, but we believe that it is important to keep open lines of communication between the United States and China, especially on areas where we disagree.” However, the Americans walked away from the Rome meeting pessimistic that the Chinese government would change its minds about backing Moscow.

“The key here is first to get China to recalculate and re-evaluate their position. We see no sign of that re-evaluation,” said another US official familiar with the discussions. “They’ve already decided that they’re going to provide economic and financial support, and they underscored that today. The question really is whether they will go further.” [..] Russia needs economic and financial aid most urgently, in the face of devastating sanctions imposed by the US and its allies since the 24 February invasion. The country is danger of default on its debt payments, with two interest payments due on Wednesday, though it will have a 30-day grace period.

Moscow is unable to access nearly all of its $640bn in gold and foreign exchange reserves, but still holds part of those reserves in yuan, so Beijing will be able to step in to provide immediate assistance. There is pessimism in Washington about the possibility of steering China away from throwing in its lot with Russia, largely because it sees the partnership as being driven from the top. “It really is a project of Xi Jinping. He is totally, fundamentally behind this closer partnership with Russia,” the US official said. There is more scepticism lower down the ranks, but Xi and Putin have bonded over their shared view of the US as being heavy- and high-handed, and determined to end the period of US global dominance.

Read more …

Yes, China has called for an investigation into the biolabs.

White House Threatens China Will Pay for Support for Russia (Antiwar)

China will face major “consequences” should it help Russia evade an ever-growing raft of American sanctions, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has warned, just a day before he’s set to meet with Beijing’s top diplomat in Rome. Sullivan’s warning on Sunday came soon after unnamed Western officials told the New York Times and Washington Post that Russia is seeking weapons and economic relief from China amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. A spokesperson for the Chinese government said they were unaware of such a request, while Moscow has yet to confirm the reports.

In response to the attack on Ukraine launched in late February, the Joe Biden administration has imposed countless layers of new sanctions explicitly aiming to cripple and isolate the Russian economy. China, however, is one among several nations refusing to condemn the invasion or sever its economic ties with Russia. Despite American pressure to join in on the sanctions spree, Chinese President Xi Jinping has stated that Beijing’s relationship with Russia “even exceeds an alliance” in its “closeness and effectiveness,” suggesting the country is unlikely to bow to Western demands anytime soon.

As President Biden has ruled out direct military action in Ukraine, the administration has instead focused on arming the country’s military while attempting to make Russia an international pariah in the diplomatic and economic spheres. China has so far been able to obstruct Biden on both counts. Beijing’s UN delegation is supporting Russia’s claim that US-funded labs in Ukraine were working on chemical and biological weapons – a charge rejected by Washington as a “conspiracy theory” – and is now calling for an international investigation. Chinese financial support could also help Russia to weather the storm as its economy struggles to adapt to punishing Western sanctions.

Read more …

To which I can add this graph from yesterday. And then you can make your own mind up.

Biden Blames Putin, Covid For Record-high Inflation In US (Fox)

President Biden on Monday said Russian President Vladimir Putin and the COVID-19 pandemic are to blame for record-high inflation in the United States and maintained that rising prices have “nothing to do” with his administration’s policies. The president spoke Monday at the National League of Cities Congressional Cities Conference and addressed the increase in U.S. gas prices, as well as every day household items. “We know that families are still struggling with higher prices,” Biden said. “Let’s be absolutely clear about why prices are high now or high for two reasons.” The first, Biden said, is due to “the way the global economy works.”

“A factory in Taiwan that makes computer chips shuts down to a COVID outbreak. It causes a ripple effect to slow down auto-manufacturing,” Biden said. “So, because of the pandemic, we had significant disruption disruptions in the supply chain, and our supply chain is so important with so many materials that come from other places.” “And now, a second big reason for inflation is Vladimir Putin,” Biden said. “We’ve seen the price of gas go up over a dollar just since he put his troops on the border on the border of Ukraine — they went up a dollar and five cents,” Biden said.

“Big part of that reason is Putin began amassing troops along the border and then crossed. And guess what? The world took notice,” Biden said. “The market anticipated, prices went up, and then Putin invaded.” He added: “Make no mistake, the current spike in gas prices is largely the fault of Vladimir Putin — it has nothing to do with the American Rescue Plan.” Biden said that “rescuing our economy didn’t cause this problem,” but he vowed to “fix it.”

Read more …

Strange article at Counterpunch. Lots of weird points. But it has this right: the IMF, World Bank and US have Ukraine in a death grip. What else is new?

Stop Putin’s War! (CP)

Washington’s NATO alliance is part of that imperial history. The United States set it up, as its first Secretary General Lord Ismay famously said, to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down” in Europe. In other words, it is a vehicle of U.S. imperial domination of European capitalism. Most of the other NATO and EU states have a sordid history of colonialism of their own. And many have been accomplices to Washington’s wars, most recently in Afghanistan, where NATO played a large role in “pacifying” the country, committing numerous war crimes in the process. Moreover, the decision by the United States and European powers to expand NATO and the EU into Eastern Europe is one of the causes of the war in Ukraine.

It triggered Putin’s growing determination over the last decade to reclaim Russia’s lost sphere of influence. The United States and the EU offer no alternative to Ukraine but subjection to its imperial interests and neoliberal economics. In fact, through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the United States is one of the oppressors of Ukraine.These international financial institutions have locked Ukraine in debt that now exceeds $129 billion. The country’s workers and oppressed have paid an enormous price to service these loans. Like they have throughout the Global South, the international financial institutions have required Ukraine to cut social programs, privatize state industry, layoff state workers, and cut workers’ wages and benefits in return for further loans.

Ukraine’s annual payments siphon off billions of dollars that would otherwise go to much needed social reforms to improve the majority’s abysmally low standards of living. The United States and NATO aim to defend and in fact expand their military rule over Eastern Europe and enforcement of neoliberal economics. They have no solution to the plight of the majority of Ukrainians fighting for their liberation. Despite all of this, many people horrified by Putin’s war are mistakenly demanding that Washington and Brussels intervene directly or set up a no-fly zone. That would lead to military confrontations between the United States/NATO and Russia, risking World War III between nuclear powers.

Read more …

“Peskov went on to confirm that Russia “did not request China military aid..”

Stocks Give Up Gains Following Kremlin Comments (ZH)

US equity futures surged overnight – again – on hopes of an ‘imminent’ peace deal between Russia and Ukraine; and now – once again – equities are reverting lower following comments from the Kremlin that do not sound very ‘peace-deal-like… Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on a conference call that “Russia will realize all its plans in Ukraine operation,” adding that the “operation would be complete on schedule,” and would not rule out taking “full control” of major Ukraine cities. We don’t think this is the ‘hope’ that Zelensky and the market was looking for.


Peskov went on to confirm that Russia “did not request China military aid,” adding that “Russia had the resources to complete the Ukraine operation alone.” And he could not resist a jab the puppetmasters, commenting that “it appears that the bosses of Ukraine across the ocean are giving orders to the Ukrainian army.” And given the recent modest bounce in Biden’s approval, do we really think his administrations wants this war over already… this far from the Midterms?

Read more …

Cui bono? Follow the money.

Germany To Buy Dozens Of US Stealth Jets (Y!)

Germany on Monday unveiled plans to buy dozens of US-made F-35 fighter jets, as part of a multi-billion-euro push to modernise its armed forces in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Berlin intends to buy 35 F-35 jets made by Lockheed Martin to replace Germany’s decades-old Tornado fleet, as well as purchasing an additional 15 Eurofighter jets. Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht called the purchase agreement “a good step forwards” for Germany’s Bundeswehr armed forces. “There can only be one answer to Putin’s aggression, and that is unity in NATO and credible deterrence,” Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, commander of the German Air Force, told reporters.

Germany’s Tornados are the only Luftwaffe planes certified to carry US nuclear bombs stationed in Germany that are a key part of NATO deterrence. Lockheed’s fifth-generation F-35 stealth jets are considered the most modern combat aircraft in the world, and their unique shape and coating make them harder to detect by enemy radar. The additional Eurofighter jets Germany plans to purchase, made by a consortium that includes Airbus, would be used for other operations, including electronic warfare like jamming enemy air defence systems. In a landmark speech late last month, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to invest an extra 100 billion euros ($112 billion) to bring the nation’s chronically underfunded Bundeswehr into the modern age.

The spending boost marks a major reversal for Europe’s top economy, upending its policy of keeping a low military profile in part out of guilt over World War II. After years of criticism that the country wasn’t shouldering enough of the financial burden in the NATO military alliance, Scholz vowed to spend “more than two percent” of Germany’s gross domestic product annually on defence, surpassing NATO’s own two-percent target.

Read more …

War victims or cancel culture?

Orwell Was Right (Taibbi)

In the last weeks, Russia took an already exacting speech environment to new extremes. A law was passed that would impose 15-year prison sentences for anyone spreading “fake news” about the Ukraine invasion; access was cut to Facebook and Twitter; stations like Echo Moskvi and TV Rain as well as BBC Russia, Radio Liberty, the New Times, Deutsche Welle, Doxa, and Latvia-based Meduza were effectively shut down; Wikipedia was threatened with a block over its invasion page; and national authorities have appeared to step in to prevent coverage of soldiers killed in the war, requiring local outlets to use terms like “special operation” instead. The latter development is connected to the state media regulator, Roskomnadzor, issuing a remarkably desperate dictum requiring news outlets to “use information and data received by them only from official Russian sources.”

Russia also appears in the middle of a general crackdown on local media, not so much because those outlets are dissenting, but because they’re more likely to provide indirect evidence of war failures or the effect of sanctions. The desperation to control news has grown to the point where Russian diplomats in foreign countries are pressuring state outlets in countries like Iran to stop using the term “war” to describe what’s going on in Ukraine. On the flip side, a slew of actions have been taken to crack down on “fake news” and “misinformation” in the West. The big one was the European Union banning RT and Sputnik. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube also cut access to all Russian state media, because the EU sanctions also required that internet platforms delist any RT or Sputnik content, even from individuals.

The statute reads, “As regards the posts made by individuals that reproduce the content of RT and Sputnik, those posts shall not be published, and if published, shall be deleted.” Other governments across the West, from Australia to Canada, have taken similar actions. In the U.S., Google and YouTube disallowed Russian state media ads (following a request by Senator Mark Warner) and demonetized “a number of Russian channels,” including RT but also many non-Russian individuals, before proceeding to demonetize all individual Russian content creators, even the individuals opposing the invasion. Even DuckDuckGo, the speechier, more pro-privacy alternative to Google, announced it was de-ranking “sites associated with Russian disinformation.” A growing list of Westerners have seen accounts frozen for supposed parroting of Russian talking points or “abusive” commentary.

YouTube banned Oliver Stone’s documentary Ukraine on Fire, while Netflix is going so far as to shelve a production of Anna Karenina. In what might have been the craziest move of all, Meta reportedly followed up a decision to un-ban the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion with a mind-blowing decision to alter its hate speech policies to “allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion,” according to internal emails seen by Reuters.

Read more …

“The member nations of NATO have even less desire to join the battle, and are doing a poor job of pretending they oppose Russia’s disagreeable but necessary work there..”

Playing Dumb (Kunstler)

Threatened by losing the war against its own citizens, the US government now seeks a wider kinetic war over its would-be client state, Ukraine. The stakes must be pretty high for “Joe Biden” and Company to risk starting World War Three. Why else inflame a dangerous situation by sending more weapons there? I’ll tell you why: to prolong Russia’s operations to neutralize Ukraine so it won’t cause further trouble to them or anybody else in the world. The longer the US can keep that going, the longer we can put off the various reckonings at home.

America has no intention of actually defending Ukraine. It’s really just a global version of the interpersonal game “Let’s You and Him Fight,” as described by pioneering psychologist Eric Berne (1910 -1970), father of transactional analysis. The member nations of NATO have even less desire to join the battle, and are doing a poor job of pretending they oppose Russia’s disagreeable but necessary work there. So far, they have had to sacrifice desperately needed natural gas supplies from Russia. You can be sure they will find a way to sneak around US sanctions and reverse the blunder. They have no choice really, unless they want to go forward without any industries. Google-up the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and you’ll catch a glimpse of that possible European future. Of course, they’ll also have to answer to their own citizens for the awful mistakes Covid-19.

