Edvard Munch Separation 1894
Goofball
https://twitter.com/i/status/1785006072844964021
Nap Jan 6
"There will be a trial because only a jury, not a judge can decide facts in a case."
Judge Andrew Napolitano analyzes the latest developments regarding Trump's presidential immunity claims in the Jan. 6th case. @Judgenap @CarlHigbie pic.twitter.com/uHNQVGSe1A
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) April 29, 2024
Mike Davis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1785467744114073939
Eva
https://twitter.com/i/status/1785434550346346708
Elon Letterman 2009
On this day in 2009: Elon Musk discusses electric vehicles with David Letterman.pic.twitter.com/OLWw1bxaIc
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) April 29, 2024
Cramer Musk China
Jim Cramer on Elon Musk: "Here he is doing something no American CEO can do. Just get on a plane & make a deal with a leader of a country that our Gov isn't fond of; Plenty of ppl shorted the stock. They failed. The stock can keep running until the shorts are all crushed." pic.twitter.com/CBHDULcdsY
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) April 29, 2024
“That said, Merchan is allowing Trump to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation on May 17..”
• Trump Held in Contempt With Fine, Jail Threat For Violating Gag Order (ZH)
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has held Donald Trump in contempt of court for ‘repeatedly violating’ a gag order in his so-called hush money trial in New York. According to Merchan, Trump violated the gag order nine times in online posts which targeted jurors or likely witnesses in the trial. The former president was fined the maximum of $1,000 per violation, or $9,000 – and was ordered to remove all of the offending posts by 2:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday. What’s more, Merchan threatened to toss Trump in jail if he willfully violates court orders again. “Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” wrote Merchan in his ruling, CNBC reports. Merchan read the order aloud before the trial resumed with more testimony from a banker who worked with the former president’s lawyer on a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
That payment is at the heart of Manhattan prosecutors’ case accusing Trump of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election. Gary Farro, a former senior managing director at First Republic bank, took the stand Friday and continued testifying Tuesday. On his way into the courtroom, Trump repeated his call for Merchan to both recuse himself from the case and dismiss it entirely. -CNBC. “The judge should terminate the case because they have no case,” said Trump in response, adding that he’s been unable to campaign for president because he’s stuck in court. That said, Merchan is allowing Trump to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation on May 17. The historic trial began last week, which has included testimony from former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, as well as Trump’s longtime personal secretary, Rhona Graff.
Pecker testified to his efforts to “catch and kill” stories that could be damaging to Trump – including one instance in which his company American Media paying $30,000 for the rights to a former Trump Tower doorman’s story about Trump having a secret love child – though Pecker believes the story is untrue. The company also inked a $150,000 deal with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had an extramarital affair with Trump, according to Pecker. Pecker said he did not pay to silence Daniels, who claims she had sex with Trump. As the Epoch Times notes further, Court was resuming Tuesday with Gary Farro, a banker who helped President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen open accounts, including one that Mr. Cohen used to send a payment to adult film performer Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. She alleged a 2006 affair with President Trump, which he denies.
“In Bragg’s case, what they’re trying to do is add one and one and come up with 11..”
• There Is No Crime”: Dershowitz Says Bragg’s Case Against Trump Will Fail (ET)
Retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said on April 28 that he believes that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump could fail because prosecutors have charged the former president with fake crimes. “There is no crime,” Mr. Dershowitz said during an interview on Fox News on April 28, referring to the case in which Mr. Bragg’s office has charged the former president with 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide so-called hush money payments that prosecutors allege amounted to a criminal conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Dershowitz argued that making nondisclosure payments is not a crime and that neither is paying for the non-publication of potentially embarrassing stories (the so-called catch-and-kill dimension of the case), both of which prosecutors have alleged were part of a conspiracy to sway voters.
The retired law professor argued that Mr. Bragg’s office is in danger of having the case thrown out on grounds similar to those on which the conviction of Harvey Weinstein was recently overturned, namely that prosecutors prejudiced the case by a number of “egregious” improper rulings, including allowing testimony that was unrelated to what Mr. Weinstein was charged with. “They ought to be very careful about this because the Supreme Court of the Appellate Court in Albany just reversed Harvey Weinstein’s conviction on the ground that they put in too much information that wasn’t really relevant to the case,” Mr. Dershowitz said, adding that this is “what’s happening” in the trial against President Trump. “There is no crime in Manhattan. You cannot figure out what the crime is. That’s why they’re putting on all this evidence of non-crimes,” Mr. Dershowitz said.
