Aug 282023
 
 August 28, 2023  Posted by at 9:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Gustave Dore Dante and Virgil among the late penitents 1868

 

Tucker Carlson: The People Who Run America Are “Dangerous And Insane” (Sp.)
NATO’s Strategy on Ukraine Failed – Former Italian PM Conte (Sp.)
Zelensky Aide Confirms ‘Secret’ Meetings With NATO Brass (Sp.)
Realistically, How Strong Is America? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Trump: The Leader of a Faction or a Party? (McCotter)
Yes, Trump was Seeking Another Recount or Investigation in Georgia (Turley)
Trump Mugshot Proves Fundraiser Miracle – Politico (RT)
BRICS Nations Just Want What Is Theirs (Ullekh NP)
‘Welcome to the BRICS 11’ (Pepe Escobar)
Gold Will Destroy The Keynesian Fallacies (Barron)
Do Clintons Seek to Steal Thunder From Team Biden & Cash in on Ukraine? (Sp.)
Hundreds of US Airline Pilots Suspected of Being Unfit to Fly (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Levin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vivek

 

 


Abraham Lincoln looking out over the March on Washington – 60 years ago this weekend.

 

 

 

 

Good speech. Makes Tucker 2028 feel closer.

BTW: why did the US make a gay human rights lawyer ambassador to Hungary? To provoke perhaps?

Tucker Carlson: The People Who Run America Are “Dangerous And Insane” (Sp.)

Tucker Carlson did not mince words as he ripped into US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman during an event in Budapest, calling the diplomat a “creep” that needs to be fired for actions “so far from the norms of diplomacy.” The former Fox News host said he felt compelled to apologize for how Washington was “harassing” the country led by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “The world is realigning at high speed, and turning against the United States. But the Biden Administration is spending its time harassing one of our last sincere allies in Europe, Hungary, for the crime of being too Christian,” said Carlson at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Feszt After event at Millenáris Park in Budapest. Hungary has been tightening laws targeting LGBT propaganda under Viktor Orban, who has been in power since 2010.

At present, same-sex couples are legally barred from adopting children, and gender change is also prohibited by law. David Pressman, America’s ambassador to Hungary, is a gay human rights lawyer who took up the position in September 2022. The California-born former aide to then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has frequently mounted open criticism of the Hungarian government, under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Earlier this year Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto lashed out at Pressman, saying that he had no business interfering in Hungary’s domestic affairs. During his speech in Budapest, Tucker Carlson made the emphatic argument that Pressman, a “political activist and Biden-donor,” was working on behalf of “special interests”, rather than the American people,” and not focusing on building stronger relations with Budapest.

“For a creep like David Pressman . . . to show up in your country and lecture you about your culture – and threaten you because you do things differently from the way they do things where he lives – hurts the United States and is a grave embarrassment to me as an American and an outrage to me as someone who pays his salary… It’s disgusting,” said Carlson. The entire premise behind “diplomacy” is that countries are different, said Carlson, himself the son of a diplomat. Accordingly, an envoy should not “hector other nations,” or “show up in somebody else’s country and scream at them because they’re different from you.” The political pundit added, in referense to David Pressman, that he was “embarrassed that I share a country of birth with a man, with a villain like this. It’s horrifying.”

According to Carlson, every time he visited Hungary, it reminded him of America back in 1980s, or as he remembered it from his early youth. However, critics in the West were trying to paint Hungary as a “rogue” state for adhering to its own strong Christian values and refusing to allow foreign envoys to tell telling Hungarians how to live. As Carlson accused Washington of demanding that Hungarians “worship transvestites,” and denounced this as as a case of a “foreign power pushing its weird boutique religion on you, and it’s wrong,” he presumed to give Hungarians some advice: “Just wait it out. The United States is in a place now where this is not sustainable. You can’t run a global empire on the imposition of boutique sexual politics on countries that don’t want them.”

Weighing in on the current policy of the United States, Tucker Carlson claimed that the people who run his country are “dangerous and Insane”. “They hate Hungary, and they hate it not because of what it’s done but because of what it is. It’s a Christian country, and they hate that. That is enough to incite our policymakers in the United States. That’s exactly why they hate Russia, by the way.” “People running the United States are no longer even pretending to offer a better life to the people who love there,” stated Carlson. As for the media landscape, there is no “diversity.” And why is this the case? “Because they are lying to you,” said Carlson, adding: “Anyone who doesn’t lie is punished and pushed off the stage.”

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“..the Ukraine conflict has “exposed the European Union’s inability to develop an effective common strategy..”

Because the EU has no leadership. People like Ursula and Borrell are not leaders.

NATO’s Strategy on Ukraine Failed – Former Italian PM Conte (Sp.)

“The strategy pursued so far in NATO, based on constant military supplies to Ukraine and the escalation logic, has not resulted in the desired military defeat of Russia. Quite the opposite. There was no defeat of the Russian army in Bakhmut [Artemovsk], no disintegration of its military units, no retreat during the Ukrainian counteroffensive,” Conte said on social media on Saturday. The economic sanctions imposed on Russia “did not lead to its bankruptcy and did not undermine its economy,” he added, noting that the possibility of internal destabilization in Russia had collapsed “in the face of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s strengthening leadership and growing domestic consensus,” and that Western policies had not led to Russia’s isolation.

“The isolation of Russia has by no means become a reality. On the contrary. The 15th summit of the BRICS group, led by Russia and China, has just wrapped up, with the concrete prospect of its further expansion in 2024, which will cover 45% of the world’s population and 38.2% of global GDP,” Conte said. In his opinion, the Ukraine conflict has “exposed the European Union’s inability to develop an effective common strategy and to exercise independent political and economic leadership,” he noted, adding that, in his opinion, the European leaders were subordinate to the United States. Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in response to calls by the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk for protection from Ukrainian troops. Since then, the EU imposed 11 packages of sanctions against Russia, and have been supplying Ukraine with arms.

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“..calling the crisis a proxy war “denies Ukraine agency.”

Zelensky Aide Confirms ‘Secret’ Meetings With NATO Brass (Sp.)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov first characterized the Ukrainian crisis as a NATO “proxy war” against Russia in April 2022. The US and its allies vocally rejected the characterization. But a series of Pentagon leaks, combined with statements made by Ukrainian officials themselves, have served to confirm the validity of Lavrov’s assessment. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top advisor has confirmed that a “secret meeting” recently took place between Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, other Ukrainian generals, and NATO top brass on the Polish-Ukrainian border. “There are a lot of meetings like that,” presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with Ukrainian television on Saturday. “Actually, Zaluzhnyi actively communicates with representatives of the ministries of defense and general staffs of our partners almost every day.”

“The General Staff is constantly making adjustments, depending on what is happening on the front line,” Podolyak added. “Obviously, these adjustments are always being discussed with our partners in order to actualize the deliveries” of additional weapons, including long-range missiles, armored vehicles, and air defense systems. The Zelensky aide also revealed that the NATO defense officials Zaluzhnyi most often communicates with are the Americans and the British, since “they know and understand better than others what is happening at the front.” Podolyak’s remarks confirm recent reports in US and UK media that the Ukrainian top commander and other Ukrainian top brass had met with Pentagon Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli, and British Chief of Defense Staff Tony Radakin to push for a change in strategy in Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive.

Zaluzhnyi was said to have verbally agreed with the “advice” of his NATO counterparts. The Biden administration, the US’ European allies, and Western media have adamantly refused to call the Ukraine conflict a “proxy war” between NATO and Russia, claiming the West’s only role is to “support the Ukrainian people as they defend their country,” and that calling the crisis a proxy war “denies Ukraine agency.” However, the extent of NATO support, including nearly $100 billion in military equipment, intelligence, and other aid, combined with the April 2022 US/UK move to sabotage Russian-Ukrainian peace talks, Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin’s admission that Washington’s goal in Ukraine was to “weaken” Russia, and NATO’s longstanding efforts to incorporate Kiev into the Western military bloc, suggest otherwise.

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“..the United States might be the least safe place on earth for white people, even less safe than South Africa and Zimbabwe..”