The best outcome, as others have pointed out, will be the disassembly of Ukraine into an eastern Russian zone — perhaps annexed into Russia — and a rump western Ukraine state that will be as quiet and inoffensive as Moldova and Slovakia next door (When was the last time they caused any trouble in the world?) It would be best for everyone, and especially the Third World, if the Russian operation is concluded as quickly as possible with a structured peace settlement, leaving a chance to get a Ukrainian grain crop planted, because otherwise a lot of innocent people will go hungry. Is the USA interested in a peace settlement? Or do we want to drive events further toward tragedy and our own national suicide?

Read more …

Now do this everywhere.

And also: Macron has an election coming up.

France Lifts Covid-19 Rules On Unvaccinated, Mask Wearing (AP)

France lifted most COVID-19 restrictions on Monday, abolishing the need to wear face masks in most settings and allowing people who aren’t vaccinated back into restaurants, sports arenas and other venues. The move had been announced earlier this month by the French government based on assessments of the improving situation in hospitals and following weeks of a steady decline in infections. It comes less than a month before the first round of the presidential election scheduled on April 10. But in recent days, the number of new infections has started increasing again, raising concerns from some scientists it may be too soon to lift restrictions. The number of new infections have reached more than 60,000 based on a seven-day average, up from about 50,000 a week before.


Starting from Monday, people aren’t required anymore to show proof of vaccination to enter places like restaurants and bars, cinemas, theaters, fairs and to use interregional transport. The so-called vaccine pass had taken effect at the end of January. A restaurant owner in Paris, Laurent Negre, praised a “return to normal.” “We got used to these restrictions and complicated protocols so we will enjoy work more now … So it’s good news,” he said. Parisian Bartholome Laisi, 23, said “it’s a good thing because people will be able to get more freedom of movement. But we need to be careful and monitor it, to avoid another (virus) wave right after.” In hospitals and nursing homes, unvaccinated people must provide a recent negative test or proof of recent recovery to enter. Wearing masks are no longer required in schools, businesses and offices. They remain mandatory on public transportation and at hospitals and other health facilities.

Read more …

What’s the consequence for life insurance?

Ed Dowd: 25 To 44 yo Experienced An 84% Increase In Excess Mortality (Kirsch)

Someone sent me this article: Edward Dowd on Future Recession, Shocking Findings in the CDC Covid Data and Democide which describes his appearance on War Room. That article says: “And the money chart is really Chart 4, which shows that the Millennial age group, 25 to 44 experienced an 84% increase in excess mortality into the fall. It’s the worst-ever excess mortality, I think, in history. I called Ed to clarify where he got the chart and then looked for verification of this. I found the verification. Then I verified that the deaths couldn’t be explained by the COVID delta variant. OK, so what caused all the deaths? The only explanation is the vaccine because the deaths are so massive.


[..] Now let’s go over some of the details of what Ed Dowd found and explain why there is no other explanation. Ed’s friend (who I know but doesn’t want to be disclosed publicly) spent about a week analyzing the CDC data. The graph in the article is from the CDC data, but is plotted by Ed’s friend. He didn’t make anything up. The work was replicated independently (see also the graphs). US mortality graphs show a spike in the same time period (Aug to Oct). These graphs of excess mortality in Europe show things got worse, not better after the vaccine rollout:

Read more …

Maybe a bit too scary?

Triple Vaccinated Just Weeks Away From Developing AIDS (DE)

The following chart shows the Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness among the triple vaccinated population in England in 4 week periods between Week 51 of 2021 and Week 9 of 2022 – As you can see the vaccine effectiveness has been falling month and month, with the lowest effectiveness recorded among 40-49-year-olds at minus-248.92%. But the sharpest decline in jab effectivness has been recorded among 18-29-year-olds, falling to minus-201.52% by Week 9 of 2022 from +10.19 in Week 51 to Week 2. However, vaccine effectiveness isn’t really a measure of a vaccine, it is a measure of a vaccine recipients immune system performance compared to the immune system performance of an unvaccinated person.

The following chart shows the immune system performance of the triple vaccinated population in England by age group in four week periods, compared to the natural immune system of the unvaccinated population – As you can see the lowest immune system performance is currently among 60-69-year-olds at minus-72.35%, but all triple vaccinated people aged 30 to 59 are not far begind, with an immune system performance ranging from minus-70.83% to minus-71.34%. Even the 18 to 29-year-olds are within this region at minus-66.84%, falling from an immune system performance of +11.35% between week 51 and week 2, meaning they have suffered the fastest decline in immune system performance.

AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is the name used to describe a number of potentially life-threatening infections and illnesses that happen when your immune system has been severely damaged. People with acquired immune deficiency syndrome are at an increased risk for developing certain cancers and for infections that usually occur only in individuals with a weak immune system. If that immune system performance was to hit around the -95% mark then this would strongly suggest the triple vaccinated population have developed some new form of Covid-19 vaccine induced acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and unfortunately based on the current trend seen over the past 3 months, the youngest age groups do not have long to wait.

Read more …

The day his marriage is announced.

UK Supreme Court Slams Door On Assange Appeal (Gosztola)

Without any explanation, the British Supreme Court denied WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “permission to appeal” a decision by the British High Court. The Supreme Court maintained the appeal did not “raise an arguable point of law” and sent the case back to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, the district court which initially blocked the United States government’s extradition request on January 4, 2021. By refusing to grant Assange a hearing, the U.S. government effectively won their appeal. Prosecutors convinced the British courts to disregard concerns that he may be subject to treatment in a U.S. jail or prison that would be oppressive to his mental health.

The Westminster Magistrates’ Court may now refer the extradition to the British Home Office for Home Secretary Priti Patel to review. According to Birnberg Peirce, the law firm representing Assange, they are entitled to make submissions to the Home Secretary for consideration before the extradition request is approved. If Patel approves the extradition, Assange’s defense may submit an appeal on the issues of freedom of the press that were not addressed before the High Court yet. That would likely prevent Assange from extradition. However, if the High Court and Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal because they did not believe it raised “arguable points of law,” he could potentially be transferred to the U.S. before the year is over.

[..] An application for appeal released by Assange’s legal team reflects the arguments they were blocked from presenting to the Supreme Court. “The manner in which assurances were permitted to be introduced in this case for the first time on appeal totally undermines the primacy of the extradition hearing and deprives the defendant of an opportunity to test them and their implications before the district judge,” attorneys argued. “It is generally regarded as unfair, wrong, and abusive for a party to elect—for a perceived or actual tactical advantage—to conduct litigation in one way and then, when met with an adverse judicial decision on that, to attempt to re-litigate or appeal on a new and different basis.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

@BrianRoemmele
To manufacture each EV battery, you must process
25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium
30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt
5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, 25,000 pounds of ore for copper
Diging up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust
For just – one – battery.

A typical electric car battery has:
25 pounds of lithium
60 pounds of nickel
44 pounds of manganese
30 pounds cobalt
200 pounds of copper
400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic
The first 4 ingredients are from limited sources and will continue to rise in cost.

 

 

Lindsey Graham

 

 

 

Russell Brand Credit Suisse

 

 

 

 

 

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Jun 062021
 


Odilon Redon Sunset 1902

 

 

When George Orwell wrote “1984” in 1948, not only did he foresee where advanced technology would bring society, he also foresaw that such technology would become available. At that time, this meant two enormous insights in one. A Big Brother may arise among power hungry forces, but it can do nothing without the technology to control and trace people. And 73 years ago, it wasn’t obvious that this would ever be reality.

But today it is here. If there’s anything the Covid era -virustime- teaches us, it is that. We are now all required to think the same, and act the same, as everyone else, and as scripted by powers that -more than ever- oversee our every move. What 1984 should have taught us, but didn’t, is that once you allow such powers to acquire such oversight, they will never let go. You need to stop them beforehand.

Because if you don’t, they will squeeze you ever tighter, until you have no freedom, no liberty, and finally no personality left: you will no longer be human in the sense that it has long been defined. There is a history and a name for this.

 

COVID, Learned Helplessness, and Control

Learned helplessness is well-documented. It takes place when an individual believes he continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to improve his circumstances, even when he has the ability to do so. Discovering the loss of control elicits a passive reaction to a harmful situation. Psychologists call this a maladaptive response, characterized by avoidance of challenges and the collapse of problem-solving when obstacles arise. You give up trying to fight back.

You could push back, but you have been made afraid at a core level and so you just give in. You’re left believing nothing will fix this. Helpless to resist, you comply “out of an abundance of caution.” American psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier created the term “learned helplessness” in 1967. They were studying animal behavior by delivering electric shocks to dogs (it was a simpler time.) Dogs who learned they couldn’t escape the shock simply stopped trying, even after the scientists removed a barrier and the dog could have jumped away.

Learned helplessness has three main features: a passive response to trauma, not believing that trauma can be controlled, and stress.{..] You are not responsible, can’t fix something so systemic, and best do what you are told. The way out is to allow people to make decisions and choices on their own. This therapy is used with victims of learned helplessness such as hostages . During their confinement all the important decisions of their life, and most of the minor ones, were made by their captors. Upon release, many hostages fear things as simple as a meal choice and need to be coaxed out of helplessness one micro-choice at a time.

 

There is no such thing as overwhelming evidence that year-long lockdowns and mask mandates and “the vaccines” can achieve their alleged goals. But that doesn’t matter if and when there is central control over what evidence -and narrative- people are allowed to read and watch. With that kind of control, there is simply just one story, and no discussion.

Whereas discussion, with different views and opinions being submitted, is essential to come out of a situation like this. Two people know more than one, basic stuff. We’re good at it, if we try. But if you look at the media, and the entire medical field, there is on discussion happening. There is only one opinion, and it’s -state and corporate- sanctioned.

I don’t find the stories about the origin of the virus all that interesting -at this moment-, they act mostly as a distraction from what is more important: freedom, having a voice in one’s own life, making your own decisions, and saving lives in the process. The virus origin stories, crazy as they may be, have nothing to do with that: they merely make you watch a sort of battle of the gods, something that never gave anyone any power over their lives.

And in the meantime you may be “allowed” some extra basic human rights, but not too many, you wear a mask on your face, and you get injected with a substance that for 99% of people is both unnecessary for their survival, and potentially dangerous to that same survival. But it’s the only narrative that is “allowed”.

As for the potential danger, it’s not just the blood clots that the media are allowed to report on, it’s also the spike proteins the vaccines induce your cells to produce, and which are free to roam around your body, gathering in testes, ovaries, placenta and a whole slew of other organs.

All we can do is hope our immune systems are strong enough to fight off the vaccines.

Seldom should any substances have been subjected to more rigorous research than mRNA vaccines, and seldom have any been subjected to less. So the problems should not be a surprise to anyone. Facebook now “allows” you to say that the vaccines are not FDA approved, but not that they are experimental or haven’t been appropriately tested. Which is the same thing. What gives Facebook that power to begin with?

Professor emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology Dr. Bhakdi doesn’t agree. But Facebook knows better, right?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1401154680361730049

And then you get things like this line: “Britain’s medicines regulator said Friday the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is safe for adolescents aged 12 to 15 after a “rigorous review”, following similar assessments in the EU and US.” What rigorous review? Where is it? How much time did you take for that research? And if it was so rigorous, why are they still not approved? And what exactly is the benefit to these children? A 0.001% higher chance of survival? Vs a 10x higher chance of suffering adverse effects?

Anyway, one step back. Yes, the vaccines are completely unnecessary. Michael Yeadon, former Chief Scientific Officer of Pfizer put it like this:

“Ivermectin is an off-patent drug that is one of the most widely used drugs in the world, and we know it is able to reduce Covid-19 symptoms at any stage of the disease by about 90%, so there is no need for vaccines.”

A 90% reduction of symptoms means no need for vaccines OR facemasks OR lockdowns. That’s ostensibly better than any of the vaccines can achieve. And this could have started at least 6 months ago (I’m thinking of Pierre Kory’s Dec. 8 Senate testimony here, conveniently killed off by YouTube), and after 6 months of a 90% reduction, there is no danger left at all.

Dr. Pierre Kory said if you take ivermectin, you won’t get sick (and it’s safer than Tylenol). Renowned science writer Michael Capuzzo recently wrote The Drug That Cracked Covid. And couldn’t get it published. Here at the Automatic Earth, we’ve been discussing ivermectin for over a year, especially after our resident physician John Day switched to it from hydroxychloroquine to treat his Covid patients.