“Trying to persuade the jury that ‘catch-and-kill’ is a crime—it’s not. Paying hush money is a crime—it’s not. Putting a corporate statement is a misdemeanor barred by the statute of limitations. You can’t suddenly resurrect that and turn that into a crime by invoking a federal statute which the federal government refused to invoke—the Federal Election Commission refused to invoke.” The former Harvard law professor has repeatedly criticized Mr. Bragg for elevating the charges against President Trump from misdemeanors to felonies on what Mr. Dershowitz has argued was an invalid legal premise because the Manhattan district attorney invoked federal statutes over which New York has no jurisdiction. Republicans have accused Mr. Bragg of bringing the case against the former president for political reasons.
[..] Under New York state law, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. However, if the records fraud was used to cover up or commit another crime, the charge could be elevated to a felony, though a number of legal experts—including Mr. Dershowitz—have challenged the way that has been done in this case. “In order to turn the state statute into a felony, you have to borrow a federal statute,” Mr. Dershowitz told The Epoch Times in March 2023. He said that this combining of laws “seems to raise real serious legal questions.” “In Bragg’s case, what they’re trying to do is add one and one and come up with 11,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “No rational person would look at these two statutes and say that Trump violated them.”
“The Gag Order imposed on me, a political candidate running for the highest office in the land, is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL! Nothing like this has ever happened before..”
• Trump Fined For Breaching Gag Order (RT)
Former US President Donald Trump has been ordered to pay $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order imposed by the judge overseeing his ‘hush money’ trial in New York. Trump was threatened with jail if he continues to breach the order. At a hearing in Manhattan on Tuesday, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump $1,000 for nine separate instances in which he violated the gag order. Merchan explained in his ruling that while a $1,000 fine ultimately matters little to a man of Trump’s wealth, he could not legally issue a larger fine. However, the judge added that he would consider whether “jail may be a necessary punishment” if Trump continues to break the order in future. Trump is currently on trial for allegedly misreporting ‘hush-money’ payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Since last month, Merchan has forbidden him from making public statements about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg or the jurors working on the case, and from uttering anything that could interfere with the work of the court. Nevertheless, Trump has spoken to the media outside the courthouse every day since the trial began earlier this month. In these appearances and in posts on his Truth Social platform, the former president has denounced the “sham case” against him, often quoting conservative pundits and journalists in an apparent bid to skirt the gag order. “The Gag Order imposed on me, a political candidate running for the highest office in the land, is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL! Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Trump wrote last week. “The Conflicted Judge’s friends and party members can say whatever they want about me, but I am not allowed to respond.”
Trump’s lawyers have argued that Merchan’s connections to the Democratic Party – his daughter owns a consulting firm that creates fundraising campaigns for Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden – make him unsuitable to judge the case. However, Merchan has refused multiple requests to recuse himself, saying that Trump has “failed to provide” evidence of a conflict of interest. In addition to the ‘hush money’ trial, Trump is also facing two federal criminal cases concerning his alleged incitement of the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill and his alleged mishandling of classified documents, as well as a state-level racketeering case in Georgia concerning his alleged efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge Biden in November’s presidential election. Despite the ongoing trial effectively halting his campaign in its tracks, a CNN poll published on Sunday showed him leading Biden by a 49%-43% margin, with six in ten respondents disapproving of Biden’s performance as president.
“..we live in a country today where most people readily admit that the CIA probably killed the president. Amazing.”
• Does the CIA Run America? (Jeffrey Tucker)
[..] let’s not dismiss the theory completely. Based on a New York Times (NYT) piece that appeared last week, it contains more than a grain of truth. The article is titled: “Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course.” Quote: “Even as president, Donald J. Trump flaunted his animosity for intelligence officials, portraying them as part of a politicized ‘deep state’ out to get him. And since he left office, that distrust has grown into outright hostility, with potentially serious implications for national security should he be elected again.” Ok, let’s be clear. If the intelligence community led by the CIA is not the “deep state,” what is? Further, it is proven many times over that the Deep State is in fact out to get him. This is not even controversial. Indeed, there is no reason for these journalists to write the above as if Donald Trump is somehow consumed by some kind of baseless paranoia.
Let’s keep going here: “Trump is now on a possible collision course with the intelligence community …. The result is a complicated and possibly destabilizing situation the United States has never seen before: deep-seated suspicion and disdain on the part of a former and perhaps future president toward the very people he would be relying on for the most sensitive information he would need to perform his role if elected again.” Wait just a moment. You are telling us that all previous presidents have had a happy relationship with the CIA? That’s rather interesting to know. And deeply troubling too, since the CIA has been managing regime change the world over for a very long time, and is now directly involved in U.S. politics at the most intimate level. Any president worth his salt should absolutely have a hostile relationship with such an agency, if only to establish clear civilian control over the government, without which it’s not possible to say that we live in a Constitutional republic.