Realistically, How Strong Is America? (Paul Craig Roberts)

America’s weakness is overlooked by investment analysts. Having offshored manufacturing, the US is import-dependent, and having weaponized the dollar Washington is causing foreign central banks to stop holding dollars as reserves. The consequence is that the US has a rising issuance of debt to finance trade and budget deficits, but a declining supply of customers for that debt. Either the Federal Reserve has to monetize the debt or interest rates will rise. Note also that it appears there will be in about 4 months a large expansion of BRICS. Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to join. I assume the Russians have the diplomatic sense not to invite someone unless they know they will accept. Otherwise, Russia will have set herself up for the Western media headline, “Country X refuses Russia’s invitation.”

In a slap down of Washington signifying the termination of the petrodollar, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said, “the special, strategic relations with the BRICS nations promotes common principles, most importantly the firm belief in the principle of respect for sovereignty, independence and non-interference in internal affairs.” BRICS expansion will make the two largest South American countries members, and with the Saudis, Iranians, and UAE almost the entirety of Middle East oil goes into the Russian organization, which with Russia’s oil is essentially the world’s oil supply, and Egypt sits on the Suez Canal. China and India, the largest part of Asia, are already members. This suggests to me that the US dollar is headed for trouble and will need interest rate support.

If the dollar loses exchange value, the cost of imports will drive US inflation considerably higher. The worst inflations are always caused by currency decline. Gold investments make a lot of sense for Americans assuming that the criminals in Washington who are ruling us don’t confiscate them. Keep in mind also that the indictments of Trump are completely phony. If white-hating black Democrat prosecutors and white-hating black Democrat juries convict Trump of these phony charges, political upheaval could result. If the Americans simply accept the false conviction of an American president, they will fall into tyranny and no asset will be safe. The real American situation could be very different from what Wall Street thinks.

Dollar problems could make the US an unsafe investment climate, and if we take account of the extreme efforts of the Biden regime, American universities, public school boards, and Woke media and corporations, such as Disney, BlackRock, Starbucks, and Budweiser, to demonize white Americans and infuse white American children with racial guilt, the United States might be the least safe place on earth for white people, even less safe than South Africa and Zimbabwe. Indeed, it seems some American cities already are. It is not only that white confidence and white lives are at risk. So are Americans’ civil liberty. American law schools are in the hands of Woke ideologues who want “to reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Law schools such as Harvard and Yale teach that the US Constitution is undemocratic and racist and should be abandoned. Under the Woke regime the law schools and New York Times intend to impose, only the Woke and “official victims” would have rights. None of this reality is part of Wall Street’s world or stock and bond market valuations.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1696046348494311769

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No, Trump will not vow to endorse Asa Hutchinson or Chris Christie. It’s about credibility.

Trump: The Leader of a Faction or a Party? (McCotter)

[..] former president Donald Trump has declined to sign the Republican National Committee’s colloquially termed “Beat Biden pledge.” The pledge would commit Mr. Trump to endorse the ultimate GOP 2024 presidential nominee. Signing the pledge also is required to participate in the GOP’s presidential debates. This is likely not a factor in Mr. Trump’s decision, as he has announced he will eschew the first debate. What, then, are some factors in Mr. Trump’s thinking? Per the New York Post: “I wouldn’t sign the pledge. Why would I sign a pledge? There are people on there that I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have certain people as, you know, somebody that I’d endorse,” Trump, 77, told Newsmax host Eric Bolling during an interview. “I can name three or four people that I wouldn’t support for president. So right there, there’s a problem,” Trump said of the Republican National Committee’s loyalty pledge requirement.

Presently, Mr. Trump holds a significant lead over his GOP rivals for the presidential nomination. If his lead holds and Mr. Trump wins the GOP nomination, his signing the “Beat Biden pledge” would put his opponents on the defensive. It would make it harder, though not impossible, for them to renege on their pledged support for Mr. Trump in the general election campaign. So, why did he not sign? Again, the RNC requires Mr. Trump’s GOP rivals to commit to endorsing the 2024 nominee to participate in the debates. Consequently, if Mr. Trump’s wins, everyone on the stage in Milwaukee has already committed to supporting him. Declining to be in the debate, Mr. Trump has no need to sign the pledge for that purpose. In fact, in expressing his refusal to sign the pledge, he has another opportunity to trash his GOP rivals as being unworthy of the debate. (And, in refraining from naming the “three or four” rivals he would not support, he casts all his rival under suspicion).

One would think this is political deftness. One would be mistaken. While Mr. Trump has a lead in a primary election – a segment of a segment of the overall electorate – he is in deep trouble in a general election. Again, per the New York Post, an AP-NORC Center survey found that 53% of Americans say they will “definitely not” vote for Mr. Trump, and 11% more say they “probably will not” vote for Mr. Trump. In sum, then, Mr. Trump should be leveraging his large primary lead not to denigrate and humiliate his GOP rivals, but rather to unite the Republican Party behind his candidacy. This is a point not lost upon the more politically savvy of his supporters. “There isn’t a real Republican Primary as President Trump continues to dominate the GOP primary in both national polls and early-state polls,” Republican House Conference Chair, Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), told Breitbart News. “All patriots should and must rally behind President Trump’s campaign to Save America and defeat the corrupt Deep State.”

True, to a point. While Mr. Trump has a large lead over each of his individual GOP opponents, the combined opposition to him is around 40%. As his rivals drop out, their voters are unlikely to go to Mr. Trump. Instead, they will go to other candidates until one challenger is left standing. This would be Mr. Trump’s nightmare scenario: one GOP rival left, who has garnered all the anti-Trump party support; and, should Mr. Biden not be the Democrat nominee, all bets could be off for Mr. Trump. Obviously, Mr. Trump wants to avoid this scenario. Further, as do all candidates, he wants to sew up the primary as soon as possible to stanch the loss of precious campaign resources in a drawn out primary. Nonetheless, presently the GOP is far from united behind Mr. Trump; and there is little to suggest this is going to change any time soon.

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And that’s not illegal.

Yes, Trump was Seeking Another Recount or Investigation in Georgia (Turley)

First, a brief reminder of what “the call” is. This was not some back-room, smoke-filled political wheel-and-deal call. It was similar to a settlement discussion between largely antagonistic figures and their opposing teams. State officials and the Trump team were seeing if they could resolve their differences without further litigation. The Trump team wanted a new statewide recount. Trump had lost the state by less than 12,000 votes and was making the case that he could still show that he had won the state. He stated, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.” If you are going to argue for another recount or continued investigation, the obvious argument is that it would not take statistically many votes to make a difference.

I have long disagreed with Trump over his claim of systemic voting fraud. I criticized Trump’s Jan. 6 speech while he was giving it. I supported Vice President Mike Pence and his certification of the election of Joe Biden. I have also regularly criticized Trump when I felt that such criticism was warranted. This does not change my view of whether the call is compelling evidence of a crime. When the Washington Post first reported this call, I posted a critical tweet based on its initial, erroneous account that Trump had ordered Georgia officials to just “find” the needed votes. I noted that such a demand would be breathtaking and further noted that, even if they did so, it would not stop Biden from winning the presidency. But a few hours later, the actual transcript of the call was released, showing a strikingly different context for the “find” comment than the Post had reported.

Trump was clearly referring to his objective in finding votes and the threshold he needed to meet. That is a predictable argument for a candidate in pushing for a continued investigation. The Post also ran a misleading story on a separate, related call that left the same false impression. By the initial account, Trump had supposedly told investigator Frances Watson to “find the fraud” and promised that she would be “a national hero.” In fact, Trump had stated that, if the officials did a neutral investigation, “you’re going to find things” including “dishonesty.” The Post had to issue a correction at the top of this second story after the Wall Street Journal found a recording of the call. “The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source,” the paper acknowledged.

Phillip Bump’s recent Washington Post column continues to cite the paper’s original, skewed account of that call in order to criticize my commentary on it. Yet even in doing so, Bump inadvertently demonstrates the danger of using this call to prosecute Trump. As a threshold matter, Bump suggests (and many have repeated) that Trump was not seeking another recount because the recount had already occurred and Trump never uses the word “recount” in the first call. The argument shows the lack of good faith in the criticism. Obviously, Trump was seeking another recount or investigation. We all know that Georgia completed the recount. I wrote about it at the time and considered that recount to end reasonable doubts over the election. Trump, however, was making the case for another investigation or recount. That was the subject of the call. He wanted the state to take another look. That is further born out in the second call when he again asks them to take another look.