This is from a very recent report written by Pierre Kory and the team at FLCCC published in the American Journal of Therapeutics :

It should be noted that the concentrations required for an effect in cell culture models bear little resemblance to human physiology given the absence of an active immune system working synergistically with a therapeutic agent, such as ivermectin. Furthermore, prolonged durations of exposure to a drug likely would require a fraction of the dosing in short-term cell model exposure. Furthermore, multiple coexisting or alternate mechanisms of action likely explain the clinical effects observed, such as the competitive binding of ivermectin with the host receptor-binding region of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, as proposed in 6 molecular modeling studies.21–26

In 4 of the studies, ivermectin was identified as having the highest or among the highest of binding affinities to spike protein S1 binding domains of SARS-CoV-2 among hundreds of molecules collectively examined, with ivermectin not being the particular focus of study in 4 of these studies.27 This is the same mechanism by which viral antibodies, in particular, those generated by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The high binding activity of ivermectin to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein could limit binding to either the ACE-2 receptor or sialic acid receptors, respectively, either preventing cellular entry of the virus or preventing hemagglutination, a recently proposed pathologic mechanism in COVID-19.21,22,26–28

Ivermectin has also been shown to bind to or interfere with multiple essential structural and nonstructural proteins required by the virus to replicate.26,29 Finally, ivermectin also binds to the SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), thereby inhibiting viral replication.30

Dr. Kory estimates that 500,000 deaths could have been prevented with ivermectin treatment. The same is likely true for hydroxychloroquine. And he’s probably deliberately lowballing it. Then there’s vitamin D, and zinc, and a dozen or so repurposed drugs. All put together, there is no doubt they make the vaccines superfluous.

And yes, if someone is responsible for 500,000 deaths, there must be an investigation, just like there must be one into the origin of the virus. Why suppress ivermectin and other drugs, and at the same time promote vaccines without properly testing them? Who made those decisions? But right now, it seems more important to make sure that no more people die unnecessarily. Take care of that first, and then investigate.

 

In “1984”, the idea is that everybody must do the same thing, and think the same thing. In 2021, they do. Nothing good can come from that.

 

 

 

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Nov 012020
 


Getty Images Sean Connery RIP

 

Going Full Orwell (Jim Kunstler)
National Security Nightmare Of Hunter Biden’s Abandoned Laptop (DM)
Donald Trump Leads Joe Biden By 7 Points Among Iowa Voters (MSN)
Arizona Polls: Trump vs. Biden (RCP)
Democrats Uneasy About Higher Republican Turnout In Miami-Dade (CNN)
A Biden Presidency Means The Return Of The Blob (Escobar)
Fauci Praises Biden’s Covid Precautions, Says He Avoids West Wing Due (F.)
Study: 20% Of Grocery Store Workers Had COVID19, Most Asymptomatic (CNN)
A Second National Lockdown Would Be Catastrophic (Sun)
Anti-Lockdown Protests Grip Spain (RT)
Europe Increasingly Toughens COVID19 Restrictions Amid Fierce Protests (RT)
Netherlands Puts KLM Bailout On Hold After Pilots Reject Wage Freeze (R.)
Why China’s Official Data Don’t Add Up (ATF)
The Great Reset for Dummies (Tessa)

 

 

BADAKATHCARE! Biden’s a one-man meme machine

 

 

“Mr. Trump has overcome every adversity thrown in his path for four years, and I believe he will get through this final tribulation, beep-beep. And then the games can begin in earnest.”

Going Full Orwell (Jim Kunstler)

The now infamous “Laptop from Hell” left behind brainlessly by Hunter in a Delaware repair shop apparently contains a parallel trove of photos and videos self-chronicling the scion’s sordid private life — sex, drugs, etc. — suggesting that he has set himself up as the perfect target for blackmailing operations. And goodness knows what Chinese intel on its own initiative recorded him doing in the hotels there (with amenities supplied) on his many visits to their land. Said laptop was also, it turns out, in the possession of the FBI as far back as the impeachment preliminaries in Adam Schiff’s House Intel Committee, fall of 2019. Since it was full of material counter-evidence about the issue at hand — the president’s phone call to Ukraine’s President Zelensky vis-a-vis the Biden family’s shady doings in that country — the question arises of how deep was the FBI’s complicity in the impeachment ruse?

Could FBI Director Christopher Wray not have known of the laptop’s existence when it came into the agency? I doubt it. Could Mr. Wray have concealed the information from Attorney General Barr? Yes, quite possibly. In the meantime, Mr. Barr has not said a word about the entire Biden pay-for-play / laptop extravaganza. I imagine he’s chewing the office furniture at Main Justice in a fury over it with the election pending, and his duty to avoid influencing the outcome. Mr. Trump has felt a little freer to share the wicked business with the public in his campaign appearances, setting the table for a banquet of consequences when the election is over.

If it can be gotten over, since the Democrats have made no secret of their elaborate plan to confound the results with post November 3 ballot harvesting and Lawfare shenanigans in the swing states — to be accompanied by riots staged by their Antifa and BLM shock troops. I think the idea is to provoke Mr. Trump to call out US troops to quell the riots, thereby opening him up to accusations of being a tyrant. I suspect the Dems will overplay their hand on that trick, since a sizable portion of the public that has not collectively lost its mind is good and goddam sick of riots, arson, destruction of property, and the looting capers that go with them. Mr. Trump has overcome every adversity thrown in his path for four years, and I believe he will get through this final tribulation, beep-beep. And then the games can begin in earnest.

Read more …

Hunter02.

National Security Nightmare Of Hunter Biden’s Abandoned Laptop (DM)

The son of the man expected by many to be America’s next President abandoned a laptop containing a treasure trove of top-secret material, including his father’s private emails and mobile phone numbers, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. In an astonishing lapse, Hunter Biden chose to protect his MacBook Pro computer – crammed with what an IT expert last night described as a ‘national security nightmare’ and ‘classic blackmail material’ – with a single, simple password: Hunter02. Remarkably, the 50-year-old businessman and self-confessed drug addict took the machine to a back-street IT store in Delaware in April 2019 to get it repaired – yet never returned to collect it. Its existence was revealed by the New York Post last month, but the staggering scale and sensitivity of its contents – easily accessible to a hacker with a modicum of skill – is only revealed for the first time today.

The material, none of which was encrypted or protected by anything as basic as two-factor authentication, includes:
• Joe Biden’s personal mobile number and three private email addresses as well as the names of his Secret Service agents;
• Mobile numbers for former President Bill Clinton, his wife Hillary and almost every member of former President Barack Obama’s cabinet;
• A contact database of 1,500 people including actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Coldplay singer Chris Martin, former Presidential candidate John Kerry and ex-FBI boss Louis Freeh;
• Personal documents including Hunter’s passport, driver’s licence, social security card, credit cards and bank statements;
• Details of Hunter’s drug and sex problems, including $21,000 spent on one ‘live cam’ porn website and ‘selfies’ of him engaging in sex acts and smoking crack cocaine;

While Hunter has been accused of using his family name to help with deals with Ukrainian and Chinese firms, there is nothing on the laptop to implicate Joe Biden in any wrongdoing. One email relating to a failed Chinese deal refers to a payment of ten per cent to ‘the Big Guy’, which some have suggested is the presidential hopeful. However, Mr Biden has insisted: ‘I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.’ Last night, IT expert Chris Greany said it was ‘staggering’ the laptop had not been encrypted.

Read more …

Will the shift be strong enough?

Donald Trump Leads Joe Biden By 7 Points Among Iowa Voters (MSN)

Republican President Donald Trump has taken over the lead in Iowa as Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden has faded, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows just days before Election Day.The president now leads by 7 percentage points over Biden, 48% to 41%. Three percent say they will vote for someone else, 2% aren’t sure and 5% don’t want to say for whom they will vote. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, all eyes are on Iowa. Get updates of all things Iowa politics delivered to your inbox. In September’s Iowa Poll, the candidates were tied at 47% to 47%.The poll of 814 likely Iowa voters was conducted by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines from Oct. 26-29. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.


J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., said while men are more likely to support Trump and women to support Biden, the gender gap has narrowed, and independents have returned to supporting the president, a group he won in 2016. “The president is holding demographic groups that he won in Iowa four years ago, and that would give someone a certain level of comfort with their standing,” she said. “There’s a consistent story in 2020 to what happened in 2016.” But, she said, “Neither candidate hits 50%, so there’s still some play here.” Trump carried Iowa by 9.4 percentage points in 2016, but his chances at a repeat 2020 win here appeared to be in doubt in recent polling. The June Iowa Poll showed Trump leading by just 1 percentage point before Biden climbed into the September tie.

Trunalimunumaprzure Mary Poppins
https://twitter.com/i/status/1322386786916749312

Read more …

Look at some of the leads Biden had recently.

Arizona Polls: Trump vs. Biden (RCP)

Key 2020 Races: Senate | AZ-1 | AZ-2 | AZ-6 President: 2016: Trump +3.5 | 2012: Romney +9.1


Final 2016 RCP Average: Trump +4.0, Results: Trump +3.5 (Trump -0.5 Behind the Polls)

Read more …

“..the county is seen by Democrats as a region former Vice President Joe Biden must win by wide margins..”

Democrats Uneasy About Higher Republican Turnout In Miami-Dade (CNN)

Republicans in Florida’s most populous county, Miami-Dade, are turning out to vote at a somewhat higher percentage than Democrats — causing uneasiness among some Democratic operatives. Nearly 63% of the 428,000 registered Republicans in the county have voted so far, whereas about 56% of the county’s 634,000 registered Democrats have voted to date, according to state data. About 225,000 people with no party affiliation have also already voted in the county. While more Democrats than Republicans have voted overall in Miami-Dade, the county is seen by Democrats as a region former Vice President Joe Biden must win by wide margins in order to offset voting in the state’s predominantly red regions.


Democratic worries come as both President Donald Trump and Biden vie for Florida’s 29 electoral votes, with each candidate holding a rally there Thursday as CNN’s Poll of Polls shows Trump lagging in the state at 46% to Biden’s 49%. Politico was first to report the concerns among Democrats. Steve Schale, a veteran Democratic Florida strategist who runs a pro-Biden PAC, said, “I’d love to see Dade County jump up this weekend and I’ll feel better if it does.” But Schale added that Black voters in the county tend to vote in-person closer to Election Day, so he expects a bump in turnout over the coming weekend. He added that Democrats have had strong turnout in neighboring Broward County. State data show about 61% of registered Democrats in Broward have voted so far compared to about 56% of registered Republicans in the county.

Read more …

“Taking a cue from TIP, let’s game a Dem return to the White House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later.”

A Biden Presidency Means The Return Of The Blob (Escobar)

The Dem strategy is crystal clear, spawned by the gaming of election scenarios embedded in the Transition Integrity Project and made even more explicit by one of TIP’s co-founders, a law professor at Georgetown University. Hillary Clinton, bluntly, has already called it: Dems must re-take the White House by any and all means and under any and all circumstances. And just in case, with a 5,000-word opus, she already positioned herself for a plum job. As much as Dems have made it very clear they will never accept a Trump victory, the counterpunch was vintage Trump: he told the Proud Boys to “stand back” – as in no violence, for now – but crucially to “stand by”, as in “get ready”. The stage is set for Kill Bill mayhem on November 3rd and beyond.

Taking a cue from TIP, let’s game a Dem return to the White House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later. That means, essentially, The Return of the Blob. President Trump calls it “the swamp”. Former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes – a mediocre hack – at least coined the funkier “Blob”, applied to the incestuous Washington, DC foreign policy gang, think tanks, academia, newspapers (from the Washington Post to the New York Times), and that unofficial Bible, Foreign Affairs magazine. A Dem presidency, right away, will need to confront the implications of two wars: Cold War 2.0 against China, and the interminable, trillion-dollar GWOT (Global War on Terror), renamed OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) by the Obama-Biden administration.

Biden became the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1997 and was the chair in 2001-2003 and again in 2007-2009. He paraded as total Iraq War cheerleader – necessary, he maintained, as part of GWOT – and even defended a “soft partition” of Iraq, something that fierce nationalists, Sunni and Shi’ite, from Baghdad to Basra will never forget. Obama-Biden’s geopolitical accomplishments include a drone war, or Hellfire missile diplomacy, complete with “kill lists”; the failed Afghan surge; the “liberation” of Libya from behind, turning it into a militia wasteland; the proxy war in Syria fought with “moderate rebels”; and once again leading from behind, the Saudi-orchestrated destruction of Yemen.