And now, according to the NYT, we have one seeking the Presidency who does not defer to the agency and that this is destabilizing and deeply problematic. Who does that suggest really rules this country? Is the NYT itself guilty of the most extreme conspiracy theory imaginable, or is it just stating facts as we know them? I’m going to guess that it is the latter. In this case, every single American should be deeply alarmed.Crazy huh? As for the phrase “never seen before,” we have to push back. What about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Calvin Coolidge? They were all previous presidents, according to the history books that people once read. There was no CIA back then. If you doubt this, I’m pretty sure that your favorite AI engine will confirm it. One must suppose that when the NYT says “never seen before,” it means in the post-war period. And that very well might be true. John F. Kennedy defied them. We know that for certain.
The mysteries surrounding his murder won’t be solved fully until we get the documents. But the consensus is growing that this murder was really a coup by the CIA, a message sent as a lesson to every successor in that office. Think of that: we live in a country today where most people readily admit that the CIA probably killed the president. Amazing. [..] Have you considered that maybe the crackpots are exactly right? If so, shouldn’t we, at bare minimum, seek to support a Presidential candidate with a hostile relationship to the intelligence community? Indeed, that ought to be a bare minimum standard of qualification. There is simply no way we can restore civilian control of government and constitutional government until this agency can be thoroughly reigned in or abolished completely.
“.. the party has announced two dozen slogans for May Day..”
“The vote for the Communist Party candidate for president, Nikolai Kharitonin, in the March election was just 4.37% — the lowest level ever reached. ”
• MAY DAY! MAY DAY! Celebration For Russia, Not A Stress Test (Helmer)
Every spring, when it’s certain no more snow will fall on Moscow, it helps to remember what the celebration stands for, and look forward with hope. Hope doesn’t come cheaply. In English and many other languages including Latin, May Day meant the return of fecundity, flowers, food harvests, and so hopefulness after winter, with entertainment from the randiest, cleverest, and silliest of the field creatures, the hare and the goat. Mayday! Mayday! That started in 1927 as an internationally recognized distress call put out on radio, which had nothing to do with the month of May. It started in French – m’aidez! “Help me!” That replaced the Morse code for SOS (“Save our Ship”) which was first adopted internationally in 1905. Mayday!, the radio call for help, was needed when radio replaced the telegraph and a speaking voice was required instead of taps and pips.
These days it’s the traditional left wing, based on workers’ movements, which need help. In France they have been superseded by spontaneous mobilizations, like the gilets jaunes, but they are failing against the Macron presidency; Keir Starmer’s British Labour Party is already a failure of the left before it defeats the Tories. There are leftwing movements in Germany and the US, but it is unlikely that such splinters can achieve more than splinters can – that’s pinpricks. Altogether, this left contributes next to nothing to the defeat of their governments, arms, and armies on the Ukrainian and Middle Eastern battlefields compared to the Russian Army and the Axis of Resistance. In Russia, the party of Marx and Engels has one leader embalmed and horizontal in Red Square; and a stone’s throw away in the State Duma, the current leader, Gennady Zyuganov, embalmed and vertical. The vote for the Communist Party candidate for president, Nikolai Kharitonin, in the March election was just 4.37% — the lowest level ever reached.
For this year’s May Day, the Communist Party has published no analysis of the current situation in Russia or party programme. Instead, it has called for a rally at the Karl Marx statue in front of the Bolshoi Theatre. In addition, the party has announced two dozen slogans for May Day. These include: “Long live the red May Day!”, “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”, “A job! Salary! Confidence in the future!”, “No increase in prices and tariffs!”, “Affordable housing for a young family!”, and “Scholarships at the minimum wage level!” The alternative leftwing Russian leaders, Sergei Glazyev and Mikhail Delyagin, have published nothing for May Day. Without mentioning May Day, Vzglyad, the semi-official platform for national security and economic analysis, has issued a report on a new government planning document setting out three scenarios for Russia’s economic future. The author is Vzglyad’s economics reporter, Olga Samofalova.
“..to criticize Israel is anti-Semitic. That is the “enabling slur” of today’s assault on academic freedom.”
• “Have You No Sense of Decency?” (Michael Hudson)
The recent Congressional hearings leading to a bloodbath of university presidents brings back memories from my teen-age years in the 1950s when everyone’s eyes were glued to the TV broadcast of the McCarthy hearings. And the student revolts incited by vicious college presidents trying to stifle academic freedom when it opposes foreign unjust wars awakens memories of the 1960s protests against the Vietnam War and the campus clampdowns confronting police violence. I was the junior member of the “Columbia three” alongside Seymour Melman and my mentor Terence McCarthy (both of whom taught at Columbia’s Seeley Mudd School of Industrial Engineering; my job was mainly to handle publicity and publication). At the end of that decade, students occupied my office and all others at the New School’s graduate faculty in New York City – very peacefully, without disturbing any of my books and papers.
