May 052023
 


Mark Chagall Peace window, UN 1967

 

Beijing Ready To Settle Ukrainian Crisis Jointly With Russia – FM (TASS)
Pepe Escobar: US Outmatched by Russia, China (Sputnik)
The Worst Kind Of Peace Is Better Than Any War – Exiled Ukraine Dissident (RT)
Washington Responsible For Attack On Kremlin – Moscow (RT)
US Has Nothing To Do With Attack On Kremlin – White House (TASS)
West Has Fueled ‘Sense Of Impunity’ In Kiev – Zakharova (RT)
Ukraine Helpless Against Russian Smart Bombs – Official (RT)
Zelensky Calls For Creation Of International Tribunal Against Russia (TASS)
West’s Attempts To Revive Neo-nazi Ideology Lead To Global Catastrophe (TASS)
Putin Compares Russian And Western Debt (RT)
Oh Countrywide, Is That Your Ghost? (Denninger)
FBI File Ties Biden To ‘Criminal Scheme’ To Trade Money For Policy (WT)
The Polish ‘Zeitenwende’ Connection (Jorge Vilches)
Nord Stream Sabotage ‘Secret Teams’ Revealed (Ponton)
State Department Slams Assange On World Press Freedom Day (Gosztola)

 

 

 

 

Drew
https://twitter.com/i/status/1654300820114948099

 

 

 

100% of all regional banks in the United States had their stocks in the red May 4, for the first time ever. This comes a day after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the US banking system was stronger than ever.

 

 

Orban

 

 

 

 

Yeadon

 

 

 

 

China inserts itself step by step..

“We are ready to make a practical contribution into the political resolution of the Ukrainian crisis through contacts and coordination with Russia..”

Beijing Ready To Settle Ukrainian Crisis Jointly With Russia – FM (TASS)

During Thursday’s talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in India, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said the Chinese side was ready to make a practical contribution into the Ukrainian crisis settlement in cooperation with Russia, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Friday.”China will persistently assist and promote peace talks. We are ready to make a practical contribution into the political resolution of the Ukrainian crisis through contacts and coordination with Russia,” the ministry’s website quoted Qin Gang as saying. During the meeting, the top Chinese diplomat said ties between Beijing and Moscow had intensified after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Russia.


“China and Russia have been maintaining active contacts at all levels, promoting cooperation in all directions,” Qin Gang said. “China is ready <…> to intensify strategic contacts with Russia, to strengthen and deepen cooperation in all areas,” the diplomat added. Both sides have reaffirmed their intention to improve coordination within the framework of important international organizations and formats, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the Group of Twenty (G20) and the United Nations. Beijing and Moscow will jointly “resist all manifestations of hegemony, defend common interests of countries with emerging markets and developing nations, defend equality and justice in the world,” the minister said.

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“The Biden administration’s policy of simultaneously confronting both Russia and China is doomed to fail, Pepe Escobar, geopolitical analyst and veteran journalist, told Radio Sputnik’s New Rules podcast.”

Pepe Escobar: US Outmatched by Russia, China (Sputnik)

Under the Biden administration Washington’s relations with Moscow and Beijing hit a new low. Having snubbed Russia’s security draft proposals concerning NATO enlargement and Ukraine’s neutrality, the US ramped up military aid to the Kiev regime after the beginning of Moscow’s special military operation (SMO) to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine. The Biden administration not only slapped Russia with sanctions and derailed the March 2022 Istanbul preliminary peace accords between Moscow and Kiev but openly called for bleeding Russia white and imposing strategic defeat on the nation. Simultaneously, Washington resorted to a series of provocations against China over Taiwan, the island located at the junction of the East and South China Seas, which Beijing regards as an inalienable part of the People’s Republic.

House Speakers Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy met with Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen in what was seen by Beijing as a clear defiance of One China principle, while President Joe Biden issued repeated “gaffes” that the US is ready to “protect” the island militarily from the People’s Republic. Recently, the Pentagon has speeded up the provision of weapons to Taipei as the latter is bracing for the January 2024 presidential elections. Despite these provocative moves, the US military is not ready for a full-fledged confrontation with China, according to Escobar. “They won’t fight real wars,” the veteran journalist said. “And now they are even more freaked out because they know, for instance, if they try something in the South China Sea, the Chinese have the famous carrier killers all over the coast. So, if you have three or four American complexes navigate over there, they can be sunk in 30 minutes. And the Pentagon knows that, they gamed it.”

Likewise, Washington has failed to defeat Moscow either militarily or economically despite a set of unprecedented measures taken by the US, its NATO allies and partners against Russia. “Russia survived everything that the West threw against it after the start of the special military operation, especially the economic war, the financial war,” Escobar said. “And Russia survived and resisted. And now it’s even growing again with the 3% inflation, where we have nations in Europe with 10-20-30% inflation and floundering.” What’s more, the Biden administration’s provocations and bellicose rhetoric against Russia and China has served to push the two great powers closer together. In March, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a three-day visit to Moscow at the invitation of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Observers have drawn attention to the fact that Russia became the first foreign state visited by Xi after his historic reelection on March 10.

Commenting on the development, Chinese observers told Sputnik that Russia and China “have entered a new stage of comprehensive cooperation and strategic partnership.” That is how Team Biden has turned Brzezinski’s nightmare scenario of a “grand coalition” between Moscow and Beijing into reality. According to Escobar, Moscow has spent much of the past decade preparing for the West’s hybrid and financial war. Russian policy makers began game planning for a potential showdown shortly after a US-backed coup in Kiev usurped power in Ukraine. “If the SMO had been launched in 2014, Russia would not have been ready economically, financially and even militarily for it. Now they are. I’m sure that Elvira Nabiullina, at the Russian central bank, knew exactly what she did. This probably had been discussed for at least two years at the highest level at the Security Council level,” he said.

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“As a result of this tragedy, Ukraine has lost the attributes needed for statehood..”

The Worst Kind Of Peace Is Better Than Any War – Exiled Ukraine Dissident (RT)

In Kolomyia, a small town in Ukraine’s Western Ivano-Frankovsk Region, a court is hearing the case against Ruslan Kotsaba, who is accused of treason and crimes against the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, the defendant is not present, having fled to the US in August 2022. The details of the charges brought against the journalist are still unknown. An advisor to the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Markiyan Lubkivsky, has stated that documents which “may indicate” treason and espionage were seized during his arrest. However, they have not been made public. Meanwhile, Kotsaba insists he’s being persecuted for his pacifist views. Since 2014, he has been a war correspondent working on both sides of the front in Donbass. During Pyotr Poroshenko’s presidency, the authorities persecuted him for issuing calls to boycott conscription.

Meanwhile, Kotsaba was also often attacked by nationalists. Under Vladimir Zelensky, the crackdown has continued, and Amnesty International has recognized him as a prisoner of conscience. In a conversation with RT, Kotsaba discussed the internal conflicts tearing Ukrainian society apart, the possibilities for pacifism in the country, and its post-war future. RT: This year will mark the ten-year anniversary of the start of the Euromaidan [a series of violent Western-backed protests which overthrew the elected government]. You took an active part in those events as a journalist. How do you feel about them now? Ruslan Kotsaba: The Ukrainian language has two different words for positive and negative kinds of anniversaries. We call the anniversary of a positive event “rychnitsa,” and the anniversary of a bad one “rokovina.” The Euromaidan anniversary is doubtlessly a “rokovina.”

As a result of this tragedy, Ukraine has lost the attributes needed for statehood. The so-called “Revolution of Dignity” was just a political strategy. Millionaires wanted to become billionaires, and the rest of the people were just used as extras. In regard to the Maidan, we need to clearly separate the people on the stage from the people in front of the stage. The actors on the stage used political methods to spark mass hysteria. The crowd merely jumped up and down under the xenophobic slogans. The media empires of the oligarchs all worked to take down President Viktor Yanukovich. At the time, people believed that they could elect someone who would make things better. But in Ukraine, the power vertical has progressively deteriorated – every new politician is worse than his predecessor.

This whole political strategy was based on the belief that new people would come and things would improve. But as we can see now, it’s only getting worse. The strategy has exhausted itself. I hope we were its last guinea pigs. At first, the Maidan looked like a festival, but it all ended with mass killings. To this day, no one knows who is responsible for the deaths, why no one has been punished, and why the authorities ordered to cut down the trees that proved that the shots were fired from the building where the deputies of the [Ukrainian far-right] ‘Svoboda’ party were positioned.

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“.. it is important that the US “clearly understands” that Russia is aware of its involvement in Ukraine and “how dangerous such direct involvement is.”

Washington Responsible For Attack On Kremlin – Moscow (RT)

All of Kiev’s decisions are ultimately dictated by Washington, including which targets to hit and by what means, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed on Thursday. His comments came after two Ukrainian drones unsuccessfully attempted to strike the Kremlin in the early hours of Wednesday morning. “Such decisions – the definition of goals, the definition of means, and so on – all this is dictated to Kiev from Washington, and we are well aware of this,” Peskov told reporters. The spokesman for President Vladimir Putin dismissed attempts by US and Ukrainian officials to “disown” Wednesday’s attack as “laughable,” insisting that “we know full well that decisions to carry out such terrorist actions are made not in Kiev, but in Washington.”

Peskov asserted that it is important that the US “clearly understands” that Russia is aware of its involvement in Ukraine and “how dangerous such direct involvement is.” The spokesman said that Kiev’s attempted drone strike on the Kremlin is being thoroughly investigated, but did not provide estimates on when any conclusions would be officially announced. Peskov reiterated that Moscow reserves the right to respond to the attack with “a variety of steps.” Although declining to specify what those measures might be, the Kremlin official insisted they would be carefully considered and “in line with Russia’s interests.” Putin’s office reported on Wednesday that two Ukrainian UAVs had been disabled by air defenses while trying to strike the president’s Kremlin residence in Moscow in the early hours of the morning. Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time of the incident and no one was hurt, the statement added.

Russia described the failed drone strike as “a pre-planned terrorist act” and an attempt on Putin’s life perpetrated by Kiev. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has denied his country’s involvement in the attack, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Washington could not “in any way validate” Russia’s claims. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has also stated that the US is unable to confirm the “authenticity” of the incident. The Kremlin has vowed that Moscow will retaliate to the raid “anywhere and anytime it deems necessary,” while senior Russian lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin has called for the use of “weapons capable of stopping and destroying the Kiev terrorist regime.”

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You paid for it, provided the intelligence, but you have nothing to do with it?

“Moscow knows that Kiev chooses the means and targets for its strikes exactly as it’s told by Washington..”

US Has Nothing To Do With Attack On Kremlin – White House (TASS)

The US has nothing to do with the recent drone attack on the Kremlin, US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said on MSNBC television on Thursday. “We still don’t really know what happened,” he said, adding that Washington is still assessing the situation. Kirby said he had seen comments by Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday, which stated Washington was involved in the incident. “I can assure you that there was no involvement by the United States in this. Whatever it was did not involve us,” he said. “We had nothing to do with this.” In a separate interview with CNN, Kirby was asked if the US regarded Putin as a legitimate military target. “We don’t endorse, we do not encourage, we do not support attacks on individual leaders,” he replied.


The Russian presidential press service said earlier that Ukraine sent two drones overnight into Wednesday to attempt a strike on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence in the Kremlin. Russian military and security personnel promptly disabled them. Putin was unharmed and is carrying on with his work as usual. The Kremlin regards the incident as a premeditated terrorist attack and an assassination attempt on the head of state. Russia reserves the right to retaliate when and how it sees fit. Peskov said statements by Ukrainian and US officials that they weren’t involved in the drone attack on the Kremlin were laughable. Moscow knows that Kiev chooses the means and targets for its strikes exactly as it’s told by Washington, he said.

Kremlin roof

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“They destroyed the lawful government in Ukraine [in 2014], put crooks and bandits in charge, provided them with money and weapons, imbued them with a sense of absolute impunity and provided political cover and military support..”

West Has Fueled ‘Sense Of Impunity’ In Kiev – Zakharova (RT)

The US and its allies are ultimately responsible for the actions of the “Kiev regime,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed. “They destroyed the lawful government in Ukraine [in 2014], put crooks and bandits in charge, provided them with money and weapons, imbued them with a sense of absolute impunity and provided political cover and military support,” Zakharova said on Thursday. The official stressed that Russia holds “Washington, London, and NATO in general” accountable for all of the Ukrainian government’s actions. On Wednesday, the office of President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of launching two drones at the Kremlin in an attempt to assassinate the Russian leader.


Ukrainian officials have rejected the allegation, claiming that their country does not attack targets in Russia. Moscow has warned that it reserves the right to retaliate in a way it deems appropriate and at a time and place of its choosing. Ukrainian troops are expected to launch a long-touted counteroffensive against Russian forces within the coming weeks. Foreign allies have pledged to support Kiev for as long as it takes to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. Leading Western media outlets have suggested that the operation could be a decisive moment for the conflict, and that Ukraine may find it difficult to secure future aid, should it fail to make significant gains on the ground.

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Send F-16s!

Ukraine Helpless Against Russian Smart Bombs – Official (RT)

Kiev has no way to counter Russian high-precision guide bombs, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Colonel Yury Ignat admitted on Tuesday, reiterating longstanding requests for modern American jets. Speaking at a press briefing, Ignat claimed that Russia launches up to 20 guided bombs on the frontline every day. The official pointed out that those munitions can travel some 70km and hit critical infrastructure facilities and other targets. “We cannot counter this kind of ammunition… and air defense is ineffective,” the spokesman noted, adding that to prevent such strikes, Ukraine has to directly take on the planes that deliver the bombs, usually the Su-34, Su-35, and other tactical aviation aircraft. To do this, Ignat said that Ukraine needs “a long hand to reach the enemy at a distance further than we can do it now.”

He pointed out that one of the longest-range air defense weapons Kiev has is the Soviet-era S-300 missile system, which can reach targets at a distance of up to 100km. He added that Ukraine’s air defense capability had been further reinforced by Western-made weapons with a range of 150km, but that these are in short supply. In light of this, he reiterated that the problem could be solved if the West were to provide Ukraine with modern jets. “F-16s can effectively counter Russian aviation all along the forward edge of the battle area,” the spokesman said, adding that such jets could discourage Moscow’s aircraft from approaching the Ukrainian border. “It’s not necessary to down the enemy aircraft, but we just have to have a strong counter argument,” he added.

In February, US President Joe Biden said that Ukraine “does not need F-16s now,” adding that Washington was concentrating on sending to Kiev “what our seasoned military thinks [it] needs,” including tanks and artillery. Moscow ramped up its strikes against Ukrainian energy and military infrastructure last October after Kiev carried out several acts of sabotage on Russian soil, most notably the deadly bombing of the strategic Crimean Bridge. Russia has repeatedly warned the West against supplying Ukraine with weapons, arguing that this will only prolong the hostilities while making it a direct participant in the conflict.

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“..Western countries themselves created this regime, and now they support those who commit extremist and terrorist acts.”

Zelensky Calls For Creation Of International Tribunal Against Russia (TASS)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has urged to create an international tribunal against Russia. “The aggressor must feel the full power of justice. This is our historical responsibility. <…> Only one institution is capable of responding to the original crime, the crime of aggression: a tribunal,” Zelensky told the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday during his visit to The Hague. The Russian side has previously repeatedly pointed out that the the Kiev regime would soon face a tribunal and its methods would be recognized in the future as extremist and terrorist. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the West would not be able to wash itself of what has become part of its activities. According to her, Western countries themselves created this regime, and now they support those who commit extremist and terrorist acts.

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Patrushev.

West’s Attempts To Revive Neo-nazi Ideology Lead To Global Catastrophe (TASS)

West’s experiments to revive the neo-Nazi ideology must be curtailed, because they lead to a global catastrophe, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said in an interview to the Izvestia newspaper, published on Wednesday. “The Anglo-Saxons have been actively reviving the neo-Nazi ideology in order to fulfill their modern geopolitical tasks. Such experiments to not lead to dominance, they lead to a global catastrophe and must therefore be curtailed in a tough and uncompromising manner,” Patrushev said. In his words, numerous facts prove that many members of Western political elites shared the Nazi ideology and provided financial and organizational support to Adolf Hitler. “Today, they need to keep their ‘democratic’ face,” he said. “Nazi ideology remains an absolute evil, no matter how you disguise it.”

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“It’s 121.7% [of GDP] in the US, the eurozone 90.9%, Germany’s and France’s total 66.5% and 111.1% respectively, Russia 14.9%..”

Putin Compares Russian And Western Debt (RT)

Russia is in better economic shape than many large Western nations in terms of inflation and the level of sovereign debt, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. During a working meeting with Economy Minister Maksim Reshetnikov, Putin noted that Russia’s state debt is only a fraction of its GDP. “It’s 121.7% [of GDP] in the US, the eurozone’s debt amounts to 90.9%, Germany’s and France’s total 66.5% and 111.1% respectively, Russia’s 14.9% is a well-performing indicator,” the leader stated. Putin also drew attention to the rate of inflation in Russia, noting it is among the lowest compared to numerous other countries – including in the West. “As of March, [inflation] is 3.5% in Russia, 7.4% in Germany, the euro area as a whole recorded 6.9%, while inflation in France and the US amounted to 5.7% and 5% respectively,” Putin pointed out. Central bank data cited by Russian media in March showed that the country’s foreign debt has dropped to its lowest level since 2007. It reportedly decreased by 21.1% last year to $380.5 billion, representing a fall of $101.8 billion.

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“..trying to force the rest of it on the public will cause enough of them to starve that a revolt is quite likely..”

Oh Countrywide, Is That Your Ghost? (Denninger)

Bear Stearns is not the banking system — it is contained. Subprime is contained. “We’re gonna OWN subprime lending — Mozilo” Uh huh. Who remembers me over on the Countrywide Yahoo finance forums back in 2007 before it all blew — when I was shorting into price ramps on that stock because from where I sat they were a zero. They were a zero. It was a nice trade. Who remembers me calling out WaMu in early 2007 when they were paying dividends with money they didn’t have, and regulators did nothing? That article is still here, if you look for it. They were also a zero. But First Republic is isolated, just like SVB. Uh huh. Sure it is. How’s PacWest doing? Oh, not so good. Let’s see…oh, looks sort of like an impending zero. But wait — First Republic was it, right? Sure it was.

There’s no real problem here, right? The TNX was down a full percent yesterday because….. the Fed will save it all, right? No they won’t. Not because they don’t want to. They can’t this time. Oh, you think not eh? How’s your homeowner’s insurance premium? Your car insurance? Your food bill? You know, all that stuff you have to buy? Yeah, you’re reading this and you’re probably middle class or better. You’re doing mostly ok. You’re on the right side of the bell curve, right? Half the people are on the left, and they’re not ok. For them that 20% increase means they are taking payday loans to buy food, effectively and sometimes literally. That ends the game folks. If The Fed tries it we get government and social collapse. The ramp in asset prices can’t just stop: It has to come back out. All of it. And yes, that will mean lots of firms — and people — blow up.

This is not fixable with any sort of deposit guarantee. That’s not the problem. The problem is that the banks loaned out a lot of money at 2% and thus can’t pay 4% or so or they will go broke. But other, equally safe or more-so investments do pay that 4-5%; for example, a government money-market fund that has daily liquidity equal to that of a bank and only holds US Treasuries. Having made those loans at uneconomic rates in the first place there isn’t anything they can do about it now. As was the case in 2006-2007 and which I pointed out in Leverage losses are made when bad loans are originated; they are often not recognized at that time but the loss has been incurred. What’s left to argue over is who is going to eat it, and unlike the 2008 blow-up trying to force the general public to eat it will not work because they are already under the inflationary pressure from the BS run during the pandemic that led to the problem and trying to force the rest of it on the public will cause enough of them to starve that a revolt is quite likely.

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“The FBI has been sitting on the report … for several years..”

FBI File Ties Biden To ‘Criminal Scheme’ To Trade Money For Policy (WT)

The FBI has been sitting on a report detailing a scheme involving then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden to accept money in exchange for policy decisions on behalf of a “foreign national,” two senior Republicans said Wednesday. Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, and Rep. James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said their information was “highly credible” and came from whistleblowers who pointed to a confidential human source report that the FBI has had for several years. They did not say when the alleged dealing occurred nor what country was involved. They did say the information that the FBI obtained was detailed enough to have been verified. “Based on those disclosures, it has come to our attention that the DOJ and the FBI possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” the lawmakers wrote.

“However, it remains unclear what steps, if any, were taken to investigate the matter,” the lawmakers said. The FBI uses form 1023 to collect information from a human source. Mr. Comer, acting as chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, issued a subpoena ordering FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to turn over the form by May 10. The FBI said it received the letter and subpoena but declined to comment beyond that. It is a rough period for the FBI, which feverishly pursued Donald Trump as a candidate and as president. That included lying to a court to obtain a surveillance warrant on a Trump campaign figure and pursuing the now-discredited Steele dossier, a Democratic opposition research document that fabricated lurid stories about Mr. Trump and dealings with Russia.

Mr. Grassley, in particular, has been critical of the FBI’s decisions. He and Mr. Comer said they are now investigating the FBI’s handling of the report on Mr. Biden. “The DOJ and the FBI appear to have valuable, verifiable information that you have failed to disclose to the American people. Therefore, Congress will proceed to conduct an independent and objective review of this matter, free from those agencies’ influence,” they said. Mr. Comer’s subpoena covers “all FD-1023 forms, including within any open, closed or restricted access case files, created or modified in June 2020, containing the term ‘Biden,’ including all accompanying attachments and documents to those FD-1023 forms.”

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“Today the son of Zbigniew Brzezinski [..] is the current US Ambassador to Poland.”

“The idea is to establish Poland as the military & political leader of a brand new yet again US-managed Europe which would leave ´doubtfull´ Germans aside.”

The Polish ‘Zeitenwende’ Connection (Jorge Vilches)

The idea is to establish Poland as the military & political leader of a brand new yet again US-managed Europe which would leave ´doubtfull´ Germans aside. Actually, both the US and Poland have lately actively required Germany – now desperate for energy and commodities — to get out of their way and to just obediently contribute to the new ´European´ project with Poland as steering wheel and the US in the driver´s seat. So Germans just stay put and abstain. And there were no effective means to ever achieve the above other than by cutting Germany off very cheap, high-quality and reliable supplies from a truly resourceful and energy-rich Russia. Now, after hundreds of pummeling sanctions and the NS1 & NS2 gaspipes non-sanctum sabotage, this has finally been achieved yet definitely against European and German best interests. So clear enough this time around no soup and no dice either for Germany.


But still, geopolitically and trade-wise the US so far has developed an attractive (and manageable) scenario. And this may also clearly explain the role planned out for a willing Poland – which Germans and the world at large have not yet quite understood – as part of the US strategy for the provoked Russian “invasion” of Ukraine. Because NATO losing an important chunk of Ukraine was always in the military cards. But Poland would still always end up conveniently next to the Russian border as an effective European gate-keeper and a highly destructive NATO Offense Team in every sense of the term. Today the son of Zbigniew Brzezinski -former U.S. National Security Adviser and author ofThe Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives- is the current US Ambassador to Poland.

Both Mark Brzezinski and his father Zbigniew have always ardently maintained that no Eurasian challenger in any way should ever be allowed to emerge and eventually dominate Eurasia and thus challenge U.S. global pre-eminence. Clear enough? Through unilateral and blatantly wrong decisions imposed by US vested interests, the current Green leadership of the German traffic-light ruling coalition has self-inflicted a needless energy crisis which will prove to be disastrous both for Germany and Europe… although to the great (supposed) “benefit” of Poland as briefly explained above. And at the same time it has allowed to miss the enormous opportunity for Germany to become a 21st. century world-leading nation as the outstanding bond between Europe and Eurasia… instead of turning into an obsolete vassal state at the mercy of colonial-minded, basement-crazy,´ exorbitantly privileged´ neo-con Atlanticists eternally dollar-indebted with impunity, unipolar and exceptionalistic with “(their) rules-based world” and 750 US military bases in 80 countries plus.


Even worse, chances are that Germany may turn itself into a poorly-developed, over-populated and highly polluted society with no gravity upon the rest of the world. In such case Germans at large should know and fully accept that their Greens did not do this all by themselves but rather with a very broadly-based German political base. So yet once more Germans should only blame themselves for their astonishing defeat. No, Germany´s current messy mess is not about Russia or Russians and it is not about Ukraine or Ukranians. Actually, it is about German politics and its “360 degree” fecal-grade leadership which comfy Germans agree to be governed by as if nothing had ever been concluded despite their historical experience in the twentieth century. Meanwhile, Poland enjoys the scene and prepares for its US-dictated role as leader of the “new” Europe as if this were the “Zeitenwende” sea-change Germany was to expect after the now infamous speech delivered to the Bundestag by Chancellor Olaf Scholz on 27 February 2022.

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A pretty incredible in-depth investigation.

Nord Stream Sabotage ‘Secret Teams’ Revealed (Ponton)

Initially, our investigation’s aim was to put a face on some of the key story points made by renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in his Nord Stream incident report published on 8 February 2022. In Part 1 of our investigation, we presented data and evidence which validated the main elements of Hersh’s story, including the CIA-led Navy diving team out of Panama City in Florida, and also that the explosives were planted on the Nord Stream pipelines at a depth of 260 feet just a few miles off the coast of Denmark’s Bornholm Island – under the cover of the annual NATO BALTOPS-22 drill in the Baltic Sea held in June 2022. We also confirmed the validity of Hersh’s accusation that NATO ally Norway was in fact intimately involved in this covert military operation.

There were parts of Hersh’s story which we did not go into detail in Part 1 of our investigation, but which we have been able to do here. This includes substantiating Hersh’s claim that the C4 explosives attached to the pipelines during the BALTOPS exercise in June would be triggered in late September by a sonar buoy dropped by a Boeing Poseidon P8 aircraft. We will also demonstrate how specialists from the deep sea oil and gas industry were also consulted and would have, at least, participated in the planning of this operation. In addition to this, we will also show how NATO member Denmark was also involved in the operation as well, as well as the cover-up alongside its close Nordic neighbour Sweden. Throughout this investigation, our strategy was never to crunch large amounts of flight data, or military and commercial ship logistical data, as there are many capable researchers who specialise in these areas, and we will be highlighting their work accordingly.


Rather, our strategy here is to review as much available and pertinent evidence we could gather, which has turned out to be substantial, while sticking to a plausible and common sense-based analysis, and see where this approach would eventually take us. In this article we will show how a CIA-led operation with highly trained divers and the latest Dry Combat Submersible (DCS) technology, was able, with the help of NATO allies, to operate under the cover of a major NATO Naval exercise BALTOPS-22, to take out the Nord Stream pipelines. In order to further validate Hersh’s story, we must first prove that NATO possessed all of the equipment and teams necessary, that these were all mission capable, and that they were positioned at the crime scene during BALTOPS-22.


S361 Manned Dry Combat Submersible (DCS1) from Msubs.

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“The State Department basically dusted off a few talking points from 2010, when WikiLeaks first published U.S. State Embassy cables..”

“A 2011 review by the Associated Press of sources, which the State Department claimed were most at risk from the publication of cables, found no evidence that any person was harmed. The potential for harm was “strictly theoretical.”

State Department Slams Assange On World Press Freedom Day (Gosztola)

On World Press Freedom Day, the United States State Department abandoned its policy of not commenting on the case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and essentially backed the prosecution against him. Matthew Lee of the Associated Press asked State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel “whether or not the State Department regards Julian Assange as a journalist who would be covered by the ideas embodied in World Press Freedom Day.” “I’m not asking for the [U.S. Justice Department point of view. I’m asking for what the State Department thinks,” Lee said. It was not the first time Lee had posed this question. In 2021, on World Press Freedom Day, Lee asked if President Joe Biden’s administration was looking into the Assange case, “his detention, his extradition, the request for extradition here, the charges against him?”

“I realize you can’t speak for DOJ, but from the State Department’s perspective, is the current position still – does that still hold? Do you believe that Mr. Assange is a journalist?” Lee added. “And given the importance you place on accurate and factual information being disseminated, do you believe that the information that was published based on the U.S. government documents that he obtained and put out was either unfactual or inaccurate?” Jalina Porter, who was a spokesperson for the State Department, avoided the question. “So to your specific on Julian Assange, we’ll have to get back to you on that.” But now, with Biden going around repeatedly declaring that “journalism is not a crime,” Patel read a prepared response. “The State Department thinks that Mr. Assange has been charged with serious criminal conduct in the United States, in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in our nation’s history,” Patel declared. “His actions risked serious harm to U.S. national security to the benefit of our adversaries.”

Patel continued, “It put named human sources to grave and imminent risk and risk of serious physical harm and arbitrary detention. So it does not matter how we categorize any person, but we view this as something, he’s been charged with serious criminal conduct.” The response was lousy and stale. The State Department basically dusted off a few talking points from 2010, when WikiLeaks first published U.S. State Embassy cables that exposed the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy. To be clear, Assange’s “role” was that of a publisher who received documents from U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. A 2011 review by the Associated Press of sources, which the State Department claimed were most at risk from the publication of cables, found no evidence that any person was harmed. The potential for harm was “strictly theoretical.”

Lee appropriately pushed back on the idea that being charged with “serious criminal conduct” made Assange a person unworthy of support on World Press Freedom Day. “Yeah, but anyone can be charged with anything. Evan Gershkovich has been charged with a serious criminal offense in Russia, and you say that he is a journalist, and he is obviously,” Lee replied. “And I just want to know whether or not you, the State Department – regardless of any charges that he faces – believe that he is a journalist, or he is something else.” Patel contended the two cases are “completely different.” He said, “The United States doesn’t go around arbitrarily detaining people, and the judicial oversight and checks and balances that we have in our system versus the Russian system are a little bit different.”

The U.S. government subjected nearly 800 people to rendition, indefinite detention, and torture and brought them to Guantanamo Bay military prison, which was established a legal blackhole for alleged terrorism suspects. It’s still open, continues to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against humanity.” Yes—the U.S. does arbitrarily detain people. Just not people the U.S. thinks should be free from arbitrary detention.