Tens of millions of Brazilians also will never forget that Obama-Biden legitimized the NSA spying and Hybrid War tactics that led to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff ,the neutralization of former President Lula, and the evisceration of the Brazilian economy by comprador elites. Among his former, select interlocutors, Biden counts warmonger former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen – who supervised the destruction of Libya – and John Negroponte, who “organized” the contras in Nicaragua and then “supervised” ISIS/Daesh in Iraq – the crucial element of the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy of instrumentalizing jihadis to do the empire’s dirty work.

Read more …

Fauci the politician. No credibility left.

Fauci Praises Biden’s Covid Precautions, Says He Avoids West Wing Due (F.)

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top figure in the federal government’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic, offered praise for the Biden campaign and a mix of criticism and plaudits for President Donald Trump and his administration in an interview with the Washington Post. Fauci told the Post that the Biden campaign “is taking it seriously from a public health perspective,” while Trump is “looking at it from a different perspective” focused on “the economy and reopening the country.” While the comments are some of Fauci’s most political yet on the pandemic, they are not entirely shocking given Fauci and Biden’s relative alignment on issues like mask mandates, and Biden has committed to listening to scientists and keeping Fauci in his role if he wins the presidential election.

By contrast, Trump and Fauci have frequently clashed, with Fauci warning earlier this month that Trump’s tightly packed rallies pose a coronavirus risk and Trump calling Fauci a “disaster” and stating he would oust him if it didn’t cause a media frenzy. Taking aim at the administration, Fauci told the Post “the public health aspect of the [White House coronavirus] task force has diminished greatly,” and he said he avoids the West Wing of the White House due to “all the infections there.” Fauci claimed neuroradiologist Dr. Scott Atlas – who he said “doesn’t have any real insight” into the virus – is the only medical expert Trump meets with on a regular basis, but he praised White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for saying the administration is “not going to control the virus,” stating “I tip my hat to him for admitting the strategy.”

Fauci has been increasingly vocal in recent weeks as cases have risen rapidly across the country moving into the winter. His outspokenness also comes against the backdrop of an executive order Trump signed earlier this month reducing protections for government civil servants, like Fauci, and in effect making it easier to fire them. Trump and Fauci have disagreed on the severity of the pandemic, with Trump claiming the U.S. is “rounding the turn” on the virus on 43 of the last 61 days – including every day since Oct. 12 – as Fauci warns the U.S. may not return to normal until 2022. “At one point during the interview, Fauci said he needed to be careful with his words because he would be blocked from doing appearances in the future,” wrote Post reporters Josh Dawsey and Yasmeen Abutaleb.

Read more …

The study is from May. Fill in the blanks.

Study: 20% Of Grocery Store Workers Had COVID19, Most Asymptomatic (CNN)

Grocery store work puts employees at serious risk for infection, a new study found, particularly those who have to interact with customers. These workers likely became a “significant transmission source” for Covid-19 without even knowing it because most in the study were asymptomatic. The analysis, published Thursday in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, is the first to demonstrate the significant asymptomatic infection rate, exposure risks and psychological distress grocery workers have felt during the pandemic. In the study, 20% of the 104 grocery workers tested at a store in Boston in May had positive nasal swab tests. This was a significantly higher rate of infection than what was seen in the surrounding communities, the researchers said.


Workers who dealt with customers were five times as likely to test positive for Covid-19 as colleagues in other positions. But three out of four of those who tested positive had no symptoms. “We were definitely surprised to see that there were that many people that were asymptomatic,” said Dr. Justin Yang, an assistant professor at Boston University School of Medicine and a researcher at Harvard School of Public Health who worked on the study. “This is definitely very alarming as it means that retail grocery store employees are exposed to customers and sort of serve as a middleman for the virus – like a super spreader almost.” Workers in the study had tried to take precautions. Nearly all, 91%, said they wore a face mask at work and 77% said they also wore masks outside of work. Yet only about 66% said they were able to practice social distancing consistently on the job.

Read more …

“We see why government scientists want a five-week lockdown: they’re up to their eyes in grim Covid predictions.”

A Second National Lockdown Would Be Catastrophic (Sun)

A second national lockdown would be catastrophic. Thousands of cancer sufferers have died since the start of the pandemic as a direct result of missed surgeries and screenings. London ambulance crews now attend an average of 37 suicides or attempted suicides per day, compared with 22 this time last year. And it’s beyond reasonable doubt that the Stay At Home messaging led to a rise in heart attack deaths between March and July. That’s before we get to the long-term health effects of plunging thousands into unemployment.


And what would it be for? Yes, Sage modelling paints a stark picture. But real, current data from the ONS suggests Covid cases have NOT “spiralled out of control” — and deaths remain normal for this time of year. We see why government scientists want a five-week lockdown: they’re up to their eyes in grim Covid predictions. But we worry that, in their panic, they’ve lost sight of the bigger picture. The virus is dangerous. But lockdowns are too.

Read more …

“This is Spain’s third extension to the state of emergency during the pandemic and will be in force until May 9..”

Anti-Lockdown Protests Grip Spain (RT)

Spain has been gripped by violence as anti-lockdown protesters clash with police in multiple cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, over the state and regional governments’ move to toughen Covid-19 restrictions. Protesters torched garbage containers and erected makeshift barricades on Gran Via, and reportedly smashed several store fronts elsewhere in central Madrid on Saturday night. When police moved in to clear the unruly gathering, they were pelted with stones and flares, and reportedly fired blank bullets, forcing the protesters to disperse into nearby streets. Meanwhile in Barcelona, police officers were pelted with stones and other projectiles, as they tried to disperse a smaller-scale anti-lockdown protest for the second consecutive night.

The regional government of Catalonia approved a new package of measures this week, including the perimeter confinement of each municipality, limiting people to their own district on weekends. Clashes also took place in the Spanish city of Logrono, where protesters burned trash containers, smashed windows and looted several shops. Heated protests were also reported in Granada, Malaga and Bilbao. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged Spaniards in a Saturday night tweet to show patience and demonstrate “responsibility, unity and sacrifice” to defeat the global pandemic, while condemning the “violent and irrational behavior” by a “small minority” of the population.

Spain’s parliament approved a six-month extension of the national state of emergency last week, granting regional authorities more power to tackle the country’s second wave of Covid-19. This is Spain’s third extension to the state of emergency during the pandemic and will be in force until May 9, but with an option for it to be lifted on March 9.

Read more …

Politicians don’t act, they re-act.

Europe Increasingly Toughens COVID19 Restrictions Amid Fierce Protests (RT)

Portugal has become the latest European state to announce new coronavirus restrictions, as Austria and England also prepare for lockdown, amid public backlash in other states forced into quarantines by the second wave of Covid-19. In Portugal, people were ordered to stay home except for work, school or essential shopping, while companies will switch to remote working wherever possible. New lockdown measures are set to take effect on November 4 and will immediately impact nearly 70 percent of the population in 121 municipalities. Prime Minister Antonio Costa, however, warned that even more areas could be added to the list if the rate of coronavirus infections continues to soar. “We have a very tough month ahead of us. It is more likely we will add more municipalities than we drop from that list next time.”

While Portugal has recorded a relatively low 2,507 deaths so far, the daily number of new infections soared over 4,000 in the recent days, with a total of 1,972 people hospitalized and the country slowly running out of intensive care units. “If nothing is done, the rise in infections will inevitably lead us to a situation of failure of our health system,” Costa added, echoing the reasoning behind the lockdown in England that was announced by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson just hours earlier. In England, from November 5 to at least December 2, people will only be allowed to go outside for specific reasons, including education, work, exercise, shopping for essentials or caring for the vulnerable.

Pubs and restaurants will be shut down and only allowed to sell takeaway. All non-essential trade will also stop. However, essential shops, schools, and universities will remain open. In Austria, a mass lockdown kicks off on November 3, with a curfew in place from 8pm to 6am every night until December. All restaurants, bars and cafes will be closed except for the delivery and takeaway services. Theaters, museums and gyms, as well as kindergartens and primary schools, will also close, while high schools and universities will switch to distance learning.

Read more …

The future of travel.

Netherlands Puts KLM Bailout On Hold After Pilots Reject Wage Freeze (R.)

The Dutch government on Saturday put on hold its plan to bail out KLM, the Dutch arm of Air France-KLM, after pilots rejected a wage-freeze until 2025, Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said. KLM had been due to receive a 3.4 billion euro ($4.0 billion) package, including 1 billion euros in direct loans. from the government to help it cope with the damage from the coronavirus pandemic.”I find it very disappointing, but this way we cannot move forward with the loan now,” Hoekstra told journalists. The pilots’ union argued that it had already agreed to a freeze until March 2022, and could not now change that agreement at the last minute.


Ahead of the government announcement, KLM CEO Pieter Elbers had said that “without this loan, KLM will not make it through these challenging times”. In a statement, he said KLM would not immediately go bankrupt but that its reserves “cannot last more than a few months”. In a letter to parliament, Hoekstra left the door open for the bailout if all KLM employees agreed to the five-year wage freeze. “It is up to KLM and the unions to ensure that they meet the government’s demands after all,” he said, adding that the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic had changed expectations about how soon airlines could bounce back. “The outlook is sombre, that makes it all the more important to have a good restructuring programme in place to work towards KLM’s long-term recovery,” he wrote.

Read more …

Creative bookkeeping.

Why China’s Official Data Don’t Add Up (ATF)

Last week China released it’s much anticipated third quarter GDP, and along with it came fresh concerns of data accuracy. While the 4.9% print missed rather exuberant market expectations of over 5% growth, the real head-turner was Beijing’s announced revisions to its fixed asset investment (FAI) data for September 2019. The revised numbers depressed last September’s FAI by 2.8 trillion yuan, thereby boosting this year’s growth figures as well as the Q3 GDP. China’s National Bureau of Statistics explained away the change in a short footnote, stating that historical data were adjusted on the basis of the “fourth national economic census unit inventory.” In August, China had reported its first positive retail sales growth of 2020 on the basis of a similar adjustment, which depressed year-ago figures by 50 billion yuan.

Predictably, this latest revision came under immediate scrutiny. The core statistical problem here is the sample’s changing characteristics and size. The NBS has a longstanding practice of only surveying firms above a minimum annual revenue. Any firm that falls below the threshold is dropped from future surveys and its results removed from past data. Alternatively, if the number of firms meeting the revenue threshold rises in a given year, the sample then becomes larger than last year’s by thousands of firms. This cherry-picking approach — which can produce trillions of yuan worth of adjustments — invalidates any claims of random, representative sampling. Furthermore, it creates a constant stream of revisions to official statistics without details on methods or the release of underlying numbers. The more fundamental challenge it underscores is that investors cannot rely on official data to reliably capture economic conditions, especially when the economy is under pressure.

[..] First, despite the announced on-year rebound in official GDP growth, CBB’s recent third-quarter data show no part of the economy registering growth anywhere near year-ago levels. Despite sequential quarterly improvement since the Chinese economy emerged from its Covid lockdown, every sector, sub-sector, region, and growth metric remains in contraction year-on-year. Second, our surveys of over 3,300 firms showed a two-track recovery in Q3. For large firms and companies based in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangdong the economy is accelerating. This is the recovery much of the West sees and what has become the public-face of Beijing’s rebound narrative. In the rest of country, however, the climb back is far more uneven and beset with reversals.

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“The king’s world feels far more predictable and relaxed when the chaos of human subjectivity is contained for good.”

The Great Reset for Dummies (Tessa)

The Great Reset is a massively funded, desperately ambitious, internationally coordinated project led by some of the biggest multinational corporations and financial players on the planet and carried out by cooperating state bodies and NGOs. Its soul is a combination of early 20th century science fiction, idyllic Soviet posters, the obsessiveness of a deranged accountant with a gambling addiction—and an upgraded, digital version of “Manifest Destiny.” The mathematical reason for the Great Reset is that thanks to technology, the planet has gotten small, and the infinite expansion economic model is bust—but obviously, the super wealthy want to continue staying super wealthy, and so they need a miracle, another bubble, plus a surgically precise system for managing what they perceive as “their limited resources.”