Only the epithets have changed. The invective “Communist” has been replaced by “anti-Semite,” and the renewal of police violence on campus has not yet led to a Kent State-style rifle barrage against protesters. But the common denominators are all here once again. A concerted effort has been organized to condemn and even to punish today’s nationwide student uprisings against the genocide occurring in Gaza and the West Bank. Just as the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) aimed to end the careers of progressive actors, directors, professors and State Department officials unsympathetic to Chiang Kai-Shek or sympathetic to the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1975, today’s version aims at ending what remains of academic freedom in the United States.
The epithet of “communism” from 75 years ago has been updated to “anti-Semitism.” Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin has been replaced by Elise Stefanik, House Republican from upstate New York, and Senator “Scoop” Jackson upgraded to President Joe Biden. Harvard University President Claudine Gay (now forced to resign), former University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill (also given the boot), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth were called upon to abase themselves by promising to accuse peace advocates critical of U.S. foreign policy of anti-Semitism.
The most recent victim was Columbia’s president Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, a cosmopolitan opportunist with trilateral citizenship who enforced neoliberal economic policy as a high-ranking official at the IMF (where she was no stranger to the violence of “IMF riots) and the World Bank, and who brought her lawyers along to help her acquiesce in the Congressional Committee’s demands. She did that and more, all on her own. Despite being told not to by the faculty and student affairs committees, she called in the police to arrest peaceful demonstrators. This radical trespass of police violence against peaceful demonstrators (the police themselves attested to their peacefulness) triggered sympathetic revolts throughout the United States, met with even more violent police responses at Emory College in Atlanta and California State Polytechnic, where cell phone videos were quickly posted on various media platforms.
Just as intellectual freedom and free speech were attacked by HUAC 75 years ago, academic freedom is now under attack at these universities. The police have trespassed onto school grounds to accuse students themselves of trespassing, with violence reminiscent of the demonstrations that peaked in May 1970 when the Ohio National Guard shot Kent State students singing and speaking out against America’s war in Vietnam. Today’s demonstrations are in opposition to the Biden-Netanyahu genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. The more underlying crisis can be boiled down to the insistence by Benjamin Netanyahu that to criticize Israel is anti-Semitic. That is the “enabling slur” of today’s assault on academic freedom.
By “Israel,” Biden and Netanyahu mean specifically the right-wing Likud Party and its theocratic supporters aiming to create “a land without a [non-Jewish] people.” They assert that Jews owe their loyalty not to their current nationality (or humanity) but to Israel and its policy of driving the Gaza Strip’s millions of Palestinians into the sea by bombing them out of their homes, hospitals and refugee camps. The implication is that to support the International Court of Justice’s accusations that Israel is plausibly committing genocide is an anti-Semitic act. Supporting the UN resolutions vetoed by the United States is anti-Semitic. The claim is that Israel is defending itself and that protesting the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank frightens Jewish students. But research by students at Columbia’s School of Journalism found that the complaints cited by the New York Times and other pro-Israeli media were made by non-students trying to spread the story that Israel’s violence was in self-defense.
“..this hideous practice on the part of the Ukrainian authorities also unmistakably exhibits the legal elements of ethnic cleansing..”
• The Kiev Regime Must Not Get Away With It (Karganovic)
The neo-Nazi regime in Kiev engages in an unperceived, generously glossed over but extremely grave violation of humanitarian principles. It is one of many breaches in that regard, of course. But it must be held to account for this and ultimately for every single one. In the zone the regime still controls in Ukraine, as Russian troops advance the neo-Nazi junta compels the local population to abandon its habitations and to withdraw alongside the retreating Ukrainian armed forces. Since generally that occurs in predominantly ethnically Russian areas, the reluctance of the population to withdraw with what it regards as occupation troops is understandable. For that reason, this hideous practice on the part of the Ukrainian authorities also unmistakably exhibits the legal elements of ethnic cleansing. The political objective behind these compulsory population movements is to project the propaganda illusion that the civilian population in Ukraine are averse to the arrival of Russian forces and would prefer to live under Kiev regime rule.