Trump’s demand is as simple and obvious as it was wrong. He wanted to maintain a challenge to the election in the courts and in Congress. Just a couple days after the election, I wrote a column predicted this strategy based on what the Democrats had done in prior years. I called it the Death Star strategy. To make it work, Trump needed to find evidence of fraud and delay or undermine state certifications. A new recount or continued investigation would achieve that purpose.

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“..make a contribution to evict Crooked Joe Biden from the White House and SAVE AMERICA during this dark chapter in our nation’s history.”

Trump Mugshot Proves Fundraiser Miracle – Politico (RT)

Donald Trump’s recent mugshot, which has already become iconic among his supporters, has also helped his campaign raise a record-breaking sum, according to Politico. The Republican frontrunner faces a plethora of charges and turned himself in at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday. On Saturday, the outlet reported that the former president had raised some $7.1 million since he had the photo taken by authorities. Politico quoted an anonymous source as saying that Trump’s campaign raked in $4.18 million on Friday alone – its single-highest 24-hour take to date. Shortly after the Fulton County’s Sheriff’s Office released the mugshot, the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., announced that he had launched a line of merchandise bearing the image and the tagline “NEVER SURRENDER!”.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), he said that all proceeds from the sale of T-shirts, mugs, and posters would go to the Legal Defense Fund “to fight the tyranny & insanity we’re seeing before us.” On Thursday night, the Republican frontrunner posted a tweet of his own on X – his first since 2021 – directing supporters to his website. Its landing page features the mugshot and asks visitors to “make a contribution to evict Crooked Joe Biden from the White House and SAVE AMERICA during this dark chapter in our nation’s history.” After being booked on multiple charges relating to his alleged attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, he was then released on a $200,000 bond. Trump is the first former or sitting US president to have a police mugshot taken of himself.

Earlier this month, Fulton district attorney Fani Willis unsealed a 41-count indictment against the former president and 18 of his associates. Trump stands accused of violating Georgia’s organized crime laws, as well as conspiracy to interfere in an election, perjury, soliciting a public official to violate their oath, and other offenses. This is the fourth criminal indictment the 45th US president has faced since the start of the year. Federal prosecutors have already slapped him with dozens of felony counts, alleging he plotted to interfere in the 2020 elections, mishandled classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021, and paid hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 election campaign. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and described the charges as a politically motivated witch hunt designed to prevent him from running for president in 2024.

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“By Ullekh NP, a writer, journalist, and political commentator based in New Delhi. He is the executive editor of the newsweekly Open and author of three nonfiction books: War Room: The People, Tactics and Technology Behind Narendra Modi’s 2014 Win; The Untold Vajpayee: Politician and Paradox; and Kannur: Inside India’s Bloodiest Revenge Politics.”

BRICS Nations Just Want What Is Theirs (Ullekh NP)

The BRICS nations, which had either rung out old monarchies or liberated themselves from colonial oppression, had long craved decolonization, but the US and its allies used every pretext to delay this overdue process. In the meantime, there were efforts such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that demonstrated the passion of multiple countries to break out of the clutches of American-centric global institutions, especially financial institutions, which had become instruments zealously used by the US and certain former colonial powers to control the resources of other countries. Any bid to question the hegemony of these global power structures was considered blasphemy, and the Western mainstream media promptly denounced any alternatives to the economic order of the day as non-starters or damp squib.

At the same time, they kept silent on the aspirations of the countries that had fought colonial and expansionist powers tooth and nail in the first half of the century to rewrite world history. The inclusion of six new members to BRICS at the recently concluded Johannesburg summit attracted international attention, but the highlight of the discourse so far has been pessimism about the grouping’s potential success. True, BRICS, or BRICS+ now thanks to its expansion, has not outlined alternative institutions it is planning to build. Neither is it an ideologically aligned entity like the G7. Nor has this grouping, which has been meeting annually on a rotational basis under the chairmanship of its member countries since 2014, chalked out any common aims in foreign policy – in fact, they do not have much in common except that they are aggrieved at being unfairly treated by the West and its satellite institutions since the end of World War II.

What BRICS has is a bank it created in 2015 called the New Development Bank (NDB), formerly known as the BRICS Development Bank, with the aim of “mobilizing resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging markets and developing countries.” But it is still at an early stage. So, what else does it have, Western commentators ask, some terming the summit “semi-farcical” and “meaningless.” It’s simple. These countries don’t want to be denied certain advantages that they are entitled to in the age of globalization. The times they are a-changin’, as Bob Dylan sang. The commentariat who see trade alone as the focus of BRICS+ must look at the political fragmentation taking place in the world where each country – from Asia to Latin America to Africa – is standing up to protect its own interests instead of remaining loyally aligned to blocs, no questions asked.

[..] … even the most neocon commentators who are silent on the splits within G7 cannot deny that the best days of the US economy are over and that the world order is shifting eastward. At this moment, there will always be desperate measures on the part of the existing hegemon to fight back inevitable change, perhaps through confrontation or through cooperation. Many economists hope that the countries in the Global South, those long denigrated, will have a greater reason than now to stick together. It is in that context that BRICS+ acquires a halo.

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Pepe reworks an earlier article. The Cradle adds graphs. Check the difference in debt.

‘Welcome to the BRICS 11’ (Pepe Escobar)

The road leading to BRICS 11, during the two days of discussions in Johannesburg, was hard and bumpy, as admitted by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. The final result turned out to be a prodigy of trans-continental inclusion. West Asia was aggregated in full force. The Arab world has three full members, as much as Africa. And Brazil strategically lobbied to incorporate troubled Argentina. The global GDP-purchasing power parity (PPP) of BRICS 11, as it stands, is now 36 percent (already larger than the G7), and the institution now encompasses 47 percent of the world’s population. Even more than a geopolitical and geoeconomic breakthrough, BRICS 11 really breaks the bank on the energy front. By signing up Tehran, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, BRICS 11 instantly becomes an oil and gas powerhouse, controlling 39 percent of global oil exports, 45.9 percent of proven reserves and 47.6 percent of all oil produced globally, according to InfoTEK. A direct BRICS 11-OPEC+ symbiosis is inevitable (under Russia-Saudi Arabia leadership), not to mention OPEC itself.

Translation: The collective west may soon lose its power to control global oil prices, and subsequently, the means to enforce its unilateral sanctions. A Saudi Arabia directly aligned with Russia-China-India-Iran offers a stunning counterpoint to the US-engineered oil crisis in the early 1970s, when Riyadh started wallowing in petrodollars. That represents the next stage of the Russian-initiated and Chinese-finalized rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran, recently sealed in Beijing. And that’s exactly what the Russia-China strategic leadership always had in mind. This particular diplomatic masterstroke is rife with meaningful details: BRICS 11 enters the fray on the exact same day, January 1, 2024, when Russia assumes the annual presidency of BRICS.

Putin announced that the BRICS 11 summit next year will take place in Kazan, the capital city of Russia’s Tatarstan, which will be yet another blow to the west’s irrational, isolation-and-sanctions policies. Next January, expect further integration of the Global South/Global Majority/Global Globe, including even more radical decisions, conducted by the sanctioned-to-oblivion Russian economy – now, incidentally, the 5th largest in the world by a PPP of over $5 trillion. The G7, for all practical purposes, has now entered an Intensive Care Unit. The G20 may be next. The new “Global Globe” G20 may be the BRICS 11 – and later on the BRICS 20 or even BRICS 40. By then, the petrodollar will also be on life support in the ICU.

[..] Putin went so far as to publicly call on all BRICS 11 to abandon the US dollar and expand trade settlements in national currencies – stressing that BRICS “oppose hegemonies of any kind” and “the exceptional status that some countries aspire to,” not to mention “a policy of continued neo-colonialism.” Importantly, as much as the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is celebrating its 10th anniversary next month, Putin drove home the necessity to: “…establish a permanent BRICS transport commission, which would deal not only with the North-South project [referring to the INTSC transportation corridor, whose key BRICS members are Russia, Iran and India], but also on a broader scale with the development of logistics and transport corridors, interregional and global.”

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The BRICS must use gold.

Gold Will Destroy The Keynesian Fallacies (Barron)

Introducing gold into the trading system will expose the main fallacy of Keynesian economics; i.e., the elevation of aggregate demand to prominence in a nation’s economy rather than production. Keynes shunned Say’s Law of Markets in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in order to hide his theory’s internal contradictions. As put succinctly by Emile Woolf, “Keynes endows the concept of ‘aggregate demand’ with god-like status while disregarding ‘production’-the only means of satisfying it.” Jean-Baptiste Say shows that production is required in order to enjoy the benefits of consumption.