Thus, they desperately want a bubble providing new growth out of thin air—literally—while simultaneously they seek to tighten the peasants’ belts, an effort that starts with “behavioral modification,” a.k.a. resetting the western peasants’ sense of entitlement to high life standards and liberties (see awful “privilege”). The psychological reason for the Great Reset is the fear of losing control of property, the planet. I suppose, if you own billions and move trillions, your perception of reality gets funky, and everything down below looks like an ant hill that exists for you. Just ants and numbers, your assets.


Thus, the practical aim of the Great Reset is to fundamentally restructure the world’s economy and geopolitical relations based on two assumptions: one, that every element of nature and every life form is a part of the global inventory (managed by the allegedly benevolent state, which, in turn, is owned by several suddenly benevolent wealthy people, via technology)—and two, that all inventory needs to be strictly accounted for: be registered in a central database, be readable by a scanner and easily ID’ed, and be managed by AI, using the latest “science.” The goal is to count and then efficiently manage and control all resources, including people, on an unprecedented scale, with unprecedented digital anxiety and precision—all while the masters keep indulging, enjoying vast patches of conserved nature, free of unnecessary sovereign peasants and their unpredictability. The king’s world feels far more predictable and relaxed when the chaos of human subjectivity is contained for good.

Read more …

 

 

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Guardian Greenwald Assange

 

 

 

 

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Oct 282019
 
 October 28, 2019  Posted by at 1:54 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  20 Responses »


Cimabue Christ mocked c1280
(Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters. Painting discovered in an old woman’s kitchen in Sept, sold for $28 million this week)

 

Trump Kept Gang of 8 In The Dark About Baghdadi Raid (WE)
Bill Barr Formally Announces Orwellian Pre-Crime Program (Webb)
Russia Calls Increase In US Troops In Syrian Oil Fields ‘Banditry’ (Hill)
Russian FM Lavrov Warns US Against Undermining Syria’s Sovereignty (RT)
The Plundering of Ukraine by Corrupt American Democrats (Shamir)
Bundestag MPs Demand That US Troops Leave Germany (RT)
European Leaders Agree Brexit Extension To 31 January (BBC)
Three Things I Learned In Washington (van Steenis)

 

 

As I already said in the TAE comments yesterday, I want to halt the daily Debt Rattles, at least for a while. I feel, and this has been building for quite some time, that they have outlived their purpose, which was always to put the daily news in context. But lately I felt it was not enough about -and by- me, and too much about the MSM.

Moreover, the Debt Rattles took away all of my mornings, 5-6 hours at a time, and I should be able to make better use of what is arguably the most productive time of the day. I have a lot more to say about this, for instance the growing place of paywalls in the news field, but I’ll do that in a separate article. I don’t know how aware people are about how much, and how fast, “news” is changing, but it’s a topic that warrants much more attention.

And did I mention the Automatic Earth has been almost wholly demonetized by Ad Sense? We’re going to need a lot more donations, the entire model for sites such as this one is rapidly changing. And I don’t want to also disappear behind a paywall, that defeats the purpose. More on that later as well. It’s not the direct reason behind halting the Debt Rattles, but it has crossed my mind. We can’t go on like this. Losing 85% of ad revenue is lethal at some point. Donations via Paypal and Patreon can be made at the top of the left and right sidebars.

I may take a few days to decide on the format I will continue in, but then I will be back and be better at it. As you may know, one of the things that has royally irked me over the past few years is how the MSM increasingly moved towards wanting to shape people’s views and opinions, instead of reporting on the news.

The incessant criticism of Trump, whether you like him or not, should have rung big blazing red alarm bells for everyone. And that wasn’t even because of a difference of opinions, it was -and is-, as I wrote over a year ago, because Trump Sells Better Than Sex.

So if you get your news from one of those outlets, you’re being duped for the sake of their profits.

The recent videos from Project Veritas, which show CNN boss Jeff Zucker hammering on about impeachment, exclusively, say it all really. I think that now that we’re there, and everybody has been able to be informed about it, a more personal approach than news overviews, despite all the effort at providing context, is called for.

 

I can start off today with a perfect example. The alleged US killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has put the MSM in an awkward position. On the one hand they cheer everything that even smells like warfare, on the other they can’t be seen uttering even one syllable that doesn’t slam Trump.

And then you get this sort of stuff, from Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large, likely written just moments after hearing Trump’s speech on the attack. I don’t care much for such speeches, and from what I did pick up certainly not this one, but I’d like to see someone explain how it differed from Hillary’s “We Cam We Saw He Died after Gaddafi” was sodomized to death by US troops. And I wonder what Cillizza had on that.

Moreover, lest we forget, al-Baghdadi was an actual terrorist, while Gaddafi ran the region’s most prosperous nation. But all Cillizza can manage is an article entitled The 41 Most Shocking Lines From Donald Trump’s Baghdadi Announcement. No, I didn’t read them. It’s Orange Man Bad cubed territory. Cillizza works for Zucker, after all, it’s his job description.

Bloomberg meanwhile ran this headline:

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi transformed himself from a little-known teacher of Koranic recitation into the self-proclaimed ruler of an entity that covered swaths of Syria and Iraq

While the Washington Post messed up even worse, changing their headline on the fly

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48

Reaction on witter: The very first headline called #Baghdadi as ‘terrorist-in-chief’. It was DELIBERATELY CHANGED to ‘austere religious scholar’. After backlash you changed it to ‘extremist leader’.

Some other reactions:

Adolf Hitler, dedicated art enthusiast, animal rights activist, and talented orator, dies at 56.


“Jeffrey Dahmer, connoisseur of exotic and locally sourced meats, dies at 34”

Trump didn’t brief Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff etc. (the Gang of 8) until after the raid was finished, and of course they complained. As Aaron Maté put it:

I was wondering if there was going to be a public celebration of the Baghdadi operation like when bin Laden was killed, but more likely this time is a vigil for Adam Schiff not getting briefed.

And Caitlin Johnstone:

If America actually wanted to end ISIS they wouldn’t kill its easily replaceable mascot, they’d stop slaughtering Middle Eastern civilians, end foreign occupations, and cease allying with nations which support violent extremists.

 

 

“Washington is a leaking machine.”

Trump Kept Gang of 8 In The Dark About Baghdadi Raid (WE)

President Trump confirmed Sunday he did not notify particular congressional committees ahead of the U.S. raid that led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The House Intelligence Committee, currently spearheading impeachment inquiry proceedings against the president, was not notified about the raid in advance, one aide told CBS News. Trump’s inner circle for decisions pertaining to such matters appears to have become smaller since leaks within his administration threaten his presidency. According to another report from ABC News, Trump told Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr about the raid after it happened, as well as Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham.


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, members of the “Gang of 8″ a group of Congressional leaders who receive classified intelligence briefings on a routine basis, were not notified, aides said. Graham is not part of the Gang of 8. A reporter asked Trump after his announcement if certain congressional committees and leadership were told of the raid before it happened. “We notified some,” Trump replied. “Others are being notified now as I speak. We were going to notify them last night, but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like I’ve never seen before. There’s nothing — there’s no country in the world that leaks like we do, and Washington is a leaking machine.”

Read more …

This from Whitney Webb needs a million times more scrutiny than it is getting. But the media are interested only in bashing Trump, because that’s where their money comes from. But really, pre-crime?!

Bill Barr Formally Announces Orwellian Pre-Crime Program (Webb)

Perhaps the most jarring aspect of the memorandum is Barr’s frank admission that many of the “early engagement” tactics that the new program would utilize were “born of the posture we adopted with respect to terrorist threats.” In other words, the foundation for many of the policies utilized following the post-9/11 “war on terror” are also the foundation for the “early engagement” tactics that Barr seeks to use to identify potential criminals as part of this new policy. Though those “war on terror” policies have largely targeted individuals abroad, Barr’s memorandum makes it clear that some of those same controversial tactics will soon be used domestically.


Barr’s memorandum also alludes to current practices by the FBI and DOJ that will shape the new plan. Though more specifics of the new policy will be provided in the forthcoming notice, Barr notes that “newly developed tactics” used by the Joint Terrorist Task Forces “include the use of clinical psychologists, threat assessment professionals, intervention teams and community groups” to detect risk and suggests that the new “early engagement program” will work along similar lines. Barr also alludes to this “community” approach in a separate instance, when he writes that “when the public ‘says something’ to alert us to a potential threat, we must do something.”

Talking about pre-crime:

Read more …

There’s horse trading going on here. The countless armed militia in the region are a real danger, because all parties involved have supported at least some of them, and perhaps still do. But at some point the real armies may find themselves facing each other. Not a good idea.

Russia Calls Increase In US Troops In Syrian Oil Fields ‘Banditry’ (Hill)

The Russian government on Saturday criticized the U.S. for bolstering military resources in eastern Syria, calling the move an “act of international state banditry,” Rueters reports. The increased military presence in the area comes after U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Friday that Washington would send more troops and vehicles into the area to secure the local oil fields. The increased protection would reportedly ensure that fields were not overtaken by Islamic State (ISIS) insurgents.


Reuters reports that in a statement released by Russia, the country claimed that the U.S. had no international legal jurisdiction to increase military presence around the oil fields. The statement went on to say that there was no real security threat in the area. “Therefore Washington’s current actions – capturing and maintaining military control over oil fields in eastern Syria – is, simply put, international state banditry,” the statement reads. The document went on to state that U.S. troops are “protecting oil smugglers that make more than $30 million a month,” Rueters reports.

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“We want to keep the oil” is a dead in the water slogan.

Russian FM Lavrov Warns US Against Undermining Syria’s Sovereignty (RT)

Steps that undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian state must be avoided, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as the two talked on the phone on Saturday, the foreign ministry said. Earlier this week, American troops were sent to Syria’s northeastern province of Deir ez-Zor with the claimed task of protecting the local oilfields from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists. Moscow decried the move as a violation of international law and reminded that all natural resources in Syria belong to Damascus. Lavrov and Pompeo also discussed separate issues around relations between Moscow and Washington during the conversation initiated by the US side, the ministry added.

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“AG Shokin immediately discovered that Burisma had paid these ‘stars’ between 50 and 150 thousand dollar per month each just for being on the list of directors. This is illegal by the Ukrainian tax code; it can’t be recognised as legitimate expenditure. At that time Biden the father entered the fray.”

The Plundering of Ukraine by Corrupt American Democrats (Shamir)

Oleg, you followed Biden story from its very inception. Biden is not the only Dem politician involved in the Ukrainian corruption schemes, is he? Indeed, John Kerry, the Secretary of State in Obama’s administration, was his partner-in-crime. But Joe Biden was number one. During the Obama presidency, Biden was the US proconsul for Ukraine, and he was involved in many corruption schemes. He authorised transfer of three billion dollars of the US taxpayers’ money to the post-coup government of the Ukraine; the money was stolen, and Biden took a big share of the spoils. It is a story of ripping the US taxpayer and the Ukrainian customer off for the benefit of a few corruptioners, American and Ukrainian. And it is a story of Kiev regime and its dependence on the US and IMF.

The Ukraine has a few midsize deposits of natural gas, sufficient for domestic household consumption. The cost of its production was quite low; and the Ukrainians got used to pay pennies for their gas. Actually, it was so cheap to produce that the Ukraine could provide all its households with free gas for heating and cooking, just like Libya did. Despite low consumer price, the gas companies (like Burisma) had very high profits and very little expenditure. After the 2014 coup, IMF demanded to raise the price of gas for the domestic consumer to European levels, and the new president Petro Poroshenko obliged them. The prices went sky-high. The Ukrainians were forced to pay many times more for their cooking and heating; and huge profits went to coffers of the gas companies.

Instead of raising taxes or lowering prices, President Poroshenko demanded the gas companies to pay him or subsidise his projects. He said that he arranged the price hike; it means he should be considered a partner. Burisma Gas company had to pay extortion money to the president Poroshenko. Eventually its founder and owner Mr Nicolai Zlochevsky decided to invite some important Westerners into the company’s board of directors hoping it would moderate Poroshenko’s appetites. He had brought in Biden’s son Hunter, John Kerry, Polish ex-President Kwasniewski; but it didn’t help him.

Poroshenko became furious that the fattened calf may escape him, and asked the Attorney General Shokin to investigate Burisma trusting some irregularities would emerge. AG Shokin immediately discovered that Burisma had paid these ‘stars’ between 50 and 150 thousand dollar per month each just for being on the list of directors. This is illegal by the Ukrainian tax code; it can’t be recognised as legitimate expenditure. At that time Biden the father entered the fray.