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Corinth Canal, Greece

 

 

Owl

 

 


Butterflies will sometimes land on a Caiman and drink its salty, crocodile tears to in order to survive. This helps the Caiman to feel both less sad and more fabulous.

 

 

Squid

 

 


In 2015, photographer Atif Saeed captured this intense photograph of a male lion moments before it launched an attack on him. He narrowly escaped with this incredible shot of a face-to-face with a lion about to kill.

 

 

Lion whisperer

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 302023
 
 April 30, 2023  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  46 Responses »


Mark Chagall I and the village 1911

 

Zelensky’s Top Adviser Threatens China With Economic Ruin (RT)
Poland’s Top General Has Some Unpopular Truths About The Ukraine Proxy War (ZB)
Medvedev Calls For ‘Complete’ Dismantling Of ‘Kiev Regime’ (RT)
Medvedev Sees No Point In Maintaining Diplomatic Relations With Poland (TASS)
Russian Next-Gen T-14 Tank Makes Ukraine Debut (ZH)
Merkel Says She Used Everything To Try To Prevent Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)
Europe Is Buying Record Amounts Of Refined Russian Fuels Through India
Morocco Supplies Spain With Russian Diesel – El Mundo (RT)
US Troops Drill For Taiwan War – Media (RT)
Kiev Decries EU Restrictions On Ukrainian Imports (RT)
EU Reaches Deal On Ukrainian Food Imports (RT)
War Threatens Ukraine Auto Empire of Biden Megadonor (Sperry)
Hunter’s Collapsing World: A Criminal Plea Could Now Be Best Option (Turley)
No Buyer for First Republic Bank at Any Price (Mish)
Irish President Condemns ‘Obsession’ With Economic Growth (Leahy)

 

 

 

 

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652184461302276096

 

 

 

 

Doctorow

 

 

Net zero

 

 

 

 

“..why China would “help Russia, which is experiencing the collapse of its civilization?”

Zelensky’s Top Adviser Threatens China With Economic Ruin (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s main adviser, Mikhail Podoliak, has claimed that China must follow the West’s position on Ukraine or “lose its influence, including economic influence.” Beijing has given no indication that it intends to take his advice. “Now China has to make a choice,” Podoliak said on Ukraine’s Rada TV on Friday. “Either it works within the framework defined by international law, and then replaces Russia in the full sense of the word, or China continues to stand aside and then it will gradually lose its influence, including economic influence.” Podoliak’s statement came two days after Zelensky and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone, their first known conversation since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began last February.

According to the Chinese side, Xi stressed that Beijing’s “core position” on the conflict is that “dialogue and negotiations are the only viable way out.” The US has repeatedly called on China to condemn Russia over the conflict, which Beijing has refused to do. Instead, China and Russia have deepened their diplomatic and trade links, and officials from both countries have repeatedly condemned the US for attempting to impose what it calls a “rules-based international order” upon the world through military force and sanctions. China and Russia have instead called for the construction of a multipolar system based on the rule of international law and respect for the UN charter. “Right now there are changes – the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving these changes together,” Xi told Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last month.

Podoliak has attempted to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing before. Late last month he asked the Italian Corriere della Sera newspaper why China would “help Russia, which is experiencing the collapse of its civilization?” “It would be an irreversible investment, and China is too pragmatic to make such mistakes,” he added. However, even if China were to break from Russia, it would still face a United States hostile to its interests. The Pentagon’s most recent National Defense Strategy lists countering the supposed “threat posed by China” as its number one priority, while Washington has blocked the sale of some semiconductor manufacturing hardware to China and rallied its Asian allies to shut Beijing out of this vital industrial sector. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has said on several occasions that he would use the US military to defend Taiwan – which China considers its territory – from a potential Chinese invasion.

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“It’s simply impossible to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of the West’s multidimensional aid to Ukraine if the conflict drags on.”

“..Russia can continue conducting its special operation for 1-2 more years before it begins to feel any structural pressure to curtail its activities.”

“We just don’t have ammunition. The industry is not ready not only to send equipment to Ukraine, but also to replenish our stocks, which are melting.”

Poland’s Top General Has Some Unpopular Truths About The Ukraine Proxy War (ZB)

The last time that Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces General Rajmund Andrzejczak generated media attention was in late January after he elaborated on how formidable Russia remained at the time, but now he’s once again making headlines for building upon this assessment. Poland’s Do Rzecy reported on his recent participation in a strategy session with the National Security Bureau, during which time he shared some unpopular truths about the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine. Andrzejczak said that the situation doesn’t look good for Kiev at all when considering the economic dynamics of this conflict, with him drawing particular attention to finance, infrastructure issues, social issues, technology, and food production, et al. From this vantage point, he predicts that Russia can continue conducting its special operation for 1-2 more years before it begins to feel any structural pressure to curtail its activities.

By contrast, Kiev is burning through tens of billions of dollars’ worth of aid, yet it still remains very far away from achieving its maximum objectives. Andrzejczak candidly said that Poland’s Western partners aren’t properly assessing the challenges that stand in the way of Ukraine’s victory, including those connected to the “race of logistics”/ war of attrition” that the NATO chief declared in mid-February. Another serious problems concerns refugees’ unwillingness to return to their homeland anytime soon. These economic, logistical, and population factors combined to convince him that he must urgently raise the greatest possible awareness of these problems in order to “give Ukraine a chance to build its secure future”, which in the context that he shared this motivation, is a euphemism for even more Western aid. He elaborated by adding that “As a soldier, I am also obliged to present the most unfavorable and difficult to implement variant, giving a field to all those who can and should help Ukraine.”

Nobody should therefore doubt Andrzejczak’s intentions or suspect that he’s a so-called “Russian agent” since he sincerely wants the West to win its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, but he’s also very worried that it might lose unless his side acknowledges the unpopular truths that he just shared. In his view, their failure to do so could doom Kiev to defeat, though the argument can also compellingly be made that indefinitely perpetuating this conflict like Poland seeks to do might be even more disastrous. After all, none of the three challenges that he drew attention to can be overcome anytime soon. The only exception might be the population one, but that would entail changing EU legislation in order to allow the expulsion of refugees, which is unlikely to happen. The economic and logistical factors are systemic ones, which affect not only Ukraine, but the entire West in general. It’s simply impossible to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of the West’s multidimensional aid to Ukraine if the conflict drags on.

As Andrzejczak himself admitted, “We just don’t have ammunition. The industry is not ready not only to send equipment to Ukraine, but also to replenish our stocks, which are melting.” Considering that Poland is Ukraine’s third most important patron behind the Anglo-American Axis, this strongly suggests that all other NATO members are struggling just as much as it is to keep up the pace, scale, and scope of support, if not more since many are a lot smaller and thus less capable of contributing in this respect. Accordingly, this observation means that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will likely be its “last hurrah” prior to resuming peace talks with Russia since the West won’t be able to keep up its assistance for much longer. Andrzejczak seems keenly aware of this “politically inconvenient” fact, hence why he wants his side to give its proxies as much as possible until the end of that operation in the hopes that they can then be in a comparatively more advantageous position by the time these talks recommence.

Cavoli
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652039270784180246

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“Otherwise, they will not calm down, and the drug-addled nonsense can turn into reality and the war will drag on for a long time. Our country does not need that..”

Medvedev Calls For ‘Complete’ Dismantling Of ‘Kiev Regime’ (RT)

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called for the “complete dismantling” of the “Kiev regime,” as well as for inflicting “mass destruction” on the country’s military personnel and hardware. Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of Russia’s National Security Council, made the remarks in a Telegram post on Friday, commenting on an interview Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky recently gave to several Nordic media outlets. He summarized Zelensky’s comments as consisting of demands for more weapons from Kiev’s Western backers and promises of a successful counteroffensive, including an attack on Crimea, while also warning that the conflict may drag on for “decades.” While the interview appeared to be “contradictory” and “delusional,” even such statements should not be underestimated, Medvedev warned.

“One should not underestimate even delusional speeches. This is a hysterical manifesto of the Kiev regime, which is seeking to consolidate its Nazi elites, maintain the morale of the troops and receive additional support from its sponsors.” To successfully foil Kiev’s plans, Russia must inflict “mass destruction of personnel and military equipment” during the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive and inflict a “maximum military defeat” on Kiev’s military, Medvedev said. Ultimately, the “Nazi regime in Kiev” must be “completely dismantled” and demilitarized throughout the entire territory of “former Ukraine,” he added. Apart from that, Russia must pursue those who manage to flee, and seek “retribution” against the “key figures of the Nazi regime, regardless of their location and without statute of limitations,” Medvedev stressed. Anything short of that would not suffice, the ex-president believes.

“Otherwise, they will not calm down, and the drug-addled nonsense can turn into reality and the war will drag on for a long time. Our country does not need that,” Medvedev said. The ex-president has repeatedly warned Kiev against any attempts to seize the Crimean peninsula, which broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup and joined Russia after locals overwhelmingly supported such a move during a referendum. Last month, Medvedev issued a nuclear warning to Kiev, cautioning that any attempt at a “serious offensive” targeting the peninsula would be “the basis for the use of all means of protection, including those provided for by the fundamentals of the Doctrine of Nuclear Deterrence.”

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“This state must not exist for us while there is no one but Russophobes in power and Ukraine is full of Polish mercenaries..”

Medvedev Sees No Point In Maintaining Diplomatic Relations With Poland (TASS)

Russia sees no sense in maintaining diplomatic relations with Poland as long as anti-Russian forces remain in power, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his Twitter page on Saturday. “I see no point in maintaining diplomatic relations with Poland. This state must not exist for us while there is no one but Russophobes in power and Ukraine is full of Polish mercenaries, who should be ruthlessly exterminated like stinky rats,” Medvedev wrote in English and Polish.


Medvedev’s tweet was posted in the wake of the situation with the school at the Russian embassy in Warsaw. Andrey Ordash, Minister-Councilor at the Russian embassy in Poland, told TASS that the Polish authorities had demanded that the staff of the Russian school at the embassy in Warsaw vacate the building by 7 p.m. on Saturday. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Russia deems the Polish authorities’ intrusion into the Russian embassy school in Warsaw as a blatant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention and another encroachment on Russian diplomatic property in Poland. The Foreign Ministry said that Warsaw’s steps would not remain without Moscow’s firm response and consequences for Poland.

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It won’t be their last new toy.

Russian Next-Gen T-14 Tank Makes Ukraine Debut (ZH)

While Western nations are working to upgrade Ukraine’s ground game with US M-1 Abrams and German Leopard 2 tanks, Russia has now introduced its latest-generation tank into the war in Ukraine, according to Russia’s state-owned RIA. The new Russian tank is the T-14 Armata, which features an unmanned turret, with a three-man crew operating the vehicle from what RIA describes as an “isolated armored capsule located at the front of the hull.” The tank has a maximum highway speed of 50 miles per hour. It’s equipped with a 125mm smoothbore main gun with a reported range of 8 kilometers. The gun is fed by an automated loader with a 45-round capacity, and can also fire laser-guided missiles.

On defense, it has both reactive armor that explodes outward upon a projectile’s impact, and an “active protection system” (APS), which BBC has described as “essentially an anti-missile system for tanks, with radars capable of tracking the incoming anti-tank missile, and projectiles that are launched to disrupt or destroy it.” The T-14 is additionally distinguished from predecessor T-90 tanks by having higher ground clearance. A developer also claimed the tank would have technology to hide it from radar- and heat-seeking targeting systems: “We essentially made the tank invisible.” RIA reports the deployed T-14s have received “additional side protection from anti-tank ammunition.”

Until now, T-14 appearances have been largely limited to a series of Moscow Victory Day parades stretching all the way back to 2015, though RIA says they have been “tested in Syria.” [..] The initial order called for 2,300 of them to be delivered by 2020. However, the UK claims “production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat,” and suggested its introduction in Ukraine may largely be for propaganda purposes. Of course, that jab may itself be propaganda.

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Mutti knew exactly what was going on with the Misk agreements. No use denying it.

Merkel Says She Used Everything To Try To Prevent Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)

Former German chancellor Angela Merkel said she used every means at her disposal to try to prevent the current conflict in Ukraine. “I used everything at my disposal to try to prevent this situation,” Merkel said, commenting on the Russian special operation in Ukraine on Saturday in an interview with the German daily Die Zeit. “The fact that it failed is not proof that it was wrong to try,” she stressed. Diplomacy is a “necessity,” as the ex-Chancellor noted.However. Merkel repeatedly defended her policy towards Russia. She called the efforts to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine after the events in Crimea in 2014 as part of the so-called Minsk agreements correct.

“I support these diplomatic efforts,” the former head of the German government said, adding that she was “very worried” about Ukraine. “To my great chagrin, there were quite a few who were not interested in this,” Merkel admitted. According to her, in the European Council Germany and France, made efforts to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.= The ex-Chancellor of Germany said that she talked a lot with the former President of Ukraine Pyotr Poroshenko and the current President Vladimir Zelensky. “President Zelensky was very critical of the Minsk agreements. He already said this during his election campaign and noted that he considers it unfeasible,” Merkel stated.

She noted that, according to Ukrainian political leaders, this agreement is not popular in Ukraine, and it was very difficult to implement it politically. In an interview with Die Zeit, published on December 7, 2022, Merkel stated that the 2014 Minsk agreements were an attempt to let Ukraine gain time. She said “it was clear to everyone” that the conflict had been frozen and the problem had not been resolved. Russian President Vladimir Putin later said that he found Merkel’s statement completely unexpected and disappointing.

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“..the Asian country is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month..”

Europe Is Buying Record Amounts Of Refined Russian Fuels Through India

Last August, we were the first to show how Russia was bypassing Europe’s so-called commodities embargo: it was selling LNG to China which was then re-selling it to Europe at a substantial mark up. And while we also frequently reported that Russia was using a similar sanctions bypass for oil, this time using India instead of China, few were willing to confirm as much: after all, it would seem very shortsighted if European consumers were paying an extra surcharge to India, while Russia was not suffering any adverse consequences from Europe’s laughable “sanctions.” Not any more: on Friday, Bloomberg reported that for all of Europe’s fire and brimstone about an embargo (which has gotten decidedly quieter in recent months), “Russian oil is still powering Europe just with the help of India.”

As we reported at the time, last December the EU barred almost any seaborne crude oil imports from Russia. It extended the prohibition to refined fuels two months later. However, the rules didn’t stop countries like India from snapping up cheap Russian crude, turning it into fuels like diesel, and shipping it back to Europe at a big markup: as shown in the chart below, just the Brent to Urals price differential, a byproduct of the Russian sanctions, is about $25/bbl, almost a third of the price of a barrel of crude. The markups on Russian product are even greater when dealing with refined products such as gasoline or diesel. In fact, India has become so good at reselling Russian oil to the same Europeans who refuse to buy it directly from Moscow for a much lower price, that the Asian country is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month while simultaneously buying record amounts of Russian crude, according to data from analytics firm Kpler.


In other words, Europe is still buying Russian oil, keeping Putin’s military machine well-funded, but because of the virtue signaling exercise of buying Russian oil though a mediator, the transaction ends up costing Europeans billions more than if they simply had purchased the oil directly. “Russian oil is finding its way back into Europe despite all the sanctioning and India ramping up fuel exports to the west is a good example of it,” said Viktor Katona, lead crude analyst at the firm. “With India taking in so much Russian barrels, it’s inevitable.”

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They all do it.

Morocco Supplies Spain With Russian Diesel – El Mundo (RT)

Morocco is purchasing Russian diesel and other refined products at discounted prices and re-exporting the fuel to Spain, El Mundo reported on Friday, citing ship tracking sources. Data from navigation tracking portal Vesselfinder showed that, on April 28, at least three tankers were heading from Russia’s Baltic ports to Morocco carrying approximately 170,000 tons of oil products on board. The North African country, which bought about 600,000 barrels of Russian diesel throughout 2021, ramped up imports of the product to 2 million barrels in January 2023, with another 1.2 million barrels arriving in the country in February, according to tracking sources. Morocco’s fuel exports almost stopped after its only processing plant was shut down in 2015 over unpaid taxes and legal hurdles, leaving the country dependent on refined oil imports.

In the beginning of the year, Rabat resumed fuel supplies and expanded exports of diesel from its Horizon Tanger terminal to Spain, Türkiye, Ghana, and southern Africa, the outlet said. In January, the country sent 280,000 barrels of diesel to the Spanish Canary Islands and another 270,000 barrels to Türkiye. “At the end of 2022, Morocco began to buy diesel fuel from Moscow at an average of more than 7 million liters per day. In parallel, Rabat began to export it to Spain,” the outlet wrote. According to ship tracking data, Moroccan deliveries now account for 10% of monthly Spanish demand for diesel, estimated at $60 million. According to some media reports, in March, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria accounted for 30% of Russia’s diesel exports.

Meanwhile, the Spanish government has pledged to ensure that no Russian fuel enters the kingdom. “Our obligation is to investigate what happens with the fuel [supplies],” Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Teresa Ribera told reporters on Friday. “Initially, it comes with documents confirming its appropriate origin,” she added. Russia has been diversifying its energy supplies in response to Western sanctions after the EU stopped accepting the country’s oil transported by sea. In December, the EU, G7, and allied countries imposed an embargo and a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian crude. Similar restrictions were introduced in February for exports of petroleum products.

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Posturing.

US Troops Drill For Taiwan War – Media (RT)

The US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has reportedly carried out drills simulating its response to a Chinese seizure of Taiwan for the first time, reflecting rising concern in Washington that Beijing may try to seize control of the self-governing island by force. The Taiwan scenario was played out as part of the USAOC’s annual capabilities exercise, known as CAPEX, at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, Military.com reported on Saturday. Troops practiced being inserted into Taiwan to help defend against a Chinese offensive, using a concrete mock-up on the base to simulate the environment in which they would fight the People’s Republic of China (PRC). “The PRC, in accordance with our national defense strategy, is our true pacing challenge out there,” Lieutenant General Jonathan Braga, commander of USASOC, said in a speech before the exercise on Thursday. “Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is prevent World War III. That’s our job.”

The drills included firing recoilless rifles, breaching tunnels and operating Switchblade drones, the media outlet said. The special forces used some of the same weaponry and tactics employed during Washington’s so-called War on Terror, along with “other tools reflecting a seismic shift for the command as it prepares for potential conflict against major military rivals.” It’s unusual for USASOC to identify the opposition force so directly during APEX, “given the military’s hesitancy to overtly suggest conflict,” according to Military.com. US-China relations have deteriorated in the past year amid Beijing’s refusal to join in a Western sanctions campaign against Russia over the Ukraine crisis. Chinese officials have accused US leaders of emboldening separatists in Taiwan, such as when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taipei last August. China responded by breaking off defense and climate ties with Washington and launching massive military drills in the Taiwan Strait.

The US government recognizes, without endorsing, China’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan. For decades, Washington has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” keeping Beijing and Taipei guessing as to whether, and to what extent, the US military would intervene if China invaded Taiwan. However, President Joe Biden has repeatedly hinted that Washington would come to Taiwan’s aid militarily in the event of a Chinese offensive. Washington think tanks have conducted wargaming exercises in recent months to simulate how a war over Taiwan might play out. One such study was done for a congressional committee by the Center for New American Security, which found earlier this month that US forces would be unable to resupply Taiwan with weapons and equipment once a Chinese offensive began. An exercise done by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that although US and Japanese forces would be able to successfully repel Beijing’s offensive, they would lose dozens of warships, hundreds of planes, and thousands of troops.

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“Such restrictions, for whatever reason, do not comply with the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement and the principles and norms of the EU Single Market..”

Kiev Decries EU Restrictions On Ukrainian Imports (RT)

The Ukrainian authorities have sent notes of protest to the Polish and EU embassies, decrying the restrictions on imports of the country’s agricultural products to the bloc. This was announced on Saturday by Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Oleg Nikolenko in a Facebook post. According to Nikolenko, Ukraine considers the restrictions “utterly unacceptable.” “Such restrictions, for whatever reason, do not comply with the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement and the principles and norms of the EU Single Market,” he wrote. The minister noted that Kiev has “all legal grounds” to immediately resume its exports to Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria and continue uninterrupted transit of all Ukrainian products to other countries both inside and outside of the EU. “The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry urged its [EU] partners to find a balanced solution based on EU legislation, the Association Agreement, and in the spirit of solidarity,” he added.


Earlier this month, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria unilaterally banned the import of agricultural products from Ukraine in a bid to protect their domestic markets, which has been overflowing with cheap Ukrainian products. Romania did not impose an import ban, but joined the other four in calls for Brussels to free the region of Ukrainian goods. After two weeks of discussions, the European Commission and the five member states struck a deal on Friday, which involves replacing the individual bans placed by the countries on Ukrainian imports with “emergency safeguard measures” for four major staples – wheat, maize, rapeseed, and sunflower seeds. Sources claim that imports of these crops into the five Eastern European countries will likely be blocked unless for transit.

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They treat Ukraine like a member. It’s not.

EU Reaches Deal On Ukrainian Food Imports (RT)

The European Commission on Friday struck an agreement with five EU member-states to help clear the supply glut caused by Ukrainian agricultural imports. The announcement was made on Twitter by EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis. “The European Commission has reached an agreement in principle with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania & Slovakia regarding Ukraine agri-food products. We have acted to address concerns of both farmers in neighboring EU countries and Ukraine,” Dombrovskis wrote on the social media platform. According to the official, the key elements of the new deal include the withdrawal of unilateral import restrictions previously placed by the countries on Ukrainian agricultural produce, a €100 million ($110 million) support package for the member-states’ farmers, and “emergency safeguard measures” for four Ukrainian staples – wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seeds.

Dombrovskis did not elaborate on what these emergency measures would entail, but sources claim that the imports of these crops into the five Eastern European countries will likely be blocked unless for transit. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the deal, saying that it would help guarantee the transit of Ukrainian produce. “This agreement preserves both Ukraine’s export capacity so that it continues to feed the world, and the livelihoods of our farmers,” she tweeted. In June last year, the EU lifted tariffs and quotas for Ukrainian agricultural imports for one year in order to enable grain from Ukraine to be shipped to global markets amid the conflict with Russia. Many of the shipments, however, ended up in Eastern European countries, flooding their markets with cheap produce and sparking protests among local farmers.

Earlier this month, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria unilaterally banned agricultural products imported from Ukraine in bid to protect their markets. While Romania had not imposed its own import ban, it joined the other four in urging Brussels to find a solution to the glut of Ukrainian produce. Import bans were deemed “unacceptable” by Brussels, as they undermined the bloc’s single market rules. The news of a deal on Ukrainian food imports followed a decision by EU ambassadors to extend Ukraine’s tariff-free access to the bloc’s market by another year. However, the extension is still subject to formal approval by the European Parliament and EU countries in the coming weeks.

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“The connection between Joe Biden and Hynansky’s business ventures dates back to 2009, when the then-vice president made his first visit to Ukraine..”

War Threatens Ukraine Auto Empire of Biden Megadonor (Sperry)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky isn’t the only one demanding more military assistance from President Biden to protect Kiev from Russian forces. So too is a close Delaware friend and financial backer of Biden, who owns several luxury car dealerships around the Ukrainian capital. By sending billions of dollars in weapons and other military aid to help defend Ukraine, Biden also is securing the investments of millionaire car magnate John Hynansky, a Ukrainian American and longtime supporter of the president. Over the course of Biden’s political career, Hynansky and his family have contributed more than $100,000 to his campaigns, including $8,000 in 2020, Federal Election Commission records show. Hynansky family members have been guests at the White House, and Hynansky has floated hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to Biden family members, property records show.

Hynansky’s son, Michael, who helps run his car empire, lent the use of his Lear jet to Biden when he was a senator. Since Russia started shelling the area around Kiev in February 2022, the U.S. government has spent $77 billion to help Ukraine rebuild and repel future attacks. Government ethics watchdogs say the president’s friendship poses a potential conflict of interest that demands a full accounting of how the massive foreign aid, which includes open-ended humanitarian and economic assistance, has been used and who has benefited from it. On the military side, moreover, billions of dollars have gone to unspecified areas, such as “security,” “intelligence,” and “training.” In the past, Hynansky has supplied the police cars and ambulances in several regions of Ukraine.

[..] The connection between Joe Biden and Hynansky’s business ventures dates back to 2009, when the then-vice president made his first visit to Ukraine. In a speech in Kiev to government officials, Biden singled out Hynansky for praise, noting that he had just had breakfast with “my very good friend, John Hynansky.” (The previous year, Hynansky had individually contributed more than $33,000 to the Obama-Biden ticket primarily through the Obama Victory Fund, according to FEC records.) Within months of his hobnobbing with the vice president and local officials in the Ukrainian capital, Hynansky scored his first international development loan from the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC, a federal body whose board was appointed by President Obama.

Hynansky used the $2.5 million to break ground on a new headquarters and massive distribution center outside Kiev that prepares 8,000 cars for sale every year. In 2012, Hynansky landed another $20 million in OPIC funding to expand his dealership facilities, federal records show, helping him corner roughly 25% of the luxury car market in Ukraine. “The proceeds of the loan will be used to construct and operate two new, state-of-the-art dealership facilities for Porsche and Land Rover/Jaguar automobiles, and repay any outstanding balance of an existing OPIC loan,” according to a 2012 OPIC financing document.

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Without implicating the Big Guy?

Hunter’s Collapsing World: A Criminal Plea Could Now Be Best Option (Turley)

This week, Hunter Biden’s defense team traveled to Delaware seeking an update on the federal criminal investigation that has dragged on for almost five years. The reason seems clear: Time is running out on Hunter and the Biden family. After years of delaying disclosures and admissions, Hunter could now be pushing to cap off the criminal side of the scandal before more information is released in Arkansas and Washington. For the White House, even a criminal plea is preferred if they can avoid one particular claim — and they may be succeeding. For years, the Bidens have worked (with the media’s help) to delay any recognition of the influence peddling and corruption that may be revealed on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Even this week, in child support proceedings in Arkansas, Hunter’s counsel continued to refuse to admit ownership of the laptop abandoned at The Mac Shop in Wilmington, Del., in April 2019.

It won’t work any more than his long refusal to acknowledge his fathering of his four-year-old child, Navy. Just as Hunter could not deny DNA, forensic and other evidence will soon make his laptop denials untenable in proceedings in which he and his counsel are required to tell the truth. These proceedings are now colliding for the Bidens. With the laptop being raised in Arkansas and being investigated in Washington by House committees, time is up and the Biden team knows it. An establishment of the laptop’s authenticity in one forum could produce cascading effects in the other forums. There has already been a recent shift to a scorched-earth strategy, including reportedly threatening possible witnesses and calling for the IRS to investigate critics.

New leaks from the Justice Department investigation have indicated that prosecutors are considering four charges: two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes and a potential felony count on falsifying a form linked to a gun permit. Those four charges could well result in jail time, but the situation is likely to get worse for Hunter if the House reveals new evidence of foreign dealings and payments. That is why a capstone plea could control the damage for both Hunter and his father. A capstone is designed to protect against erosion and even help to hold together an arch that might otherwise collapse. This capstone plea could avoid a worst scenario (and charge) that would undermine years of denials by both Bidens.

However, there was one conspicuous omission from the list of potential charges that may also indicate a reason to push toward a plea. There is no mention of a charge as an unregistered foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). The Justice Department aggressively used this charge against Trump figures like Paul Manafort and, if the same standard is applied, it is hard to see the basis for discarding the charge in the Hunter Biden case. The laptop shows emails from various foreign sources, including some with close connections to foreign governments and intelligence services. There are also records of visits of clients and business associates to the White House as well as pictures with then-Vice President Joe Biden. Finally, there are emails showing Hunter reached out to high-ranking officials like Antony Blinken for “advice.” Now our secretary of state, Blinken was then deputy secretary of state.

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“..merger accounting rules would require a buyer to immediately mark down FRC’s assets to fair value..”

No Buyer for First Republic Bank at Any Price (Mish)

In one of the biggest bank collapses ever, First Republic Bank is down 96 percent in two months. But look on the bright side. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) fared even worse. At least FRC is still kicking. It rose 8.79 percent on Thursday. You likely can’t give FRC away. There would be no takers. Its assets are worth less than zero. That’s because merger accounting rules would require a buyer to immediately mark down FRC’s assets to fair value. FRC lost $100 billion in deposits. And unlike SVB, it is stuck with severely underwater mortgage loans. The FRC business model was to give ridiculously cheap mortgage loans to high-wealth clients in return for their business. When that model started blowing up, clients pulled their deposits.


Given all around silliness by banks chasing yield, any buyer would likely have to raise capital which would hammer their own share price. According to the WSJ, Autonomous Research analyst David Smith commented “It might cost you $30 billion of capital to buy the bank for free.” If the run on assets continues, either the Treasury or the Fed is likely to step in. Elizabeth Warren would then moan about the Fed bailing out the wealthy. If the bank went under, she would moan about something else. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen repeated her comment that the U.S. banking system remains sound and the U.S. government will take “any necessary steps” to keep it the strongest and safest financial system in the world.

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“envisage our future utopia”, suggesting that Ireland must “rebalance economy, ecology and ethics..”

Irish President Condemns ‘Obsession’ With Economic Growth (Leahy)

President Michael D Higgins has condemned the “obsession” with achieving economic growth in a speech on Friday that was implicitly critical of the economic policies pursued by successive governments. In a reception at Áras an Uachtaráin for Tasc, a think tank dedicated to social change, the President delivered a typically wide-ranging speech that featured a strong critique of economic policy that seeks to prioritise growth, a condemnation of “neoliberalism” and an evaluation of the shortcomings of the teaching of economics at universities. He also urged those present to “envisage our future utopia”, suggesting that Ireland must “rebalance economy, ecology and ethics”. And he insisted that the current exchequer surplus was not just the product of corporation tax receipts from multinationals, but “has been made possible by an educated and hard-working population”.