On the face of it, it is hard to believe that anyone would believe that production either isn’t required for consumption or that it magically appears. Yet, this rather upside down theory appealed to politicians for obvious reasons; i.e., it gave them carte blanche to spend, all with money created out of thin air by the central bank. Rather than economize and prioritize spending that was absolutely necessary for the benefit of the entire nation, politicians were told by Keynes that it was their duty to spend if only to pay people to dig holes and others to fill them up.

The new international trade settlement system will require settlement in gold. A possible mechanism has been outlined by Alasdair Macleod of Goldmoney.com. The benefits of the new system will become obvious to every nation, not just the current BRICS members. The political benefits are that no one nation can control or manipulate the system for its unearned benefit. The economic benefits are that government spending will be minimized so that resources can be allocated to production rather than state aggrandizement. A member can expand imports only by expanding exports. This puts market pressure on member governments to reform their internal economies in order to increase production. To artificially increasing demand, per Keynesian orthodoxy, would be counterproductive, because gold would drain from the nation’s gold settlement account and imports would be suspended.

Therefore, the system encourages sound economic practices within its members’ individual economies. Printing money, excessive and unnecessary regulations, excessive taxation, and excessive government spending do nothing to aid a member’s ability to engage in trade. Nations like the US who have huge welfare obligations and who have politically connected industries that do not add to the nation’s capital base will struggle. Having lots of nuclear weapons will be irrelevant and having bases around the world will be liabilities rather than assets. An important point made by Macleod is that over time the gold settlement system for international trade will expand into members’ internal monetary systems. In other words, fiat currencies, which can be inflated/debased by governments, will be thrown on the ash heap of history. They will become “barbarous relics” instead of gold, as Keynes predicted in 1924.

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Haiti 2.0 or the White House?

Do Clintons Seek to Steal Thunder From Team Biden & Cash in on Ukraine? (Sp.)

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) gathering scheduled for September is expected to bring together corporate leaders, Hollywood stars, and other celebrities with the aim to “address climate change, health care issues, gender-based violence, the war in Ukraine and a host of other issues.” The timing of the Clintons’ September gathering hints at two probabilities: first, they are showcasing their talents just as Democrats need to find viable candidates to replace Biden; second, they may be salivating over a potentially mammoth rebuilding package in Ukraine, as Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel told Sputnik. What is the Clinton Global Initiative? In March 2022, the Clintons revived the CGI, which has long been suspected of being a vehicle for “pay-to-play” schemes by Bill and Hillary Clinton and personal enrichment of the political dynasty.

“For decades, the elder Clintons have not been able to resist milking purported charities for personal and political gain. A vivid example – ‘Clinton Global Initiative’ – was born in 2004 just around the time the Little Rock Presidential Center was opened to the public,” Ortel, who has been investigating the Clintons’ charities for around eight years, told Sputnik. “The initial concept of having a grand, closed to the public, confab in New York, around the time of the UN Annual Meeting was actually inspired in principle, but grievously flawed in practice. Gathering globalists around world leaders and glitterati might have given rise to great philanthropy, had the Clintons and their advisors bothered to follow the laws and regulations in New York state and city pertaining to charities and to soliciting donations, but the parent Clinton Foundation and CGI thumbed their noses at these strict rules.”

In his articles and interviews with various media outlets, Ortel has repeatedly drawn attention to obvious discrepancies in founding documents and financial records of the Clinton Foundation and its numerous offshoots. Per the Wall Street analyst, the Clintons were not just cutting corners: these errors and omissions could hint at nothing short of fraud and influence peddling by the famous political dynasty. Remarkably, two forensic investigators-turned-whistleblowers, John Moynihan and Larry Doyle, who have been carrying out their own inquiry into the Clinton Foundation in parallel with Ortel, came to similar conclusions. On December 13, 2018, Doyle and Moynihan testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, suggesting that the Clinton Foundation owes the US government between $400 million and $2.5 billion in taxes.

According to the forensic investigators, the charity does not operate as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, but acts as a foreign agent. As such, the foundation should have registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act), which it never did. Both Ortel and the Clinton Foundation whistleblowers Doyle and Moynihan suspect the Clintons of engaging in a pay-to-play game with foreign governments and tycoons, something which the Biden family has also been accused of by GOP congressional investigators. “When you check public filings in New York state, you will see that neither the parent nor CGI bothered to register using legal or ‘doing business as’ names by 2005, validly explaining the tax-exempt purposes or results of CGI,” said Ortel. “Yet, tens of millions of dollars were raised for CGI for meetings in 2005 through 2008, including one in Hong Kong in 2008, just after Barack Obama’s selection of Hillary Clinton to serve as Secretary of State.

[..] “Then, in 2009, Bill Clinton and his advisors allowed a false and materially misleading application for tax exemption to be filed with the IRS for ‘Clinton Global Initiative, Inc.’ Unlike filings by conservatives before Lois Lerner’s IRS Department, the CGI filing, utterly false as it was, sailed through with swift approval,” the Wall Street analyst continued. Ortel highlighted that during Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state and through the 2015/2016 election cycle, “CGI went from strength to strength.” However, when Hillary lost the presidential race, support for CGI and for the parent and affiliates dried up, the analyst noted. “Now, with Biden stumbling and in deep trouble for much smaller pay to play schemes, the Clintons seem to be showcasing their talents just as Democrats need to find viable candidates to replace Biden and his inept Vice President [Kamala Harris],” said Ortel.

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Even before mentioning vaccine injuries.

Hundreds of US Airline Pilots Suspected of Being Unfit to Fly (Sp.)

About 600 US pilots licensed to operate passenger flights are under investigation for lying about their medical records, US press reported Sunday, citing officials and internal records. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been looking into 4,800 former military veterans turned airline and commercial pilots who might have submitted “incorrect or false information” as part of their medical applications, FAA spokesman Matthew Lehner admitted in a comment to the daily. The pilots were red-flagged after investigators at the Department of Veterans Affairs cross-checked federal databases to discover aviators who were receiving veteran benefits for mental health disorders and other serious conditions, while hiding their true medical history from the FAA in order to continue flying.

While the FAA relies on screening to identify safety risks, the tests are often cursory and pilots are expected to self-report conditions that can otherwise be difficult to detect, such as depression or post-traumatic stress, The Washington Post cited physicians who conduct the exams as saying. Officials told the newspaper they suspected many of the pilots under investigation of being either too sick to fly or defrauding taxpayers by exaggerating their disabilities to claim bigger benefits. The FAA disbursed $3.6 million starting last year to run additional tests on thousands of pilots deemed “potential risks.”

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Goat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1695535072990855614

 

 

Ringtone
https://twitter.com/i/status/1695896301873856835

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 182023
 
 July 18, 2023  Posted by at 9:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


Andy Warhol Sigmund Freud 1980

 

US Not Ready For War With Russia – White House (RT)
US Soldiers Don’t Belong in Ukraine (Ottenberg)
No Military Solution To Ukraine Crisis – China (RT)
No More Security Guarantees For Black Sea Navigation – Russian FM (RT)
Erdogan To Talk Black Sea Grain Deal Resumption With Putin (RT)
EU Snubs Zelensky Over Summit – Spanish Daily (RT)
US Bid to Prolong Ukraine Proxy War Risks Another Quagmire (Sp.)
Yellen Says Ukraine Aid Is the Best Boost for Global Economy (NM)
Jan. 6 Defendant Appeals To Supreme Court (JTN)
Trump Opens Up About Mistakes Made During First Term (ET)
Situational Awareness (Jim Kunstler)
Abominable RFK Jr. Anti-Semitism Accusation a Harbinger of Things to Come (ET)
The Human Cost of Net Zero (Spiked)

 

 

 

 

Putin

 

 

 

 

Macgregor


https://twitter.com/i/status/1680884654172258305

 

 

 

 

Ukr pre2014

 

 

RFK Event 201

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Sullivan said that accepting Ukraine into the alliance now would mean a direct confrontation between the bloc and Russia.”