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Not going to happen, but good idea.

Bundestag MPs Demand That US Troops Leave Germany (RT)

German MPs have demanded that the government expel US forces stationed in Germany. MPs argue that their presence only serves the purposes of the US illegal wars in the Middle East and stokes tensions with Moscow. Lawmakers from the opposition Left Party have tabled a motion calling on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to immediately stop financing the American military presence in the country and to annul a 1990 treaty allowing US soldiers to be deployed on German soil in the first instance. “More than 35,000 US soldiers are stationed in Germany, more than in any other European land,” the document, published on the Bundestag’s website, points out, adding that American military bases are used to further Washington’s “policy of war in the Middle East.”


The lawmakers particularly expressed their outrage over the fact that the German bases are used “in the continuing illegal practice of targeted US assassinations in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” apparently referring to the American use of strike drones. The document also states that the continued presence of American forces on German soil leads to nothing but escalation of an already tense situation with regard to relations with Russia. The MPs also denounced any deployment of American troops to bases in Poland and other Central and Eastern European states, saying that such actions cannot be interpreted as anything but “war preparations.” They also drew attention to the fact that the US troops are being transferred through the territory of the former East Germany, thus violating the spirit of the 1990 ‘2+4’ agreement that facilitated Germany’s reunification ..

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Name the year, always.

European Leaders Agree Brexit Extension To 31 January (BBC)

EU leaders have agreed in principle to extend Brexit until 31 January 2020 – meaning the UK will not leave as planned on Thursday. EU Council President Donald Tusk said it was a “flextension” – meaning the UK could leave before the deadline if a deal was approved by Parliament. It comes as MPs prepare to vote on proposals by Boris Johnson for an early general election on 12 December. The SNP and Lib Dems have also proposed an election on 9 December. The government has not ruled out getting behind that proposed date, if it fails to get its preferred date through the Commons later.

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Huw van Steenis, senior adviser to the CEO of UBS, and formerly senior adviser to Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, asks : “..are negative rates starting to do more harm than good..?” He’s a blind man. What good?

Three Things I Learned In Washington (van Steenis)

As the world’s central banks and economic policymakers convened in Washington over the weekend for the annual meetings of the IMF, IIF and World Bank, there was a distinct lack of conviction in the air. “Globally synchronised slowdown”, trade wars, political uncertainty and persistent ultralow interest rates have ground down most investors and policymakers’ belief in the prevailing economic or market narratives. So the most interesting conversations were about transitions and tail risks. What are the long term implications of negative rates? How disruptive is digital money? And what does the greening of the financial system mean in practice? Central banks are wrestling with a major challenge: are negative rates starting to do more harm than good?

Professor Charles Goodhart of the LSE and I fear we may have already have this “reversal rate” in the Eurozone. Like steroids, unconventional policy, such as negative rates, can be highly effective in limited dosages but long term usage starts to weaken the skeletal system. Given that negative rates have been in place for over a quarter of the time that the euro has existed, policymakers are starting to worry about the negative consequences — like impaired banking systems and asset bubbles. I sensed an inflection in the level of concern from two distinct groups: Anglo-Saxon policy makers who simply never want to open the Pandora’s box of negative rates, and European policy makers growing increasingly concerned about the toolkit to break out of the “Japanification” of the eurozone.

What’s more, the penny is dropping that negative rates are hampering the ability of many eurozone banks, aside from the market leaders, to invest confidently in digital technology to serve clients better and fend off the risks from disruptive new entrants. I came away feeling the bar is now incredibly high for any further negative rate cuts. Second, technology is rapidly changing the way we pay for things. Investors know this well from the huge growth in value of Mastercard, Visa, Paypal and Amex, or new firms like Stripe and Ant Financial. Little wonder that payments has become the battleground between Big Tech, existing payments firms and banks. The size of the prize can be huge. Alipay and WeChatPay represent 90% of mobile payments in China.

Read more …

 

John Conyers -RIP- on WikiLeaks in 2010 (back when Joe Biden was declaring Assange a “high-tech terrorist”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 112019
 
 April 11, 2019  Posted by at 7:08 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Salvador Dali Hallucination. Six Images of Lenin on a Grand Piano 1931

 

47 years ago in American Pie, Don McLean talked about The Day The Music Died. Or of course the music didn’t really die, but at the same time it did. “The three mean I admired most, the father, son and the holy ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died.”

Back then you could still have claimed the country merely lost its innocence. And you could have said the same in 1861 or 1914 or 1941. Today, not to take anything away from music, or the song, something much bigger died. America itself died, not just its music or innocence. America didn’t just lose its innocence, it pled guilty.

No doubt most of you would proclaim that’s a gross exaggeration, and an insane hyperbole, but you would all be wrong, sorry. There’s no way back this time.

America, the United States, with all its initial prejudice and lethal screw-ups, was founded as a place where people could direct their own lives without having to fear any other party, let alone a government, that would stand in their way while they did it. And a big part of not having to fear one’s government is not having to fear that government purposely lying to its citizens. The Founding Fathers, for all their faults, got that right. And today erases all of that in one fell swoop.

That is what died today. Or, you know, it may have died much earlier, and a thousand times before as well, but with the arrest in London of Julian Assange, an Australian citizen wanted by the US Deep State, a myriad of strands connecting, and connected to a bloated dying corpse came together. And now we know there is no salvation possible. Today made it all terminal. America is no more. Or it is no longer what they tell you it stands for, whichever comes first.

And it’s not just America, mind you. ‘The UK is a serious country’, PM Theresa May said today when addressing Brexit. No it’s not, Theresa, it’s a banana republic hopelessly stuck in a spaghetti western and it no longer knows the rule of law. It sells people to the highest bidder in a meat market, be they Windrush, refugees from her Majesty’s wars in Libya, or just white and poor English, or Julian Assange.

The UK is a parody on a country, it’s a sordid piece of third rate slapstick. It kills people while trying to maintain the image of being a serious country. You know, whatever that is?! The British judge Assange faced today was bleeding mocking him, the arguably greatest journalist of this century and millennium. A serious country?

 

Julian Assange Branded ‘Narcissist’ By Judge As He Faces US Extradition

Julian Assange has been branded a “narcissist” by a judge as he faces both a UK prison sentence and being extradited to the US. The Metropolitan Police said the Australian hacker was initially detained at the Ecuadorian embassy for failing to surrender to court. He had been summoned in 2012 over an alleged rape in Sweden, where authorities are now considering reopening their investigation into those allegations.After arriving at a London police station on Thursday morning, the 47-year-old was additionally arrested on behalf of the US under an extradition warrant.


Mr Assange was taken to Westminster Magistrates’ Court and found guilty of breaching bail hours later. He faces a jail sentence of up to a year. He denied the offence, with lawyers arguing that he had a “reasonable excuse” could not expect a fair trial in the UK as its purpose was to “secure his delivery” to the US. District Judge Michael Snow described the defence as “laughable”, adding: “Mr Assange’s behaviour is that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests. He hasn’t come close to establishing ‘reasonable excuse’.” He remanded Mr Assange in custody ahead of a future sentencing hearing at Southwark Crown Court.

 

And where was opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn when this all went on? Haven’t seen him, other then in the afternoon when he was ‘discussing’ Brexit details with May in Parliament on day 1021 since the Brexit referendum, while he should have been out in the street denouncing May and protecting Assange at the loudest voice there is.

Screw you, Jeremy, you’re a pathetic loser. No matter what else you do, there are times when you have to stand up and be counted. You were nowhere to be seen, you coward. Screw you again. And all of your family. A curse on y’all. You had a chance to be counted, and you whimped out so enormously only an elephant could whimp out more. Today was your day, and you were a no-show, again.

But don‘t you mind me, I’m not British and I’m not one of those ass-hat followers of you. I’m just someone calling you a coward. So, you know, your campaign team can keep polling and intervene as soon as they see too many ass-hats become concerned about Assange. Until then, who cares, it’s all in the numbers. It’s not as if you have any principles anyway. If you can screw up Brexit there’s no reason why you couldn’t screw up Assange’s situation as well.

 

As for the Donald, man, it’s just 6 days ago that I issued a well-meant warning to you, to tell you that those who are after Assange are the same people who are after you.

And now you’ve given those very people a huge stage to execute their anti-Assange and thereby their anti-Trump messages from. Mr. Trump, you’re helping Brennan and Clapper and Comey and their ilk persecute the only person who could ever stand up to them. And who did that better than you ever did. Because he’s so much smarter.

And where are all the media? Where are all the other governments? Where is the European Union? Where is Australia? Yes, Ecuador took away Assange’s citizenship too today, like that’s a piece of candy or something. Asylum, citizenship, they can be bought and sold whenever a bell tolls.

Why do we have international law anyway if nobody abides by any of it? You can’t just grant someone asylum, and then a citizenship, and then rescind it when you like on a rainy morning when your medication runs out or they’re on to you for blatant fraud, Lenin Moreno. Do that and all international law becomes null and void. Hereby.

 

Pardon me, I’ve just been, like hopefully many people are, so sad and angry and despondent today, all day. The entire world watched the music die today, and never realized it, and a man much smarter and braver and real than any of us is out there paying for our sins, and we have no media left to tell us an honest story about it, and George Orwell is laughing somewhere out there.

And I am still stupid enough to think that we can do better.

 

 

 

Mar 262019
 
 March 26, 2019  Posted by at 10:48 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


Jan van Eijk The Arnolfini portrait 1434

 

 

I first asked Dr. D. a few years ago if I could turn one one his comments at the Automatic Earth into an essay. The following illustrates why I asked. Not sure he understands why some of his rants stand out while others do not, but they certainly do. Go to the Automatic Earth comments section to figure that one out. He’s there every day.

And you’re free to disagree of course. And I myself am good, have an essay on the same topic waiting but love the view from over there. Nothing not to like.

 

 

It USED to be that when a newspaper catastrophically screwed the pooch as we Yanks say, people would cancel their subscription to such a piece of pure, useless, misleading garbage.

Dr. D.: Legally, the path is pretty clear and incredibly old. It’s always been illegal to slander (in voice) or libel (in print) someone. The Covington kids are following this right now. It’s illegal everywhere, including Britain and New Zealand, and the legal threshold has a couple of bullet points. There has to be provable damage, the facts provided have to wrong, they have to be specific, and so on. Then you sue civilly for compensation in measure with the damage caused. Pretty simple. But if it’s actual libel of the sort anyone actually means, not just “I disagree with you”, then all these elements are absolutely in play. No false accusations, no just getting the facts wrong on accident.

What’s more, the government is never the plaintiff. Although in theory I suppose they could get standing, in practice slander and libel are prosecuted BY private people AGAINST private people, which eliminates a major element of government censorship and repression. …The problem is, now that the entire force of media is resident in 5 corporations the size of most countries, no one has been suing anyone, much less challenging them to pistols at dawn.

That and the marketplace is adjusting to the new reality: It USED to be that when a newspaper catastrophically screwed the pooch as we Yanks say, people would cancel their subscription to such a piece of pure, useless, misleading garbage. …But no one ever pays for news anymore; there’s nothing to cancel. Clicks are free. So even when it’s completely wrong, knowingly, provably wrong in 10 minutes of google, if it gets clicks you get paid, so there is a new OPPOSITE incentive to lie, so long as the lies are salacious. It’s literally impossible to be discredited under this model. Look at Brian Williams on NBC and Donna Brazile on Fox.

However, you can still be sued to penury and be unable to pay your click-bills, and I expect this is a new growth industry, perhaps led by Nunes. Certainly Buzzfeed and Vox haven’t waited, they’re collapsing under their blizzard of nonsense and poor reputation, while so many bloggers who got it right continue to rise despite every repression the algos can throw at them. And that’s the market adjusting, note: without the government.

So that’s how Americans and legal nations with free speech do it and always have. Because legally, there is no such thing as ‘hate speech’. If there were, it would be thought crime, a tyranny so diabolical that even the existence of opinions is illegal. You are allowed to hate. Why? Because you are human, we don’t lock people up for thinking and feeling things, and thank our ever-loving God for that.

You are also allowed to SAY you hate someone. Why? Because it’s both a fact and your opinion. What would be the alternative, universal love enacted by perpetual violent force? If people don’t know you don’t like them, you can’t be forewarned, you can’t work things out, we don’t have an open debate in the marketplace of ideas.