“Many economists remain stuck in an inexorable growth narrative, or at best a ‘green growth’ narrative,” he said. “A fixation on a narrowly defined efficiency, productivity, perpetual growth has resulted in a discipline that has become blinkered to the ecological challenge – the ecological catastrophe – we now face. “That narrow focus constitutes an empty economics which has lost touch with everything meaningful, a social science which no longer is connected, or even attempts to be connected, with the social issues and objectives for which it was developed over centuries. It is incapable of offering solutions to glaring inadequacies of provision as to public needs, devoid of vision.” Later he added: “Our obsession with inexorable economic expansion expresses, perhaps, a desire to transcend our material limits and rise above the state of nature. Yet this growth fixation paradoxically increases the potency of those very limits. “A deadly cocktail of exploding inequalities, massive deregulation and a globalisation defined solely by trade densities has precipitated this ecological crisis.”

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Fern
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652411867732557825

 

 

 

 


Greta oto, also known as glasswinged butterfly, has transparent wings with a span of 5.6 to 6.1 cm

 

 

 

 

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Apr 272023
 
 April 27, 2023  Posted by at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  52 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Woman sitting in a armchair 1910

 

Pentagon Top Brass Pleased With Carlson Exit – Politico (RT)
Tucker Carlson Reappears In 8PM Time Slot, But Not With Fox (ZH)
Poland Seizes Russian Embassy And Trade Mission Funds (RT)
Russia Understands Western Sanctions Aren’t ‘Temporary’ – PM (RT)
Moscow Reacts To Xi-Zelensky Call (RT)
Kiev Could ‘Capture Small Russian Towns’ For Leverage – WaPo (RT)
Ukraine Conflict Helps Prepare For Potential China Clash – Pentagon (RT)
Zelensky’s Right-Hand Man Contradicts US General (RT)
Biden Threatens North Korea With Annihilation (RT)
The Historic US-Saudi Relationship Cannot Bounce Back (Sweidan)
Twitter, Tiktok And Instagram To Face Much Stricter Content Rules In EU (Az.)
Ex-CIA Boss Intervened On Russia Collusion In 2016, Benghazi In 2012 (JTN)
The RFK Jr. Tapes (David Samuels)
Musk’s Lawyer Invokes ‘Deepfake’ Defense (RT)
EU Countries Sinking In Debt – Bloomberg (RT)
Gold Leading ‘Revolt Against Dollar’ – Economist (RT)

 

 

 

 

Macgregor It’s over and Ukraine is doomed

 

 

 

 

RFK Tucker

RFK – Unavoidably unsafe

RFK pharma ads
https://twitter.com/i/status/1651222441715281921

 

 

Digital trap

 

 

“Alexander Dugin, a prominent Russian thinker, in a conversation with Al-Mayadin: The global structure is between two possible scenarios; The first scenario belongs to the year 2050, in which the complete and irreversible victory for globalization and the unipolar era and the emergence of the post-human era and the destruction of all types of humanity have been achieved. The second possible future is that we will win and everything will change and a multipolar world will emerge.

Russia is currently fighting the real devil, Joe Biden, George Soros, and Western crazies; We need to create a new network outside of Western control. We need the continuation of international relations in a successful global trade system, without Western domination. The world is not limited to the West and globalism does not necessarily have a Western meaning. I believe that we are on the verge of the global collapse of liberalism. Its main cause is the growth of internal contradictions in the world system; A new global network should be created based on justice and equality. Globalization is nearing its collapse and end.”

 

 

 

 

“What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military.”

Pentagon Top Brass Pleased With Carlson Exit – Politico (RT)

Senior Pentagon officials have welcomed the departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News, Politico has claimed. The popular host regularly criticized the US military’s diversity and inclusivity policies, claiming they were imposed at the expense of battle readiness. “We’re a better country without him bagging on our military every night in front of hundreds of thousands of people,” a senior Defense Department official told the news outlet on condition of anonymity. The source claimed Carlson had “made a mockery” of the free press and “repeatedly cherry-picked department policies and used them to destroy DoD [Defense Department] as an institution.” Commenting on Carlson’s exit from the conservative network, another official reportedly said: “Good riddance.”

The popular former prime-time host regularly accused the Pentagon of undermining US fighting capabilities for the sake of ideologically-motivated inclusivity, imposed under pressure from President Joe Biden’s administration. In a March 2021 segment, Carlson blasted the introduction of flight suits for pregnant aviators, suggesting that Washington was heading in entirely the wrong direction – unlike its rival Beijing. “While China’s military becomes more masculine as it assembles the world’s largest navy, our military needs to become, as Joe Biden says, more feminine,” Carlson said. “This is a mockery of the US military and its core mission, which is winning wars.”


The remarks triggered a rare direct rebuke by the Pentagon, with then-spokesman John Kirby responding: “What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military.” “We know we’re the greatest military in the world today and even for all the things we need to improve, we know exactly why that’s so,” Kirby insisted. When asked by Politico what he thought about the reported glee at his departure among senior Pentagon officials, Carlson replied in a text message: “Ha! I’m sure.” The news that Carlson and Fox News were parting ways broke on Monday, shortly before his prime-time show was due to be broadcast. Neither party has offered an explanation for the split.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1651421792936894467

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“Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some – and that’s enough..”

Tucker Carlson Reappears In 8PM Time Slot, But Not With Fox (ZH)

After Tucker Carlson’s surprise split from Fox News, the #1 rated cable news host in history re-emerged from his home office on Wednesday to offer a stunning 8PM monologue covering his thoughts on the media landscape, and his future. According to Carlson, one of the things one notices when one takes a little ‘time off’ is “how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. “In five years we won’t even remember that we had them… and yet, at the same time, the undeniably big topics – the ones that will define our future – get virtually no discussion at all. War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues?”

“Debates like that are not permitted in American media,” Carlson continued, adding “Both political parties, and their donors, have reached consensus on what benefits them – and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. “Suddenly the United States looks like a one-party state,” Carlson said. Carlson doesn’t think this will last, however, noting that while the above is a “depressing realization,” he doesn’t think this is permanent. “Our current orthodoxies won’t last. They’re brain-dead. Nobody actually believes them. Hardly anyone’s life is improved by them. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, and so it won’t.


The people in charge know this, that’s why they’re hysterical and aggressive. They’re afraid. They’ve given up persuasion – they’re resorting to force. But it won’t work. When honest people say what’s true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars who’ve been trying to silence them shrink – and they become weaker. That’s the iron-law of the universe; true things prevail.” Tucker rhetorically asked “Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some – and that’s enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon.”

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Wild West.

Poland Seizes Russian Embassy And Trade Mission Funds (RT)

All the money in the accounts of the Russian embassy and trade office in Warsaw has been seized by the Polish prosecutor’s office, Ambassador Sergey Andreyev revealed on Wednesday. “We received a notification from the prosecutor’s office that the funds from the Santander Bank accounts of the embassy and the trade representation were transferred to the accounts of the prosecutor’s office,” Andreyev told RIA Novosti. Santander Bank then informed the embassy that it had “ceased cooperation” with the Russian government and closed the accounts, Andreyev added. There were “significant amounts” of both US dollars and Polish zlotys in both accounts, according to the diplomat. Andreyev called the incident “a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” the 1961 treaty governing the rights and responsibilities of diplomats.

The Polish authorities had previously frozen the embassy account, citing suspicions that it might be involved in “money laundering or terrorism.” When this prevented the embassy from paying the lease on a recreational facility near Warsaw, the Polish authorities terminated the lease and seized the property in November 2022. Another property, a residence on 100 Sobieski Street, was seized last spring. Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said at the time it should be handed to refugees from Ukraine. The Polish foreign ministry said the building was “illegally owned” by the embassy as it was not being used for diplomatic or consular purposes. The embassy’s explanation, that the building was unfit for occupancy as it needed repairs, was ignored.

Poland has also sought to confiscate the embassy-operated school in Warsaw, citing the same pretext. The Russian Foreign Ministry has protested both seizures as a flagrant violation of international law. Many EU and NATO countries have expelled dozens of Russian diplomats after the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, but most did not go so far as to sever relations with Moscow. The US and its allies have insisted they are not actually involved in the conflict, even while they sent Kiev over $100 billion worth of weapons and financial aid.

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“..slapping Russia with restrictions to “disrupt the economy, hurt the people and hit their standard of living, ‘cancel’ Russia and strip it of the ability to choose its own path based on its peoples’ interests.”

Russia Understands Western Sanctions Aren’t ‘Temporary’ – PM (RT)

Russia’s leadership is well aware the nation is likely to live under Western sanctions for a long time, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Wednesday. The government is calculating all the risks associated with the existing and potential future restrictions and is ready for any scenario, he added. “We understand that sanctions are not a temporary phenomenon. They will not be lifted in an instant. Our former partners have gone too far to just turn around and retreat,” he told the ‘Znanie’ (‘Knowledge’) forum in Moscow. According to the prime minister, the US and its allies have been slapping Russia with restrictions to “disrupt the economy, hurt the people and hit their standard of living, ‘cancel’ Russia and strip it of the ability to choose its own path based on its peoples’ interests.”

The Russian economy has been weathering the sanctions push well so far and demonstrated its resilience, Mishustin said, adding that some industries still need to fully restore their production chains. The prime minister earlier told the State Duma that the downturn the Russian economy experienced in 2022 was not as drastic as had been predicted, adding that the nation is going back to economic growth now. The Russian government’s head also warned that the “sanctions war” ultimately led nowhere and only impeded global economic development. The world is now dominated by developments affecting every aspect of life, the prime minister said, naming the rapid development of information technologies used in various fields as one of such processes. “They [IT technologies] are now an important condition of long-term quality economic growth,” he said.

Last week, the head of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, said that the Western sanctions Russia had to face last year were worse than “even the most pessimistic scenario.” Although no one could have predicted anything like that, both the Russian people and the country’s businesses demonstrated remarkable adaptability in the face of this new reality, she added. The US and EU have introduced a total of ten rounds of sanctions over the conflict. In December, the EU, along with the G7 countries and Australia, introduced a price cap on Russian seaborne oil, set at $60 per barrel.

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“She said Russian and Chinese visions for a path to peace were “broadly in tune” with one another. “The problem lies not with the lack of good plans,” Zakharova said.”

Moscow Reacts To Xi-Zelensky Call (RT)

Ukraine’s “unrealistic” demands are standing in the way of peace negotiations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has stated. She made her comments in response to a question about the phone call between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The leaders spoke on Wednesday for the first time since Russia launched its military operation in the neighboring state in February 2022. Zakharova praised Beijing for its efforts to help restart meaningful negotiations. She said Russian and Chinese visions for a path to peace were “broadly in tune” with one another. “The problem lies not with the lack of good plans,” Zakharova said.

“The Kiev regime has so far not been receptive to any reasonable initiative aimed at a political and diplomatic settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. Its occasional agreement to hold negotiations is being tied to ultimatums with obviously unrealistic demands.” The spokeswoman blamed Kiev for the eventual breakdown of negotiations last spring when Russian and Ukrainian teams held several rounds of meetings. Kiev, meanwhile, has repeatedly said that negotiations can resume only after Russia surrenders its recently incorporated territories. Moscow has called such demands unacceptable. Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia in the wake of the 2014 coup in Kiev. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, did the same after holding referendums on the matter in September.

In October, Zelensky signed a decree that declared the “impossibility” of conducting negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Beijing, which unveiled a 12-point roadmap for peace in Ukraine in February, has maintained that the conflict can only end through dialogue. China, unlike many Western countries, has also refused to condemn Russia for its actions. China named diplomat Li Hui its special envoy to Ukraine and “other countries” on Wednesday. Xi said that the envoy would be tasked with conducting “in-depth communication with all parties on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.” Li was China’s ambassador to Moscow from 2009 to 2019. Zelensky, meanwhile, has appointed former strategic industries minister Pavel Ryabkin as the country’s new ambassador to China.

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“The profile of the unit published by the Post claims that Azov has “evolved” away from its neo-Nazi origins..”

Kiev Could ‘Capture Small Russian Towns’ For Leverage – WaPo (RT)

The interim commander of Ukraine’s Azov Brigade (the current incarnation of a former volunteer unit known for its neo-Nazi ideology) has said that Kiev’s forces could capture Russian towns and use them to put pressure on Moscow. In an interview with the Washington Post, Bogdan Krotevich was asked about Ukraine’s much-anticipated planned offensive against Russia. He was referring to the experience of Chechen militants in the mid-1990s who “adopted a strategy of capturing small Russian towns to use as leverage to recover Russian-held areas” during the military conflict in the southern Russian republic. The Ukrainian fighter said his country “may do the same,” the newspaper reported on Wednesday. It was not clear which episodes of the conflict in Chechnya Krotevich was referring to.

One of the most tragic examples of violence spilling outside of the Chechen Republic at the time came in June 1995, when a militant force led by Shamil Basayev raided the city of Budyonnovsk, taking over 1,000 civilians hostage at a local hospital. Another raid targeted the city of Kizlyar in Dagestan the next year, in which Chechen militants led by terrorist Salman Raduyev likewise resorted to hostage-taking. Dozens of people were killed in both cases. The Post’s article noted the desire of Krotevich and other Azov leaders to have more prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine so that captured members of the unit can be returned. The man himself spent several months in Russian custody after he and other Azov fighters surrendered in the Donbass city of Mariupol. Krotevich was freed in a Türkiye-mediated swap last September.

“I came to the conclusion that the fastest way to release our prisoners is to take more Russian soldiers prisoner, and to end this war with our victory,” Krotevich stated. The profile of the unit published by the Post claims that Azov has “evolved” away from its neo-Nazi origins. Moscow regards the original Azov Battalion, which was created in 2014, and its successor organizations as a terrorist group. The unit was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard early in its history and has now become one of nine ‘Attack Guard’ volunteer brigades. The Interior Ministry revealed them in February, touting service in the units as “an opportunity to dispose of enemies” of the country.

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Dress rehearsal.

Ukraine Conflict Helps Prepare For Potential China Clash – Pentagon (RT)

The Pentagon will use the lessons learned from supplying military aid to Ukraine to help Taiwan in a potential conflict with China, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks has said. “There are many advantages we’ve gained for a potential Pacific challenge from the Ukraine conflict,” Hicks told Bloomberg in an interview published on Wednesday. “We’re learning now to grow our industrial base and to study that industrial base, which has been for the last 60 years in a bit of a feast and famine cycle.” The conflict highlighted the difficulties of quickly procuring enough weapons and equipment for Kiev, Hicks explained. The US repeatedly used the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) to speed up the transfer of stockpiles to Ukraine and plans to do the same with Taiwan.

“We’re thinking about how we use those authorities right now to generate faster and higher-capacity delivery of munitions to provide to our forces in the Pacific,” Hicks said, adding that the Pentagon has “a clear strategy that’s focused on China.” Although the deputy secretary admitted that the US did not believe Beijing was planning an “imminent attack” on Taiwan, she maintained that the Pentagon was committed to “making sure that the (Chinese) leadership wakes up every day and says today is not the day to undertake aggression that threatens US interests.” In December, US President Joe Biden signed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes $2 billion in military loans to Taipei. The law also allows Washington to muster an emergency stockpile of ammunition worth up to $100 million on or near the island.

Taiwanese Premier Chen Chien-jen said on Monday that negotiations of assembling “regional contingency stockpiles” were still ongoing. Beijing held large-scale military exercises around the island this month in response to a visit by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to the US. Beijing considers Taiwan – which has been ruled by a separate government since the late 1940s – its territory and views contact between local and foreign officials as meddling into its domestic affairs. China has also accused Washington of backing “secessionist forces” on the island. Chinese President Xi Jinping said last year that Beijing favored peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan but reserved the right to use force if necessary. The US supports the ‘One China’ policy by refraining from establishing formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. At the same time, Washington has been selling arms to the local authorities and promised to defend the island in case of an invasion.

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“..98% of promised combat vehicles had already been delivered..”

Zelensky’s Right-Hand Man Contradicts US General (RT)

Ukraine still needs more weapons and equipment for the much-hyped spring “counteroffensive,” especially artillery ammunition, President Vladimir Zelensky’s adviser Mikhail Podoliak said on Wednesday. He disagreed with the US general commanding NATO forces in Europe, who told Congress earlier in the day that 98% of promised combat vehicles had already been delivered. General Christopher Cavoli gave that statistic to the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday morning. “I am very confident that we have delivered the materiel that they need and we’ll continue a pipeline to sustain their operations as well,” Cavoli added, responding to questions about the expected Ukrainian attack.

Podoliak challenged that assessment later in the day, speaking during a telethon hosted by Ukrainian television. He said only the Ukrainian General Staff can offer accurate numbers, and that Cavoli’s statistics weren’t up to date. “In my opinion, 98% is too much, too large a number. He proceeds from certain mathematical data, things he knows today,” the adviser said, referring to Cavoli. “There should be much more equipment, there is a real shortage of shells, especially of heavy calibers. We are trying to solve this problem.”

The current rate of supply allows the Ukrainian military to take “certain actions” at the frontline, Podoliak said, adding that there is “never enough” weapons and equipment when facing an enemy such as Russia. The much-anticipated counteroffensive may have already begun, he suggested, urging the public not to regard it as a single event but a large number of engagements on various fronts Multiple US outlets have sought to temper expectations about the Ukrainian attack over the past week, citing anonymous government officials worried about the political fallout from its possible failure. Last Friday, the White House even warned of a possible Russian offensive taking place instead.

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Biden=Trump.

Biden Threatens North Korea With Annihilation (RT)

US President Joe Biden declared on Wednesday that a North Korean nuclear attack on his country or South Korea would spell doom for Pyongyang. Under a new agreement between Washington and Seoul, the US would respond to such an attack with nuclear weapons, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol added. “A nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies or partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of whatever regime were to take such an action,” Biden told reporters at the White House. Speaking alongside Biden, Yoon declared that “sustainable peace on the Korean peninsula does not happen automatically.”

“We can achieve peace through the superiority of overwhelming forces and not a false peace based on the goodwill of the other side,” Yoon said, adding that in the event of a nuclear attack from the north, the US and South Korea would “respond swiftly, overwhelmingly and decisively using the full force of the alliance, including US nuclear weapons.” Biden’s words echo those of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who in 2017 warned North Korea that he would respond with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if the country threatened the US with nuclear weapons. Although the north tested a nuclear bomb a month later, Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed to a detente and went on to meet several times, and the north’s missile tests came to a halt for most of Trump’s remaining time in office.

These tests have since restarted and ramped up. Pyongyang has test-fired more than 100 missiles since the beginning of 2022, and this month tested its first solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile and a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone. Officials in Washington and Seoul have claimed since last year that the north is gearing up for its seventh underground test of a nuclear weapon. Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, largely went along with Trump’s policy of diplomatic outreach to Kim. Yoon, however, has taken a much more hardline stance on his neighbor to the north. In a speech in January, Yoon raised the possibility of his administration acquiring “our own nuclear weapons,” something that more than two thirds of South Koreans want, according to recent polls.

The agreement signed on Wednesday has brought an end to that idea, as it stipulates that Seoul will not pursue its own nuclear armament. Known as the ‘Washington Declaration’, the agreement boosts nuclear information-sharing between the US and Korea, and provides for more joint military drills and the deployment of nuclear-armed US submarines and bombers to South Korea on a rotating basis.

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“..all US efforts to persuade Riyadh to flood global oil markets have failed, and the Russians have managed to maintain both their exports and their economy..”

The Historic US-Saudi Relationship Cannot Bounce Back (Sweidan)

Since the Cold War era began, oil has been a key pillar of the Russian (and former Soviet) economy. It has long been a US priority to be able to influence prices as a pressure tool against Moscow. Since Saudi Arabia is considered an oil superpower, Washington’s cooperation with Riyadh – despite its own dramatically reduced Saudi oil imports – is at the heart of US economic strategies to counter Russia. For example, in the mid-eighties, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US asked the Saudis to flood oil markets in order to lower prices and undermine the oil revenue-reliant USSR. In 1986, oil prices dropped by two-thirds, from $30 per barrel to nearly $10 per barrel, ultimately crippling the Soviet economy and its geopolitical reach. But attitudes have sharply altered during the intervening 37 years.

Saudi Arabia now views the US as an energy market competitor due to Washington’s increased shale oil production and disinterest in boosting oil imports. Between 2010 and 2021, US shale oil production grew from approximately 0.59 million bpd to 9.06 million bpd. Riyadh’s response to this new geo-economic development was to raise oil production in 2016, with the aim of lowering prices to undercut the US shale industry, which operates at significantly higher costs. The Saudis indeed fear a declining role as a strategic supplier of global oil, in large part due to expanded US shale production and energy self-sufficiency. This has driven the Saudis to try and reimpose their oil superiority by lowering prices to undercut competitors with higher production costs – despite the short-term domestic damage caused by increased Saudi oil production.

To this day, Saudi Arabia continues to present an obstacle to US energy interests, and has instead found most common ground with Washington’s main adversaries – Russia, China, Iran – with whom Riyadh’s energy interests intersect. Contrary to expectations since the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022, all US efforts to persuade Riyadh to flood global oil markets have failed, and the Russians have managed to maintain both their exports and their economy. It has become manifestly clear to Washington’s decision-makers that Saudi Arabia today is not the Saudi Arabia of 1985, willing to undermine its own revenues and energy interests in order to serve a US geopolitical agenda. Discussions in Washington today have likewise turned to the feasibility of maintaining the US commitment to Saudi Arabia’s security, particularly since Riyadh neither provides Americans with energy nor follows its political diktats.

Some believe that the US’ role of acting as a security guarantor in the Persian Gulf merely serves Beijing’s interests by securing China’s main energy sources. Yet others argue that a US military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf will create a vacuum filled by Beijing, which will keenly seek to ensure its own energy security. The one point of clarity, however, is that US-Saudi energy interests are no longer synergistic and that Riyadh’s interests line up far more closely with those of Beijing and Moscow. This remains a key factor driving Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy and economic diversification today. What remains to be seen is how far the Saudis – deeply and historically bound to western interests – will be willing to challenge the US’ regional hegemony as their goals diverge and Riyadh finds common cause with Washington’s rivals.

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“..a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP) or a “Very Large Online Search Engine” (VLOSE)..”

Twitter, Tiktok And Instagram To Face Much Stricter Content Rules In EU (Az.)

The list features platforms with more than 45 million monthly active users, which also includes certain services from Amazon, Google, Meta, Instagram and Microsoft. The volume of users puts the platforms under a new EU law, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), imposing measures from August such as annual audits and a duty to effectively counter disinformation and hate content. In four months’ time, “these platforms and search engines will not be able to act as if they were ‘too big to care’,” Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, said in a statement. “This new supervision system will cast a wide and tight net and catch all points of failure in a platform’s compliance,” he added.

Platforms meeting the 45-million-plus threshold include Twitter, owned by US billionaire Elon Musk; Alphabet’s Google Search, Google Maps, Google Shopping and Google Play units as well as its YouTube subsidiary; and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Apple’s iOS App Store, online encyclopedia Wikipedia, messaging app Snapchat and creative image website Pinterest are also covered under the legislation. Under the DSA, they are categorised as a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP) or a “Very Large Online Search Engine” (VLOSE). Most of the companies on the list are US-based but Chinese-owned platforms TikTok and e-commerce site AliExpress also feature. The commission also listed German online fashion retailer Zalando. Breton told journalists today that his team will hold “stress tests” to check Twitter’s compliance readiness at the end of June.

He added that TikTok had also expressed an interest in cooperating to ensure compliance. The announcement follows a deadline in February for online companies to publish user figures in Europe. The DSA has a wide range of objectives, including forcing platforms to better protect children, strengthen transparency around digital services, prohibit the sale online of unsafe goods and allow users to have greater choice when online in the EU. The rules allow the EU to impose fines of up to six percent of the platforms’ annual global sales for repeated infringements. By 25 August, the 19 platforms must have an independent compliance system in place and give their first annual risk assessment to the European Commission, including how they plan to handle content on mental health and gender-based violence.

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Lying and cheating. Working for Hillary, Obama and Biden. For years. It’s a sad picture.

Ex-CIA Boss Intervened On Russia Collusion In 2016, Benghazi In 2012 (JTN)

Morell, a 33-year veteran of the CIA who retired shortly after Brennan took over in 2013, has now stirred controversies in three straight elections with actions that relied in part on his intelligence community ties. In September 2012, as Obama was seeking reelection in a close race against Republican Mitt Romney, Morell edited intelligence talking points to delete references to al Qaeda’s role in the deadly attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi. The edits ended up sending National Security Advisor Susan Rice onto the Sunday talk shows to make a false insinuation that an anti-Muslim video spurred the attack on Benghazi when in fact the CIA had strong evidence an al Qaeda-related arm had instigated it.

Republicans accused the former CIA chief of a cover-up. Morell defended his actions in testimony two years later, insisting his edits were not designed to be political but instead were well-meaning actions taken in the heat of a dramatic intelligence drama. “These allegations accuse me of taking these actions for the political benefit of President Obama and then secretary of state Clinton,” Morell testified. “These allegations are false.” But by that time, the talking points had become a major controversy in the 2012 election.

In 2016, Morell’s insertion into the Russia collusion narrative came as Brennan, his successor, was warning Obama the Clinton campaign was crafting a dirty trick. In declassified notes, Brennan recounted how during a July 28, 2016 meeting with Obama he relayed a warning that there was intelligence that Clinton was trying to conjure up a Trump-Russia scandal to distract from Mrs. Clinton’s email controversies. The Clinton campaign had helped fund the Steele dossier, it was later learned. “We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED],” Brennan’s notes read. “Cite alleged approval by Hillary Clinton of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”

Two months later, Brennan’s CIA would send a similar warning to the FBI, which was investigating Russian collusion based in part on the now-discredited Steele dossier. CIA is aware of an intercept “discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server,” the agency wrote in a teletype to the bureau. Brennan’s warning to Obama was significant because just four days earlier the Clinton campaign — where current Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan served at the time as a security adviser — put out a statement saying Russia hacked the Democrat Party documents to help Trump. Mueller’s probe found no proof Trump or his team played a role in the hack.

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Long read.

The RFK Jr. Tapes (David Samuels)

The heir to the family’s political mantle in the third generation of Kennedys was always Bobby. It was Bobby who became the leader of his tribe of orphaned brothers and sisters after their father’s death, trying and failing to make up for the absence of a charismatic father and the near-total absence of adult supervision. A friend who was close to the family in those years recalls visits to their home in Hickory Hill, Virginia, as like visiting a zoo—quite literally, with live sea mammals in the swimming pool, and animals of all shapes and sizes, frequently untamed, roaming freely throughout the house. Bobby’s hawks nested in the eaves and children climbed in and out of windows. Eventually, the friend’s mother forbade further visits, on account of it being too physically dangerous.

If the Kennedys were a kind of American royalty, then Bobby was their Prince Hal—charismatic and beloved, yet also dangerous and frequently out of control, a fatherless child who was trying to emulate the adult father figures who had been taken from him before he could truly understand who they were or what their brand of world-shaping masculinity meant. In 1983, Bobby was found nodding off in an airplane bathroom, and then pleaded guilty to heroin possession. The death of his brother David, who worshipped Bobby, a year later from a heroin overdose, made an uphill climb back to respectability seem even more unlikely, even after he got clean, and his decades of hard work as an environmental lawyer for Riverkeeper and the NRDC established him as one of the most effective environmental activists in the country.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Bobby kept his name alive in political circles through a familiar striptease dance with the New York press, which was no doubt orchestrated in part by his best friend from college, Peter Kaplan, the sharp-eyed editor of The New York Observer: A dutiful accounting of his environmental good works ridding New York’s waterways of deadly toxins, a dash of Kennedy fairy dust, a tour of his falcons—falconry being a lifelong hobby, pursued with characteristic dedication—and a tantalizing hint of a possible future race for some political office that would re-up his star power and help promote his advocacy. Of course, he never ran—which prevented the publication of the inevitable attack articles ripping him to pieces.

Running would have been messy. His sister Kerry was married to the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo—heir to another political dynasty whose name meant more in New York state than the name Kennedy did. Then it all came apart. In 2005, Kerry and Andrew Cuomo divorced. In 2010, Bobby separated from his wife, Mary Richardson, who had been Kerry’s college roommate at Brown and appeared to be suffering from substance abuse issues; a judge awarded temporary full custody of their four children to Bobby. In 2012, Mary Richardson hung herself. In 2013, Peter Kaplan died of cancer.

Meanwhile, Bobby Kennedy Jr. found success as an environmentally friendly venture capitalist along with a new cause: vaccines. In 2005, Kennedy wrote a blockbuster Rolling Stone magazine article titled “Deadly Immunity,” which presented compelling evidence of an ongoing vaccine safety cover-up led by U.S. national health bureaucrats, including transcripts of a 2000 CDC conference in Norcross, Georgia, where researchers presented information linking the mercury compound thimerosol with neurological problems in children. At its root, the case Kennedy made in his article was no more or less plausible and empirically grounded than the cases that he and dozens of other environmental advocates had been making for decades against large chemical companies for spewing toxins into America’s air, water, and soil, and then lying about it.

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“..the company’s defense could make all of Musk’s public statements “immune” from legal scrutiny simply because he is “famous.”

Musk’s Lawyer Invokes ‘Deepfake’ Defense (RT)

A judge has ordered Elon Musk to testify under oath about whether he made certain claims about his company’s electric cars, after Tesla lawyers said statements attributed to him by plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit could have been fabricated with ‘deepfake’ software. The ruling from California Judge Evette Pennypacker was handed down on Wednesday, part of a lawsuit against Tesla over the death of Walter Huang, who was killed in a car wreck involving one of the company’s vehicles in 2018. Musk was ordered to provide a three-hour interview under oath regarding some of his past comments about Tesla cars and their ‘Autopilot’ capabilities, as the CEO is alleged to have claimed that some models could “drive autonomously with greater safety than a person” at a conference in 2016.