Reports of forced deportation of local residents are plentiful (also see here, here, and here). A quick search of the internet will yield much additional evidence. Western governments and “human rights monitors” have remained utterly silent about this egregious conduct, which in the past they would have denounced vociferously whenever the perpetrators could be presented as actors hostile to the collective West’s political interests. In the present case, however, the perpetrators happen to be their Ukrainian proxies, recently rewarded with another tranche of multibillion dollar largesse. Hence the studious silence of the Western governments and media. The enablers are loath to publicise their vassals’ transgressions. What does international humanitarian law have to say about the forced displacement of civilians during armed conflict? Individual or mass deportations are prohibited, regardless of their motive, by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Art. 49).
Deportation refers to the forced transfer of civilians (or other persons protected by the Geneva Conventions) from the territory where they reside to the territory of the occupying power or to any other territory, whether occupied or not. Such acts are prosecutable according to the universal jurisdiction principle (Geneva Convention IV on Civilians, Art. 147). They can also be constitutive elements of crimes such as ethnic cleansing and genocide. There is a degree of ambiguity in the scope and application of the norm, which in Article 49 holds that “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.” The presence of the related concept of “population transfer” further complicates the legal analysis because it seems to describe a forced movement of the population which takes place within the national territory and thus, perhaps, under the direction of the domestic authorities.
“..It is not accurate to say everyone in the Republican Party is a conspiracy theorist but as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.”
• “All of the Conspiracy Theorists are Republicans.” (Turley)
There has been a notable shift toward more and more extreme rhetoric in the media from predicting that democracy will end with this election to “disappearing” journalists and gays to ending all rights for everyone. On Monday, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace added to this litany with a claim that “as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.” After discussing how GOP candidates have stated that they believe that the last election was “stolen,” Wallace added “It is not accurate to say everyone in the Republican Party is a conspiracy theorist but as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.” It was a crushingly ironic moment. Wallace has been repeatedly criticized for spreading false news. For example, the “Deadline: White House” host told viewers that they should not take the Hunter Biden laptop seriously: “We shouldn’t look at it as anything other than a Russian disinformation operation.”
Wallace heralded the Mueller investigation while pushing the now debunked Russian collusion claims. However, on the Durham investigation, she told viewers that they could ignore it despite the fact that the report stands uncontradicted: “Durham’s whole thing is predicated on it’s like a rabbit hole conspiracy that suggests that the Trump-Barr paranoia infected his ability to stand back and evaluate whether the probe yielded guilty convictions of people who would have had nothing to do with any of these questions he looked at.” Wallace and MSNBC also pushed false claims about Bill Barr clearing Lafayette Park for a Trump “photo op.” On August 5th, 2019, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace falsely claimed that Trump had talked about “exterminating Latinos.”
Wallace and MSNBC pushed the false story of border agents whipping migrants in Texas. Wallace claimed that the lab theory of the Covid 19 was a “conspiracy theory.” It has been embraced by various federal agencies despite being called racist by many experts. Many on the left now routinely call opposing views as spreaders of disinformation or conspiracy theories. The Biden Administration has funded various groups to blacklist or bar those with opposing views as disinformation, malinformation, or misinformation. Indeed, new groups are being formed before the election to echo these claims, including one headed by the former “Disinformation Czar.”
Interesting man.
• Russia Defends Traditional Values The West Is Abandoning – Dugin to Carlson (RT)
The ever-growing anti-Russia sentiment in the West stems from the fact that Russia adheres to traditional values that Western “progressives” are trying to destroy, philosopher and political commentator Aleksandr Dugin said in an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson that was posted on the latter’s YouTube channel on Monday. During the interview, Dugin laid out his view of the contemporary Western world and what he sees as the historical origins of its current ideology. He explained that the West has moved from “classical liberalism” – which professed individual freedom and democracy as understood as the rule of the majority – to a “new liberalism” defined by the rule of minorities and woke-ism. Rather than emphasizing freedom of the individual, the new incarnation of liberalism prescribes adherence to certain progressive values that are completely at odds with traditional values and in fact seeks to abolish them.
Carlson asked Dugin why many Westerners, even those who previously supported the Soviet Union, turned against Russia when President Vladimir Putin came to power in the early 2000s and started professing Russophobic ideas. The philosopher said that “Putin is a traditional leader” who defends traditional values, which run counter to those currently in vogue in the West. “When [Putin] came to power, from the very beginning, he started to extract Russia from global influence. He started to contradict the global progressive agenda… tried with success to restore traditional values – sovereignty of the state, Christianity, traditional family,” he said, explaining that Western progressives saw these developments as being in opposition to their values. This hatred is not something casual… it’s metaphysical. If your main task and main goal is to destroy traditional values – traditional family, traditional state, traditional relations, traditional beliefs – and someone with a nuclear weapon… stands strong defending traditional values you are going to abolish – they have some basis for this Russophobia and hatred for Putin.