US Not Ready For War With Russia – White House (RT)

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has stated that Ukraine’s future lies in NATO, but said certain conditions must be met before it can join the alliance, which includes ending its conflict with Russia. In an interview with CBS on Sunday, Sullivan insisted that NATO is committed to accepting Kiev into its ranks despite the lack of a formal invitation or timeline for membership during last week’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. “Ukraine’s future is in NATO. We meant it. That’s not up for negotiation,” Sullivan said. “That’s something that now all 31 allies have committed to,” he added, referring to the final statement released at the end of the summit, in which all members of the alliance pledged to eventually accept Ukraine into the bloc, once a number of conditions are met. Speaking to ABC, Sullivan said that accepting Ukraine into the alliance now would mean a direct confrontation between the bloc and Russia.


“Having Ukraine come into NATO while the war is going on would mean that NATO was at war with Russia, it would mean the United States was at war with Russia. And neither NATO nor the United States were prepared to do that,”he said. Kiev insists that it has already met all of the requirements to join the US-led bloc and has expressed confusion over what more it has to do to qualify for membership. “When will those conditions be met? What are those conditions? Who should formulate them? What are they?” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said in an interview with Radio Free Europe last week. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky lashed out at NATO for failing to meet Kiev’s membership demands and called the lack of a roadmap towards accession “unprecedented and absurd,”saying NATO’s indecisiveness is a sign of weakness.

Ru soldier

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“The worst day in Afghanistan or Iraq is a great day in Ukraine.”

US Soldiers Don’t Belong in Ukraine (Ottenberg)

So how many American soldiers fight in Ukraine? The Biden bunch is careful not to reveal or refer to their presence, mercenary or otherwise, but the question keeps coming to mind. It popped up again June 27, when Russia bombed what the Ukraine press called simply a restaurant in Kramatorsk. However, this supposedly innocuous restaurant was part of a hotel complex that apparently attracted lots of western men of fighting age, specifically American soldiers and others from NATO countries. We know this because eyewitnesses heard them speaking American English and saw their U.S. military tattoos (3rd Ranger Battalion) and the American flags on their helmets. Also, American mercenaries were reported dead in twitter accounts. We also know that this missile attack killed 50 Ukrainian officers and two generals and at least 20 of the westerners, including Americans, proving yet again that one American soldier in Ukraine is one too many.

The problem is that we don’t know how many U.S. soldiers – to say nothing of American mercenaries – are in Ukraine. The Russian ministry of defense estimates that there have been over 900 American mercenaries in Ukraine. Meanwhile Washington remains mum, closely guarding its knowledge of this secret for the obvious reason that not doing so might provoke an open confrontation with Moscow. And since they don’t want a nuclear World War III, the white house and pentagon nurture an intense interest in concealing facts about the U.S. military footprint in Ukraine and their possible encouragement of it. Even if large numbers of American NATO officers were killed there, we, back in the so-called homeland, would doubtless be kept in the dark.

The scraps of news we do get indicate that the fighting goes poorly for U.S. troops. “This is my third war I’ve fought in, and this is by far the worst one,” Troy Offenbecker told the Daily Beast July 1. “You’re getting fucking smashed with artillery, tanks. Last week I had a plane drop a bomb next to us, like 300 meters away. It’s horrifying shit.” The Daily Beast quotes another U.S. soldier, David Bramlette: “The worst day in Afghanistan or Iraq is a great day in Ukraine.” Regarding reconnaissance missions, he said, “if two of them get injured…there’s no helicopter coming to get you…shit can go south really, really frickin’ quickly.” In other words, this is a different enemy, a very competent one, and U.S. soldiers in Ukraine sub rosa could die in large numbers that people back home never hear about.

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“..the official said the Ukraine crisis erupted last year thanks to “expanding military blocs..”

No Military Solution To Ukraine Crisis – China (RT)

Only a political settlement can resolve the conflict in Ukraine, China’s deputy UN envoy has said, urging the international community to seek a peaceful end to the crisis after Beijing advanced its own plan to halt the fighting. Speaking at an open meeting on Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Monday, Beijing’s deputy permanent UN representative, Geng Shuang, proposed a four-point framework for future peace efforts, saying the global body should “work together to prevent the situation from getting out of control.” “The evolution of the battlefield situation shows that military means cannot resolve the Ukrainian crisis, and the continuation of the conflict will only bring more suffering to civilians, and may even lead to unpredictable and irreparable situations,” he said.

“No matter how long the crisis lasts, it will eventually be resolved through political means.” The Chinese framework calls for talks between Moscow and Kiev, limiting the potential “spillover effects of the crisis,” addressing humanitarian issues, and guaranteeing “nuclear safety and security” – in particular at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. The deputy UN envoy went on to argue that any solution to the conflict must “uphold a common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security concept.” Though he did not cite the NATO alliance by name, the official said the Ukraine crisis erupted last year thanks to “expanding military blocs,” which “can only bring turmoil and unrest to Europe and the entire world.”

Early this year, China unveiled a 12-point roadmap designed to end the fighting, calling for the resumption of talks and arguing that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations should be upheld. The Chinese government has previously slammed the unilateral sanctions on Moscow, and argued that NATO expansion in Europe is the root of the conflict in Ukraine. The initiative received a positive reception in Moscow, with senior officials in the Kremlin signaling willingness to discuss it further. However, the proposal was soon rejected by Kiev and some of its Western backers, who accused Beijing of supporting Russia’s interests.

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The grain deal met the same fate as Minsk, April 2022: the west doesn’t make good on its part of the deal.

No More Security Guarantees For Black Sea Navigation – Russian FM (RT)

Russia will no longer provide security guarantees for civilian vessels traversing the formerly exempted corridor in the Black Sea, the country’s foreign ministry has announced. Earlier on Monday, the Kremlin stated that it would not extend the Black Sea grain agreement since its own food and fertilizer exports are still being blocked. In a statement released on Monday, the Foreign Ministry said that this latest decision “means the recall of maritime navigation security guarantees, the discontinuation of the maritime humanitarian corridor [and] the reinstatement of the ‘temporarily dangerous area’ regime in the north-western Black Sea.” Russian diplomats went on to accuse Ukraine of using the humanitarian corridor to carry out attacks on Russian targets.

As for the Ukrainian grain shipments that were facilitated by the deal, the ministry claimed that the vast majority of those ended up in Europe, with several countries there allegedly lining their pockets. The statement pointed out that the whole mechanism, which was launched last summer, had ostensibly been designed to help avert famine in poorer nations. According to Moscow, key points in the Russia-UN memorandum, which was signed in lockstep with the Black Sea Initiative, have remained unfulfilled to date. As a result, the ministry explained, Russian bank transactions, insurance and logistics were effectively paralyzed, meaning that Moscow could not sell its own produce and fertilizers on the international market. In one case cited in the statement, a shipment of Russian fertilizers donated free of charge to several African countries was blocked in the EU.

The foreign ministry concluded that in light of all these issues, the agreement no longer makes sense. Moscow has suggested European nations should allow Ukraine to transfer its grain via their territory and potentially face the wrath of local farmers, or take action and address Russia’s grievances. Should this happen, Moscow would be ready to return to the implementation of the agreement, the statement noted. Earlier on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov announced the termination of the deal. He also reiterated Russia’s readiness to return to the mechanism; however, he added that this would only happen if its interests were respected. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow would “suspend participation in this deal,” describing the arrangement as a “one-sided game all along.”

Grain deal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1680936741430018049

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Erdogan didn’t keep his word to Putin about the Azov commanders.

Erdogan To Talk Black Sea Grain Deal Resumption With Putin (RT)

Türkiye believes that Russia is interested in continuing the Black Sea grain deal despite Moscow announcing on Monday that it was ending its involvement in the agreement, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has claimed. The arrangement “went down in history as a diplomatic success,” the Turkish leader said during a press conference on Monday. Erdogan insisted that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, wanted the deal to survive, and that the two would soon talk on the phone about a possible way forward. Earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the scheme “effectively ceased to be in effect today.” Russia has accused the UN of failing to deliver on its part of the bargain, which included lifting Western economic sanctions hampering Russian exports of foodstuffs and fertilizers.


Unless that changes, Moscow will no longer keep up its end of the deal either, Peskov said. The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that the UN and Türkiye had been formally notified that Moscow had opted against renewing the grain deal again, resulting in its expiration on Monday. Formally known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the agreement between Moscow and Kiev was mediated by the UN and Türkiye last summer. It allowed Ukrainian grain to be shipped by sea, with merchant ships being inspected to prevent misuse of the arrangement. The deal was touted as a way to alleviate a food price hike in the world’s poorest nations. However, Moscow said that contrary to the deal’s stated goal, European nations were the primary recipients of the shipments.