The plaintiffs in the suit say the claims were misleading and that the self-driving features on Huang’s Tesla had failed, resulting in his death. The carmaker, however, maintains that Huang was on his cell phone before the crash and had disregarded warnings from the vehicle, denying any liability. Company lawyers also dispute the comments pinned on Musk, saying that he, “like many public figures, is the subject of many ‘deepfake’ videos and audio recordings that purport to show him saying and doing things he never actually said or did.” Though Huang’s family cited a 2016 YouTube video which appears to show Musk making the statement in question, Tesla’s legal team has opposed the CEO’s deposition, also stating that he cannot remember his past comments.

Judge Pennypacker said Tesla’s claims are “deeply troubling,” suggesting the company’s defense could make all of Musk’s public statements “immune” from legal scrutiny simply because he is “famous.” She warned similar arguments could allow celebrities and public figures to “avoid taking ownership of what they did actually say and do.” However, the judge’s order was tentative, meaning that another hearing will be held on Thursday to determine whether Musk will be deposed under oath. Such rulings are not uncommon in California courts, which frequently allow parties to offer additional arguments to dispute motions before they are finalized.

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Join the crowd.

EU Countries Sinking In Debt – Bloomberg (RT)

Countries in Eastern Europe have borrowed some $32 billion so far this year, three times more than during the same period a year ago, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Poland has tapped overseas markets for nearly $9 billion, putting it second among emerging-market economies in terms of overseas borrowing, trailing only Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Romania and Hungary, which have borrowed a respective $6 billion and $5 billion, are the fourth and fifth largest emerging-market borrowers. This marks the first time in a dozen years that three Eastern European countries are among the top five overseas emerging-market borrowers.

The surge in borrowing is attributable to an increasing need to dole out subsidies due to the still-raging energy crisis, as well as soaring spending related to the military conflict in Ukraine, according to Bloomberg. Eastern European countries have had to build up their military capabilities and help refugees from the neighboring state. Meanwhile, hawkish policies pursued by key central banks have made it much more expensive to borrow in bond markets, even for highly rated nations. Poland is paying 5.5% in annual interest on a new 30-year bond, significantly above the less than 4% the same bond would have sold for back in 2021.

Rising interest rates are projected to add to the suddenly swelling budget deficits across Eastern Europe, inevitably putting more pressure on finances in the region. According to analyst estimates on Bloomberg, Eastern Europe’s budget deficit will surge to 4.3% of the region’s gross domestic product in 2023, up from the 1.3% recorded two years ago. The conflict in Ukraine “hits fiscal deficits from both sides,” Daniel Wood, a fixed income portfolio manager at William Blair International, told Bloomberg. “It lowers growth, which reduces revenue collection for the government, and on the expenditure side it has been necessary for governments to help those that have been hit hard by the cost of living.”

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“Some countries began to seek alternatives after seeing Russian assets frozen abroad and the country cut off from the SWIFT global financial messaging system. “Suddenly, it was clear that any nation could be a target..”

Gold Leading ‘Revolt Against Dollar’ – Economist (RT)

Central banks around the world are shifting away from the US dollar and turning their attention to gold as a safe haven asset, the chairman of Rockefeller International, Ruchir Sharma, has said. Prices for the commodity have surged 20% in the past six months, with demand coming not from “the usual suspects” such as large and small investors “seeking a hedge against inflation and low real interest rates,” but from “heavy buyers” like central banks, Sharma wrote in the Financial Times on Sunday. According to the investment expert, regulators are sharply reducing their dollar holdings and seeking a safe alternative. Central banks now account for a record 33% of monthly global demand for gold and are ramping up gold-buying more than at any time since data began in 1950, Sharma added.

“This buying boom has helped push the price of gold to near-record levels and more than 50% higher than what models based on real interest rates would suggest,” he explained, adding that “clearly, something new is driving gold prices.” Sharma pointed out that nine of the top ten central bank buyers are in the “developing world,” including Russia, India, and China. “Not coincidentally, these three countries are in talks with Brazil and South Africa about creating a new currency to challenge the dollar,” Sharma noted. He attributed the rush for the precious metal to increasing sanctions pressure exerted by the US and its allies, with as many as 30% of nations facing international penalties – up from 10% in the early 1990s.

“Thus, the oldest and most traditional of assets, gold, is now a vehicle of central bank revolt against the dollar,” Sharma argued. Some countries began to seek alternatives after seeing Russian assets frozen abroad and the country cut off from the SWIFT global financial messaging system. “Suddenly, it was clear that any nation could be a target,” Sharma wrote. According to the expert, the US saw sanctions as a “cost-free way to fight Russia,” but in reality the weaponization of the dollar has come at a cost for Washington as even allies such as Thailand and the Philippines have started to look for alternatives.

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CO2

 

 

 

 

Progress

 

 

 

9/11

 

 


Biologists found a marine green algae during a trip to the island in 2019. It took two years to identify it and give it a name: acetabularia jalakanyakae. The main feature of the species is that the plant is made up of one gigantic cell with a nucleus

 

 

Tippy taps

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 182023
 


Vincent van Gogh Scène de rue à Montmartre 1887

 

Leaks Spelling the End for Ukraine (Lauria)
Poland Needs Ukraine As Anti-Russian Toolkit – Zakharova (TASS)
American Smart Bombs Are Failing In Ukraine (ZH)
Multipolarity Is About A Fair Redistribution Of Power (Sibal)
It’s All Hotting Up (Macleod)
Anti-Russian Sanctions Harm Developing Nations – Brazil FM
Russia’s Suicide (Gotev)
Pentagon Doesn’t Know How Many Documents Were Leaked – Spokeswoman (RT)
US Carries Out Provocative Course Towards Moscow In Ukraine – Envoy (TASS)
Canada’s State Media Quit Twitter Over Label (RT)
G7 Members Seek To Push Moscow Out Of Nuclear Energy Market (RT)
Russian Researchers Find New Way To Reuse Nuclear Waste (RT)
Call the Exorcist (Kunstler)
‘We’re Going to See a Lot of Bankruptcies’: Former Home Depot CEO (ET)
Cost Of British Food Basics Increases By Up To 80% In A Year (G.)

 

 


Monday evening – more than 280 anti-government rallies across France

 

 

Elon Tucker
https://twitter.com/i/status/1648131075133128709
https://twitter.com/i/status/1648121643439366144

 

 


Prague, Wenceslas square. Czechs want the globalist government to resign.

 

 

Comer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1648073662845820928

 

 

Gaetz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1648083568457859075

 

 

 

 

Bragg

 

 

 

 

Pinocchio, Snow White, and Superman

Pinocchio, Snow White, and Superman are out for a little stroll in town one afternoon enjoying the sunshine. As they walked, they come across a sign: “Beauty contest for the most beautiful woman in the world.” “I am entering!” said Snow White. After half an hour she comes out and they ask her, “Well, how’d ya go?” “I won First Place!,” said Snow White. They continue walking and they see another sign: “Contest for the strongest man in the world.”

“I’m entering” says Superman. After half an hour, he returns and they ask him, “How did you make out?” “I won first place too.” answers Superman. “Did you ever have a doubt?” They continue walking when they see a third sign: “Contest – Who is the greatest liar in the world?” Pinocchio quickly enters the contest. After half an hour he returns with tears in his eyes. “What happened?” they asked. “Who the hell is Anthony Fauci?”

 

 

 

 

“Why would Moscow accept a deal now when Ukraine is at its weakest and Russia is poised to make significant gains on the battlefield?”

Leaks Spelling the End for Ukraine (Lauria)

A Washington Post headline last week was a bombshell for someone who has only been reading about the Ukraine war in The Washington Post and other Western media: “U.S. doubts Ukraine counteroffensive will yield big gains, leaked document says.” The story admits that Western media audiences have been misled about the course of the war, that essentially what mainstream media has been reporting about Ukraine has been a pack of lies: namely that Ukraine is winning the war and is poised to launch an offensive that will lead to a final victory. Instead, the second paragraph of the piece makes clear the leaked documents show the long-planned Ukrainian offensive will fail miserably — “a marked departure from the Biden administration’s public statements about the vitality of Ukraine’s military.”

In other words, U.S. officials have been lying about the state of the war to the public and to reporters who have faithfully reported their every word without a hint of skepticism. The Post said, as if it’s a bad thing, that the leaks will likely “embolden critics who feel the United States and NATO should do more to push for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.” That has begun to happen. Writing in the uber-Establishment Foreign Affairs, former State Department official Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, write that “it is difficult to feel sanguine about where the war is headed.” In “The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine: A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table,” they say:

“The best path forward is a sequenced two-pronged strategy aimed at first bolstering Ukraine’s military capability and then, when the fighting season winds down late this year, ushering Moscow and Kyiv from the battlefield to the negotiating table.” The article does not mention the leaks, though it was published after the disclosures made clear that the Ukrainian offensive, intended to break through Russia’s land bridge to Crimea, would fail. Filled with the usual talk about Ukraine having better “operational skill” than Russia, and that the war will end in a “stalemate,” the piece represents an emerging strategy in the West: namely that before negotiating, Ukraine needs to launch its offensive to gain back some territory, “imposing heavy losses on Russia, foreclosing Moscow’s military options, and increasing its willingness to contemplate a diplomatic settlement.”

But that is a tall order. Moscow would be unlikely to negotiate at the end of the Ukrainian offensive, particularly as the article admits the “Russian military’s numerical superiority” and that Ukraine is “facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.” Moscow was ready to cut a deal with Kiev one month after Russia’s intervention but the West, with its strategy of lengthening the war to weaken Russia, quashed it. Why would Moscow accept a deal now when Ukraine is at its weakest and Russia is poised to make significant gains on the battlefield?

CNN Russia

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“And when the border will be erased and the rest of Ukraine will be absorbed by Warsaw, then no one will talk to the local population at all.”

Poland Needs Ukraine As Anti-Russian Toolkit – Zakharova (TASS)

Ukraine is beneficial for Poland only as a tool of anti-Russian policy, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Monday. “Can you imagine, this is how Poland talks to Ukraine, while it still needs it as a subject, as an anti-Russian tool,” she wrote, commenting on the words of Poland’s Minister of Economic Development and Technology Waldemar Buda about the ban on the import of Ukrainian grain, “And when the border will be erased and the rest of Ukraine will be absorbed by Warsaw, then no one will talk to the local population at all.” Zakharova added that such a decision “is very revealing from the point of view of exposing the Westerners’ imaginary concern for the hungry and needy for food.” Earlier, the Polish minister recalled that the ban on imports of Ukrainian grain also concerned its transit to third countries.


Poland and Hungary on April 16 announced a temporary ban on the import of agricultural products from Ukraine. It will be in effect until June 30. Both countries said they were forced to take this measure because of the lack of response from the European Commission to its demands to provide European aid to Hungarian and Polish farmers who are suffering significant losses due to the overstocking of these countries’ markets with agricultural products from Ukraine. On Friday, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic called for creating a single European mechanism for buying Ukrainian grain and introducing EU customs quotas on agricultural products from Ukraine. On Thursday, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Slovakia imposed a temporary ban on the processing and sale of grain from Ukraine in the country. The ban also applies to flour already produced from it.

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“..Russia is using GPS jamming to interfere with the weapons’ targeting process..”

American Smart Bombs Are Failing In Ukraine (ZH)

American-made smart bombs are failing in Ukraine, based on successful Russian electronic jamming measures, according to a Pentagon document connected to alleged leaker Jack Teixeira. The highly-classified document not only reviews use of effective Russian countermeasures to make the smart bombs ineffective, but also says that in some cases technical problems are resulting in failure to detonate. A Biden administration defense aid program has involved sending the Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range (JDAM-ER) to Ukraine in order to turn unguided bombs into GPS guided “smart bombs” capable of hitting targets over 50 miles away. According to Politico:

“A larger problem is that Russia is using GPS jamming to interfere with the weapons’ targeting process, according to the slide and a separate person familiar with the issue who’s not in the U.S. government. American officials believe Russian jamming is causing the JDAMs, and at times other American weapons such as guided rockets, to miss their mark. “I do think there may be concern that the Russians may be jamming the signal used to direct the JDAMs, which would answer why these munitions are not performing in the manner expected and how they perform in other war zones,” said Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon official and retired CIA officer.” The document mentions that “1,000 arming lanyards” were approved for Ukrainian forces, suggesting that over 1,000 of the smart bomb kits will be sent.

Far from being the ‘game changer’ that Kiev hoped for, other major US-provided systems are failing as well. The leaked Pentagon documents elsewhere make mention of M270 and HIMARs rockets being thwarted by Russian forces’ GPS jamming tactics. Some documents among the trove of leaks have consistently shown that Ukraine’s military is generally beset by ammunition and weapons shortages, despite the billions in defense aid pledged from the West.

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Kanwal Sibal is a former Indian foreign secretary and former ambassador to Russia, Turkey, Egypt, France and was Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington DC.

Multipolarity Is About A Fair Redistribution Of Power (Sibal)

Multipolarity is a code word for more equitable power sharing in the world. Although global power, especially economic, has been dispersing in recent years, mainly towards the East, it is still not adequately reflected in decision-making on global issues. The West, led by the US, still dominates international political and financial institutions. It seeks to impose its values and norms on others and uses human rights and democracy as tools to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. It has not given up attempts to bring about regime change in other countries to further its geopolitical agenda. It is currently strengthening or building military alliances and partnerships to maintain its global leadership. It tries to shape narratives at the international level in its favor through the global information networks it controls. The power that the US exerts on all transactions in US dollars, along with the status of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, arms Washington with a unique weapon for financial domination including its use of sanctions as an instrument to bend countries to its strategic goals.

All of these deficiencies in global governance are epitomized in the unfolding of the conflict in Ukraine. Russia has been subject to a series of sanctions by the West without UN approval. Third countries are pressured to adhere to them under pain of secondary sanctions by the US. Losing access to the US financial markets is a risk that countries want to avoid. With multiple Russian banks arbitrarily excluded from the SWIFT payments system, bank transfer arrangements with Russia have been disrupted, affecting trade exchanges. Russian foreign exchange reserve holdings abroad have been illegally confiscated. Not only has the West broken oil and gas ties with Russia, other countries have been pressed to do so. A price cap on Russian oil has been imposed in a bid to limit Russian earnings from oil sales. The declared goal of these measures is to cause Russia’s economic collapse.

The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline has been blown up to end Germany’s reliance on Russian gas. The property of private Russian individuals has been confiscated without due process of law, which casts doubt on the sanctity of private property in Western countries. Russian media has been banned in violation of Europe’s commitment to freedom of speech as a fundamental value, and Western media has long been propagating narratives demonizing Russia and its President. The essence of multipolarity is multilateralism. However, the structures of multilateralism have not functioned well in the field of international security in particular and have been weakened further with the absence of reforms in the international political and economic institutions. The UN Security Council, the World Bank and the IMF still reflect the world of 1945 in many ways and require a thorough overhaul and modern restructuring.

The UN Security Council needs to be expanded to give more representation to rising developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. This is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future with the deepening divisions between the West on one side and Russia and China on the other blocking even further an already difficult consensus from emerging. The expansion of the Security Council, in effect, constitutes a transfer of power at the international level, and this will continue to be resisted by the permanent powers for various reasons. Multilateralism means a willingness to accept the redistribution of global power that has already occurred on the ground, instead of looking for ways to limit its import by strengthening existing alliances and forging new ones, as is being seen today.

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“..if they all joined, the expanded BRICS would have a nominal GDP 30% larger than the United States, represent over 50% of the world population, and control over 60% of global gas reserves.”

Note that the GDP PPP would be well over 50%.

It’s All Hotting Up (Macleod)

Increasing numbers of national governments are abandoning the US sphere of influence. Opportunities from trade with Asia compare favourably with rising currency and banking risks in a dollar-centric world. Against an imploding banking system in long-established financial markets, China’s renminbi looks like a safe haven. Thanks to a savings-driven economy, China’s consumer price inflation remained very low, when those of the western alliance soared. Now we face a credit crunch, as banks struggle to reduce their operational gearing which has become uncomfortably high. Consequently, borrowing rates will be driven higher, taking interest rate control out of central banking hands. Higher interest rates and therefore bond yields due to a credit crunch will escalate the banking crisis, which is only in its early stages.

Consequently, central bank credit will be inflated to prevent the commercial banking network from collapsing and to fund rising government budget deficits. It is the prospect and realisation of these conditions which will lead ultimately to a collapse of fiat currency values, and foreign holders of dollars, euros and sterling are only beginning to understand the danger. In recent weeks, the threat to the dollar’s hegemony has noticeably increased. Like rats deserting a sinking ship, growing numbers of countries are backing off from the dollar in favour of China’s renminbi, and to a lesser extent other emerging market currencies. China has brokered a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and in turn the Saudis are now improving their diplomatic relations with Syria.

It appears that America’s divide-and-rule Middle East policy has been overthrown. Even Mexico is reported to be prepared to accept renminbi in defiance of its northern neighbour’s policies. And Brazil has always been the B in BRICS. Now Argentina has applied to join an expanding BRICS, alongside Algeria, Indonesia, and Iran. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Afghanistan are also said to be interested, along with other likely contenders for BRICS membership, which includes Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Senegal, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. All of them had their finance ministers present at the BRICS Expansion Dialogue meeting held last May. And if they all joined, the expanded BRICS would have a nominal GDP 30% larger than the United States, represent over 50% of the world population, and control over 60% of global gas reserves.

Following China’s diplomatic coup over the Middle East, President Macron of France and Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, visited President Xi in Beijing last week ostensibly to see if he could persuade the Russians to consider a peace deal over Ukraine. That got nowhere. But the Chinese appear to see France as a more important trade partner than the European Commission. While Macron got the full diplomatic treatment, von der Leyen who recently delivered a hawkish speech over Taiwan was side-lined. Macron’s popularity with China’s leadership is undoubtedly connected with his longstanding policy of promoting diplomatic and trade relations between China and France, with China making substantial investments in France. And it was recently announced that a French exporter of LNG to China even accepted payment in renminbi instead of dollars.

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The only countries not harmed appear to be Russia, India and China.

Anti-Russian Sanctions Harm Developing Nations – Brazil FM

Unilateral economic sanctions imposed on Russia in bypassing the UN Security Council harm developing nations, Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said on Monday. “I reiterated to [Russian Foreign] Minister [Sergey] Lavrov Brazil’s position on unilateral sanctions. Apart from not having been coordinated with the UN Security Council, they have negative consequences for economies around the world, especially for developing countries, many of which have not yet recovered from the pandemic,” the top diplomat told a news conference following talks with Sergey Lavrov. The Russian and Brazilian delegations, led by the foreign ministers, held talks on Monday morning at the palace housing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Brazilian capital. Lavrov will be received later by Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The Russian minister will also meet with President Lula’s foreign policy advisor, former Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim.

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And now for something completely different. A Bulgarian voice who claims Russia is losing badly.

Russia’s Suicide (Gotev)

Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine, their Slav and Orthodox neighbour, is possibly only a symptom of a bigger illness. The Russian nation, the centre of a vast empire spanning Eurasia, is self-destructing to an extent unseen in modern history. When the Soviet Union collapsed, I was in my early 30s and naively expected that a modern Russian state, similar to the Western powers such as France, the UK or Germany, would be born from its ashes. As someone who comes from Bulgaria, a satellite country of the former Soviet Union, I knew the weaknesses of the Soviet system they had imposed on the countries of the then Warsaw Pact.

[..] Putin aims to resuscitate the USSR geographically, but what is less obvious is that he has also been replicating its failed economy. Putin’s Russia continued to focus on nuclear missiles that it cannot use, instead of developing the production of consumer goods, the backbone of any modern economy. And even for building missiles, Russia needs imported or smuggled semiconductors and other technologies. According to some reports Russia imports washing machines from the West in order to harvest their chips to build missiles. Unlike China, which not only produces everything a modern economy needs but is even ahead of the West on certain technologies like 5G, Putin’s Russia chose not to develop.

This suicidal policy may be decided by one single person, and we are not aware of a significant political opposition or alternative. What we may be aware of is the risk Russia’s suicide may entail for the rest of the world. Putin’s doctrine says that a world in which there is no Russia should not exist. “Why would we want a world without Russia?” he has famously said. Putin attacked Ukraine not because the latter had the ambition to join NATO, a defensive alliance. He did it because Ukraine, so similar to Russia until recently, has been developing fast and was on its way to becoming the window shop of all the opportunities Russia has missed. So, Putin decided it was better to burn this country to the ground rather than allow such an affront and political risk to his power.

I wrote this text on Orthodox Easter, a sacred holiday during which Russia’s attacks never relented. If this was only about Putin, who hypocritically attended a church service on Easter Sunday, I wouldn’t have used the title “Russia’s suicide’. But what is more shocking is the passive attitude of the Russians, including the vast majority of those living abroad, as I saw some of them enjoying themselves in the West, seemingly impervious to the tragedy their own country had inflicted on Ukraine. We are witnessing an entire nation, despite its rich culture and undisputed contribution to the victory over Fascism in World War II, sleepwalking into self-destruction and committing collective suicide. It is not only tragic to behold, but it’s also a big danger for the entire planet.

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“..some of the files could have been leaked as part of a Western “deception” campaign aimed at downplaying Ukraine’s military capabilities ahead of Kiev’s rumored offensive.”

Pentagon Doesn’t Know How Many Documents Were Leaked – Spokeswoman (RT)

The US Department of Defense is still trying to “understand the scope and scale” of a document leak that saw a trove of classified information posted online, a spokeswoman told reporters on Monday. “We’re going to continue to find documents online,” Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said at a briefing. Singh added that the Pentagon does not “have a specific number” of leaked documents identified, and that the “scope and scale” of the leak “is something we’re still assessing.” The documents in question appeared on a Discord server at some point in the last month, before spreading to the wider internet and catching the attention of the mainstream media. The alleged leaker, a 21-year-old airman in the Massachusetts Air National Guard named Jack Teixeira, was arrested by the FBI on Thursday after the New York Times published his identity.

Files allegedly leaked by the suspect revealed that US and NATO special forces were active in Ukraine, that Ukrainian casualties were higher than publicly acknowledged by US officials, that Kiev’s forces were low on ammunition, and that the US has spied on its allies throughout the conflict. US officials have dismissed many of the leaked files as fake or doctored. The same media outlets – the New York Times and the Washington Post – that printed the leaker’s identity have continued to publish information from the documents following his arrest. Files from the leak cited by Newsweek on Sunday revealed the purported start date of Ukraine’s forthcoming spring offensive against Russian forces.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has responded to the leak by announcing an internal security review in order to “prevent this kind of incident from happening again,” the closest a top defense official has come to confirming the documents’ authenticity. Previously, the Pentagon would only say that some of the files “appear … similar in format” to its intelligence briefings. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Friday that Moscow had looked into the leaked documents. Earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov suggested that some of the files could have been leaked as part of a Western “deception”campaign aimed at downplaying Ukraine’s military capabilities ahead of Kiev’s rumored offensive.

Rogin Beck

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“[Washington] handed over to the Kiev regime increasingly deadly and long-range systems that have purely offensive, not defensive, purpose..”

US Carries Out Provocative Course Towards Moscow In Ukraine – Envoy (TASS)

US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl effectively admitted Monday that the US Administration carries out a provocative course towards Moscow in Ukraine, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said, commenting on Kahl’s remarks regarding the risks of escalation of the Ukrainian conflict. “The official’s considerations are full of shamelessness, hypocrisy and are saturated with arrogance towards out country. The Pentagon representative said it directly that the US Administration did not restrain itself in any way because of potential escalation risks when shipping weapons to Ukraine. Thus, the American admitted that Washington has been deliberately carrying out a provocative course towards Russia throughout the conflict,” Antonov said, according to the embassy’s press office.

“[Washington] handed over to the Kiev regime increasingly deadly and long-range systems that have purely offensive, not defensive, purpose,” he added. The envoy noted that he does not believe “the military official’s words that the US expressed concerns over the use of US-made weapons for strikes deep inside Russian territory.” “If the US truly took this most important aspect into consideration, it would have immediately thwarted such attempts of Ukrainian radicals. In reality, though, the unprecedented aid and enabling from the [US] Administration only push the agents in Kiev towards new crimes,” Antonov pointed out.

He added that Kahl’s statements are an “eloquent testimony that it was Washington who ‘inspired’ the standoff in Ukraine.” “In its desire to inflict a defeat on us, they forget literally about everything, and, most importantly – about the fate of the Ukrainian people and the risks of a global conflict,” the envoy concluded. Earlier, Kahl said in an interview for Foreign Policy that the US expressed its concerns over the use of weapons, shipped by Washington to Kiev, for strikes on Russian territory, and is not interested in getting directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine, as well as in the conflict escalating into World War III. Meanwhile, the Pentagon representative said, the opinion that the US restrains itself on a number of issues due to fear of escalation is wrong.

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“Leader of the opposition Poilievre called on Twitter owner Elon Musk to add the label to the broadcaster..” “Now people know that it is [Canadian PM Justin] Trudeau propaganda, not news.”

Canada’s State Media Quit Twitter Over Label (RT)

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) announced on Monday that it was “pausing” its activity on Twitter after the social media platform labeled it as state-funded, arguing that this somehow impugned their editorial independence. “Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on Twitter,” the government-funded outlet tweeted. “Twitter can be a powerful tool for our journalists to communicate with Canadians, but it undermines the accuracy and professionalism of the work they do to allow our independence to be falsely described in this way,” CBC spokesperson Leon Mar said on Sunday evening.

“Consequently, we will be pausing our activity on our corporate Twitter account and all CBC and Radio-Canada news-related accounts.” The CBC is a Crown corporation, entirely owned by the Canadian state. In its 2021-22 annual analysis, it reported receiving 1.24 billion ($930 million) Canadian dollars in government funding. However, the outlet insists that its editorial policies are entirely independent of the government and guided only by “public interest.” Mar argued that Twitter’s own policy defines government-funded media as those in which the authorities “may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content,” which is “clearly not the case with CBC/Radio Canada.”

Leader of the opposition Conservative Party Pierre Poilievre reacted to the labeling of CBC by tweeting that “Now people know that it is [Canadian PM Justin] Trudeau propaganda, not news.” Last week, Poilievre called on Twitter owner Elon Musk to add the label to the broadcaster, saying it was needed to protect Canadians against “disinformation and manipulation by state media.” Describing the CBC as government-funded is a fact, the politician said, “and Canadians deserve the facts.” The CBC’s Twitter boycott echoes the actions of two US outlets, the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Both stopped tweeting last week, in response to being labeled as government-funded.

PBS also insisted that it was entirely editorially independent and produced “trustworthy content that features unbiased reporting.” The outlet could not argue that it didn’t receive government funding, as 31% of its revenue came from federal, state and local authorities, with another 12% coming from regional public broadcasters and universities, also heavily subsidized by the government. Twitter originally rolled out the labeling of outlets in August 2020, tagging Russian and Chinese media as “state-affiliated” but exempting Western outlets such as the BBC and Voice of America (VOA). As documents published after Musk’s takeover showed, the platform was working hand in glove with what several US journalists described as a “censorship-industrial complex” of government agencies and politically motivated NGOs.


Elon Musk: “Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they’re “less than 70% government-funded”, so we corrected the label “

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Sanction No. 823. Great success.

G7 Members Seek To Push Moscow Out Of Nuclear Energy Market (RT)

Five members of the G7 group have formed an alliance aimed at blocking Russia out of the international nuclear energy market. The US, UK, Canada, Japan and France reached the agreement on the sidelines of a G7 meeting in Sapporo, according to a joint statement shared on Sunday by the British government. Under the agreement, the allied countries have vowed to use the respective resources and capabilities of each state’s civilian nuclear energy sectors to “ensure the secure supply of uranium fuel through the development of shared supply chains that isolate Russia.”

The document further states that the five countries have “identified potential areas of collaboration on nuclear fuels to support the stable supply of fuels for the operating reactor fleets of today, enable the development and deployment of fuels for the advanced reactors of tomorrow, and achieve reduced dependence on Russian supply chains.” “Together, today’s G7 commitments deal a blow to Russia, demonstrating the international resolve to isolate Putin further internationally,” the British government said in a press release. British Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps declared that the UK has been “at the very heart of global efforts to support Ukraine” and “defeat Putin,” adding that the latest agreement is “the next vital step, uniting with other countries to show Putin that Russia isn’t welcome anymore.”

The move comes after it was revealed last week that a number of EU countries were also planning to cut their reliance on Russian uranium by turning to Kazakhstan for supplies, according to a Bloomberg report. Russia is considered to be one of the world’s largest uranium producers. However, after Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine over a year ago, a number of countries have been seeking to reduce their dependence on Russian supplies. This includes the US, which is the world’s largest uranium consumer. While Washington has introduced a number of restrictions on Russian energy imports, these sanctions have yet to target uranium, despite pressure from US senators to place an embargo on imports. Meanwhile, experts in the nuclear energy field have warned that any disruption in supplies of Russian uranium would “shake” the market and cause “upward pressure” on prices.

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“..more efficient than expected”, but that’s all.

Russian Researchers Find New Way To Reuse Nuclear Waste (RT)

Russian chemists are researching a method that could improve the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, Moscow State University has reported. The process involves using a compound that readily binds to uranium, but not other heavy metals contained in reactor waste. Spent nuclear fuel rods typically contain amounts of uranium and plutonium which can be extracted and processed into new fuel. Other byproducts of nuclear fission include long-lasting radioactive elements, such as neptunium, americium, and curium. They have their own uses and pose a safety risk if buried with the waste. The nuclear industry uses chemical repossession to extract these actinides – as the elements are collectively known – and other valuable components before spent fuel is sent for long-term storage.

However, the process is relatively complex. The method that Russian scientists are exploring is an alternative to the industry standard and involves an additional phase, during which uranium is removed selectively. Called the GANEX (group actinide extraction) process, it uses a special chemical to extract uranium from nitric acid solutions. Scientists at Moscow State University’s chemistry department have tested an organic compound derived from phenanthroline for its ability to form ionic bonds with uranium. When switching from lab-simulated spent fuel to what industrial repossession deals with, they found it more efficient than expected.