In 2022, Dugin’s daughter Darya was killed in a car bombing in Moscow, which the Russian authorities claim was orchestrated by Ukrainian agents, a version also expressed by the US government. Darya, a journalist and political activist in her own right, was a vocal supporter of Russia’s military operation against Kiev. Russophobic sentiment has been growing exponentially in light of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the outbreak of which in 2022 the West has blamed squarely on Russia. NATO has branded Russia the “most significant and direct threat” to its members’ peace and security, and many Western leaders have claimed that Moscow would attack Europe if it secures victory in Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly said it has no such plans, with Putin last month dismissing such claims as “nonsense.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week called such ideas “horror stories” made up to divert attention from domestic problems in the West.
“We’re talking about 11 contracts, 4.6 billion vaccines, and €71 billion of public money transferred to Big Pharma.”
• Pfizergate: Ursula von der Leyen’s Shady Covid Vaccine Deals (Marsden)
Forget this whole “election” charade and just glue the crown onto her head, already.Ursula von der Leyen, the unelected European Commission President, is up for job renewal in June. She’d have to be re-nominated by the majority of EU member state leaders and then re-confirmed by members of the newly-elected European Parliament. They’d have to be crazy to dethrone this ultimate incarnation of true EU values, like transparency and foresight (or rather, lack thereof). One particular tale about Queen Ursula comes to mind that perfectly illustrates the point.
During Covid, the European Union rolled out a bloc-wide QR code system as proof of vaccination for travel, leisure, and in some cases a condition of employment – even as reports started raising doubts about how reliable the shot really was when it came to stopping infection, transmission, and death. It’s like there was this interest in Brussels to move fast in getting shots into arms as quickly as possible, and setting up this digital identity system linked to jab status before the scary music stopped or people just tuned it out. Skeptical members of the European Parliament have been demanding to know what kind of deal the bloc’s leadership actually signed with the manufacturers of these injections. We’re talking about 11 contracts, 4.6 billion vaccines, and €71 billion of public money transferred to Big Pharma.
So far, neither the citizens who paid for all of it, nor their elected representatives have been able to get full transparency on those deals. According to research published last year by the French NGO Global Health Advocates, and the UK based health nonprofit, StopAids, the European Commission “agreed to extensive confidentiality requirements with pharmaceutical corporations that may not be fully consistent with EU legislation,” and that of the contracts analyzed with AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna, “the Pfizer contract was the most significantly redacted.” Specifically, they noted that the European Commission “redacted the most information about product safety and indemnification in the Pfizer and Moderna contract,” concluding that “it looks like most of the risk was borne by the EU in a desperate attempt to get access to these vaccines.”
The reports also draw attention to the lack of interest on the part of certain Big Pharma CEOs when it comes to accountability towards their customers – their end-clients who received and ultimately paid for the jabs: average EU citizens. “We provided Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna the opportunity to react to the claims… but we did not receive a response,” the NGOs said. It turns out that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is also the same person who was exchanging private text messages with von der Leyen the month before the Pfizer contract was negotiated. How do we know that? Because she said so herself in April of 2021 in a New York Times interview. While she was busy doing that, questions arose over how German defense contracts were being awarded. Politico reported on it in 2019, citing the increased use of consultants during her time in office, and she ultimately copped to “mistakes” having been made. Nor would they be the last of their kind, apparently.
“Everything has gone haywire in the White House,” Zakharova said.”
• US Politicians ‘Living In Wonderland’ – Moscow (RT)
US calls for Russia to hold talks on ending the Ukraine conflict seem detached from reality and ignore Moscow’s previous attempts to reach a settlement, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted on Monday that Moscow’s alleged plans “to erase Ukraine from the map… failed.” He added that he hopes Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken note of Western support for Ukraine, “gets the message, and demonstrates a willingness to genuinely negotiate consistent with the basic principles… of the international community and the UN Charter: sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence.” Responding to Blinken’s remarks later that day, Zakharova said American politicians seem to live in a “wonderland.”
She recalled that in 2014 and 2015, Russia “showed respect for international law” by promoting the now-defunct Minsk agreements, which sought to end the bloodshed in the region by giving the two Donbass republics special status within the Ukrainian state. Moscow has claimed that Kiev and Western countries never intended to implement the deal in the first place. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and ex-French President Francois Hollande have admitted that the primary purpose of the agreements was to help Kiev buy time to build a stronger military force. Zakharova also noted that Moscow was ready to engage in peace talks in 2022. At the time, negotiations in Istanbul, Türkiye initially made headway, but later collapsed after what Russia claims was interference by then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who allegedly advised Kiev to keep fighting. Johnson has denied the accusation.