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Latin American heads of state are not wild about Zelensky.

EU Snubs Zelensky Over Summit – Spanish Daily (RT)

The European Union ignored Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s requests to be invited to the bloc’s summit with Latin American heads of state and government, Barcelona’s La Vanguardia has reported. Last week, NATO refused to accommodate Kiev’s demands for a clear NATO membership timeline, let alone immediate accession to the US-led military alliance. In its article on Monday, the paper cited anonymous European diplomats as claiming that the European Council’s President, Charles Michel, had decided it would be “better not to invite” the Ukrainian head of state to the meeting of European Union and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) leaders in Brussels.

However, “Ukraine will occupy a prominent place during the leaders’ discussions,” unnamed sources told the Spanish daily ahead of the event, which kicked off on Monday. The unnamed diplomats listed food security as one item that would likely be high on the agenda. According to the outlet, the EU has been pressing for the inclusion of condemnation of Russia’s military campaign against Ukraine in the summit’s final document. However, it is not clear whether this will be the case as there is reportedly no consensus on the issue among Latin American nations. La Vanguardia pointed out that the previous EU-CELAC summit took place back in 2015, with Brussels now busy doubling down on its efforts to woo the Global South.

Last week, NATO fell short of Ukraine’s expectations after the US-led military bloc decided that Kiev would be granted membership at some unspecified point in the future, “when allies agree and conditions are met.” President Zelensky took to social media last Tuesday, slamming the alliance’s “indecisiveness” and “weakness.” “It’s unprecedented and absurd when [a] time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership,” the Ukrainian head of state insisted. Later on, however, Zelensky softened his stance somewhat after the US delegation reportedly became “furious” at his criticisms.

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“Outside this event, war in Ukraine has also taken the glitter off of western weapons and the military industrial complex. For a very high price, it produces inadequate quantities of shoddy goods..”

US Bid to Prolong Ukraine Proxy War Risks Another Quagmire (Sp.)

The Biden administration appears content to prolong the proxy conflict in Ukraine in an effort to weaken Russia, while serving the interests of certain stakeholders in the American establishment, despite the risk of the confrontation turning into another Vietnam or Afghan-style quagmire, experts told Sputnik. At the NATO summit in Vilnius earlier this week, the US and its allies made long-term security commitments to Ukraine while easing alliance admission requirements. However, Kiev was disappointed in not getting an invitation to join NATO as soon as possible, with US President Joe Biden even saying membership is off the table for Ukraine while the conflict with Russia lasts.

“NATO summit proved what was known anyway. The collective West under US leadership wants to destroy Russia without going to war directly but by using Ukrainians as cannon fodder,” American University in Moscow President Edward Lozansky told Sputnik. “Thus we are witnessing a crime that supersedes the atrocities in Vietnam and the Middle East.” However, in previous proxy fights, he added, the US could at least use countering communism or terror as a pretext. “Here we see a policy of provoking, funding, and prolonging the war between the two Christian nations that lived together for over three centuries and who were bounded by close historical, religious, economic, cultural, and family ties under the false flag of preserving a non-existing democracy in the most corrupted state to preserve the geopolitical advantage of the hegemon and its willing vassals,” Lozansky said.

University of Louvain Professor of Political Philosophy Jean Bricmont believes by only pledging more security assistance, NATO allies have made it obvious they do not want to spark a direct war with Russia, which is not good news for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “The mere sending of weapons does not seem to tilt the balance in his favor,” Bricmont suggested. Meanwhile, Bricmont added, developments on the ground in Ukraine and inside Russia have not gone according to plan for the United States, especially as the hoped-for collapse of the Russian economy has not happened and Ukraine’s counteroffensive is failing. “The whole thing has become a very cynical game: using Ukrainians as much and as long as possible in that war, but without any real plan of success,” Bricmont told Sputnik.

“This is likely to end like Vietnam or Afghanistan, but the Americans cannot admit it and cut their losses. So, Ukrainians and Russians will continue to die needlessly.” Lozansky suggested there were other motives driving the White House’s Ukraine policy besides simply trying to counter Russia. “Of course, there was an additional incentive to make money for the military-industrial complex, and, as it turns out, to enrich the Biden family,” Lozansky said. Krainer Analytics Founder Alex Krainer, a Europe-based financial analyst, said while the war may have filled the US defense industry’s pockets, it also undermined many perceptions of its strengths and American’s military prowess. “Outside this event, war in Ukraine has also taken the glitter off of western weapons and the military industrial complex. For a very high price, it produces inadequate quantities of shoddy goods,” Krainer said. “The whole thing has been outed as a con and a paper tiger.”

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Shrooms.

Yellen Says Ukraine Aid Is the Best Boost for Global Economy (NM)

Redoubling support for war-stricken Ukraine is the “single best” way to aid the global economy, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday, along with boosting emerging economies and tackling debt distress. Yellen also said on the sidelines of a G20 finance ministers’ summit in India she would “push back” on criticism there was a tradeoff between aid to Ukraine and developing nations. “Ending this war is first and foremost a moral imperative,” she told reporters in Gandhinagar. “But it’s also the single best thing we can do for the global economy.” Yellen also pointed to efforts to tackle debt distress faced by struggling economies, bank reform and a global tax deal, and warned it was “premature” to talk of lifting tariffs on China.


Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, both global breadbaskets that together exported almost a quarter of the world’s wheat supply, triggered shockwaves in economies worldwide by sending prices for food and fuel shooting up. Japan’s Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki, speaking after a G7 meeting of ministers, “reconfirmed the G7’s unshakeable support” to Ukraine. “We confirmed that Russia-owned assets that are under the G7’s supervision would not be transferred until Russia pays damages to Ukraine,” Suzuki said, adding that Moscow should also “pay long-term reconstruction costs”. Any discussion on Ukraine is awkward for G20 host India, which has not condemned Russia’s invasion but is also part of the Quad grouping alongside Australia, the United States and Japan.

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High time SCOTUS gets involved.

Jan. 6 Defendant Appeals To Supreme Court (JTN)

Jan. 6 defendant Edward Jacob Lang is asking the Supreme Court to hear his challenge against one of the 11 charges he was indicted on – obstruction of an official proceeding – in a case that could upend legal proceedings against hundreds of other defendants indicted on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. The obstruction charge could be levied against “anyone who attends at a public demonstration gone awry,” attorneys for Lang wrote in an appeal to the Supreme Court last week. The proceeding for which the charge was brought refers to the event where Congress certifies the Electoral College votes to confirm the president.

The charge “is nothing less than the weaponization of the penal code to stifle dissent; it sets a terrifying precedent unworthy of this nation’s history,” Lang’s attorneys also wrote. Lang had filed a motion to dismiss the obstruction charge, which carries a 20-year sentence, before his trial, and the D.C. District court granted this motion. However, an appeals court reversed the lower court’s decision and a motion for a rehearing was denied. Lang’s attorney Norman Pattis told Newsweek that he thinks the Supreme Court could upend the cases of “hundreds of defendants.” “The government misuse and abuse of the federal penal code in the [January 6] cases is shocking,” Pattis also said. His client expects to hear this fall whether the Supreme Court will take up the case.

Lang has been incarcerated for more than 900 days without a trial. He told The Epoch Times that he thinks his appeal could impact the Justice Department’s separate effort to potentially charge former President Donald Trump with obstruction. “I think the timing of this filing is astronomical,” Lang said. “Donald Trump is the political frontrunner for the Republican Party, and while the other bogus charges might easily go away through a plea deal, the obstruction of Congress charge carries prison time. This one would land him in serious hot water with a conviction.”

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How about Bolton, Pompeo?

Trump Opens Up About Mistakes Made During First Term (ET)

President Donald Trump acknowledged that he made mistakes during his first term in office, saying that most issues arose from the people he chose to fill various roles in office. In an interview that aired July 16, Mr. Trump sat down with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo to discuss an array of issues, including whether he thought he made any mistakes during his term. Ms. Bartiromo asked, “If there’s anything that you could look back on in [2016] that you think maybe you want to do differently this time around?” Mr. Trump replied, “The mistake would be people. I mean, I wouldn’t have put a guy like Bill Barr in—he was weak and pathetic,” a reference to his former attorney general, who has spoken out against Mr. Trump since leaving office and has expressed opposition to a second term for the former president.