What you CAN’T do – and again, this is the law everywhere and always – is ACTUALLY HARM someone. ‘Cause words are just cheap air, sound and fury, signifying nothing. A world where people are terrified of words alone is a world the weakest man who ever lived could conquer. But that’s the western world now, apparently having never seen or felt violence, actually believes that ‘words are violence.’ …That is until being so weak, such violets, such snowflakes, their total weakness attracts REAL violence which devours their nation in hours, as they see with decadent, falling empires throughout history.

There are a few other things: you are generally liable if your words cause physical or monetary harm. Further, you can’t therefore call for specific harm to a specific person, as is called on my people every day, because being more dangerous, the law wishes to prevent murder rather than punish it. But any rational person can follow these without even knowing the law exists, although, like all laws in the U.S. presently, it isn’t enforced, or only enforced on people they don’t like.

But that’s all terribly simple. The media legally CAN’T tell lies like this without consequences. Thankfully, however, the government isn’t the plaintiff and repressor. We legally can have open discussions where bad ideas, bad beliefs are able to be read openly and refuted, like Jim Jones, like Mein Kampf; as they must be, for the only alternative is to control and erase history, and then we could never learn, never recognize it. To punish people for ideas in their heads and feelings in their hearts, making their very existence a prison.

The media will soon wish they could erase history, and perhaps they will already. I mean, they just erased Patrick Moore from founding Greenpeace yesterday. But without the authorization of legal propaganda against the people and the government cash payments that’s soon going to be revealed — as long-used but signed into law by Obama — CNN, MSNBC and the boys are going to go broke on a business plan that has been totally discredited.

So under market capitalism – and now lacking monetary and legal protection of their lies by government, and under attack for monopoly bias and with executive orders reminding everyone that speech is always free – the liars are about to be sued, go broke, and disappear. Which is a pity, since I doubt they have the competence to clean toilets instead. So that’s what free nations do, and are doing right now, instead of making all news, all facts, and all history verboten.

 

 

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
– George Orwell, 1984

 

 

Feb 232019
 


Henri Rousseau The sleeping gypsy 1897

 

A Fed Pivot, Born Of Volatility, Missteps, And New Economic Reality (R.)
Get Out Of The Bond And Stock Market, Put Your Money In Cash – Stockman (MW)
Global Sovereign Debt Will Top $50 Trillion This Year (ZH)
Mueller Won’t Deliver Report To DOJ Next Week (Hill)
Schiffting to Phase 2 of Collusion (Strassel)
‘Even Nixon Wasn’t Like Him’: Trump’s Bid To Upend Russia Inquiry (G.)
Great Investigations (Kunstler)
Theresa May Must Go In Three Months, Cabinet Ministers Say (G.)
UK Food Imports From EU Face ‘£9bn Tariff Bill’ Under No-Deal Brexit (G.)
Dianne Feinstein Snaps At Group Of Environmental Activist Children (ZH)
The Cold War in Tech (Barron’s)
Silicon Valley Wants In On It Pair Of Gene-Edited Chinese Twins (ZH)
China Blocks 17.5 Million Plane Tickets Due to Lack of ‘Social Credit’ (Ind.)

 

 

The folly of our times. The Fed has completely destroyed America’s market system, and thus its economy, and they are treated as wise men. There are no markets left, there are no pensions left, there’s only the Fed.

A Fed Pivot, Born Of Volatility, Missteps, And New Economic Reality (R.)

The Federal Reserve’s promise in January to be “patient” about further interest rate hikes, putting a three-year-old process of policy tightening on hold, calmed markets after weeks of turmoil that wiped out trillions of dollars of household wealth. But interviews with more than half a dozen policymakers and others close to the process suggest it also marked a more fundamental shift that could define Chairman Jerome Powell’s tenure as the point where the Fed first fully embraced a world of stubbornly weak inflation, perennially slower growth and permanently lower interest rates. Along with Powell’s public comments, Fed minutes, and other documents, the picture emerges of a central bank edging towards a period of potentially difficult change as it reviews how to do business in light of that new reality.

[..] Concern that years of solid economic growth and falling unemployment would inevitably rekindle inflation or threaten financial stability have been a staple of Fed debates, but had largely disappeared by the Fed’s Dec. 18-19 meeting, according to a review of Fed meeting minutes and officials’ public statements. It was a conclusion hiding in plain sight. After a year when the Trump administration pumped around $1.5 trillion of tax cuts and public spending into a full employment economy, the Fed in 2018 would miss its 2 percent inflation target yet again.

“I hate to say we were right,” Dallas Federal Reserve president Robert Kaplan told reporters on Jan. 15 in Dallas. “But we have been warning for quite some time that…the structure of the economy has changed dramatically.” Technological innovation, globalization, and the Fed’s commitment to its inflation target all held down prices, and “those forces are powerful and they are accelerating,” he said.

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Dave Stockman, too, keeps referring to markets. Stop it. A market has a definition, a function, based one-on-one on price discovery. And that simply ceased to exist.

Get Out Of The Bond And Stock Market, Put Your Money In Cash – Stockman (MW)

[..] thus far the market has bounded higher after shaking off a withering decline toward the end of 2018 that culminated in the worst Christmas Eve drop on record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 19.4% since that time, breaking above a psychologically significant at 26,000 level on Friday, while the S&P 500 has advanced 19.5%, the Nasdaq Composite has risen 22.4% and the small-capitalization focused Russell 2000 index has returned more than 25%, according to FactSet data. Much of that gain has been underpinned by a Fed that has signaled that it is likely to slow a reduction of its $4 trillion balance sheet as soon as this year and a willingness to wait before increasing borrowing costs further. Both of those plans had been cited as a source of friction for markets.

However, Stockman has said a yawning deficit and an economic expansion in the U.S. that is making history for its length are signs that a reckoning my be at hand. He says easy-money days cannot last and has ramifications for all, arguing that the Fed must normalize its policy, at some point: “My point is, it’s finally catching up with us. We’ve gotten by with this for 30 years ‘cause the Fed has been monetizing the debt — buying bonds hand over fist. When Greenspan arrived, the balance sheet of the Fed was $200 billion; at the peak it was $4.5 trillion,” he told Cavuto, referring to former Fed boss Alan Greenspan. “We need to wake up and smell the roses here. We’re in year 10 of the longest business expansion in history.

We’re increasing the deficit at the very wrong time. They say it’s $900 billion this year it’ll be $1.2 trillion of borrowing at the same time that the Fed is beginning to shrink its balance sheet, which means they’ll be dumping bonds into the market,” he said.

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All that new debt and still pension systems are being fully gutted.

Global Sovereign Debt Will Top $50 Trillion This Year (ZH)

It has been one week since the US Treasury revealed that the national debt had topped $22 trillion (only 11 months after it had topped the $21 trillion threshold). And as the US budget deficit shows no signs of shrinking thanks to the Trump tax cuts and the death of the Obama-era budget sequester that has allowed for an expansion of federal spending (with more presumably on the way once the Trump infrastructure plan comes into focus), S&P warned on Thursday that worldwide sovereign debt could reach $50 trillion this year. According to Reuters, S&P predicted that governments will borrow some $7.78 trillion this year, up 3.2% since 2018 (the US will constitute more than $1 trillion of that all by itself). That’s a 6% increase in the total debt pile from the year before.

Most of this borrowing will be rolling over long-term debt. “Some 70 percent, or $5.5 trillion, of sovereigns’ gross borrowing will be to refinance maturing long-term debt, resulting in an estimated net borrowing requirement of about $2.3 trillion, or 2.6 percent of the GDP of rated sovereigns,” said S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Karen Vartapetov. Governments, like corporations and individuals, took advantage of low interest rates around the world to step up borrowing in the wake of the financial crisis. Now, with borrowing costs expected to rise, these long-term burdens will become more burdensome to service. And with central banks slowly beginning to allow their inflated balance sheets to run off…

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No collusion.

Mueller Won’t Deliver Report To DOJ Next Week (Hill)

Special counsel Robert Mueller will not deliver his report to the Justice Department on Friday or next week, a Justice Department official told The Hill. The news comes amid broad speculation that Mueller’s probe into Russia’s electoral interference is wrapping up, with several news outlets reporting Wednesday that newly confirmed Attorney General William Barr was preparing to receive Mueller’s final report as soon as next week. The highly anticipated report is expected to cap off a sprawling, nearly two-year investigation into Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, a probe that has ensnared multiple former Trump campaign officials and associates.

Next week is already slated to be a busy week in Washington, with former longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen appearing for testimony on Capitol Hill and several other major hearings and votes set to take place. President Trump is also slated to travel to Vietnam next week for his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. It remains unclear when Mueller will ultimately wrap up and submit his final documentation, though Friday’s news indicates the end of the investigation is at least a week away.

Mueller has been investigating Russian interference and potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow since May 2017, weathering constant attacks from Trump, who views the investigation as a “witch hunt” and has long denied allegations of collusion between his campaign and the Kremlin. In the course of his investigation, Mueller has unveiled charges against more than two dozen Russians for hacking Democratic emails and committing fraud in an elaborate plot to use social media to meddle in the election. The special counsel has also charged six Trump associates with making false statements, illegal foreign lobbying, financial violations and other crimes. However, none of the charges have alleged a conspiracy between the campaign and the Russians to interfere in the election.

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“No acknowledgment that Mr. Schiff & Co. for years have pushed fake stories that accused innocent men and women of being Russian agents. No relieved hope that the country might finally put this behind us. Just a smooth transition—using Russia as a hook—into Mr. Trump’s finances. Mueller who?”

Schiffting to Phase 2 of Collusion (Strassel)

There’s been no more reliable regurgitator of fantastical Trump-Russia collusion theories than Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff. So when the House Intelligence Committee chairman sits down to describe a “new phase” of the Trump investigation, pay attention. These are the fever swamps into which we will descend after Robert Mueller’s probe. The collusionists need a “new phase” as signs grow that the special counsel won’t help realize their reveries of a Donald Trump takedown. They had said Mr. Mueller would provide all the answers. Now that it seems they won’t like his answers, Democrats and media insist that any report will likely prove “anticlimactic” and “inconclusive.” “This is merely the end of Chapter 1,” said Renato Mariotti, a CNN legal “analyst.”

Mr. Schiff turned this week to a dependable scribe—the Washington Post’s David Ignatius—to lay out the next chapter of the penny dreadful. Mr. Ignatius was the original conduit for the leak about former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s conversations with a Russian ambassador, and the far-fetched claims that Mr. Flynn had violated the Logan Act of 1799. Mr. Schiff has now dictated to Mr. Ignatius a whole new collusion theory. Forget Carter Page, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos—whoever. The real Trump-Russia canoodling rests in “Trump’s finances.” The future president was “doing business with Russia” and “seeking Kremlin help.”

So, no apologies. No acknowledgment that Mr. Schiff & Co. for years have pushed fake stories that accused innocent men and women of being Russian agents. No relieved hope that the country might finally put this behind us. Just a smooth transition—using Russia as a hook—into Mr. Trump’s finances. Mueller who? What’s mind-boggling is that reporters would continue to take Mr. Schiff seriously, given his extraordinary record of incorrect and misleading pronouncements. This is the man who, on March 22, 2017, helped launch full-blown hysteria when he said on “Meet the Press” that his committee already had the goods on Trump-Russia collusion. “I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now,” Mr. Schiff declared then. Almost two years later, he’s provided no such evidence and stopped making the claim..

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Perhaps even more than politicians, it’s the media that will keep the collusion tale alive. They wouldn’t know how to make money anymore if they didn’t.

‘Even Nixon Wasn’t Like Him’: Trump’s Bid To Upend Russia Inquiry (G.)

It was yet another bombshell report for a president already ensnared in multiple investigations against his campaign, administration and family members. This time it had to do with hush money paid to women to silence them from speaking about alleged affairs they had with Donald Trump. According to a New York Times report published this week, Trump asked Matthew Whitaker, his controversial acting attorney general, if he could install a loyalist at the helm of the investigation into the hush money.

Although Whitaker declined Trump’s request, the story has raised fresh questions over whether the president was seeking to obstruct justice and how the reported move fits into a broad pattern of Trump attempting to interfere with an investigation concerning himself. Since taking office, Trump’s fixation on the federal inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election – and potential collusion between his campaign and Moscow – has spurred a series of actions that could now imperil his presidency and prospects of a second term.