The spokeswoman stated that Blinken himself had proposed settling the conflict “based not on international law,” but on the ‘peace formula’ proposed by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which demands that Russia withdraw all troops from the territory Kiev claims as its own and includes several other clauses that Moscow has rejected as unacceptable. “Everything has gone haywire in the White House,” Zakharova said. Moscow maintains that it is open to talks with Ukraine. However, Zelensky signed a decree in autumn 2022 barring negotiations with the current leadership in Moscow. The move came after four former Ukrainian regions voted overwhelmingly to join Russia.
“There is a straight line between this relentless, politically motivated fear-mongering and the thought that Fascism in some American incarnation is hard upon us..”
• This Isn’t Fascism (Patrick Lawrence)
On April 19, just as a court in Lower Manhattan finished selecting a jury to hear the farcical “hush money” case against Donald Trump, a 37-year-old Floridian named Max Azzarello set himself ablaze across the street from the courthouse. Azzarello, by subsequent accounts, was a peaceable man, an agreeable neighbor, and was much taken up with questions of social justice. He was also no slouch on the academic side: Azzarello had a degree in anthropology from the University of North Carolina and a master’s in urban planning from Rutgers. To go by the mainstream press reports, Azzarello seems to have lost it somewhat after his mother died two years ago this month. But it is not anyone’s place, other than those close to him, to go any more deeply, or even this far, into the man’s psychiatric profile. Max Azzarello did have something to say to the rest of us as he stood in the park across from the Center Street Courthouse, however.
Just before setting himself ablaze, he held up a placard that read, in all caps, “TRUMP IS WITH BIDEN AND THEY’RE ABOUT TO FASCIST COUP US.” We ought to pay attention to this. An apparently capable man, by all accounts a compassionate man, died dreading an imminent Fascist takeover in America. This makes me very angry. To go straight to my point: A human life is wasted in consequence of a ridiculous, paranoiac idea that has for some time circulated among us either out of foolishness or for the most cynical of political motives. I was very sad to learn of Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation before the Israeli Embassy in Washington on February 25. I was sad to read of Max Azzarello’s final act, too, but in a different way. Bushnell died for “what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers,” as he put it in his final moments. An Air Force enlistee, Bushnell declared he could “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His last words were “Free Palestine!” One would rather Bushnell were still with us, but his was an honorable death.
Azzarello died in a state of confusion and delusion, and I draw this conclusion from the message on his placard. His death honored no one. I will go so far as to say there are many among us who dishonorably bear responsibility for it. Readers of this column may have noted over the months that I am a stickler for nomenclature. To name things properly is essential to our understanding. It enables us to act, if we are so inclined, because we are clear in our minds as to what is to be done. To name things improperly causes all kinds of problems. It leaves us confused and deluded, as in the case of Max Azzarello. It can paralyze us. Or if we choose to act, we are likely to act wrongly. As in the case of Max Azzarello. There are so many misnomers abroad among us, amid the panic on our sinking ship, one sometimes grows weary of language altogether. Russia is an aggressor, China is an imperialist power, Israel is a democracy, and so on through the Orwellian lexicon: War is peace, etc.
On the domestic side, the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol were an attempted coup. Or an insurrection. We have Donald Trump is a tyrant. We have Donald Trump is a dictator — “King Trump,” I am now reading in The New York Times. And we have it that America, as per the late Max Azzarello and countless other like him, is on the eve of a Fascist takeover. Much of this, let’s call it the pollution of public discourse, comes from the liberal authoritarians. Rachel Maddow, to take one of the more pitiful cases, wants us to think Trump the dictator will end elections, destroy the courts, and render the Congress powerless. The MSNBC commentator has actually said these things on air. One-man rule is the theme, if you listen to the Rachel Maddows. The evident intent is to cast Donald Trump in the most fearsome light possible, as it becomes clear Trump could well defeat President Biden at the polls come Nov. 5. We can mark this stuff down to crude politicking in an election year, surely. There is nothing new in it. But this is not the point.
There is a straight line between this relentless, politically motivated fear-mongering and the thought that Fascism in some American incarnation is hard upon us — a straight line, this is to say, from our Rachel Maddows to the self-immolation of Max Azzarello. This is the point.
Muscle cars.