“The compound can ‘grab’ macroscopic amounts of uranium, and each unit of the extraction agent can link with two units of uranium,” researcher Svetlana Gutorova explained. “One of the particles gets attracted to the positively charged cation part of the complex, and the other one to the negatively charged anion part. With smaller concentrations of uranium in model samples, no team has observed this effect before.” The team described their research in a paper published in the Inorganic Chemistry magazine earlier this year, and say the efficiency of the phenanthroline derivative in extracting uranium is on a par with the traditional method. The scientists plan to test similar compounds to see if they could work even more effectively. They hope that a particular chemical could bond exclusively to uranium, and not plutonium, streamlining its reuse in reactors.

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“If, for some reason, it escaped her attention, do you suppose that somebody among her ten-thousand-plus CDC employees might have alerted the director about all this?”

Call the Exorcist (Kunstler)

What more subtle minds are asking these days is: when does this insanity tip over into evil? Especially the insanity evinced in our authority figures. How about when someone positively refutes reality in the act of doing harm, for instance Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC. Ms. Walensky is, to this moment, still proffering mRNA Covid-19 “vaccines” for children despite the reality that reams of evidence exist showing these products to be harmful, even deadly — and, in particular, by the previously exacting standards of the CDC’s sister agency, the FDA, which hold that just a few demonstrated injuries will lead to a drug being withdrawn from medical practice. (Ms. Walensky is a medical doctor, by the way.) Is it possible that Ms. Walensky is unacquainted with the genuine news all over the Internet about mRNA injury and death? Rate that hard-to-believe… that is, at odds with reality. If, for some reason, it escaped her attention, do you suppose that somebody among her ten-thousand-plus CDC employees might have alerted the director about all this?


I would suppose so. The unappetizing conclusion is that Rochelle Walensky, in her very important role as a national public health officer, has tripped over the line from insane to evil. As a general rule, human societies give individuals and groups permission to act in certain ways. Is it not obvious, for instance, that the deans and college presidents have issued blanket permission for students (and faculty) to mistreat invited speakers who purvey ideas contrary to the Woke campus consensus? Or that many big city mayors give permission to young people to create mayhem in the streets, steal from retail shops, and even injure or kill other people? Hence, college no longer works to expose young adults to the reality of competing ideas and the public realm in our cities is one big danger zone.

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“It adds to the certainty of uncertainty, what’s going to happen.”

‘We’re Going to See a Lot of Bankruptcies’: Former Home Depot CEO (ET)

Bob Nardelli, the former CEO of Home Depot, is warning about more bankruptcies hitting the U.S. economy, and blames lawmakers for their delay in coming to terms regarding the country’s debt ceiling. “I think we’re going to see a lot of bankruptcies. Like Bed, Bath, and Beyond. We got Walmart not only laying people off but closing stores. We got Accenture laying people off. We got Amazon closing distribution centers. So, I think there’s a tremendous-mixed message,” Nardelli said in an April 14 interview with Fox. At present, the “complexity” of the American economy is “different than anything I have seen in my 52 years.” Nardelli also blamed Congress’ inability to work together to raise the U.S. debt limit as creating a burden on businesses, saying that he is “definitely worried” about the situation.

The former Home Depot CEO says he is seeing “inventory builds” in a lot of public and private businesses. He pointed to the 2007–09 period when the banking meltdown took “everything down.” “I think we’re in a very complex environment. And, of course, this debt issue only adds to that. It adds to the certainty of uncertainty, what’s going to happen.” Bankruptcy filings across the United States rose for the third straight month in March in all major industries. A total of 42,368 new bankruptcies were filed last month, according to data from Epiq Bankruptcy, a provider of U.S. bankruptcy court data, technology, and services. This is 17 percent up from the 36,068 filings in March 2022 and is the highest number of monthly bankruptcy filings since April 2021.

[..] Meanwhile, lending activity by banks suffered the biggest plunge ever in the two weeks ending March 29. Commercial lending in the country declined by $105 billion during this period—the highest since 1973. The collapse in lending was led by declining real estate loans as well as industrial and commercial loans. According to financial analyst Andreas Steno Larsen, tough times are ahead for the American economy. “Evidence is gathering that the SVB-fueled banking stress indeed will turn into a recession, but instead of a fast and rapid liquidity-driven recession, we are rather slow-walking into a credit crunch over summer,” he wrote in an April 9 post.

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Confusing numbers from the Guardian. 80% in the headline, but..”Year-on-year price increases for all groceries reached an all-time high of 17.5% in the four weeks to 19 March..”

Cost Of British Food Basics Increases By Up To 80% In A Year (G.)

The price of staple foods such as cheddar cheese, white bread and pork sausages has soared by up to 80% in some shops over the past year, in further evidence of how inflation is hitting those on the tightest budgets the hardest. Porridge oats topped the price increase ranking among a basket of British basics measured by the consumer group Which?, with prices up by an average of 35.5% followed by skimmed milk, which was up by 33.6%, and cheddar cheese, which rose by 28.3%. However, an 180g pack of Dragon cheddar cheese in Asda was priced 80% higher than a year before – putting it top of the study’s inflationary list for individual product lines. The same retailer’s own-label cheddar sticks were up by just under 79%. Asda’s budget Just Essentials pork sausages were up by 73%, a similar increase to Tesco’s Woodside Farms best-value pork sausages.

Sue Davies, the head of food policy at Which?, said: “Our latest supermarket food and drink tracker paints a bleak picture for the millions of households already skipping meals of how inflation is impacting prices on supermarket shelves, with the poorest once again feeling the brunt of the cost of living crisis. “While the whole food chain affects prices, supermarkets have the power to do more to support people who are struggling, including ensuring everyone has easy access to basic, affordable food ranges at a store near them, particularly in areas where people are most in need.” The Which? survey reflects a recent trend for price rises in supermarkets’ budget ranges as well as to their regular own-label goods and international brands as retailers pass on cost hikes linked to energy and commodity cost increases.

Such increases appear to confirm fears, raised over a year ago by the food campaigner Jack Monroe, that the poorest are being hit hardest by inflation. Which?’s tracker shows that while supermarket own-label budget items remain the cheapest overall, prices rose 24.8% in March year on year. The price of standard supermarket own brands was up by 20.5% in the same period, while branded goods and premium own brand ranges rose by 13.8%. Year-on-year price increases for all groceries reached an all-time high of 17.5% in the four weeks to 19 March, according to figures from the data firm Kantar.”

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Click
https://twitter.com/i/status/1647972285792284673

 

 

Hammond

 

 

Tom and Jerry
https://twitter.com/i/status/1647994379313770498

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 152023
 


Pablo Picasso Head of a Woman 1946
..gifted to the National Gallery by Picasso in 1946 in recognition of Athens’s resistance to Nazi occupation; he inscribed on the back: “For the Greek people, a tribute from Picasso.”

 

Poland Receives Zelensky, Prepares Direct Intervention In Ukraine War (WSWS)
Failure In Ukraine Could Mark The End Of Western ‘Golden Age’ – Polish PM (RT)
Poland Would Not Survive A Russia-NATO war – Medvedev (RT)
Ukraine A ‘Non-existent Country’ Financially – Orban (RT)
US Seeks To Drag Everyone Into Ukrainian Conflict – Orban (TASS)
Ukraine Calls Out Orban Over Money (RT)
Ukraine Faces Corruption Investigation By Pentagon Inspector General (Rebel)
Pentagon Leaks Won’t Hurt Ukraine – Prigozhin (RT)
Ukraine’s EU Backers Are Skeptical Of Counteroffensive – Bloomberg (RT)
NATO States Sponsored ICC Prosecutor’s Putin Arrest Warrant (GZ)
Nuland Issues Threat Over Russian Assets (RT)
Now, The Difficult Choice (Denninger)
Disorder is the Order of the Day (Kunstler)
Global Monetary Experiment Ends in a Bloodbath – John Rubino (USAW)
Germany Shutting Down Its Last Nuclear Reactors (RT)
Contentious COVID-19 Drugs Are All Antimalarial (ET)

 

 

 

 

Tucker leaker
https://twitter.com/i/status/1646673964884713476

 

 

 

 

Bragg

 

 

 

 

Greek new year is this weekend. This is a stone’s throw away, last night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The complete and final victory of Ukrainian nationalism will be won only when the Russian empire no longer exists.”

Poland Receives Zelensky, Prepares Direct Intervention In Ukraine War (WSWS)

In a joint appearance with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in the courtyard of Warsaw’s Royal Castle, Zelensky praised Poland’s role as one of the biggest supporters of the war and called for further arms deliveries. “Is it still far to victory? No!” he declared. He added that one should “just not stop at solidarity. If the fight requires artillery, it must be granted. If victory requires tanks, their thunder must be heard on the front line, and if independence requires an air force, one must not brood over how Russia will react to planes.” Poland is among the first countries to supply fighter jets to Ukraine and now plans to hand over its entire stock of MiG-29 fighter jets to Kiev. Polish President Andrzej Duda announced this after a meeting with Zelensky. He said his country had already delivered eight fighter jets to Ukraine and was currently preparing six more MiG-29s for handover. He said Warsaw will be “in a position in the future to hand over its entire MiG fleet” of about 30 aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force, “provided the NATO allies agree.”

On Thursday, Berlin approved the Polish government’s request to export MiG-29 fighter jets to Kiev from stocks in the former East Germany. In 2002, the then Social Democratic-Green government had sold 23 fighter jets to Poland, which the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) had taken over from the former East Germany’s National People’s Army. According to Warsaw, the Polish Air Force still has about a dozen of them today, which are now going to the Ukrainian army. The planned Polish arms deliveries are not limited to fighter jets. In Warsaw, the Ukrainian delegation signed further contracts for Polish howitzers, anti-aircraft missiles, troop carriers and wheeled tanks. The arms purchases are to be financed by support funds from the EU and the USA. It was also agreed to set up joint production lines to manufacture 125-mm tank ammunition for the Ukrainian army.

The entire visit was designed to celebrate the close alliance between Warsaw and Kiev. After Duda received him with Poland’s highest military decoration, Zelensky spoke of a “friendship for centuries” between Ukraine and Poland. But historical conflicts still simmer beneath the surface. This summer marks the 80th anniversary of the massacres by Ukrainian nationalists and fascists of an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and eastern Galicia. The leaders and instigators of the mass murder are glorified by today’s leadership in Kiev. On January 1, 2023, the Ukrainian parliament and military leadership celebrated the 114th birthday of notorious fascist, anti-Semite, and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and its paramilitary wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), played a central role in the Holocaust and war of extermination against the Soviet Union.

The current Ukrainian government sees itself as part of this tradition. Among other things, the Ukrainian parliament published a tweet showing a picture of Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in front of Bandera’s likeness, quoting him as saying, “The complete and final victory of Ukrainian nationalism will be won only when the Russian empire no longer exists.” After a public outcry in Poland, the Ukrainian Rada (parliament) was forced to delete the post. But this does not diminish the glorification of Bandera and other fascists in Ukraine. The Zelensky regime spends millions on monuments and renaming streets in honour of Nazi collaborators and neo-fascists.

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“Some politicians in Western Europe “want a quick ceasefire almost at any price” he claimed.”

Failure In Ukraine Could Mark The End Of Western ‘Golden Age’ – Polish PM (RT)

Not everyone in the EU wants to support Ukraine as much as Kiev requires, yet the country’s future is key to Western prosperity, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has insisted. “Failure in Ukraine could be the beginning of the end of the golden age of the West. Ukraine’s victory is a guarantee not only of reconstruction, but of strengthening of our economic power,” the politician declared on Thursday, in a speech hosted by the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO think-tank. Poland prides itself on being one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine against Russia. According to Morawiecki, all Western nations want Kiev to prevail, but “not necessarily to the same extent”. Some politicians in Western Europe “want a quick ceasefire almost at any price” he claimed.

The Polish prime minister believes that Russia’s goal in the conflict is to “destroy Ukraine … so that Ukraine cannot be a base for enhancing the West.” The country’s existence is “crucial to contain Russia,” he added, claiming that “if Russia wins, we will be next.” The Russian leadership stated that its primary goals in Ukraine were to curb a growing threat to national security posed by NATO’s creeping expansion into its neighbor and to stop Kiev’s attacks against the people of Donbass. Morawiecki touted Poland’s centuries-long history of hostilities with Russia as a source of his expertise on the Russian mindset. “Imperialism, colonialism and nationalism is not merely a passing affliction of Moscow’s soul. It lies in its core,” the politician stated. Defending Ukraine has ramifications for other brewing conflicts, particularly the US-China stand-off over Taiwan, Morawiecki reasoned.

While Beijing has strongly protested against Washington’s growing involvement with the self-administered island, US officials claim that China could take Taiwan by force. “You need to support Ukraine if you want Taiwan to stay as it is,” Morawiecki said, criticizing EU politicians, who believe that Taiwan is not within their sphere of influence. “If Ukraine falls, if Ukraine gets conquered, the next day China may attack Taiwan,” he predicted. Beijing’s stated policy is to seek peaceful reunification with the island, but it does not rule out military action to prevent separatism. Morawiecki dismissed the notion of EU strategic autonomy, saying that people promoting it are really pushing the economic bloc into greater dependency on China. “We have to rebuild the world order, renew NATO and restore peace,” he stated, explaining his nation’s vision of the EU’s future.

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“..considering Poland’s role as a NATO outpost in Europe, this country is sure to disappear together with its stupid prime minister.”

Poland Would Not Survive A Russia-NATO war – Medvedev (RT)

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has claimed that Poland would cease to exist if a direct war were to occur between Russia and NATO, regardless of the outcome. He was responding to remarks by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who expressed confidence that the Western alliance would win such a conflict. Morawiecki, who is currently visiting the US, commented on the Ukrainian conflict in an interview with NBC News on Friday. Host Kristen Welker asked whether he was concerned that Ukrainian strikes outside its territory risked “a wider war, drawing Poland… into the conflict.” The prime minister replied that he was not concerned, as it would be “a war between Russia and NATO, and Russia would lose this war very quickly.”

“They believe that fighting with Ukraine they are fighting with the West and fighting with NATO, whereas the fact of the matter is that we are only supporting a brutally invaded country”, Morawiecki said. Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of Russia’s National Security Council, tweeted in response that he was not so certain about which side would win, “but considering Poland’s role as a NATO outpost in Europe, this country is sure to disappear together with its stupid prime minister.” The Russian official has previously warned against a possible escalation of the Ukraine conflict, which Moscow perceives as a proxy war against it by the US and its allies.

If that were to happen, hostilities could go nuclear, Medvedev believes, and all sides would be catastrophically harmed. The former president has branded European leaders who underestimate this risk as incompetent. Morawiecki is one of the most outspoken critics of Russia and its involvement in Ukraine. He has claimed the country is similar to Nazi Germany in its goals and methods, and accused nations in the EU that do not fully support Ukraine, of appeasing Moscow. During his visit to the US, the Polish leader delivered a speech to the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO think-tank, in which he reiterated his case for investing in Ukraine. If Kiev loses, he claimed, the West’s “golden age” may end.

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“The EU is now paying Ukrainian salaries, pensions and healthcare, allocating “huge sums, which the European economy is missing out on..”

Ukraine A ‘Non-existent Country’ Financially – Orban (RT)

The EU isn’t going to provide Kiev with funds indefinitely, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned Friday during an interview with a Kossuth radio station. “Effectively, Ukraine is a non-existent country in financial terms,” he declared. “The fall in economic indicators is huge, which is completely understandable due to the war. Obviously, Ukraine can’t finance itself,” the Hungarian leader explained. The EU is now paying Ukrainian salaries, pensions and healthcare, allocating “huge sums, which the European economy is missing out on,” the PM pointed out. He added that this support “can’t continue indefinitely.” According to Orban, the question is whether the West wants to continue sustaining Ukraine.

“The moment when America and Europe answer ‘no’ to that question – the war will end,” he stressed. Budapest is also involved in financing the Kiev government through joint EU mechanisms, but despite this, the situation keeps deteriorating for the Hungarian minority in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia Region, the prime minister said. Orban had previously complained about Ukraine mistreating ethnic Hungarians in the country’s western region. In his speech in February, the PM claimed that Hungarian symbols are being brought down in settlements across Transcarpathia, heads of Hungarian language schools are being removed, while “many ethnic Hungarians are dying on the frontline.”

The EU, its member states, and financial institutions have provided more than €50 [$55.3] billion in financial support to Kiev since the outbreak of fighting between Russia and Ukraine more than a year ago, including €12 billion in arms and €30 billion in macro-financial aid. Hungary has supplied humanitarian aid to Kiev, but refused to send arms to President Vladimir Zelensky’s government, unlike many fellow EU members. Budapest has consistently called for a peaceful settlement to the conflict and criticized the sanctions imposed by Brussels on Moscow, arguing that they have failed to achieve their goal and were hurting the EU more than Russia.

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“..if a world war breaks out, it will be a nuclear war..”

US Seeks To Drag Everyone Into Ukrainian Conflict – Orban (TASS)

The United States has not given up on its aim of embroiling everyone it can into the military conflict in Ukraine, but Hungary will remain on the side of peace, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told the Kossuth radio station on Friday. The head of government stressed that the US “has not abandoned its plan to shoehorn everyone into a military alliance,” supplying weapons to Ukraine and supporting continued hostilities. In connection with this, he reiterated that the threat of the Ukrainian conflict morphing into a new world war has been growing with each passing day. “And if a world war breaks out, it will be a nuclear war,” Orban noted. In his opinion, the current escalation of the conflict in Ukraine attests to the fact that the [combatant] countries are literally “inches away from the use of nuclear weapons.” This is precisely why Hungary supports the swiftest possible ceasefire and the commencement of peace talks on settling the Ukrainian conflict, the Hungarian prime minister emphasized.

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“By giving money to Ukraine, Nikolenko insisted, the EU “invests first and foremost in its own security..”

Ukraine Calls Out Orban Over Money (RT)

It is “cynical” of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to criticize the EU funding of Ukraine when Budapest takes money from Brussels as well, the foreign ministry in Kiev said on Friday. Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko also insisted that Ukraine was defending Hungary and the rest of the EU from Russia. Earlier in the day, in an interview with a Hungarian radio station, Orban had described Ukraine as “a non-existent country in financial terms,” entirely dependent on EU and US donations that won’t go on forever. “Another anti-Ukrainian statement,” Nikolenko wrote on Facebook. “It is cynical of the Hungarian leadership to speak on other countries’ financial issues while Hungary itself receives a lot of money from the EU to support its economic stability.”

By giving money to Ukraine, Nikolenko insisted, the EU “invests first and foremost in its own security,” as Ukrainians are defending Europe with their lives from “unprecedented Russian aggression.” Instead, he argued, Orban should be grateful to Ukraine for “a peaceful sky over Budapest and other European cities.” Speaking to the national radio on Friday, Orban pointed out that the EU was currently paying the salaries of Ukrainian public officials, as well as pensions and healthcare expenses, because Kiev’s economy had completely collapsed due to the conflict.

By the most recent estimates, the bloc has provided over €50 ($55.3) billion to Kiev since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022, including €12 billion worth of weapons and another €30 billion in financial aid. This does not include the $113 billion the US Congress had appropriated to prop up Ukraine, of which only about 20% has been cash assistance. “Obviously, Ukraine can’t finance itself,” Orban said, adding that external support “can’t continue indefinitely.” The conflict will end the moment the US and the EU stop funding Kiev, he argued. While Hungary does get billions of euros subsidies from Brussels, the EU is currently withholding a combined €34 billion, including in Covid-19 pandemic recovery funds, demanding that Budapest change the policies the EU disapproves of, most notably on the issues of immigration and LGBT rights.

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Could be used as an excuse to leave.

Ukraine Faces Corruption Investigation By Pentagon Inspector General (Rebel)

The Pentagon’s inspector general is examining the Ukrainian government for corruption in relation to the vast aid received since Russia’s invasion last year. Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch is probing the Ukrainian government for corruption concerning the large amounts of aid provided to the country after Russia’s invasion in the previous year. According to Defense One, Storch has over 20 audits planned and nearly 100 people involved in Ukraine-related oversight, working in collaboration with the State Department and USAID. Storch stated that they are covering a broad range of security assistance. Ukraine has a history of significant corruption issues, which could pose a threat to the nation if they undermine the trust of foreign governments supplying its military with advanced weapons and supplies.

Republicans are increasingly critical of the Biden administration’s aid to Ukraine. The U.S. is the leading supporter of Ukraine in its conflict with Moscow, having committed over $78 billion in military, humanitarian, and economic aid since January 2022, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has referred to the aid packages as a “blank check” lacking strict oversight standards. The Ukrainian government is working to eliminate corruption, but allocating resources to oversight and investigations diverts resources from the war against Russia, a senior official in Storch’s office told Defense One. The source explained that the Ukrainian authorities are fighting both the Russians and internal corruption, with many individuals who would typically combat corruption now engaged in the conflict with Russia.

The Defense Department is aware of Ukraine’s corruption history and views the potential diversion of aid before reaching its intended recipients as a “high risk,” according to the official. Another official noted that the Pentagon is concerned about the theft of weapons systems and other goods being sent to Ukraine. Defense One quoted the official as saying that numerous entities, including foreign nations and criminal groups, are interested in obtaining weapons technology. While the Biden administration continues to express its commitment to supporting Ukraine, reportedly leaked classified documents from the Pentagon indicate that the administration is pessimistic about Ukraine’s ability to defeat Russia. These documents emphasize weaknesses in Ukraine’s military, such as weaponry and air defenses, and predict that the two sides will be in a stalemate for an extended period.

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“The Ukrainians are ready to attack. We are ready to repel the blow,” Prigozhin summarized. “No negotiations. Only an honorable battle. And the sooner it starts, the better.”

Pentagon Leaks Won’t Hurt Ukraine – Prigozhin (RT)

The leaked Pentagon documents contain no strategic revelations that could harm Kiev, and the media attention they received must be an attempt by the West to delay the Ukrainian military’s much-announced “spring offensive,” Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Friday. “The documents by themselves do not pose any strategic danger,”Prigozhin said in a statementposted on social media, describing their published contents as mostly being based on open sources. “However, the leak was widely publicized and immediately after it, statements from sources close to the Pentagon began about the need to delay the offensive announced for April 15 until the summer.”

Commenting on the arrest of the alleged leaker, a 21-year-old Air National Guard member, Prigozhin said he may have been a fool or a dupe, but “if this leak had not happened, it would certainly have been invented.” The documents themselves, he emphasized, contain nothing that would add to the risk of the Ukrainian military should it launch its long-anticipated attack. “It is clear that the military operations on Ukraine’s side are tactically directed by Ukrainian soldiers, but strategically by the so-called Western coalition, run by the UK and the US,” said Prigozhin. He accused the West of “holding back” the Ukrainian military in a “dramatic pause,” after it had been assembled for attack, delaying the offensive that might actually inflict reputational harm on Russia with even a symbolic advance on any front ahead of May 9, the anniversary of the great WWII victory over Nazi Germany.

“The Ukrainians are ready to attack. We are ready to repel the blow,” Prigozhin summarized. “No negotiations. Only an honorable battle. And the sooner it starts, the better.” Founded as the businessman’s side project, Wagner has been involved in heavy fighting in the Donbass, most recently in the storming of Soledar and the battles in and around Artyomovsk, called Bakhmut by the Ukrainians. As of Friday, Wagner and other Russian troops hold most of Artyomovsk, with an estimated 6,000 battered Ukrainian troops attempting to retreat westward to Chasov Yar. Prigozhin has suggested that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had thrown his best troops and foreign mercenaries into the battle for the Donbass town after receiving a personal challenge from Wagner in December, losing thousands in the “meat grinder” with nothing to show for it.

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“Bloomberg alleged that the high hopes prevalent among Ukraine’s backers late last year, after Kiev’s troops managed to regain a large area, have now mostly dissipated..”

Ukraine’s EU Backers Are Skeptical Of Counteroffensive – Bloomberg (RT)

Some EU nations supporting Ukraine have started to doubt whether Kiev will be able to recapture large swathes of territory this year, Bloomberg has reported. Even a modest advance would likely result in heavy casualties among Ukrainian personnel and require considerable amounts of ammunition and hardware, the outlet claimed, citing anonymous EU officials. In an article on Friday, Bloomberg alleged that the high hopes prevalent among Ukraine’s backers late last year, after Kiev’s troops managed to regain a large area, have now mostly dissipated. Fewer people in Western capitals are counting on a decisive push in 2023, with the fighting expected to continue well into next year. The news agency quoted unnamed European officials “involved in efforts to support Ukraine’s military” as predicting that a realistic goal for Kiev would be a 30 km (20 mile) advance.

This, if successful, should set the stage for a deeper counteroffensive in 2024, the sources predicted.To support such a push, Ukraine’s Western backers would need to step up their military production capacity, Bloomberg said. According to the outlet, further large-scale deliveries could, however, run into political opposition in some countries. An unnamed European official cited in the report also warned that any such operation would be a costly endeavor, both in terms of manpower and weapons, as Russian forces have had time to dig in, with minefields, ditches, and concrete anti-tank pyramids in place. Nevertheless, several European defense officials have told reporters that the counteroffensive, which the Ukrainian leadership has been hyping up for several months now, is likely to get underway by mid-May.

Strikes may be expected from multiple directions, potentially including diversionary ones, the sources alleged. Speaking to The Hill on Tuesday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal suggested that the counteroffensive may actually begin in the summer. He insisted that Western backers were not putting any pressure on Kiev to force it into action without due preparation. The official also called on the West to provide Ukraine with more artillery, ammunition, middle- and long-range missiles, tanks, and fighter jets. On the same day, the Washington Post, citing a trove of recently leaked classified documents, reported that US intelligence did not hold out much hope back in February as to Ukraine’s ability to make significant territorial gains during the anticipated counteroffensive. Among the problems supposedly faced by Kiev at the time were “force generation and sustainment shortfalls.”

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” Through his focus on Ukraine, Khan has presided over a massive surge in Western financial support for his office..”

NATO States Sponsored ICC Prosecutor’s Putin Arrest Warrant (GZ)

Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, stood before a podium on March 3, 2023, and issued an unusual qualifier: “Of course the prosecutor of the ICC does not, whatever affection and regard I may have for my dear friends in Ukraine – has no special affinity to any particular country. We’re not a party to any hostilities.” “We have an affinity to legality,” Khan insisted in British-accented English. “We have an affinity and commitment to the rule of law.” Khan made his declaration of legal independence while headlining the “United for Justice” conference, an event personally organized in Lviv, Ukraine, by President Volodymyr Zelensky. There, he pressed the flesh with Ukraine’s president and conferred with US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who had stopped in to advance the Biden administration’s effort to haul Russian President Vladimir Putin before an international war crimes tribunal.

It was Khan’s fourth visit to Ukraine since the Russian military invaded the country in February 2022. On March 17, 2023, Khan introduced a formal ICC warrant for Putin’s arrest, accusing the Russian president of the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to a “network of camps” throughout Russia. The warrant arrived days before the 20th anniversary of the NATO invasion of Iraq, a crime directed by US and UK officials whom the ICC has refused to prosecute to this day. As The Grayzone has reported, the ICC’s warrant was inspired by a State Department-funded report that contained no field reporting, no concrete evidence of war crimes, and no proof that Russia was actually targeting Ukrainian youth with a massive deportation campaign. In fact, the investigators acknowledged finding “no documentation of child mistreatment, including sexual or physical violence, among the camps referenced in this report.”

What’s more, the inquiry’s lead author told The Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo that “a large amount” of the Russian youth camps his team researched were “primarily cultural education – like, I would say, teddy bear.” Though Khan pledged his absolute independence in his hunt for Putin, he is closely aligned with the same Western governments that are currently engaged in a proxy battle with Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield. Meanwhile, he has stalled the ICC’s case against Israel, frustrating human rights lawyers who represent the victims of grisly violence in the besieged Gaza Strip. Additionally, Khan formally dropped the international court’s case against the US military for its actions in Afghanistan. Through his focus on Ukraine, Khan has presided over a massive surge in Western financial support for his office, with much of the money earmarked for his investigation into Russian officials.

The ICC’s issuance of Putin’s arrest warrant happened to coincide with a major donor’s conference for the court in London, England. The ICC prosecutor’s political entanglements do not stop there. Celebrity lawyer Amal Clooney has worked as a special advisor to Khan’s office while simultaneously counseling the Ukrainian government on its initiative to target Russian officials with prosecution, either by the ICC or another international body. Clooney has also served as a special liaison to the British Foreign Secretary. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that after two decades of unremitting hostile relations with the ICC, official Washington is suddenly warming up to the court, and is endeared by its top prosecutor.

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Broken record.

Nuland Issues Threat Over Russian Assets (RT)

The American authorities are in discussions about using the Russian central bank assets frozen by the West to rebuild Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, has said. When the conflict between Kiev and Moscow ends, Washington plans a massive reconstruction program for Ukraine aimed not only at rebuilding its cities, towns, and villages, but also at providing the country with a powerful military, “greener” energy infrastructure and stronger government institutions that would be “better hardened against corruption,” Nuland said during a speech at the US-Ukraine Partnership Forum in Washington on Thursday. The reconstruction of Ukraine would cost at least $411 billion over a ten-year period, according to conservative estimates of the World Bank, she said.

“Among other things, we are working to ensure that Russia helps pay for all that it has broken,” the State Department official pointed out. She said that thanks to the support of Congress, the US Department of Justice has been granted new authority to use “illicit assets seized from Russian oligarchs” to help rebuild Ukraine. “In February, we announced the first tranche of $5.4 million under this authority, with more announcements to come,” Nuland said. She also stressed that “discussions are ongoing about the estimated $300 billion of Russian central bank assets that we and our allies have frozen” in connection to the reconstruction of Ukraine.

On Thursday, however, German newspaper Die Welt reported – after viewing unpublished internal documents by the European Commission – that Brussels had come to the conclusion that it would eventually have to return the frozen central bank reserves. This could happen after the conflict in Ukraine ends, according to the outlet. The foreign reserves of the Russian central bank were seized by the US and the EU shortly after the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine last February. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the move as “plain theft,” accusing the West of “returning to bandit, wild capitalism from the times of the Gold Rush” in the 19th century.