“I wouldn’t have put Jeff Sessions in,” Mr. Trump said, a reference to another former attorney general with whom Mr. Trump clashed. “There are some people that I wouldn’t have put in. You know, most people were good. But I had some people—we had [former Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper. I didn’t like him. He was incompetent. I thought we had other people I didn’t like.” Ms. Bartiromo replied, “Why did you put them in the job then?” “Because every—look, every president, you put somebody in, you think they’re good,” Mr. Trump said. “But one thing that has happened and I find it very interesting, and this is the way life goes, I put people in—I was there 17 times in Washington, D.C. my whole life. I never stayed overnight. The press actually reported 70 I don’t know if it’s right, but it’s probably pretty right.

“I never stayed overnight. Ever. And then all of a sudden, I’m the President of the United States and it’s like a different society. I was New York and you know, it was a different thing. So I didn’t know people, I became President,” Mr. Trump said, adding later, “I never was involved in that.” “So you didn’t know what to expect?” Ms. Bartiromo asked. “No, no,” Mr. Trump cut in. “I didn’t know the people. I know the people now better than anybody has ever known the people. I know the good ones, the bad ones, the dumb ones, the smart ones.” Mr. Trump was also pressed on whether he had “drained the swamp,” a reference to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign pledge to root out D.C. bureaucrats and other entrenched establishment figures in the capital city. “You didn’t drain the swamp like you said you would, you didn’t drain the swamp,” Ms. Bartiromo said, a common criticism of the former president by conservative elements in the party who feel he failed to live up to his 2016 campaign promises.

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It’s not the FBI, but people working there. Who?

FBI Tipped Off Biden Team, Secret Service About Plan To Interview Hunter (JTN)

A recently retired FBI supervisory agent told Congress behind closed doors Monday that the bureau tipped off Joe Biden’s team and the Secret Service in late 2020 about a plan to interview Hunter Biden in his criminal tax probe, corroborating allegations from two IRS whistleblowers. The FBI agent, who worked alongside the IRS whistleblowers on the Hunter Biden case when he was assigned to the Wilmington field office, gave his account in a transcribed interview before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, providing fresh evidence of alleged political interference in the treatment of Joe Biden’s son. He corroborated several aspects of the account IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley and a second agent gave Congress last month, including that law enforcement’s plan to conduct a surprise interview in early December 2020 with Hunter Biden about alleged tax crimes was foiled by the tipoff.

The agent, whose name wasn’t immediately made public, said the bureau told both Joe Biden’s transition office and the Secret Service, creating a tipoff that thwarted the planned interview. “The night before the interview of Hunter Biden, both Secret Service headquarters and the Biden transition team were tipped off about the planned interview,” Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. said. “On the day of the Hunter Biden interview, federal agents were told to stand by and could not approach Hunter Biden—they had to wait for his call. As a result of the change in plans, IRS and FBI criminal investigators never got to interview Hunter Biden as part of the investigation. “The Justice Department’s efforts to cover up for the Bidens reveals a two-tiered system of justice that sickens the American people,” he added.

In his testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee back in May, Shapley described how the tipoff around Dec. 7-8, 2020, was a major set back for the investigation, and one of several instances in which political favoritism and interference occurred. “I was informed that FBI headquarters had notified Secret Service headquarters and the transition team about the planned actions the following day,” Shapley testified. He said the alert afforded Hunter Biden and his team “an opportunity to obstruct” the investigation. Shapley and his IRS colleague are slated to testify in public for the first time as early as Wednesday before Comer’s panel, and officials told Just the News they hope to release a transcript of the FBI agent’s corroborating testimony in the next few days.

IRS
https://twitter.com/i/status/1681036655178686469

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“..a pharmaceutical industry metastasizing on money the way an aggressive cancer feeds on sugar..”

Situational Awareness (Jim Kunstler)

What if Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is correct? The [Belgian] virologist said at the outset of the Covid-19 episode in 2020 that vaccinating the world in the midst of an epidemic was insane because it would train the virus to evolve more dangerously while disabling human immune systems. Last week he issued a warning that the world was within weeks of just such a new and deadly immune escape variant outbreak that would bring on a shocking wave of sickness and death among people who received multiple Covid-19 vaccinations. This would happen on top of an already accelerating rise in latent vaccine adverse reactions manifesting as aggressive cancers, blood disorders, cardiac injury, neurological disease, and much, much more.

To this point in the Covid-19 story, Western Civ in general, and the USA in particular, have descended into an epic group psychosis as a result of the managed mind-fuckery induced by their own governments in collusion with a pharmaceutical industry metastasizing on money the way an aggressive cancer feeds on sugar in a human body. Fearful citizens swallowed all manner of unreality foisted on them by means of propaganda and censorship.We still don’t know for sure how, who, and why, exactly, Covid-19 was set loose on the world, and the public health agencies don’t want you to know. Perhaps the worst and most baldly dishonest act was the official suppression of effective treatments with common, safe, anti-virals that could have saved millions of lives. And all just to preserve the vaccine companies’ liability shield from the Emergency Use Authorization. In fact, governments are still militating against the sale and use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which could be taken prophylactically in anticipation of a new outbreak.

So, if these populations were driven crazy by authorities ginning up their fear and preying on it, what will happen if that fear turns to anger instead? Because that’s exactly what will happen when Americans, and perhaps even Europeans, realize they’ve been subject to history’s biggest homicidal fraud. That anger is going to seek targets, and they are going to find them very easily in their own government officials and also — get this — in the medical establishment that has betrayed its patients so unconscionably. It’s just impossible to say exactly how that will play out on-the-ground. Governments are already falling — Spain, the Netherlands — but these were parliamentary downfalls according to regular political procedure. Our country has no such procedures for changing authority in a time of crisis. Instead, we have a president up to his neck in bribery scandal and executive agency thuggery, and political parties sunk in corruption, and no way to get rid of them except elections many months away — elections which at least half the people don’t believe are honest.

This crisis of bad faith and sickness is happening at the same time that Western Civ enters an equally vicious crisis of economy and finance. America and Europe are broke. All are playing games with their conjoined banking systems and their currencies. All are de-industrializing economies strictly based on industrial production of goods no longer being produced, and pretending to replace them with economies of computer vapor-ware. That can’t work and can only end badly in collapsing standards of living. The past few years, an apparent coalition of global elites, functioning in orgs such as the WEF, the WHO, the EU, the IMF, the central banks, and countless NGOs, along with shadowy intel units and what remains of the old news media, have promoted ever more desperate top-down control programs to prevent a breakdown into wholesale economic and political disorder. Their efforts increasingly tilt into pretense.

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“..this fake news accusation went around the world faster than Churchill’s famous line about the truth and the time it takes to put on your pants.”

Abominable RFK Jr. Anti-Semitism Accusation a Harbinger of Things to Come (ET)

To claim that COVID-19 is the product of a cabal of Chinese and Jews is so ridiculous that it only speaks to what the author wants to believe or, more accurately, wants us to believe Kennedy meant. Which Chinese and which Jews? It’s hard to imagine since Israel was locked down to such a degree it made California look like Florida. Also, Israeli scientists were working around the clock to invent a successful vaccine but got nowhere. If they had been in on the original design, you would think they would have been able to do something, or at least have a leg up. The internet being what it is, this fake news accusation went around the world faster than Churchill’s famous line about the truth and the time it takes to put on your pants.

The lie appeared almost immediately in numerous publications from the Daily Mail to the Daily Beast as if it had to be true that RFK Jr. was anti-Semitic. But Kennedy doesn’t need me to defend him. He’s doing a fine job himself, including demanding a retraction from the Post and an apology from Levine, in his Twitter feed. So what’s actually going on here? This isn’t, in the end, really about anti-Semitism, real or imagined. It was just low-hanging fruit, as the “canary in the coal mine” often is, the first of many—a harbinger of many dastardly smears of the candidate to come.