• Cars Used to Make Us Happy (Paul Craig Roberts)
I attended a classic car show recently and realized why my generation was so happy compared to the current ones. Cars in those days were beautiful and the muscle car element had glorious sounds. Beginning in 1954 but especially with the advent of the 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air coup and Ford Fairlane coup you were looking at beauty enhanced by two-tone paint jobs. Some were a combination of pastels. Others were combinations of strong colors–red and black, yellow and black, red and white, and some were a combination of a strong color and a pastel–navy blue and French blue, pink and black. In 1955 Chevrolet brought back the V-8 for its cars, and it was a performer. A stock ’55 Chevy V-8 was a match for our souped up 1950 Ford flatheads. What you could do to that 55 Chevy V-8 was something else. So many of the cars, not only Chevrolets and Fords, but also Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Dodges had beautiful two-tone paint jobs and delightful styling. The cars also offered wonderful visibility. You could see where you were going, backing up, and what was on either side.
For us what constituted safety was visibility, good brakes, and maneuverability. The mid to late 60s into 1972-73 was the muscle car era. The cars had appealing design as they were designed by designers and not by safety bureaucrats. Some of the colors were outrageous–plum crazy purple, bright lime green, triple black, orange. Such outstanding colors usually indicated potent performance. How fast were the muscle cars of a half century ago? Very. Plymouth Barracudas, Superbirds, Dusters, Roadrunners, Dodge Daytonas, Chargers, Ford Torinos, Oldsmobile Cutlasses, 442s, Pontaic GTOs, Firebirds, Chevrolet Chevelles, Cameros could compete in quarter mile times with the supercar of the era, a Lamborghini Miura S (1970). The muscle cars would leave in the dust James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, Ferrari’s 250 GT Lusso, and even beat fast cars from 20 and 30 years later such as the Lotus Esprit Turbo (1988) and Subaru’s 2001 WRX.
Moreover, a muscle car could be souped up to high heaven. Some of them run 9 and 10 second quarter mile times, which beats the entire range of today’s supercars, such as Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Corvettes, and Shelby Mustangs. Not many of the souped up muscle cars from a half century ago can beat the present day Dodge Demon, but they can run with it. The thing about muscle cars is that they were so fast that you didn’t need to soup them up like you did a 1950s Ford flathead or a 55 Chevy. Muscle cars date from the days of 30 cents per gallon gasoline, and in those days it was 100 octane. The combination of low purchase cost (a Plymouth Barracuda with a Hemi engine cost $4,000), operating cost, style, and performance made them a deal that no longer exists. Today’s cars are loaded down with electronics and “safety” that you don’t need and that is difficult to live with and costly. If the tire pressure in my safe car drops from 32 to 31 on come warning lights and notices on my screen.
You have to go through a pointless exercise and then spend half an hour figuring out how to turn off the warning indicators. Moreover, the accepted safety style comes from federal safety bureaucrats. Consequently, unless you can see the Mercedes star, you can’t tell one from a Toyota. Today all cars look alike. And you have 4 color choices–white, black, gray, and a dark red. Mopar performance cars, Corvettes, and performance Mustangs are bringing back striking colors and their performance products have a striking appearance. They certainly get your attention, but they are not beautiful. At a large car show cars from the past and present will be on display. The older cars are beautiful. The new ones are aggressive and heavy in appearance. They don’t inspire. They drive well but they don’t make you happy. They look brutish, like American foreign policy. In my teenage years driving down a road was like driving along a rainbow. Colors everywhere. Distinctive styles with no possibility of confusing one make with another, glorious sounds if a muscle car passed you, and wonderful visibility.
All of this ended when the fools up high decided to make us safe. One of the consequences has been that we can’t see out of our cars. My safety designer car has great forward vision unless I turn left down hill. Then the massive pillar that makes me safe blocks all vision. There could be a dog, a child, a huge pothole in the road and I am unable to see it. Rear vision depends on cameras, but they are useless when you are backing out of a parking slot in a shopping center. You can see behind you but not on your side as the enormous pillar blocks all vision. When the massive trucks of today are parked along side of you, it is a game of Russian Roulette to back out. The emphasis on safety has homogenized car design. There is no distinction, and there are no shapes that work with two-tone paint. The modern car world is drab, and drabness produces depression. Thus, the cost of our bureaucratic imposed safety is depression. We are mired in sameness and brutal shapes. When did you last see a happy American?
Change of guard
Change of guard on India-Pakistan border.pic.twitter.com/rGYFD7i3KA
— Figen (@TheFigen_) April 30, 2024
Bukele bribery
Remarkable video from El Salvador.
Nayib Bukele gathers every single official in the executive branch of his government and then announces a surprise.
He asks the Attorney General to investigate all of them for bribery.pic.twitter.com/7s3y4R6Bwv
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) April 30, 2024
Dog trust
https://twitter.com/i/status/1785120887844266358
Cowswim
I didn't know cows could swim like that!?! pic.twitter.com/9adwY72zAV
— Déborah (@dvorahfr) April 29, 2024
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