Nuland

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“..every penny you spend, every tax dollar you generate, every bond sale you allow to have a “full faith and credit” behind is an act of support of said war..”

Now, The Difficult Choice (Denninger)

The alleged “leaker” of classified US defense information, which I remind you not only provided details about the Ukraine situation but also stated that we had actual uniformed troops in the nation, has been arrested. There were plenty of folks who claimed over the last few days that these documents were not genuine; that is, they were a hoax — or propaganda, if you prefer, put forward by Russia to make it look like we had troops in Ukraine when in fact we did not. By arresting the “leaker” we have admitted the documents are factual. This is a problem; it is quite-arguable we have actually entered the Russia-Ukraine war. For real. You need to think long and hard about that, because from this point forward it is your decision whether you permit this administration – and by extension the military that is under civilian control of the Executive – to do this.


Unlike many nations the military in the United States is under civilian control and said control resides solely in the Executive, with the President as Commander in Chief. All the denials, all the arm-waving, that’s all over now. This is now our war, and we, the people are the ones who decide. Whatever you think about Putin or Russia generally, or for that matter Ukraine, we are now in that war, the opponent has nuclear weapons, and we, right here in America, are now subject to whatever Russia decides to do with regards to a combating nation in said war, including to us as the civilian population. Do not kid yourself as to what this means. Choosing to do nothing is consent; every penny you spend, every tax dollar you generate, every bond sale you allow to have a “full faith and credit” behind is an act of support of said war; no war is ever prosecuted without both men and money and this is no longer an abstract discussion.

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“..Larry Johnson says the leak was done for a specific purpose, namely to shove “Joe Biden” out of the White House..”

Disorder is the Order of the Day (Kunstler)

The mysterious “Joe Biden” regime, in its brief two-plus years of service, has proven especially adept at creating fiascos. Are they aiming for the gold ring in this Ukraine gambit, that is, nuclear war? People seriously wonder. Or is something else going on? Blogger and ex-CIA agent) Larry Johnson says the leak was done for a specific purpose, namely to shove “Joe Biden” out of the White House. Yes, our Deep State is at it again. Why, because “Joe Biden” can no longer be trusted to even pretend he’s chief executive. (Well, maybe they shouldn’t have installed him in the first place.)

Larry also reminds us that, conveniently, an Obama-era whistleblower named Mike McCormick, who accompanied Veep Joe Biden’s delegation to Ukraine in 2014, has stepped forward to detail Biden family grifting operations there, with the help of then-aide (now National Security Advisor) Jake Sullivan. It’s like somebody is laying out a case for impeachment — or resignation. One really off-the-wall theory floating “out there” has Veep Kamala Harris being induced to take Diane Feinstein’s senate seat (DF, 89, is very ill), and “Joe Biden” then appointing Barack Obama to be Veep — with BHO stepping back into the White House when “JB” exits (or gets exited). Note, the XXII Amendment only prohibits a person from being “elected” president more than twice. No mention of appointment. Now there’s a real Catch-22!

The blogger who styles himself as “Sundance” at the excellent Conservative Tree House website has another theory. He writes, The Leak Was the Op, saying its purpose was to help get the Restrict Act passed. This loathsome legislation, pimped by Senate Intel Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), would essentially allow the government to censor everything and anything on the Internet, including blogs and comments on blogs and all websites generally — that is, the entire Alt Media. Senator Warner, you might recall (if you followed the immensely tangled story) was one of the prime movers behind the RussiaGate hoax. What a daisy he is!

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“We all should be preppers now.”

Global Monetary Experiment Ends in a Bloodbath – John Rubino (USAW)

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino said in February, “We are in a debt and death spiral” that will force dramatic changes on the world. It was a direct hit because in March, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) tanked, and the FDIC and the U.S. Treasury were forced to basically back-stop the entire banking system. The financial problems are far from over as Rubino explains, “Basically, interest rates have been artificially low for a decade . . . . In that time, crazy numbers of office buildings went up and were financed at really low rates. . . . Now, office vacancy rates are spiking, which means office building are not profitable anymore. The debts they have at 2% to 3% now have to be rolled over at 5%, 6% or 7%. This means an already unprofitable office building is going to be even more unprofitable because of rising interest rates.

Now, they want to sell this office space, and the price cuts that have to be done to get a deal done is 30% to 50% . . . . Some are down by 80%. . . . Local and regional banks already had their troubles last month but are going to have bigger troubles when all these building turn out to be not worth nearly as much as we thought they were. This paper is in pension funds. . . . they are going to go into crisis. So, real estate is liable to be the catalyst in crisis in several other sectors. . . . The government is going to have to let it burn and have a 1930’s style depression, or bail out everybody in sight. . . at the cost of rising inflation and the dollar tanking.” Rubino says, “There is no fix. . . . There is no way to refill these buildings. There is no way to refinance them without going bankrupt. . . . Sometime this year we are going to drop back into negative growth, and it’s going to be a bloodbath. There is no solution, and these guys see it coming and they have no idea what to do about it. . . .

This is the sector we want to watch and will be the catalyst for the next big crisis. . . .The next bailout crates a lot of new dollars, and that pushes down the dollar, and then, we are in the death spiral where there is no fix. That is out there waiting to happen, a bailout so huge that it terrifies holders of the currency and Treasury bonds. Then it’s game over. . . . This is just a question of when people figure this out. That really is our situation right now.” In closing, Rubino says, “This is a much bigger story than what happens to the dollar as the reserve currency. This is the end of a global monetary experiment that is going to go out with a very fiery end. This is not going to be fun to watch.” Rubino advises people to get tangible assets such as food, water, tools, gold, silver, a car title and a garden, to name a few. Rubino says, “We all should be preppers now.”

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Coal is “accounting for over 31% of power supplies”. Green success.

Germany Shutting Down Its Last Nuclear Reactors (RT)

Germany’s government has confirmed plans to go through with the shutdown of the country’s last remaining nuclear power plants this weekend, cutting off a key source of energy despite the loss of Russian natural gas amid the Ukraine crisis. The last three reactors – Emsland in northwest Germany and Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim 2 in the south – will be idled for good on Saturday, completing a phaseout of nuclear power that began in 2002 and was accelerated after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011. The shutdown order had been extended from the end of last year to April 15 amid concerns over a potential winter energy crisis, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz ruled out seeking another extension. Germany’s nuclear power industry accounted for about 30% of the country’s power supplies in the late 1990s. With all but three reactors closed, the plants generated 6% of German electricity last year.

Fossil fuels are filling the void. With Russian gas imports cut off, output from coal-fired plants rose 8% last year, accounting for over 31% of power supplies. Germany also is ramping up imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), including cargoes from the US. The country plans to boost its LNG import capacity more than fivefold by 2030, to nearly 71 million tons annually. Scholz has warned that Germany will need to install four to five new wind turbines each day over the next few years to meet its power-supply needs. That would be about triple last year’s pace of 1.5 per day. Renewable energy sources currently account for 46% of power supplies. While environmentalists have pressed to keep Scholz’s government on course with the nuclear phaseout, most Germans oppose the move.

A poll released on Friday by public broadcaster ARD showed that 59% of Germans believe the government’s decision to abandon atomic power was wrong, while 34% agree with the policy. Two-thirds of respondents who want to keep the reactors running said they’re concerned that energy prices will rise when nuclear power supplies are lost. “Politicians need to adjust to changed circumstances, and I accuse the government of not doing that at all,” opposition party lawmaker Albert Stegemann told the Associated Press. “The nuclear phase-out by April 15, that’s this Saturday, is a done deal,” the chancellor’s spokesperson said earlier this week. Environment Minister Steffi Lemke defended the decision, saying the safety risks of nuclear power “can’t be controlled, even in a high-tech country like Germany.”

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“Drugs that are capable of targeting iron storage or preventing proliferation may therefore be successful in treating both malaria and COVID-19..”

Contentious COVID-19 Drugs Are All Antimalarial (ET)

The COVID-19 recommendations hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and now artemisinin all have one thing in common: They are antimalarial drugs or have such properties. Yet studies suggest that this may not be a mere coincidence; malaria and COVID-19 may be more similar than people may realize. From the outset, malaria and COVID-19 are very distinct diseases. Malaria is a parasitic disease. An infection starts when an individual is bitten by a mosquito carrying a parasite from the Plasmodium genus. Upon infection, the parasite first goes to the liver and multiplies in liver cells. Then it migrates to the bloodstream, invades and proliferates in red blood cells, and causes these cells to expand and burst. Common malaria symptoms such as fever, chills, and sweating occur during the blood-stage infection. Complications include anemia, and on rare occasions, cerebral malaria, liver failure, fluid buildup in the lungs, and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

COVID-19, on the other hand, is a viral disease. Infection occurs primarily through the inhalation of contaminated droplets. The virus invades the body through the nasal cavities, entering the upper and then lower respiratory tracts. Inflammation of the lungs ensues as the body’s immune cells fight off the infection. The person’s oxygen levels start dropping as inflammation worsens in the advent of a cytokine storm, and the lungs become damaged. Some of the virus can also go into the bloodstream and invade other organs, causing systemic inflammation and damage. While one mainly affects blood cells and the other primarily affects the lungs, both diseases are characterized by a strong inflammatory response early in the infection, according to a 2022 paper in Frontiers in Immunology.

Symptoms-wise, both infections from malaria and COVID-19 can lead to fever, fatigue, shortness of breath, diarrhea, and muscle pain. If inflammation is prolonged, the body will experience a significant increase in cytokines, and individuals can become severely injured or even die. The two diseases are also similar in that they both sequester iron, use the same receptors in their pathogenesis, and even share similar structures in their proteins. Both the Plasmodium parasite and the SARS-CoV-2 virus require iron to proliferate. Therefore, both the parasite and the virus need to store iron inside the ferritin protein within infected cells. High or increased levels of ferritin are therefore an indication of severe disease and inflammation. Drugs that are capable of targeting iron storage or preventing proliferation may therefore be successful in treating both malaria and COVID-19.

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Flying cycle

 

 


Images that produce an illusory motion when scrolling or moving are caused by small, involuntary eye movements generating a ghost image on our retina to overlap with the image on the page

 

 

Pilots
https://twitter.com/i/status/1646978853292724225

 

 

Attack
https://twitter.com/i/status/1646633570838913025

 

 

Humpback

 

 

 

 

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Apr 062023
 
 April 6, 2023  Posted by at 2:21 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  2 Responses »


John Singer Sargent The moraine 1908

Andrew Korybko:

 

Symbolism & Substance

Zelensky’s first state trip to Poland since the start of Russia’s special operation last year took place earlier this week, during which time he was awarded with his host country’s highest civilian honor, the Order of the White Eagle. His visit occurred at a crucial moment in the NATO-Russian proxy war, which adds an element of intrigue to it, as does its symbolism. The present piece will thus analyze the aforesaid in order to better understand the importance of Zelensky’s latest trip.
 

The Latest Military-Strategic Dynamics

To begin with, the NATO chief declared in mid-February that his bloc is in a so-called “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia, one which Moscow is winning as evidenced by its continued military resilience and Zelensky’s remark late last month about running out of ammunition. Wagner founder Prigozhin also recently claimed victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk/“Bakhmut” after his group captured that city’s administrative center, which prompted a policy reversal from the Ukrainian leader.

Back in late February, he said that his forces might abandon that area if their losses there become unreasonable, but then he told CNN last month that losing that city might result in Russia rolling through the rest of Donbass. Zelensky then built upon this prediction to warn just a little more than a week ago that he’ll be pressured at home and abroad to “compromise” with Moscow if that happens, but now he’s snapped back to his prior position after preconditioning the public to expect a possible withdrawal.

It remains to be seen what’ll ultimately happen, but there’s no doubt that the military-strategic dynamics favor Russia. This isn’t wishful thinking either but is predicated on the damning details contained in the Washington Post’s report from the middle of last month about how poorly Kiev’s forces are faring. With this larger context in mind, it’s clear that Zelensky’s latest trip to Poland truly took place at a crucial moment in this conflict.
 

The De Facto Polish-Ukrainian Confederation

As for the symbolism, Poland is among Ukraine’s top allies, so much so that those two declared their mutual intent last May during President Duda’s visit to Kiev at the time to eventually remove all borders between them. This resulted in them gradually merging into a de facto confederation, which advances Poland’s geopolitical project of restoring its lost commonwealth in pursuit of its grand strategic goal of once again becoming a Great Power.

Zelensky’s reaffirmation of their mutual intent to remove all borders between them during his latest trip to Poland extends credence to this assessment, as does a neoconservative lobbyist’s push for that geopolitical project in a recent article for the influential Foreign Policy magazine. With a view towards legitimizing Ukraine’s status as his country’s de facto protectorate, Duda declared that Warsaw is seeking additional security guarantees for its neighbor ahead of this summer’s next NATO summit.
 

Polish-Ukrainian Problems

For as much as those two want to gradually merge their countries into a de facto confederation, there still remain some very serious obstacles in their way. For starters, there’s obviously the question of financing this geopolitical project, which Poland can ill afford. Second, Poles are disgusted with Ukraine’s glorification of Hitler’s fascist genocidal collaborator, Bandera. The more that the Polish state tolerates this in spite of its occasional rhetoric in defense of historical truth, the angrier that average Poles get.

Building upon the aforementioned observation, the third challenge to this geopolitical project is rising anti-establishment sentiment in Poland, which could lead to the Confederation party winning enough votes during this fall’s elections that the ruling party is forced to form a governing coalition with them. That outcome could throw a wrench in these plans, thus indefinitely delaying their implementation, especially if Confederation finds a way to block the requisite funding and/or security guarantees.
 

The Prospects Of A Polish Military Intervention

There’s still plenty that can still happen before the next elections, however, including a Polish military intervention in Ukraine. Its Ambassador to France thundered late last month that “If Ukraine fails to defend its independence, we will have no choice but to enter the conflict. Our fundamental values, which are the cornerstone of our civilisation, our culture will be in fundamental danger, so we don’t have a choice.” Even though the embassy said his words were decontextualized, the intent was clear.

Russia has been warning about this scenario for quite a while already, which could represent an unprecedented escalation in NATO’s proxy war against it by dint of Poland being an official member of that bloc whose countries have mutual defense obligations to one another. A Polish intervention could therefore serve as a tripwire for that anti-Russian alliance to formalize its role in this conflict, especially in the event that Poland announces its “unification” with Ukraine and brings it under their umbrella.

While this sequence of events remains speculative, it’s nevertheless founded on a factual basis as was explained thus far in this piece, especially considering the disadvantageous military-strategic dynamics that cast a cloud over Zelensky’s latest trip to Poland. Returning to those and keeping in mind the words of the Polish Ambassador to France as well as these two countries’ leaders reaffirming their desire to remove all borders between them, observers shouldn’t discount the possibility that this transpires.
 

Scenario Variables

In fact, it could very well unfold prior to the next elections in fall should Russia’s capture of Artyomovsk lead to it rolling through the rest of Donbass like Zelensky earlier predicted might happen, which could prompt Poland to intervene in accordance with the conditions that its Ambassador to France stipulated. The only variables that could credibly offset this scenario are Russia continuing to only make piecemeal progress on the ground or Kiev agreeing to a ceasefire with Moscow prior to resuming peace talks.

The first’s chances could be strengthened by a surge of modern Western weapons to Ukraine while the second’s could be reduced by Poland promising whatever support Kiev requires in order to not feel forced by circumstances into negotiating with Russia. Therein lies the likely purpose behind Zelensky’s latest trip to Poland, namely to explore exactly what Warsaw could provide in this respect so as to better assess whether it’s worth seriously considering during this crucial moment in the conflict.
 

Reassessing Duda’s Demand To NATO

Duda implied during an interview with Le Figaro in early February that he feared France might try to broker a ceasefire, the scenario of which could be advanced by Macron’s ongoing trip to China, whose 12-point peace plan was praised by President Putin during his counterpart’s visit to Moscow last month. The political dynamics of this conflict are therefore just as disadvantageous from Kiev’s and Warsaw’s shared perspective as the military-strategic ones since they both point to an impending ceasefire.

This observation adds further context to Duda’s demand that NATO give Ukraine more security guarantees. His statement can now be interpreted as either hinting at a forthcoming Polish military intervention (irrespective of whether this is preceded by formalizing their confederation) or suggesting that these could soon be extended to reassure Kiev of that bloc’s enduring support in the event that it’s forced by circumstances into agreeing to a ceasefire with Russia (regardless of who might mediate it).
 

Ukraine’s Upcoming Counteroffensive

Duda’s desire for this to be done sometime in the next three months before early July’s NATO summit places a concrete deadline on his demand, which coincides with Kiev’s expected counteroffensive. About that, the Washington Post’s earlier cited report tempered expectations about its success, as did the latest assessment from the former commander of the Polish Land Forces. Waldemar Skrzypczak told leading Polish media that Ukraine is “not ready” for this and that “Now it’s time for politicians.”

Cynics who might claim that this retired official doesn’t have accurate information about the conflict’s military-strategic dynamics should be reminded of what incumbent Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces General Rajmund Andrzejczak told publicly financed media in late January. He warned that time is running out for Kiev, confirmed that Russia’s military might still remains formidable, and expressed serious concern that Ukraine could ultimately be defeated.

Despite this dire analysis from Poland’s top military official, who’s indisputably in a position to receive the most up-to-date classified information about the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, Kiev will probably still attempt its planned counteroffensive anyhow. That will in turn influence whether Poland formalizes their de facto confederation and/or militarily intervenes in its support, exactly which security guarantees NATO might give Kiev, and whether a ceasefire is reached before the bloc’s summer summit.
 

Concluding Thoughts

This insight leads to the conclusion that Zelensky’s latest trip to Poland was super significant since it’s intended to shape the course of the NATO-Russian proxy war over the next three months. Warsaw’s role in forthcoming events will powerfully influence what Kiev does during this crucial moment in that conflict, hence the timing with which the Ukrainian leader decided to meet with his counterpart. For as carefully as Zelensky is planning everything, however, he might still fail in reversing his side’s fortunes.

 

 

 

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Mar 122023
 


Dora Maar Model in swimsuit 1936

 

Seismic Iran-Saudi Rapprochement Isolates US (Lauria)
Georgia Has A Huge Western-Funded NGO Sector (Trenin)
Kiev Considers Renaming Russia (RT)
Medvedev Suggests New Name For Ukraine (RT)
Russia Should Lose, But Not ‘Too Badly’ – US Congressman (RT)
Ukraine Is Lying About Casualty Ratios To Justify Holding Of Bakhmut (MoA)
Russia Issues Latest Report On US-Funded Biolabs In Ukraine (RT)
Poland Builds Europe’s Largest Land Force (Az.)
American Guided Bombs Are ‘Operational’ in Ukraine (LI)
Elon Musk Demands Release Of ‘QAnon Shaman’ (RT)
Trip To Moscow Not Impossible, Pope Francis Says (TASS)
Over $250 Billion Swindled From US Pandemic Fund (RT)
Silicon Valley Bank Employees Made Large Donations to Biden, Dems (GP)
Musk Lets In Possibility Of Buying Bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank (TASS)
House GOP ‘Building the Case’ to Issue Criminal Referrals Against Fauci (BN)

 

 

 

 

Putin Oliver Stone
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634559549095944192

 

 

 

 

Noem CBDC
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634369634672443392

 

 

 

 

Ritter

 

 

Lock ‘em up

 

 

Trump Jan 6 peace

 

 

 

 

Inauguration

 

 

 

 

Pepe Escobar: “So the Exceptionalist Realm spent TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in wars across West Asia. With one single Sun Tzu move – Iran meets Saudi – China laid it all to waste. This humiliation is Afghanistan multiplied by trillions.”

Seismic Iran-Saudi Rapprochement Isolates US (Lauria)

Ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-allied Shah of Iran, the rivalry between the two major Middle East powers — Iran and Saudi Arabia — has been at the heart of every conflict across the region. The announcement on Friday that Iran and Saudi Arabia have normalized relations could have a seismic effect on all these conflicts and leave the U.S. on outside looking in. In Lebanon, Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Saudi-backed parties might begin to resolve their differences, a unity that would worry Israel and lessen U.S. influence in the country. In Syria, Hezbollah and Iranian militias have been battling Saudi-backed jihadists for more than a decade. The Syrian war could now come to an end. In Yemen, U.S.-backed Saudis have been fighting the Houthi, who have been driven into a closer alliance with Iran. Obstacles to a peace deal have now been removed.

In Iraq, reconciliation between Sunni and Shia could make the U.S. presence and influence irrelevant and unwelcomed by all sides. In Bahrain, Iranian-backed Shi’ites in conflict with the Saudi-aligned monarchy could sideline the presence of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in a region on the mend. And in Saudi Arabia itself, the state’s tensions with Shi’tes in the eastern oil regions should lessen. The historic rapprochement and resumption of formal diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran could transform the Middle East. And the United States doesn’t like it one bit. The U.S. has depended on the Saudi-Iranian divide to pursue its interests in the region. After this development, the U.S. and Israeli front against Iran should lose their chief Arab ally, Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are now in a position to defy U.S. economic sanctions on Iran — a nightmare for Washington.

An end to the Yemen war, which the Biden administration has been making feeble noises about, would mean having to accept Iranian influence on the Arabian peninsula. An end to the war in Syria would be the death knell for the American regime change project in that country. It will put U.S. occupying forces in the east of Syria in an uncomfortable position. And it could spell the end of covert support for some of the most vile jihadists in the region, which depended on Saudi backing. Worst of all for the United States, China has stepped in to be the statesman the U.S. refused to be to resolve differences that have ripped the Middle East apart. That has to produce sleepless nights inside the Beltway. If anything proves China is committed to stability in the world and the U.S. to instability, it is this deal.

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The entire country runs on western NGOs. Detailed report.

Georgia Has A Huge Western-Funded NGO Sector (Trenin)

Tbilisi’s main street, Rustaveli Avenue, was blocked for several days, this week, As thousands of people chanted anti-government slogans in front of the parliament building and sang the Georgian national anthem. Even more protesters gathered at the square in the evenings. By nightfall, the enraged crowd was throwing firecrackers, stones, and Molotov cocktails at the police, attempting to take down an iron fence and storm the parliament. The police used water cannons to promptly put out the fires and showered the crowds with water, at the same time spraying tear gas to disperse those present. What led to this violent confrontation is perhaps difficult to understand from the perspective of a Western reader. It wasn’t a “civil society” uprising in the sense you might find, for example, in a country like France.

Instead, it was organized by people whose livelihoods were threatened by the proposed legislation. In a poor country like Georgia, foreign-funded roles pay multiple times better than local gigs. By taking on the NGO industry, the government went up against a powerful, and relatively well-heeled lobby. The protests were initially triggered by a bill ‘On the Transparency of Foreign Influence’, which was adopted by the Georgian parliament on its first reading. On Tuesday, 76 deputies voted in favor of adopting the bill and 13 deputies opposed it. During the discussion stage, MPs from opposition parties said they would not allow the so-called “Russian law” to be considered in parliament. This resulted in a fight between opponents and supporters of the legislation.

[..] The strong reaction to the initiative does not seem surprising considering how many foreign NGOs are active in Georgia. In a review of the Georgian civil sector published in 2020, the Asian Development Bank indicated that there is no special legislation on non-profit or non-governmental organizations in the country, although they are listed in the general register of companies, which as of the beginning of 2019 consisted of 12,800 organizations. At the same time, the vast majority of such organizations rely on foreign funding, according to the Georgian national statistics service Sakstat. As of spring 2022, there were 7,972 companies with foreign founders operating in the country. With a total population of 3.7 million, there are around 460 people per foreign NPO in Georgia. For comparison, as of November 2022, there were over 500 active “foreign agents” registered in the US, under FARA.

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Moscovia = Muscovy

Kiev Considers Renaming Russia (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has instructed his government to consider renaming Russia as ‘Moscovia’, an unofficial designation used centuries ago. The move comes after a petition insisted that by using the word ‘Russia’, Ukraine is endorsing a “dangerous claim” that its neighbor is a direct descendant of Kievan Rus. In a statement on Friday, Zelensky said he had turned to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal with a request that the petition, which had gathered the necessary 25,000 votes to be considered, be “comprehensively processed.” The issue “needs to be carefully worked out both in terms of the historical and cultural context, and from the perspective of possible international legal consequences,” with scientific institutions taking part in the process, the Ukrainian president added.

Commenting on the move, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated that it was “further evidence of an attempt to create an ‘anti-Russia’ out of Ukraine.” The name ‘Moscovia’ dates back to the Grand Duchy of Moscow, one of principalities of Kievan Rus in the late Middle Ages. The modern Russian state formed around this center of power while retaining historic and cultural roots stemming from Rus. The author of the petition, which was submitted in late November 2022, claimed that the name ‘Russia’ “gave grounds for further encroachment” on the history of Kievan Rus as foreigners often confuse the words ‘Russia’ and ‘Rus’. Many Ukrainian nationalists reject the notion that the two have some kind of historical link, arguing that only Ukraine can be viewed as the true heir of Kievan Rus.

The petition also demands that the word ‘Russian’ be replaced with ‘Moscovian’ and that the Russian Federation be renamed as ‘the Moscovian Federation’. In recent years, Ukrainian authorities have embarked on a renaming spree, targeting thousands of place names they deemed to be linked to Russia or the Soviet Union. The campaign intensified after Moscow launched its military operation against the neighboring country in February 2022. In October last year, Kiev officials renamed a street which had honored Soviet Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, who played a prominent role in liberating Ukraine from Nazi occupation. The name of the street now celebrates the “heroes” of the Azov Battalion, which is notorious for its support of neo-Nazi ideology.

Zel talk

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“Schweinisch Bandera-Reich”

Medvedev Suggests New Name For Ukraine (RT)

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has proposed renaming Ukraine in honor of notorious Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. His suggestion came after Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told his government to consider a proposal to change Russia’s name. On Friday, Zelensky instructed authorities to “thoroughly study” the proposal to officially rename Russia to ‘Moscovia.’ He was reacting to an online petition, which argued that the name ‘Russia’ provided grounds for “further encroachment” on the history of Kievan Rus, a medieval state from which both Russia and Ukraine trace their origin. Many Ukrainian nationalists claim that their homeland is the only true heir of Rus.

The name ‘Moscovia’ dates to the Grand Duchy of Moscow and was historically used by some authors to describe the Russian state. On Saturday, Medvedev, who served as Russian president between 2008 and 2012, and currently serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council, fired back in a post on his Telegram channel. “Our response?… Only the Schweinisch Bandera-Reich,” he wrote. The word “schweinisch” means “piggish” in German. Medvedev was apparently referencing the idolization by some Ukrainian politicians of Stepan Bandera, a World War II-era leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Bandera collaborated with Adolf Hitler’s government during the early stages of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

He was later arrested and imprisoned by the Germans over disagreements about the future of Ukraine. After the war, Bandera fled to West Germany, where in 1959 he was assassinated by a KGB agent. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army – the OUN’s military wing founded in 1943 – positioned itself as a guerilla force fighting both Soviet and German troops. Its agents committed multiple atrocities against Polish, Jewish and Russian civilians. Bandera and his followers are honored as heroes in modern Ukraine, with streets and buildings named after them. Nationalists hold annual torchlit processions on Bandera’s birthday in Kiev and other cities.

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Zero grip on reality.

Russia Should Lose, But Not ‘Too Badly’ – US Congressman (RT)

The US doesn’t “actually want Russia to lose too badly” in Ukraine, Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton claimed in an interview on Friday. While some Washington lawmakers have gone as far as to call for regime change in Moscow, the Kremlin has repeatedly stated that it will succeed in achieving all the goals of its military operation. “I don’t know if it’s good for the stability of the world if the Russian regime collapses,” Moulton told Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute, a think tank funded by several NATO governments and US arms manufacturers. Citing the risk of nuclear proliferation that would come with the collapse of Russia, Moulton said that the “abject defeat of the Russians and the whole regime collapse is probably not what we actually want.”

“We absolutely want Ukraine to win, we want Russia to lose, but we don’t actually want Russia to lose too badly,” he continued. Moulton sits on the House Armed Services Committee, and voted with the rest of his party to authorize a $40 billion military and economic aid package to Ukraine last year. He told Coffey that this aid should continue, and that the Biden administration should provide Kiev with more tanks and artillery ammunition in order to mount a counteroffensive against Russian forces this year. Lawmakers in both parties have suggested more extreme measures, however, with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham calling last year for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a bipartisan group urging President Joe Biden last month to supply Ukraine with US-made fighter jets – a move that former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described as a “red line” that would place the US at “war against Russia.”

In Ukraine, President Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly stated that he intends to retake four formerly Ukrainian provinces that voted to join Russia last year, as well as Crimea, which held a similar referendum in 2014. Not only would such a move be “met with inevitable retaliation using weapons of any kind,” in Medvedev’s words, it would also be impossible at present, with Ukrainian forces mired in battle in the Donbass city of Artyomovsk, called Bakhmut in Ukraine. The Kremlin has stated on multiple occasions that its special military operation in Ukraine will continue until its goals are achieved. These goals, as set out by Putin last year, are the demilitarization of Ukraine, the “denazification” of its leadership, its establishment as a neutral country, and the defense of the Russian-speaking population of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

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They’ve gone overboard recently.

Ukraine Is Lying About Casualty Ratios To Justify Holding Of Bakhmut (MoA)

The linked Financial Times piece, reprinted in the Irish Times, actually quotes the Ukrainian national security chief Oleksiy Danilov as saying that the kill ratio was one to seven in Ukraine’s favor. The whole passage is nuts: “US and European officials estimate 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or seriously injured since February last year, and Ukraine about half that. One western official said Russia had suffered “between 20,000 and 30,000 casualties over the past six months”, adding that most of them were mercenaries fighting for the Wagner private military company. Wagner’s operations have been largely focused on Bakhmut. Nato officials estimate one Ukrainian had been killed or injured for every five Russians. Ukrainian national security chief Oleksiy Danilov last week estimated the ratio was “one to seven in our favour”.