From high-level firings to public misstatements, Trump’s repeated steps to undermine the investigations that have clouded his two years in office paint a picture of a president who is his own worst enemy, legal experts say. “It is quite clear from all the evidence that the president has had the intent to obstruct this investigation,” said Andy Wright, a former associate counsel to Barack Obama and the founding editor of the legal blog Just Security. “It’s been in plain sight.” “It’s a fundamental abuse of power for the president to be trying to shut down an investigation in which he has a personal stake – both as a potential target himself and his political allies and family members,” he added.

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Jim stays on message. I changed the headline from Great Expectations to Great Investigations.

Great Investigations (Kunstler)

Meanwhile, their antics may be eclipsed by the now inevitable inquiry around the misdeeds carried out by public officials in Act I of the show: the Russia Collusion Ruse. Based just on the current Andy McCabe book tour, there will be an awful lot to get to, and it is liable to be far more compelling than the nonsense conjured up by the Three Stooges. Mr. McCabe, in his quest to hand off the hot potato of culpability to his former colleagues, and to sell enough books to pay his lawyers’ retainers, has neatly laid out the case for his orchestrating a coup d’etat within the FBI. It’s an ugly story, and it’s all out there now, like so much spaghetti hurled against the wall, and it won’t be ignored.

There are many other spaghetti wads already plastered on that wall ranging from Hillary Clinton’s Fusion GPS hijinks, to Loretta Lynch’s written assurances to the Clinton campaign that the email server matter would be dropped, to the rather complete failure of the FISA process, and much much more that needs to be ventilated in a court of law. I suspect that Barack Obama and his White House confidents will enter the picture, too, sooner later, and to the great dismay of his partisans who do not want to see his legacy tarnished. Whatever your view of all these dark events, it would be pretty awful for the country to have to see him in a witness chair, but it may be unavoidable. Ditto Hillary, who is liable to go all Captain Queeg-y when she finally has to answer for her campaign’s turpitudes.

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Can both major parties in Britain dissolve in just 4 weeks time?

Theresa May Must Go In Three Months, Cabinet Ministers Say (G.)

Cabinet ministers will make it clear they believe Theresa May should step down after the local elections in May and allow a new leader to deliver the next phase of the Brexit negotiations, the Guardian understands.Senior figures in government have suggested they want the prime minister to leave shortly after the first phase of the Brexit negotiations finishes – or risk being defeated in a vote of no confidence at the end of the year. May wants to stay in place for long enough after Brexit to secure a political legacy beyond the fraught negotiations. But some ministers believe she should announce the timeline for her departure “on a high” after the local election results, paving the way for a Conservative leadership contest over the summer.

Brexiters in the cabinet are keen to see a new leader take over for the next stage of the negotiations with the EU, which May has already pledged will involve more active involvement for politicians rather than advisers. The hardening mood among cabinet ministers on the timeline for her departure will place further pressure on May before a critical week of Brexit talks and votes amid a febrile climate in Westminster. On Thursday the Guardian revealed that remainer ministers emboldened by the departure of three MPs to the Independent Group (TIG) were threatening to rebel against her leadership to prevent a no-deal outcome – daring her to sack them.

And in a fresh blow to May, three cabinet ministers publicly say they would back moves to delay Brexit if she fails to get her deal through parliament. In a joint newspaper article, Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, David Gauke, the justice minister, and the business secretary, Greg Clark, say they want to ensure the UK does not crash out of the EU without a deal on 29 March. And they insist they are prepared to defy the prime minister and join those MPs pushing for an extension to article 50 if there is no significant progress next week.

Writing for the Daily Mail on Saturday, they argue that a no-deal Brexit would wreck the country’s economy and put its security at risk. “If there is no breakthrough in the coming week, the balance of opinion in parliament is clear – that it would be better to seek to extend article 50 and delay our date of departure rather than crash out of the European Union on 29 March,” they write. “It is time that many of our Conservative parliamentary colleagues in the ERG recognised that parliament will stop a disastrous no-deal Brexit on 29 March. If that happens, they will have no one to blame but themselves for delaying Brexit.”

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Both May and Brussels appear to think they stand to gain from a no-deal Brexit. Maybe that makes it more likely than we think.

UK Food Imports From EU Face ‘£9bn Tariff Bill’ Under No-Deal Brexit (G.)

The government is expected next week to spell out its plan to mitigate a potential £9bn food-price shock from a no-deal Brexit, as analysts predict the cost of staples such as beef, cheddar cheese and tomatoes could soar. With just over a month until the Brexit deadline, the Department for International Trade is expected on Monday to publish a list of new import taxes, or tariffs, that will apply to 5200 products, including food and clothing, should the UK crash out of the EU without a deal. The relationship with the EU is key to the price of food because nearly one third of the food eaten in the UK comes from the bloc. At this time of year the situation is more acute because, with UK produce out of season, 90% of lettuces, 80% of tomatoes and 70% of soft fruit is sourced from, or via, the EU.

“Food and drink tariff rates will be higher than those in any other supply chain,” says Richard Lim, chief executive of consultancy firm Retail Economics. “All stages within the food supply chain will experience increased costs, with retailers hit disproportionately as processed goods attract higher duties than raw materials and semi-processed goods.” In 2017 the UK bought about £34bn of groceries from the EU, which arrived on supermarket shelves and at factory gates without being hit by customs duties or other trade costs. But if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, both will fall back on the World Trade Organisation’s “most favoured nation” tariffs, which means they must pay import duties on each other’s trade. On that basis the UK’s 2017 EU food imports would come with a hefty £9.3bn tariff bill on top, according to Retail Economics’s analysis.

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Having been there for 30 years is not exactly a positive thing, given how much things have deteriorated in that time. Hand it over to the kids, they couldn’t possibly do worse.

Dianne Feinstein Snaps At Group Of Environmental Activist Children (ZH)

Armed with an impassioned letter and memorized talking points, the children belonging to three Bay Area environmentalist groups (Sunrise Bay Area, Youth Versus the Apocalypse, and Earth Guardians San Francisco) implored Feinstein to support the Green New Deal. The Senator responded: “Ok, I’ll tell you what. We have our own Green New Deal.” The video skips forward to the children warning Feinstein that “some scientists have said that we have 12 years to turn this around” – referring to a conclusion by a recent UN-backed report that man-made climate change will become irreversible if carbon emissions are not significantly reduced over the next 12 years (which Ocasio-Cortez turned into “the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change”).

“It’s not gonna get turned around in 10 years,” responded Feinstein – drawing a harsh rebuke from an angry chaperone. “Senator if this doesn’t get turned around in 10 years you’re looking at the faces of the people who are going to be living with these consequences,” said the adult – as one of the children chimed in “the government is supposed to be for the people and by the people and for all the people!” Feinstein was not amused. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say “it has to be my way or the highway.” “I don’t respond to that,” shot back Feinstein. “I’ve gotten elected. I just ran. I was elected by almost a million vote plurality. And, I know what I’m doing. So, you know, maybe people should listen a little bit. -Dianne Feinstein

One kid shot back “I hear what you’re saying but we’re the people who voted you. You’re supposed to listen to us, that’s your job.” “How old are you?” challenged Feinstein. “I’m 16. I can’t vote,” said the girl. “Well you didn’t vote for me,” replied the Senator.

https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1099075460649107458

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The new fight for control of the world. Orwell International Inc.

The Cold War in Tech (Barron’s)

Cisco Systems, an early Silicon Valley success story, has become one of the nation’s top tech exporters. Today, roughly half of the networking giant’s sales come from outside the U.S. As foreign countries sought to catch up with U.S. connectivity, Cisco helped plug them in. But a wave of nationalist thinking has put Cisco—and most of its peers—in an uncomfortable position. Earlier this month, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins described the current climate as “one of the more complex macro, geopolitical environments that I think we’ve seen in quite a while with all the different moving parts.” It’s likely to get worse.

While investors are cheering indications of progress being made toward a resolution of trade issues between China and the U.S., the battle for tech supremacy between the two global superpowers shows few signs of abating. Even as the White House was negotiating on trade with Beijing, it was also contemplating a U.S. ban of telecommunications equipment from Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies, essentially China’s version of Cisco. As President Donald Trump was tweeting about the importance of 5G on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was pushing U.S. allies to ditch Huawei. This is a fight that is not going to end anytime soon. For years, U.S. officials have worried about Chinese equipment being used to infiltrate U.S. networks and businesses for possible espionage and theft of intellectual property.

Even a resolution of the trade war won’t quell those fears. “The perception is that too much of the information- and communication-technology supply chain is centered on China,” says Paul Triolo, who focuses on global technology policy issues for risk consulting firm Eurasia Group. “If we are in a conflict and using infrastructure built by China, they could theoretically hit a button and shut off everything.” “After 30 years of saying companies should optimize supply chains and move some abroad, now we are saying it’s a security concern,” he says. “Adjusting to that is jarring.”

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The sort of thing you know someone will always try, no matter what laws are invented. And it’s not about Silicon Valley, it’s about the CIA through big Tech.

Silicon Valley Wants In On It Pair Of Gene-Edited Chinese Twins (ZH)

A pair of Chinese twins who were gene-edited for resistance to HIV may also have ‘supercharged’ brains, along with possible resistance to age-related cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s. In a controversial experiment led by Chinese scientist He Jiankui, the embroys of seven couples had their genes “edited” using a tool known as CRISPR. By removing a gene called CCR5, Jiankui sought to create a natural immunity to HIV – which requires CCR5 to enter blood cells. Based on new research, however, Jiankui may have also left the twins, Lulu and Nana, with improved memory and enhanced cognition, according to MIT Technology Review. They may also enjoy some degree of protection from Alzheimer’s Disease and other maladies which are rapidly being linked to chronic inflammation, as some groups of mice without CCR5 – or who have been given CCR5 inhibitors, experience less severe dementia or Alzheimer’s symptoms.

“The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” says UCLA neurobiologist Alcino J. Silva, whose lap discovered a link between CCR5 and the brain’s ability to form new connections. “The simplest interpretation is that those mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function in the twins,” says Silva, adding that the exact effect on the girls’ cognition cannot be predicted, which is “why it should not be done.” Jiankui’s human experiments drew harsh rebuke after news of Lulu and Nana’s birth in late October or early November, and has reportedly been fired from his position at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China. Jiankui says there are more gene-edited babies on the way.

Silva tells the MIT Technology Review that “because of his research, he sometimes interacts with figures in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who have, in his opinion, an unhealthy interest in designer babies with better brains.” When word of Jiankui’s experiment went public, Silva says he immediately questioned whether enhanced cognition was the real goal of the experiment. “I suddenly realized—Oh, holy shit, they are really serious about this bullshit,” said Silva. “My reaction was visceral repulsion and sadness.” He Jiankui acknowledged that he knew about the potential cognitive benefits of removing the CCR5 gene discovered by the UCLA team during a Q&A session, though he said “I am against using genome editing for enhancement.”

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Brave new world: gene-edited superhumans controlled through embedded technology. That Orwell guy appears smarter by the day.

China Blocks 17.5 Million Plane Tickets Due to Lack of ‘Social Credit’ (Ind.)

The Chinese government blocked 17.5 million would-be plane passengers from buying tickets last year as a punishment for offences including the failure to pay fines, it emerged. Some 5.5 million people were also barred from travelling by train under a controversial “social credit” system which the ruling Communist Party claims will improve public behaviour. The penalties are part of efforts by president Xi Jinping‘s government to use data-processing and other technology to tighten control on society. Human rights activists warn the system is too rigid and may lead to people being unfairly blacklisted without their knowledge, while US vice-president Mike Pence last year denounced it as “an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life”.

Authorities have experimented with social credit in parts of China since 2014. Points are deducted for breaking the law, but also, in some areas, for offences as minor as walking a dog without a lead. Offences punished last year also included false advertising and violating drug safety rules, said China’s National Public Credit Information Centre. It gave no details of how many people live in areas with social credit systems. [..] The ruling party is spending heavily to roll out facial recognition systems, and human rights activists say people in Muslim and other areas with high ethnic minority populations have been compelled to give blood samples for a genetic database. Those systems rely heavily on foreign technology, which has prompted criticism of US and European suppliers for enabling human rights abuses.

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