This makes no sense. Had 200,000 Russian’s be killed or seriously wounded in the war while 20,000 to 30,000 of those were killed or wounded in the past six month then the first six month of the war would have cost the Russian side 175,000 losses. That’s more than the total numbers that were, until the recent mobilization, involved in the whole campaign. Those numbers must have been pulled from hot air. Danilov casualty ratio is likewise obvious nonsense. The Medical Department of the U.S. Army has a book about CAUSATIVE AGENTS OF BATTLE CASUALTIES IN WORLD WAR II. It is quoted here: “A report on the causative agents of battle casualties in World War II showed the comparative incidence of casualties from different types of weapons for several theaters. Compilers of the report believed that, while the more detailed subdivisions within their three major classes were open to question, their findings on the percent of total casualties due to small arms, artillery and mortars, and “miscellaneous” were reasonably accurate.

From these they drew the following conclusions: 1. Small arms fire accounted for between 14 and 31 percent of the total casualties, depending upon the theater of action: The Mediterranean theater, 14.0 percent; the European theater, 23.4 percent; and the Pacific theaters, 30.7 percent. 2. Artillery and mortar fire together accounted for 65 percent of the total casualties in the European and Mediterranean theaters, 64.0 and 69.1, respectively. In the Pacific, they accounted for 47.0 percent. The Encyclopedia Britannica likewise notes for World War I: “The greatest number of casualties and wounds were inflicted by artillery, followed by small arms, and then by poison gas.” When I was in officer school the number estimated for a big war in Europe was 75% of casualties due to artillery and aerial bombing.

Data from the European Commission, quoted by El Pais, says that Russia has a 10:1 advantage in artillery: According to data from the European Commission to which EL PAÍS has had access, Russia fires between 40,000 and 50,000 artillery shells per day, compared to 5,000-6,000 Ukrainian forces expend. The Estonian government, which has been one of largest contributors to Kyiv’s war effort, puts the average use of artillery at between 20,000 and 60,000 Russian shells per day, and 2,000 to 7,000 Ukrainian rounds, according to a document sent to EU Member States by Tallinn, to which this newspaper has had access The Russian forces fire ten times the number of shells the Ukrainians can fire. In a modern war artillery fire causes 65+% of all casualties. It is thus impossible that Ukraine is losing less soldiers than the Russians. The total ratio may well be 7 to 1 but it will certainly be to the advantage of the Russian forces side.

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“..unlimited profits” by conducting “directed evolution” research on the Covid-19 virus, in order to “proactively develop new vaccines..”

Russia Issues Latest Report On US-Funded Biolabs In Ukraine (RT)

US-funded biological research laboratories are continuing to operate in Ukraine in spite of official statements indicating that they had been “deactivated,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a Friday report on Washington’s international pathogen research programs. According to the commander of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, Moscow has obtained documents that suggest Kiev has continued to coordinate with the Pentagon in the military biological field, including the transfer of pathogenic biomaterials. Kirillov pointed to an official appeal from ‘ch2m-hill’ – a key Pentagon contractor – to Ukrainian companies participating in a “program to counter particularly dangerous pathogens in Ukraine.”

The document reports on the continuation of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) biological program in Ukraine and outlines future tasks, such as consolidating collections of dangerous pathogens and deploying systems for managing bio risks and monitoring the epidemiological situation. Kirillov also stated that, in January 2023, the government of Ukraine published a new set of requirements for the “accounting, storage, transportation and destruction” of various pathogens, which included instructions for the international transportation by air of substances with the highest hazard class. He noted that the transport document templates provided in the guidelines only featured examples of US labs as recipients or senders of the hazardous biomaterials.

The lieutenant general warned that Kiev and Washington could potentially use their research to carry out “provocations with dangerous pathogens,” which they would later blame on Russia. In his report, Kirillov reiterated Russia’s concerns with the potential risks associated with the “dual-use” programs that the US implements on its own territory and abroad. He pointed out that the work of US biolabs on dangerous pathogens “seems to be the height of recklessness” against the backdrop of viral outbreaks such as anthrax and cholera in various parts of the world and the rise in animal diseases such as African swine fever, avian influenza, and foot and mouth disease.

The commander also drew attention to the US pharmaceutical industry’s attempts to secure “unlimited profits” by conducting “directed evolution” research on the Covid-19 virus, in order to “proactively develop new vaccines,” which Pfizer R&D director Jordan Walker admitted to in a Project Veritas expose. Kirillov also reiterated Russia’s position that the main goal of US bio programs across the world was to “establish global biological control” by degrading the national health systems of other countries and subverting the provisions of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) with its own rules, which were developed to serve the interests of Washington and its allies.

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I’m sure it’s all defensive.

Poland Builds Europe’s Largest Land Force (Az.)

Warsaw is embarking on its biggest re-armament drive in 50 years in response to the growing threat posed by Russia, Report informs via The Telegraph. But in mid-December, Poland’s 11th Artillery Regiment received 24 South-Korean made K9 self-propelled howitzers that can hit targets up to 34 miles away, bringing new and deadly capabilities to the regiment. Stationed not far from the Russian border, Captain Marek Adamiak unit has long grappled with outdated kit. “As an artillery officer I’m excited by the new equipment,” Captain Adamiak told The Telegraph. “We can manoeuvre better, we can shoot from anywhere. There is no place we can’t shoot from. We had a lot of old artillery but now we have very new weapons.”

The war happening in neighboring Ukraine has given the Poles the confidence that if the conflict came to their doorstep, they would now have the weapons to fight back. The 24 guns are just the tip of a massive defence spending programme by Poland. Spurred on by war next door and the growing fear that Poland could one day be in the sights of the Kremlin looking to return to the days when the Russian empire once stretched to River Vistula, the Polish government is determined to arm up – and fast. This year it will spend 4 percent of its GDP on defence, an amount double the Nato requirement, and one that will make Poland the biggest, per-capita, spender on defence in the alliance.

Some of the deals for new equipment pre-date the Ukraine war when Poland, already conscious of the Russian threat, had started to revamp armed forces still burdened with a lot of Soviet-era equipment. “The criminal assault carried out by the Russian Federation, targeting Ukraine, and the unpredictable nature of Putin means that we need to accelerate the equipment modernisation even further,” Mariusz Blaszczak, the Polish defence minister, told the Defence24 portal. “It is of key importance to increase the levels of security as fast as possible for Poland. We can do this only by creating a strong military. Strong enough to deter any potential aggressor from deciding to attack.”

Poland has placed orders for 1,000 K2 main battle tanks from South Korea, and 250 brand new M1A2 SEPv3 Abram tanks from the US. This will turn Poland into the owner of Europe’s biggest tank force, dwarfing the UK’s fleet of 227. Its artillery will be bolstered by the arrival of 600 K9s, 18 HIMARS launchers with 9,000 rockets, and 288 K239 Chunmoo MRL systems from South Korea. Over 1,000 Polish-made Borsuk infantry fighting vehicles will carry Polish troops into battle, while air cover will come from 96 AH-64E Apache helicopters bought from the US, and 48 FA-50 combat aircraft now on order from South Korea. All of this will be underscored by plans to double the size of the Polish Army to 300,000, which would turn Poland into Europe’s biggest military power, in terms of manpower, west of Ukraine.

Orban

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If the bombs are, then so are the soldiers.

American Guided Bombs Are ‘Operational’ in Ukraine (LI)

The Department of Defense confirmed that advanced bombs are operational in Ukraine. The Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range (JDAM-ER) can hit targets 50 miles away. The Pentagon’s confirmation comes after President Joe Biden ordered the Pentagon to transfer “precision aerial munitions” to Kiev in December. On Monday, U.S. Air Force Gen. James Hecker, head of US Air Forces in Europe, told reporters that the JDAM-ER was operational in Ukraine. “Recently, we’ve just gotten some precision munitions [to Ukraine] that had some extended range and go a little bit further than the gravity drop bomb and has precision [guidance],” Hecker said. “That’s a recent capability that we were able to give them probably in the last three weeks.” JDAMs are primarily used to increase the accuracy of bombs.


The official did not specify how many or what variation of JDAMs would be sent. The JDAM-ER can be equipped onto 2,000 or 500 pound bombs and will deliver the munition up to 45 miles. JDAMs are compatible with some Western-made fighter jets and drones. Officially, Kiev does not possess any aircraft that can drop precision munitions. Biden said he has “for now” ruled out sending American-made aircraft. However, the UK is training Ukrainian pilots on Western-made fighter jets. Ukrainian pilots are in the US this week to determine how much training the airmen will need to become proficient on American planes. Additionally, JDAMs have been tested on Quickstrike underwater mines. The Quickstrike bombs are dropped by aircraft in shallow waters and can sit on the seabed for some time before being activated. If Ukraine is utilizing JDAMs on Quickstike mines, it’s still unclear what aircraft Kiev is using in the operations.

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Set them all free, except for those few caught on tape destroying property and/or attacking people.

Elon Musk Demands Release Of ‘QAnon Shaman’ (RT)

SpaceX and Twitter CEO Elon Musk has called for the release of Jacob Chansley, the war-painted Trump supporter jailed for his role in the January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill. Recently released video footage shows Chansley, nicknamed the ‘QAnon Shaman’ by the media, peacefully walking through the Capitol with a police escort. Musk tweeted a video on Friday showing Chansley encouraging his fellow protesters to “go home,” telling them that Donald Trump had asked them to leave the area. “Free Jacob Chansley,” he captioned the video. “Chansley was falsely portrayed in the media as a violent criminal who tried to overthrow the state and who urged others to commit violence. But here he is urging people to be peaceful and go home,” Musk wrote in a follow-up tweet. “I’m not part of MAGA,” he added, referring to Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ movement, “but I do believe in fairness of justice.”

Chansley pleaded guilty in 2021 to one count of obstructing an official proceeding, and was sentenced to 41 months in prison. One of the first protesters to enter the Capitol on the day of the riot, Chansley was photographed inside the Senate chamber wearing a horned fur helmet with his face painted in the colors of the American flag.The federal judge who sentenced Chansley described his actions as “horrific” and “terrifying.” However, video footage aired by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday showed Chansley walking around the interior of the Capitol alongside two police officers, before dedicating a prayer to the officers. The Democrat-led January 6 Committee – formed to investigate Trump’s culpability in the riot – kept this footage under wraps. It was provided to Carlson by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, after the GOP retook control of the House of Representatives in January.

Quiz

“Chansley got 4 years in prison for a non-violent, police-escorted tour?” Musk wrote in another tweet on Friday. That tweet was “fact checked” when shared on Instagram, with the platform linking to media reports claiming that police repeatedly asked Chansley to leave the building, and therefore did not “help” him around the Capitol. “The Capitol Police literally opened the Senate chamber door for him on camera!” Musk exclaimed. “But who are you going to believe, Instagram ‘fact-checkers’ or your own lying eyes!?” Chansley is one of nearly 1,000 protesters arrested in connection with the riot, 306 of whom were charged with obstructing an official proceeding, according to Justice Department figures. The vast majority – 919 – of defendants were charged with entering a restricted federal building, while 326 were charged with assaulting or disobeying a police officer. Of those detained, 518 have pleaded guilty, most of them to misdemeanor offenses.

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“However, an international meeting on this topic is possible, a meeting of delegates from the whole world..”

Trip To Moscow Not Impossible, Pope Francis Says (TASS)

A trip to Moscow is not impossible, Pope Francis said in an interview with the Argentina’s La Nacion news outlet. “This is not impossible. We hope we will be able to do that. I would like to bring to the attention that there are no promises. I have not closed this door,” the Pontiff said in the interview. At the same time, the head of the Roman Catholic Church expressed doubt regarding the possibility of a bilateral meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky under auspices of the Vatican.


“However, an international meeting on this topic is possible, a meeting of delegates from the whole world,” he said. The Vatican is working in this direction, the Pontiff noted. [The Vatican has] no peace formula, the peace service is in place,” Pope Francis added. Pope Francis repeatedly said earlier that his trip to Kiev is possible only on condition of visiting Moscow. The Pontiff said that he is open for a meeting with both presidents, of Russia and Ukraine, on the way from the apostolic trip to Africa in early February.

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What a surprise.

Over $250 Billion Swindled From US Pandemic Fund (RT)

More than $250 billion in Covid-19 relief funds were lost to “fraud” and “waste,”the directors of three US government agencies testified before the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee on Thursday. Compounding what Deputy Inspector General Sheldon Shoemaker of the Small Business Administration (SBA) called “the biggest fraud in a generation,” the officials stressed that the figures they gave represented an extremely conservative estimate of the total amount lost as they did not include the amount defrauded from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. According to a statement submitted by Shoemaker ahead of the hearing, the SBA has already uncovered $190.7 billion in potential fraud across relief programs under its jurisdiction. Specifically, it expects to find upwards of $100 billion within the scandal-plagued Paycheck Protection Program.

Acting Treasury Inspector General Richard Delmar admitted to just $2.6 billion in dubious charges confirmed at his agency, pleading that ongoing audits precluded making an estimate of the full cost. Larry Turner, inspector general of the Department of Labor, blamed the massive losses on a lack of preparation, insufficient oversight, and even the government’s generosity, making a “highly conservative” estimate of $76 billion in fraudulent spending. With no functioning system in place to verify applicants’ qualifying details in a reasonable time frame, the “unprecedented infusion of federal funds” into the program made it irresistible to fraudsters, he told the subcommittee.

Rep. Keith Mfume (D-Maryland) expressed shock that no one had predicted that requiring only “self-certification” to access such a prodigious cash hoard would lead to “a lot of hanky-panky,” while Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) pointed out that the agencies did not even use existing checks and balances to vet applicants, and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Florida) highlighted that state unemployment systems were hopelessly outdated even before the pandemic placed them under unprecedented stress. Of $45.6 billion in potential fraud lent out in association with one Labor Department program, Turner acknowledged upon questioning that $267 million had gone to dead people.

Asked about the possibility of recovering the money, Turner said that hunting down the perpetrators was financially unrewarding, as “once money goes out the door, it is hard to get it back.” Even in cases where the government has been able to track down Covid-19 benefit fraudsters and claw back some of the funds, the inspectors general were unable to tell subcommittee members what had become of some of the money. More than $5 trillion in pandemic relief funds have been distributed since 2020. By some estimates, as much as $400 billion was stolen from the unemployment relief program alone.

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Bankman Fried all over again.

Silicon Valley Bank Employees Made Large Donations to Biden, Dems (GP)

As The Gateway Pundit reported on Friday, Silicon Valley Bank was closed by the FDIC due to the bank losing over 60% of its value after the company disclosed major losses from security sales. Many political pundits and investors have called for lawmakers to bailout out the failed bank. Those advocating for bailouts have shied away from telling the public that SVB employees and affiliates voted in the leaders responsible for the current economic crisis. Open Secret’s data reveals in the 2020 election cycle Silicon Valley Bank employees and affiliates donated over $188,000 dollars to political candidates. Over 90% of the donations which amounted to $173,434 went to Democratic candidates whereas 7.2% or $13,763 went towards Republican candidates.


Joe Biden received the most donations with $66,748, followed by the DNC Service Corps and Pete Buttigieg. Other notable names and organizations that benefitted from Silicon Valley Bank employees in the 2020 election cycle were the Lincoln Project, Bernie Sanders Kamala Harris, and Raphael WarnockRepublicans did see some donations from Silicon Valley Bank affiliates but they weren’t as lucrative. The Republican Nationals Committee received the most notable donation which amounted to $5,271. The Silicon Valley Bank PAC in 2020 was a bit more balanced when it came to donations between Republicans and Democrats.Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters both received $2,500. Former Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio who previously voted to impeach Trump received $1,000.

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A cheap banking licence?! But first, the bailouts. There’s talk of the FDIC paying everyone 50%.

Musk Lets In Possibility Of Buying Bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank (TASS)

US businessman and billionaire Elon Musk has posted a tweet assuming the possibility of buying the bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). “I think Twitter should buy SVB and become a digital bank,” one of the users tweeted. “I’m open to the idea,” Musk replied in a comment. On Friday, the California Department of Financial Protection announced the bankruptcy of SVB, one of the largest banks in the United States. This became the largest bankruptcy of a US bank since times of the 2008 financial crisis, CNN TV Channel said earlier. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was appointed as the receiver for Silicon Valley Bank.

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“I do think Dr. Fauci and the CDC changed the definition of gain-of-function research, so that Fauci has, like, this wiggle room, but they were juicing up this virus..”

House GOP ‘Building the Case’ to Issue Criminal Referrals Against Fauci (BN)

House Republicans are “building the case” to issue criminal referrals against Dr. Anthony Fauci for lying to Congress, according to news reported on “The Benny Show” with journalist Benny Johnson. “So, specifically before your committee, and also before Rand Paul over in the Senate, Dr. Fauci has, of course, absolved himself of all funding of gain-of-function,” Johnson said. “He said he doesn’t know anything about it. It is verifiable and demonstrable that he lied. Now, there are codes in Congress. I have a code right here, 18 U.S. Code 1001.” “1001,” Jordan said. “Statements — false statements to Congress,” Johnson said. “Says you can be imprisoned, says you can be imprisoned for eight years if you lie to Congress. It seems like there has never been a more clear-cut case of some individual lying to Congress.”

“Yeah, we can do — there could be a referral, but you would refer to the Biden Justice Department,” Jordan remarked. “I don’t know that — they’re going to pursue that, but you can definitely do that. You could, have to have one of the committees, the Senate Judiciary Committee could do a referral. I doubt they will with the Democrats in charge.” “We could do a referral potentially,” he continued. “I would, frankly, prefer just to have Dr. Fauci come back in and take another round of questions here, but we’re building the case. You know, like, we had Dr. Redfield testify last week, Chairman Wenstrup did. I thought he was — I thought he was great. As were the other witnesses that were brought in.”

“So, again, laying that foundation,” he continued. “I do think Dr. Fauci and the CDC changed the definition of gain-of-function research, so that Fauci has, like, this wiggle room, but they were juicing up this virus, no doubt about it, juicing up this virus, making it more — I don’t know the technical, but making it juiced up and more deadly, I guess, maybe the correct word.” “Yes,” Johnson remarked. “So, they were doing that in this lab and I think that’s clear,” Jordan said. “So, we’ll just have to see as we move through this investigation.”

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Macgregor

 

 


Bob Newhart at 93

 

 

 

 

Walnut World
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634593087937822720

 

 

 

 

Hello!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634339185804079104

 

 

 

 

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Feb 162023
 
 February 16, 2023  Posted by at 5:36 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


Cy Twombly Fifty Days at Iliam: Like a Fire that Consumes All before It 1978

Andrew Korybko has more time to write articles than I do these days. And I must transfer his Word files to my own editor. Not obvious. What can I say? I don’t like Bill Gates. Plus, I need to find a new apartment here in Athens,  a perfectly affordable place until recently, where now real estate agents seem to think they live in Manhattan. It just takes so much time… Andrew:

Andrew Korybko:

Speculation has been swirling over the past month about why the US-led West’s Golden Billion so decisively shifted its “official narrative” about the Ukrainian Conflict from prematurely celebrating Kiev’s supposedly “inevitable” victory to seriously warning about its potential loss in this proxy war. This took the form of related remarks from the Polish Prime Minister, President, and Army Chief as well as the US’ Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after which the New York Times admitted that the sanctions failed.

The reason why they decided to so decisively shift the “official narrative” was because NATO’s military-industrial crisis, which the New York Times warned about last November and was then touched upon by Biden’s Naval Secretary last month, finally became undeniable. Putting all prior speculation about this to rest, NATO’s Secretary-General declared a so-called “race of logistics” against Russia on Monday precisely on this pretext and thus confirmed the bloc’s crippling military-industrial crisis.

According to the transcript of Jens Stoltenberg’s pre-ministerial press conference that was shared by NATO’s official website ahead of his meeting with this anti-Russian alliance’s Defense Ministers, he said the following of relevance to this subject:

“It is clear that we are in a race of logistics. Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel, and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield.

 

 Ministers will also focus on ways to increase our defence industrial capacity and replenish stockpiles. The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting Allied stockpiles. The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defence industries under strain.

 

For example, the waiting time for large-calibre ammunition has increased from 12 to 28 months.

Orders placed today would only be delivered two-and-a-half years later. So we need to ramp up production. And invest in our production capacity.

 

 Well, this is an issue we started to address last year, because we saw that an enormous amount of support for Ukraine, the only way to deliver that was to dig into our existing stocks. But of course, in the long run, we cannot continue to do that we need to produce more, to be able to deliver sufficient ammunition to Ukraine, but at the same time, ensure that we have enough ammunition to protect and defend all NATO Allies, every inch of Allied territory.

 

 Of course, in the short run, the industry can increase production by having more shifts, by using existing production facilities more. But really to have a significant increase, they need to invest and build new plans. And we see a combination both of utilizing existing capacity more and also by making decisions to invest in increased capacity. This has started but we need more.

 So what I said was that the current rate of ammunition consumption is higher, bigger than the current rate of production. That’s a factual thing. But since we have been aware of that for some time, we have started to do something. We’re not just sitting there idle and watching this happening.  

 And of course the industry has the capability to increase the production also short term, sometimes this on some non-used or not utilized capability there. But even when you have a factory running, you can have more shifts. You can even work during weekends.

 

 So yes, we have a challenge. Yes, we have a problem. But problems are there to be solved and we are addressing that problem and we have strategies to solve it both in the short term and also longer term to as a mobilized defense industry. And if there’s anything NATO Allies, and our economies and our societies have proved over decades, is that we are dynamic, we are adaptable, we can change when needed.

 

 And let me also add, of course this is –the challenge of having enough ammunition is also a big challenge for Russia. So it just shows that this is a war of attrition, and the war to attrition becomes a battle of logistics and we focus on the logistical part of the defence capacity, defence industry capacity to ramp up production.”

As proven by Stoltenberg’s press conference, there should thus be no doubt that NATO is experiencing an unprecedented military-industrial crisis, which is responsible for reshaping its members’ narratives and overall strategy towards the Ukrainian Conflict.

This self-declared “race of logistics”, which he also described as a “war of attrition”, first of all proves that the bloc wasn’t prepared for waging a prolonged proxy war against Russia otherwise they’d have preemptively retooled their military-industrial complexes accordingly. The New York Times’ recent admission that the anti-Russian sanctions are a failure also suggests that NATO completely miscalculated in this respect by expecting Russia to collapse as a result of those restrictions, which didn’t happen.

These two factors add crucial context to why the Golden Billion’s “official narrative” about the conflict so decisively shifted over the past month. They simply can’t sustain the pace, scale, and scope of their armed assistance to Kiev, especially not after their much-ballyhooed sanctions failed to catalyze Russia’s economic collapse or at the very least give their proxy an edge in this “race of logistics”/”war of attrition”. As a result, they were forced to change how they present this conflict to their people.

Most tellingly, the Polish President didn’t rule out the scenario of Kiev making territorial concessions to Russia in his recent interview with Le Figaro, which he said should solely be that country’s choice to make and not anti-war Republicans’. Even Stoltenberg let slip during his latest press conference that “we must continue to provide Ukraine with what it needs to win. And to achieve a just and sustainable peace”, which also didn’t include his usual explicit condemnation of the territorial concession scenario.

That selfsame “just and sustainable peace”, according to the Jerusalem Post’s Dave Anderson, can actually be achieved by Kiev finally giving up its territorial claims. In his opinion piece about how “Ukraine can win against Russia by giving up land, not killing troops”, which was coincidentally published on the same day as Stoltenberg’s press conference, he argued that this swift resolution of Ukraine’s territorial disputes with Russia could result in its accelerated admission to NATO.

That outcome would thus sustainably ensure its security, thereby representing a victory over Russia, at least according to Anderson’s view. In the broader context of this analysis and in particular the interpretation of Stoltenberg’s remarks from his latest press conference, his article can thus be seen as the latest contribution to decisively shifting the “official narrative” about the Ukrainian Conflict in the direction of preconditioning the Western public to accept some sort of “compromise” with Russia.

All of this, the reader should be reminded, is occurring because of NATO’s military-industrial crisis hamstringing its members’ capabilities to sustain their bloc’s pace, scale, and scope of armed assistance to Kiev. Their “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” against Russia is obviously trending towards Moscow’s favor after that Eurasian Great Power proved that it truly has the wherewithal to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of its special operation in spite of the Golden Billion’s unparalleled sanctions against it.

If someone still remained in denial about the existence of NATO’s military-industrial crisis in spite of Stoltenberg’s surprisingly candid admission on Monday, then they should also be made aware of Politico’s exclusive report that was published on the same day, which reinforced his claim. Four unnamed US officials told this outlet that their country can’t send Kiev its requested “Army Tactical Missile Systems” (ATACMS) because “it doesn’t have any [of them] to spare”.

This revelation should thus serve as the proverbial “icing on the cake” proving that NATO is in the midst of such a serious military-industrial crisis right now that its US leader itself can’t even afford to spare important munitions that could give its proxies in Kiev the edge that they so desperately need right now. What’s so stunning about this strategic dynamic is that the combined military-industrial capabilities of the bloc’s two and a half dozen countries can’t compete with their single Russian adversary’s.

That insight in turn shows just how mighty Russia’s military-industrial complex is that it’s still capable of sustaining the same pace, scale, and scope of the ongoing special operation in Ukraine despite the sanctions against it while 30 Golden Billion countries can’t collectively do the same. Should its rumored full-scale offensive transpire, then it’s likely to deal a deathblow to NATO’s proxies due to Russia’s edge in this “race of logistics”/”war of attrition” and thus force them to finally cede their disputed regions.

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Jan 102023
 
 January 10, 2023  Posted by at 3:14 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  18 Responses »


John Koch Conversation 1962

 

 

I don’t really like to do predictions, not without tea leaves and crystal balls, but I do have one. My prediction is that NATO will -try to- expand/widen/deepen the Ukraine conflict in 2023, and not just a little. They have to, because Ukraine as a theater is failing, no matter how much additional weaponry they import into it. And because Ukraine is running out of -under 65- boots on the ground.

Next step will be to actively involve the NATO members who despise Russia most. Ergo: the Baltic States. Problem with that is there’s not a lot of people there. But it’s just a hop across the border from Lithuania to Poland. And Poland is a whole different story. And, like the Baltics, but unlike Ukraine, a NATO member.

Here’s NATO’s own numbers: Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014-2022)

 

Poland has the weaponry, and the trained personnel. No threat to Russia, but you could sell is as such. Poland is just what Washington likes. And Raytheon, Northrop etc. The US cannot send US troops into the theater. And neither can Western Europe. Unpalatable. Countries like Germany, France and Holland won’t even think about sending troops. NATO depends on eastern European cannon fodder. Western Europe, like the US, will only send their second hand armoury. But not so, Poland. Here’s from Politico, November 21 2022:

 

Meet Europe’s Coming Military Superpower: Poland

Poland’s paranoia about Russia prompted it to eschew the prevailing Zeitgeist across much of Europe that conventional warfare was a thing of the past. Instead, it is building what are now on track to become the EU’s heftiest land forces. “The Polish army must be so powerful that it does not have to fight due to its strength alone,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on the eve of Poland’s independence day. It’s a shift that has resonated with Poland’s indispensable ally.

“Poland has become our most important partner in continental Europe,” a senior U.S. Army official in Europe said, citing the crucial role Poland has played in supporting Ukraine and in shoring up NATO defenses in the Baltics. While Germany, traditionally America’s key ally in the region, remains a linchpin as a logistical hub, Berlin’s endless debates over how to resurrect its military and lack of a strategic culture have hampered its effectiveness as a partner, the official said. As Germany continues to debate the details of what it calls the “Zeitenwende,” or strategic turning point triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Poland is already making substantial investments.

Warsaw has said it will raise its target defense spending from 2.4% of GDP to 5%. Meanwhile, Germany, which spent about 1.5% of GDP on defense last year, is debating whether it can maintain NATO’s 2% goal after it exhausts a €100 billion defense investment fund it approved earlier this year. Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak pledged in July that his country would have “the most powerful land forces in Europe.” It’s well on its way. Poland already has more tanks and howitzers than Germany and is on course to have a much larger army, with a target of 300,000 troops by 2035, compared with Germany’s current 170,000.

Today, Poland’s military is about 150,000 strong, with 30,000 belonging to a new territorial defense force set up in 2017. These are weekend soldiers who undergo 16 days of training followed up by refresher courses. They were initially seen as a bit of a joke, but Ukraine’s success in using mobile militia equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles now makes the idea seem much more sensible. “Today, those doubts have disappeared,” Blaszczak said during a recent swearing-in ceremony for new territorial troops.

Unlike Germany, which struggles to attract new troops, Poland’s recruiting drive is gaining attention. “The Poles have a much more positive attitude towards their military than Germany because they had to fight for their freedom,” said Gustav Gressel, a former Austrian military officer and security scholar now with the European Council on Foreign Relations. “In military circles no one questions the quality of the Polish army.”

We would do well to see all this in the light of what Julian Assange said about Afghanistan in 2011. NATO wants a forever war, not a successful one.

 

 

NATO, the US and the rich part of Europe, have nothing to lose. They send plenty of mostly useless weapons into the Ukraine theater, but as long as there are no coffins arriving at their (air)ports, their people won’t complain. On the contrary, their media make sure that they keep cheering it all on. While making sure it remains murky how much it exactly costs them.

I found this very peculiar, through Andrew Korybko:

Top Ukrainian & Former US Officials Are Panicking That $100 Billion In Aid Isn’t Enough

Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK Vadim Prystaiko [..] telling Newsweek: “The West now has a unique chance. There are not many nations in the world who would allow themselves to sacrifice so many lives, territories and decades of development for the purpose of defeating the archenemy…This is what I mean: All hands on deck, every single thing we can spare to help Ukraine win.”

You have a unique chance to have our people shot to bits. We will be happy to sacrifice them for your goals. Just keep giving us weapons, that’s all you have to do. Note the use of the term “archenemy”. For a country whose language and culture is still very much alive for perhaps more than half of Ukrainians. The 2014 US coup unseated a president elected by a majority of the population.

 

For some reason the US dragged two of their biggest old warmongers out of their respective proverbial basements: former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Who co-wrote this in the WaPo:

Time Is Not On Ukraine’s Side

Under current circumstances, any negotiated cease-fire would leave Russian forces in a strong position to resume their invasion whenever they are ready. That is unacceptable. The only way to avoid such a scenario is for the United States and its allies to urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in military supplies and capability — sufficient to deter a renewed Russian offensive and to enable Ukraine to push back Russian forces in the east and south.


Congress has provided enough money to pay for such reinforcement; what is needed now are decisions by the United States and its allies to provide the Ukrainians the additional military equipment they need — above all, mobile armor. The U.S. agreement Thursday to provide Bradley Fighting Vehicles is commendable, if overdue. Because there are serious logistical challenges associated with sending American Abrams heavy tanks, Germany and other allies should fill this need. NATO members also should provide the Ukrainians with longer-range missiles, advanced drones, significant ammunition stocks (including artillery shells), more reconnaissance and surveillance capability, and other equipment. These capabilities are needed in weeks, not months.

It’s starting to look like a desperate push. But it will come. Much stronger than today. Desperation has that kind of effect. The suffering will be in Ukraine and soon likely in Poland and Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia. Western Europe will pay through higher food- and energy prices. The US elites will be sitting pretty.

There is zero doubt that we will have to come back to this, a lot, in the near future. But that’s sort of what you do with predictions. They foretell actual events and conversations.

 

Gonzalo Lira talked about these things back in November 2022:

 

To be continued. As long as the people in the west remain oblivious to their own destiny, fate, reality. We are all used to having unipolar control of the world. But those times are over.

 

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Dec 242022
 
 December 24, 2022  Posted by at 10:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  27 Responses »


Edvard Munch Christmas in the brothel 1904-05

 

Santa and Satan (Kunstler)
What Should We Make Of The Latest Muppet Show In DC? (Saker)
Kiev Is Mulling Peace Plan, WSJ Reports (RT)
Kremlin Comments On Kiev’s Purported Peace Plan (RT)
US Has Nothing To Lose, Everything To Gain, From Longer Ukraine Conflict (Luk.)
NATO Armies Drained By Ukraine Conflict – Media (RT)
In for a Pound (Schryver)
The US Love For Ukraine Or Hate Against Russia? (Awan)
Russia Sets Its Own Gas Price Cap For EU (RT)
Russia Warns Of Oil Production Cut (RT)
Mass Twitter Suspension Of Accounts Criticizing Zelensky Visit To Congress (PM)
Can China Help Brazil Restart Its Global Soft Power? (Escobar)
United States Attorney Announces Extradition Of SBF To US (SDNY)

 

 

It’s Christmas Eve and all we can talk about is war. The next step once the last Ukrainian dies, as Gonzalo also says, may well be to push Poland forward as the -willing- next proxy. Because the Poles do have the equipment, and the personnel to operate it.

Merry Christmas.

 

 

 

 

Rob Reiner

 

 

Gonzalo Will Poland Be The Next Proxy

 

 

 

 

Pelosi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1606110816540819457

 

 

 

 

Slowak flag

 

 


stationary slit vision

 

 

 

 

Krampus.

Santa and Satan (Kunstler)

The Santa we know came from a mashup of ancient pre-Christian Teutonic and Norse folk figures (Wotan, Odin) with the 4th century Greek bishop, St. Nicholas, a humble giver of gifts to children. That evolved in 19th century Anglo-America, with help from Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, and Clement Moore, into the jolly fat man in a fur-lined cloak, chortling merrily amid the platters of roast goose and baskets of sugarplums. And then, of course, the Santa character was retooled and stylized by the big advertising mills of mid-20th century Madison Avenue into the red-suited icon who functioned as a cosmic delivery-man to suburban houses where the little ones dwell, efficiently distributing Red Ryder BB guns and Barbie Dolls from sea to shining sea out of his reindeer-powered express vehicle, circling the entire globe in a single breathless night of glittering snow and shining stars, plangent with countless wishes from little hearts.

Strange to relate, in some corners of Europe, St. Nick acquired a traveling companion named Krampus. The two went from house-to-house in the dark hours of St. Nick’s name-day (Dec. 6) interrogating children as to their conduct. Dark and hirsute with horns, cloven hooves, and a darting red tongue, this monster acted the “bad cop” of the roving pair, badgering the little ones about their naughty or nice doings, and whacking them with a birch rod if he didn’t like their answers. If especially displeased, he stuffed kids into a basket for transport to Hell. A Krampus-like character reemerged in America this pre-Christmas week in the figure of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, who flew halfway around the world in a US government-issue magic sled to meet up with his chum, the new Santa Claus, “Joe Biden,” alleged current president of our land.

Mr. Z, still tricked-out in his wartime olive-green togs and scrufty beard, was here to lecture the boys and girls of Congress about being naughty or nice vis-à-vis “democracy” in his distant land, lately under a siege of angry bears. Ukraine did nothing to make the bears angry, you understand. They just lumbered in from the forest one day and started busting stuff up, as bears will. Ukraine has already received many gifts from Santa’s workshop, formerly known as the USA, toys much more impressive than any Red Ryder BB gun, for sure: howitzers, Javelin missiles, Stinger missiles, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Phoenix Ghost tactical drones, Switchblade tactical drones, Puma surveillance drones, Vampire anti-drone systems, Mi-17 helicopters, Harpoon coastal defense systems, and much more. (How did Santa fit it all in his sack?)

“Joe Biden” promised another fifty-billions of dollars to Mr. Z’s bear-extermination project, with the further objective of dethroning the king of all bears, the wicked Putin, who glowers at the world from the mouth of his faraway Kremlin Cave. Then, in Congress Wednesday night, before a coast-to-coast TV audience, Mr. Z tuned-up our elected boys and girls in the great House chamber, forked tongue darting, to tell heart-wrenching tales of bear-provoked terror. He played them like the very keys of a harpsichord — a trick he has performed before with an interesting twist on Ukrainian television. The elect of our land stood and cheered, ready to proclaim Ukraine the fifty-first state. Mr. Z stole a smooch from the ruler of Congress, the winsome Ms. Pelosi, and then disappeared in a puff of smoke that left a tang of sulfur wafting on the stale air.


To underscore his seriousness, and using his secret powers, Mr. Z arranged for a bomb-cyclone storm to roar out of the North Pole a few days after his departure to give Americans a little taste of what it’s like to sit in the cold and dark at Christmas time — because the USA is such a blessed land as to have no problems of its own, and needs to be reminded about the sufferings of the less fortunate. And so it goes this Yuletide of 2022 in our charmed and exceptional country. The elves at Clusterfuck Nation wish you all a merry little Christmas!

Read more …

“..Russia has been preparing non-stop for a full-scale continental war since at least 2014..”

What Should We Make Of The Latest Muppet Show In DC? (Saker)

Since Dubya and Obama the White House has been occupied by weak and frankly clueless leaders, hence the various interests groups which control DC run “their own foreign policy”. So, like vectors, the various goals and means of the key actors add up to create a “sum vector” which can *look* like “a policy” or “a plan”, but it is no such thing. What is true of the US is even MORE true for NATO. Hence the Poles pulling at their chain like rabid dogs to the horror of the comparatively sane(er) Europeans. I fully agree with Andrei Martyanov – the folks in charge in the West are totally clueless and they have absolutely no idea how to walk away from the mess they created.

The Neocons probably would prefer a worldwide nuclear war to a Russian victory, but non-Neocon actors might not want to die for a sick, narcissistic, gang of ignorant yet self-worshiping thugs. Who will prevail? I have absolutely no idea. I am not sure anybody else knows either. What I do know is that Russia has been preparing non-stop for a full-scale continental war since at least 2014. Defense Minister Shoigu has declared that next year Russia will add five new artillery divisions, eight bomber aviation regiments, one fighter regiment, three motor-rifle divisions, two air-assault divisions, and six army aviation brigades to the Russian armed forces!

And, by the way, these “artillery divisions” will be what is called “high power” brigade/division in Russia, that is to say that they get the very heavy weapons, like 203mm and 240mm self-propelled mortars. Something which the newly recreated First Guards Tank Army (a “Shock Army” in Russian military terminology) would need to further increase its huge firepower power. And did I mention that Russia has fully modernized her nuclear triad and that key weapons factories in Russia are now working for 6 days weeks with 3 shifts working non-stop?

Zel DC

Read more …

Kiev and NATO can make any ‘peace plan’ that they know Russia won’t accept.

Kiev Is Mulling Peace Plan, WSJ Reports (RT)

Ukraine may present its vision of peace around the last week in February, near the first anniversary of Russia’s offensive against the country, the Wall Street Journal has reported. The US newspaper, citing European and Ukrainian diplomats, claimed President Vladimir Zelensky and his team are currently working on such a formula. In its article on Thursday, the media outlet alleged that the Ukrainian leadership wants to strengthen its position at the negotiating table by making gains on the battlefield against Russia before unveiling any peace proposals. The topic of peace and how Ukraine sees it was high on the agenda of US President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Zelensky during the latter’s visit to Washington on Wednesday.

However, according to the Washington Post, citing an anonymous senior US official, the discussion was largely “academic,” as the US and Ukraine believe Russia is not interested in any such negotiations at this point. Addressing G20 leaders in Indonesia last month, President Zelensky laid out a ten-point peace plan, which called for, among other things, the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and an “all for all” prisoner swap. The Kremlin, in turn, insisted that Kiev must recognize the “reality on the ground” as a prerequisite for any peace negotiations. In Moscow’s eyes, this reality includes the new status of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as parts of Russia.

Unnamed Western officials cited by the Wall Street Journal had suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to launch a renewed offensive in the coming months and is not interested in any peace talks before he sees how those efforts pan out. Meanwhile, speaking to journalists on Thursday, the Russian head of state said that Moscow’s “goal is not to ramp up this military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war, that is what we are striving for and will strive for.” Putin noted that the sooner hostilities in Ukraine come to an end, the better, as the “intensification of fighting leads to unnecessary losses.”

The Russian president went on to insist that the Kremlin has never refused to engage in peace talks with Ukraine. He claimed that it is the leadership in Kiev that “has forbidden itself from” going down this road. This is an apparent reference to a decree signed by Zelensky in early October, according to which Ukraine will not negotiate with Moscow as long as Putin remains in power there. The decision came in response to Moscow officially signing agreements with the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which joined Russia after holding referendums. “One way or another, all armed conflicts end with some negotiations on the diplomatic track,” Putin argued on Thursday. He also expressed hope that those “who are opposing us” realize this as soon as possible.

Read more …

“..all that he has said until now did not take into account the reality on the ground..”

Kremlin Comments On Kiev’s Purported Peace Plan (RT)

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Russia considers previous comments made by Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky about the possibility of peace talks as detached from reality. He’d been asked on Friday to comment on media reports about a new peace plan being formulated by the leader’s office. “We are not aware of it,” the official told journalists during a briefing. “We have heard Zelensky’s statements about various steps, a peace plan. But all that he has said until now did not take into account the reality on the ground, which one simply cannot ignore.” The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the Ukrainian government could reveal a new peace proposal sometime in February.

The Ukrainian leadership wants to achieve some battlefield victories first, to strengthen its position, the newspaper’s sources in the governments of the US and Ukraine claimed. Zelensky last month made public what he termed a peace plan for his nation during a speech to the G20 leaders, who were meeting in Indonesia. It involved full withdrawal of Russian troops from all territories that Kiev considers under its sovereignty. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the time that the terms were “unrealistic and inadequate” and that Zelensky’s speech was full of “militant, Russophobic and aggressive rhetoric.”

Zelensky was asked about a “just peace” ending the conflict, during a press-conference in Washington that he held this week alongside US President Joe Biden. He replied that he didn’t know what that term meant, before declaring that no amount of reparations would compensate for the losses of some Ukrainians, who want revenge on “inhumans.” Biden intervened to declare that both he and Zelensky ultimately wanted peace. US policy states a strategic defeat of Russia as a primary goal in the crisis. Russia and Ukraine were on the brink of reaching a ceasefire agreement in early April. But Kiev’s Western backers reportedly declined to support the deal that Kiev brought to the negotiation table. Moscow said the US and its allies derailed the talks so that they could inflict more damage on Russia, disregarding Ukraine’s interests.

Read more …

The last Ukrainian.

US Has Nothing To Lose, Everything To Gain, From Longer Ukraine Conflict (Luk.)

Putting aside the pomp, the theatricals designed tug at the heart strings and the rhetorical chatter, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s visit to Washington could indeed be a milestone for the “European security” framework. A recent article by veteran German-American diplomat Henry Kissinger offered a new perspective in that he claimed a neutral status for Ukraine can no longer serve as a subject for negotiation, as the subject is no longer relevant. Ukraine is forming a powerful and capable armed force, actively assisted by the West, primarily the US, so its formal status – whether it’s a member of NATO or not – no longer matters. It is America’s de facto, if not de jure, military ally, in addition to having unique practical experience in a direct large-scale confrontation with Russia. One might add: it is motivated to pursue it.

Elaborating on this thought, it is reasonable to assume that, for the US, it’s even more comfortable for Ukraine to remain outside the formal alliance, as it expands the space for political-military action. There are no legal commitments, the level and scale of support can vary according to the situation at any moment, and the degree of Kiev’s loyalty to Washington as the main guarantor of resources is likely to exceed even that shown by Warsaw or the Baltic states. As will the degree of dependence on external aid. Ukraine, like Poland and the Baltics, is likely to become increasingly distrustful of continental Western Europe, as Kiev will interpret its inevitable internal contradictions as an implicit desire to make peace with Russia.

For the US, this sort of “land-based unsinkable aircraft carrier” will come in handy. Such a trained and loyal satellite, on the one hand beside Russia and on the other pointing towards Western Europe – and Kiev’s narrative that thanks to its efforts, the rest of Europe can live in peace and not under Russian bombs – opens up many opportunities. The territorial configuration of Ukraine in this context is unimportant to Washington. Moreover, the preservation of part of the internationally recognised Ukrainian territory under Russian control cements the conflict, and leaves the rump with a reason to fight on.

For this it should be equipped and trained, but all its wishes don’t necessarily need to be fulfilled. As for preparing its forces, it is crucial, for Washington, to enhance Ukraine’s own capabilities so that any subsequent phases of the confrontation can continue without the direct involvement of US and NATO units. This is a very significant point. The scheme is, in principle, quite rational. There is no guarantee that it will work, because Russia has the power to prevent it (even if, so far, this hasn’t been very visible), but there are few risks for the US. And the notorious European security system – the reform of which was Russia’s key demand a year ago – if it ever comes back on the agenda, it will be under very different circumstances. The old approaches and demands will no longer apply.

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“We are really low… and we’re not even fighting..”

NATO Armies Drained By Ukraine Conflict – Media (RT)

The fighting in Ukraine has “exposed flaws in US strategic planning” and “revealed significant gaps” in the US and NATO military industrial base, the Washington Post reported on Friday. As Kiev’s forces consume more ammunition than the West can produce, the Pentagon seeks to cope by training them to fight more like Americans. “Stocks of many key weapons and munitions are near exhaustion, and wait times for new production of missiles stretches for months and, in some cases, years,” the Post noted, as part of a narrative about how the US has funneled some $20 billion in military aid to Kiev just this year. Only $6 billion of that has been in new weapons contracts, while the rest came from the Pentagon stockpiles.

The US military-industrial complex can make about 14,000 rounds of ammunition for the 155-mm howitzers, the Post quoted US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, while Ukrainian forces go through about 6,000 a day during heavy fighting. The US military-industrial complex is “in pretty poor shape right now,” Seth Jones of the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told the Post. “We are really low… and we’re not even fighting,” Jones said, adding that in scenarios where the US is facing China or Russia in a conventional conflict, “we don’t make it past four or five days in a war game before we run out of precision missiles.” Washington’s allies in Europe are in similar shape, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Michal Strnad, owner of a Czech ammunition conglomerate, said Ukraine chews through 40,000 rounds a month, while all of the European NATO members put together can produce 300,000 a year. “European production capacity is grossly inadequate,” Strnad said, adding that it would take up to 15 years to restock at current production rates, if the conflict were to somehow end tomorrow. Moscow has repeatedly warned the US and its allies that shipments of increasingly modern and long-range weapons could lead to a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, and accused the West of prolonging the conflict and causing civilian deaths in Ukraine. While Western officials have demanded a ramp-up of production for months, recent EU legislation blocked many investments into weapons manufacturing by designating it “not sustainable,” according to the Journal.

Germany is now in the process of funding a factory in Romania that could produce both NATO and Soviet-caliber ammunition for Ukraine. The Pentagon is trying to deal with the problem by training Ukrainian troops to “fight more like Americans” and use different tactics, according to the Post. “I think if we can train larger formations — companies, battalions — on how to employ fires, create conditions for maneuver, and then be able to maneuver like you’ve seen [the US military] maneuver on the battlefield, then I think we’re in a different place. Then you don’t need a million rounds” of artillery, a senior US official – who did not wish to be named – told the outlet.

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“..Russia has unswervingly adhered to the three primary war objectives Putin articulated in his February 24th speech.”

In for a Pound (Schryver)

In his February 21, 2022 speech, Putin meticulously recounted the relevant history of the region dating back multiple centuries, and focused specifically on the events that followed in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In addition to Putin’s history lesson, he makes particular reference to a detailed proposal Russia delivered to the United States and its NATO allies in mid-December 2021 – a proposal that effectively amounted to a “final warning”; a last-ditch effort to avoid war in Ukraine. Consider his words carefully, and particularly in light of how Russia has unswervingly adhered to the three primary war objectives Putin articulated in his February 24th speech.

“Last December, we handed over to our Western partners a draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on security guarantees, as well as a draft agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and NATO member states. The United States and NATO responded with general statements. There were kernels of rationality in them as well, but they concerned matters of secondary importance and it all looked like an attempt to drag the issue out and to lead the discussion astray.

We responded to this accordingly and pointed out that we were ready to follow the path of negotiations, provided, however, that all issues are considered as a package that includes Russia’s core proposals which contain three key points. First, to prevent further NATO expansion. Second, to have the Alliance refrain from deploying assault weapon systems on Russian borders. And finally, rolling back the bloc’s military capability and infrastructure in Europe to where they were in 1997, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed. – Vladimir Putin, Address by the President of the Russian Federation, February 21, 2022” I submit we can confidently assume Putin was as deadly serious on February 21, 2022 as he was on February 24, 2022; that he was not bluffing; that he was resolved to “raise the stakes” commensurate to whatever was required to achieve the objectives he had so carefully articulated.

I submit that his domestic popularity AND the support of his generals correlates closely to the perception that he will not waver from those objectives, and that it has only been the misplaced sense that he might be failing, or at least stumbling, or that he might even pull back from his stated objectives that has resulted in meaningful criticism arising from his domestic supporters, be it in government, the military, or the general public. I further submit that, in my estimation, it is precisely the burgeoning faith that Putin will resolutely pursue and achieve his stated objectives that has resulted in the unprecedented willingness of China, Iran, India, and other geostrategically important Eurasian and Global South nations to not only openly support Russia in this conflict, but to also, in many instances, openly defy imperial decrees forbidding military and commercial relations with Russia.

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“..may keep them engaged for a prolonged time to make Russia suffer economically..”

The US Love For Ukraine Or Hate Against Russia? (Awan)

The US is not sincere with Ukraine nor in love. If the Americans love Ukraine, they might have provided unlimited weapons and advanced weapons to make Ukraine win. But, this is not their intention, not their goals. Actually, they are in hate with Russia and wanted to counter the revival of Russia through Ukraine and may keep them engaged for a prolonged time to make Russia suffer economically. The US put sanctions on Russia to harm it economically. Sanctions proved counterproductive and the Russian economy has not suffered at all. Its trade has remained the same, but, the trading partners have changed, China, India, Pakistan, and many other countries are becoming bigger trading Partners with Russia. Pushing out from the SWIFT banking system has no impact on its financial transactions as China has compensated and provided them with alternates.

It Oil and Gas export has not reduced, and India and China have been importing much more. Furthermore, the increase in Oil and Gas prices in the international market has become supported the Russian economy. On the other hand, Europe has been victimized by the Ukraine war. The Fuel and Food prices have jumped much high. Few European countries are providing subsidies to their citizens but not all of the European countries are rich enough to extend subsidies to their citizens. As a result, many Europeans are suffering. The public in Europe is turning against the Ukraine war and demanding the end of this war immediately. There are protests and agitations in some European capitals and slogans are heard against NATO and withdrawal from NATO.

The current leaders in Europe are bound under the agreement to support NATO and Ukraine’s war. But, it is predicted that in the upcoming some of the political parties may come up with the idea to promise the public to end the war, end NATO support or exiting from NATO, etc., may win the general elections. It is pretty sure that public sentiments will dominate in the next elections and visionary politicians will make bold decisions. There is an awareness in the public that blindly following the US is not the ultimate goal, but, must think about national interests. War in Europe is not desired, no one wants it and the public may reflect their anger at the time of voting. The next elections will be decisive and may change the fate of not only Europe but the whole world. Geopolitics might be changed completely. It is a matter of time only, public sentiments must be respected at all costs.

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“..partially relieves state energy major Gazprom from fulfilling its obligations to its foreign partners..”

Russia Sets Its Own Gas Price Cap For EU (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Thursday that partially relieves state energy major Gazprom from fulfilling its obligations to its foreign partners who hail from countries that have imposed sanctions on Moscow. According to the decree, published on the official government portal, Gazprom and its subsidiaries are prohibited from paying for gas, or for its production and transport, from joint projects with its EU partners in Russia if the amount of payment is higher than the cost established by the Russian government. The decree targets Gazprom’s joint ventures with Germany’s Wintershall and Austria’s OMV. In partnership with the two companies, Gazprom is developing two large natural gas deposits in Russia, the Yuzhno-Russkoye and the Urengoyskoye fields.


The regulation has been introduced retroactively, and so is enforeceable from March 1, 2022, and will be effective until October 1, 2023. The government has been charged with setting a price limit within ten days. Both Germany and Austria are members of the EU, which imposed multiple sanctions against Russia in connection with Ukraine. Head of Wintershall Mario Mehren said in April that Russia had crossed red lines in its partnership with European companies, which means the end of “an era of long and intensive economic cooperation” between Russia and Germany. However, over the summer he said that his company has no plans to quit its joint ventures in the country. OMV has refused to make new investments in Russian projects and has announced plans to review its participation in the Yuzhno-Russkoye field, where it owns a 25% stake. Both companies have yet to comment on Putin’s decree.

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“..right now, we’d rather take a risk of a production cut than stick to the policy of selling in line with the threshold.”

Russia Warns Of Oil Production Cut (RT)

Russia will not sell oil to countries that impose a price cap on its crude exports, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak warned on Friday. According to Novak, Moscow may respond by reducing oil production by 500,000-700,000 barrels a day in early 2023. Russia is the world’s third biggest oil producer and the cuts would equate to roughly 5-6% of the country’s daily output. The G7 and EU’s $60-per-barrel ceiling on Russian seaborne crude came into force on December 5. The measure, along with a ban on EU imports of seaborne Russian flows, is aimed at curbing the Kremlin’s revenues. Russian oil cargoes that are traded above the threshold cannot access some key services from Western companies, including insurance.

“We are ready to partially cut our production early next year,” Novak warned in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel. “We’ll try to find some common ground with our counterparts to prevent such risks. But right now, we’d rather take a risk of a production cut than stick to the policy of selling in line with the threshold.” The official described the potential production drop as “insignificant” [to Russia], reiterating that Moscow will not sell its crude to those who apply the Western price cap. Russian producers are able to reroute their exports to competing markets, including Asia, as the nation’s energy is still in high demand globally, Novak stressed.

On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin told reporters he will sign a decree on the nation’s response to the cap next week, which will feature “preventive measures.” Russia’s full-year oil production in 2022 will probably grow to 535 million tons, equivalent to around 10.74 million barrels per day (bpd), according to Novak. Data shows that in November, the country’s average daily output hit an eight-month high of 10.9 million bpd. Meanwhile, experts have warned that an output cut by Russia could tighten the global energy market as demand in China, the world’s largest oil importer, is forecast to rebound.

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Ukrainian bots?

Mass Twitter Suspension Of Accounts Criticizing Zelensky Visit To Congress (PM)

Zelensky brought his flag and his ask for cash and weapons to Congress during the prime time hours on Wednesday night, much to the fawning of American legislatures. In response, many who are critical of the massive expenditure to Ukraine, and of the US involvement in a war against Russia at all, took to Twitter to express their disdain. They were banned, and many speculated that it was bots who were to blame. Many accounts shared a photo of the two most powerful women in American politics, Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who are second and third in line for the presidency respectively, hoisting high the flag of Ukraine in the US Congress while Zelensky spoke to that body. Dozens of accounts were summarily banned after criticizing the visit, Zelensky, the US’ involvement in Ukraine, and the horrifying vision of the Ukrainian flag being raised in Congress.

Zelensky was treated to cheers, a standing ovation, and multiple rounds of applause. The flag being raised above Congress added insult to the injury of Zelensky asking for cash, in addition to his stating outright that no matter what the US was giving him it would not be enough. “I’m now getting reports of tons of accounts that were locked out our tweets that were taken down for posting images of Zelensky’s speech last night and being critical of him Seems to be a mass takedown campaign by Twitter,” Jack Posobiec reported. This after prominent account ALX was suspended pending deletion of his tweet criticizing Ukraine, Pelosi and Harris. Elon Musk replied to Posobiec’s post about ALX, saying that he was looking into it as the “tweet doesn’t violate ToS.”

Posobiec offered “Update, could be a mass-reporting situation by trolls or state actors.” The idea is that the tweets critical of Zelensky could have been the target of a mass-reporting campaign, with the intention of silencing anti-Zelensky sentiment on the platform. Former Trump administration official who served in the State Department and the Department of Defense William Wolfe said he was “back after an entirely arbitrary and unfounded suspension.” He had tweeted out the photo of Harris and Pelosi as well, saying “When we say ‘clown world’ this is what we mean.” For that tweet, he was slapped with a 12 hour ban. The Columbia Bugle simply tweeted the photo with “Bring a check next time,” and that caught a ban. The report from Twitter said the ban was for “Violating our rules against posting or sharing privately produced/distributed intimate media of someone without their express consent.” But of course, the image was a screen shot from the live broadcast of Zelensky speech, and Congress’ shilling for Zelensky, that was broadcast across many channels.

 

 

Tucker clapping

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“..an extraordinary story trespassed by Sisyphean tasks..”

Can China Help Brazil Restart Its Global Soft Power? (Escobar)

The return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for what will be his third presidential term, starting January 1, 2023, is an extraordinary story trespassed by Sisyphean tasks. All at the same time he will have to fight poverty; reconnect with economic development while redistributing wealth; re-industrialize the nation; and tame environmental pillage. That will force his new government to summon unforeseen creative powers of political and financial persuasion. Even a mediocre, conservative politician such as Geraldo Alckmin, former governor of the wealthiest state of the union, Sao Paulo, and coordinator of the presidential transition, was simply astonished at how four years of the Bolsonaro project let loose a cornucopia of vanished documents, a black hole concerning all sorts of data and inexplicable financial losses.

It’s impossible to ascertain the extent of corruption across the spectrum because simply nothing is in the books: Governmental systems have not been fed since 2020. Alckmin summed it all up: “The Bolsonaro government happened in the Stone Age, where there were no words and numbers.” Now every single public policy will have to be created, or re-created from scratch, and serious mistakes will be inevitable because of lack of data. And we’re not talking about a banana republic – even though the country concerned features plenty of (delicious) bananas. By purchasing power parity (PPP), according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brazil remains the eighth-ranked economic power in the world even after the Bolsonaro devastation years – behind China, the US, India, Japan, Germany, Russia and Indonesia, and ahead of the UK and France.

A concerted imperial campaign since 2010, duly denounced by WikiLeaks, and implemented by local comprador elites, targeted the Dilma Rousseff presidency – the Brazilian national entrepreneurial champions – and led to Rousseff’s (illegal) impeachment and the jailing of Lula for 580 days on spurious charges (all subsequently dropped), paved the way for Bolsonaro to win the presidency in 2018. Were it not for this accumulation of disasters, Brazil – a natural leader of the Global South – by now might possibly be placed as the fifth-largest geo-economic power in the world.

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No wonder they’re eager to sing.

United States Attorney Announces Extradition Of SBF To US (SDNY)

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Michael J. Driscoll, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced the extradition of SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED, a/k/a “SBF,” yesterday from the Bahamas.[1] Also unsealed are the guilty pleas of CAROLINE ELLISON, former CEO of Alameda Research, and GARY WANG, co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of FTX. ELLISON and WANG pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams on December 19, 2022, to charges arising from their participation in schemes to defraud FTX’s customers and investors, and related crimes, and are cooperating with the Government.


U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Last week, we announced charges against Samuel Bankman-Fried for a sweeping fraud scheme that contributed to FTX’s collapse and for a campaign finance scheme that sought to influence public policy in Washington. As I said last week, this investigation is very much ongoing, and it’s moving very quickly. I also said that last week’s announcement would not be our last, and let me be clear once again, neither is today’s.” FBI Assistant Director Michael J. Driscoll said: “With the pleas announced today, Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang admitted they were willing participants in schemes to defraud FTX.com’s customers and backers out of their money. The FBI will continue to seek justice for the victims of this case. No matter how fraudsters dress it up or sell the scam, we will continue to make every effort to ensure those responsible for the scheme are held accountable in our criminal justice system.”


Check the date. They pled guilty 11 months ago

CAROLINE ELLISON, 28, is charged with and has pled guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, each of which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; two counts of wire fraud, each of which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; one count of conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. GARY WANG, 29, is charged with and has pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; one count of conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Tucker SBF

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RT
https://twitter.com/i/status/1606347049284165632

 

 

Paramount

 

 


The rainbow starfrontlet (Coeligena iris) is a species of hummingbird in the “brilliants” tribe Heliantheini. Males have a glittering yellow-green forecrown that transitions through golden yellow to blue on the crown

 

 

All time favorite

 

 

 

 

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