If there’s one thing the military-industrial complex (endless wars from Iraq to Ukraine) and the health care-industrial complex (Big Pharma, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, et al.) do not want, it’s a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presidency. Big Tech probably isn’t very keen on it, either. It would cost them all incalculable amounts of money, much of it courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer and a complaisant government. Most of all, the current leadership of the Democratic Party—bent on exploiting every so-called progressive policy, no matter how looney, for maximum gain and power—don’t want anyone bringing their party back to sanity, under the leadership of Mr. Kennedy or anyone else. Notable is that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is backing Joe Biden for reelection, not RFK Jr.

And then there’s the CIA, whose antipathy for RFK Jr. should be obvious to all those with even a passing knowledge of the lives and deaths of his father and uncle who wanted that organization splintered in a thousand pieces and cast to the winds. In all, it’s no surprise then that the corporate media, in which we now must include the N.Y. Post of the increasingly untrustworthy Murdoch empire, is now the mouthpiece of anti-RFK Jr. propaganda. More and most probably worse will come. What we are looking at is what we might call the coming ‘The Plot Against Kennedy” after Lee Smith’s best-selling “The Plot Against the President,” which detailed the subversion of Donald J. Trump before and after his presidency by many of the same parties. The similarity between the treatment of Trump by corporate media that was always dishonest and is now, if anything, worse, and the beginnings of the treatment of RFK Jr. is all too obvious.

RFK Townhall

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Zero society.

The Human Cost of Net Zero (Spiked)

Canadian political scientist Vaclav Smil lists cement, steel, plastics and ammonia as the four ingredients that make the modern world possible. For example, modern healthcare systems need enormous amounts of plastic (for everything from flexible tubes to sterile packing), making it yet another crucial ingredient in the wellbeing of humanity. And without steel and cement, nothing could be built – no roads, no houses, no harbours, no airports. Plastics, steel and cement also require fossil fuels for their production. The same goes for modern agriculture. It depends on synthetic fertilisers, which massively increase yields and allow farmers to use smaller areas of arable land. Without these fertilisers, half the current global population would go unfed.

The production of these fertilisers depends on something called the Haber-Bosch process, a method of producing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, which was invented in the early 20th century. Given its contribution to feeding the world, Smil has justifiably called it the ‘most momentous technical advance in history’. The problem for those demanding the phasing out of fossil fuels is that the hydrogen required for the production of ammonia, and therefore synthetic fertilisers, is almost entirely derived from fossil fuels. So all of Smil’s building blocks for the modern world are dependent on the very materials that Western elites say they want to keep in the ground. It’s not just fertilisers that require fossil fuels, either. 75% of all farm equipment in the US runs on diesel. It dominates the entire farming supply chain, from planting to harvesting to bringing food to market.

A green optimist might suggest simply replacing all these diesel-powered machines with industrial EVs. Yet to build the batteries for all these EVs would require a massive expansion of energy-intensive mining for metallic minerals, such as cobalt, lithium, manganese and nickel. EVs would also require clean electricity sources to charge them. In fact, every step of the proposed energy transition is itself dependent on fossil fuels. You cannot build a wind turbine without lubricants from oil, a concrete foundation and copious amounts of steel. Just as you cannot make solar panels without polysilicon, a component that is immensely energy intensive to produce because it requires temperatures beyond 1,150 degrees Celsius.

The expansion of mining activities needed to build EVs and wind turbines is particularly problematic for the clean-tech crusaders. According to the International Energy Agency: ‘A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant. Since 2010, the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50 per cent as the share of renewables in new investment has risen.’ The mineral-mining sector is also energy intensive, producing a huge amount of carbon emissions. It is already responsible for 38 per cent of total global industrial energy use. This means that even if the electrification of all vehicles were possible, it wouldn’t eliminate carbon emissions. It would just raise them at other points in the supply chain.

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Orson

 

 

Chinsa high speed rail

 

 

Magnet

 

 

Birdies
https://twitter.com/i/status/1680905456389361671

 

 

Bobi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1680910054910730240

 

 


Jonathan was born in 1832 in the Seychelles. He has been living in Saint Helena since 1882 and just celebrated his 190th birthday.

 

 

 

 

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Jul 172023
 


Andy Warhol Reigning Queens 1985

 

NATO Plan to Bulk Up Presence on Eastern Flank Faces ‘Serious Problems’ (Sp.)
US, NATO Weapons Stockpiles at ‘Dangerously Low’ Levels: Top General (ET)
‘They’re Running Out of Ammo’: Putin on US Sending Cluster Bombs to Kiev (Sp.)
The Incredible Shrinking NATO (Dmitry Orlov)
Ukraine Behind New Crimean Bridge Attack – Media (RT)
Real War To Defeat, Fake Propaganda To Victory – Nato Is In Two Minds (Helmer)
The Wagner Mutiny (Jacques Baud)
Cracks in NATO’s Ukraine Project (Hahn)
Failed Proxy War With Russia Shows US Can’t ‘Pick on Someone Its Own Size’ (Sp.)
Why Dennis Kucinich Should Now Threaten His Candidate RFK Jr. (Zuesse)
Hunter Biden Threatens Trump With ‘Legal Trouble’ (RT)
Almost Half of Millennials Want Jail Time for “Misgendering” (Turley)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Biden at 29

 

 

 

 

Kerry
https://twitter.com/i/status/1680479725624369153

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until now, we were pointing out that Ukraine was running out of troops, weapons and ammo. Now, it’s all of NATO. 3 articles.

“These are numbers that, unless they announce an all-out mobilization, cannot be provided.”

NATO Plan to Bulk Up Presence on Eastern Flank Faces ‘Serious Problems’ (Sp.)

NATO’s plan to beef up its military presence in Eastern Europe will face “serious” problems because almost no country can muster troops in significant numbers, with Spain no exception, military analyst Juan A. Aguilar told Sputnik. Spain would be able to send only a meagre number of soldiers to reinforce the NATO flank in Slovakia and Romania, he added. In fact, the media impact of the announcement recently made by the country’s President is far greater than the actual size of the forces to be sent on the ground, remarked the director of the strategic research portal Geoestrategia.es. Pedro Sanchez had revealed during the recent NATO summit in Vilnius that Spain will deploy 700 troops in Slovakia and reinforce its presence in Romania by 250 military personnel.

“As a committed member, Spain is going to announce the deployment of Spanish forces in Slovakia to reinforce the eastern front and we are going to reinforce our presence in Romania with a greater number of troops,” Sanchez said, adding that his country would “continue to contribute to the alliance’s effort to achieve the just and lasting peace.” Although the details have not yet been officially specified, Juan A. Aguilar weighed in on the announcement, saying: “I don’t think that more than 300 soldiers can be deployed in three annual rotations, about 1,000 in total, a battalion… There are no more, unless they withdraw from other areas,” said the military analyst. He recalled that although Spain has on paper “some 150,000 troops”, far from all of them are available to be posted to Eastern Europe.

“Out of the 150,000 we have to subtract those integrated into Common Corps, Headquarters, Logistics, the Navy and the Air Force… Then, those of the special units (NBC, UME, Anti-aircraft) and, of course, the garrison troops deployed in the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla”, Aguilar explained. “What’s left?” queried the military analyst, and speculated: “Three light brigades and three armored-mechanized brigades, not at full strength, numbering about 18,000 soldiers. You have to leave a garrison for the country’s capital… There are troops deployed in Lebanon, Iraq, Mali, Turkey, the Baltic countries… And there are at least three rotations a year”.

NATO has been bulking up its military footprint along the alliance’s eastern flank, in countries that share a land border with Ukraine, where Russia is conducting its special military operation. NATO’s multinational battlegroups are currently stationed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. US President Joe Biden on Thursday approved an executive order authorizing 3,000 US military reserve personnel to augment Operation Atlantic Resolve, which provides rotational deployment of combat-credible forces to Europe as part of the United States’ commitment to NATO. Following decisions made at the NATO summit in Vilnius, allies that have been sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to the regime in Kiev vowed to maintain up to 300,000 troops in a “state of high readiness”, as part of the NATO Response Force.

However, this comes as many of the afore-mentioned bloc members are worried about their own insufficient ammunition stocks, drained by the US-spearheaded Western proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Major European NATO powers like Germany, Italy and the UK have all conceded that after splurging on Ukraine, their own military had been “hollowed out” by arms shipments. Moscow has warned repeatedly about the consequences of these actions for regional and global security, only serving to fan the flames of the Ukraine conflagration. As for military manpower along the eastern NATO flank, Juan A. Aguilar told Sputnik: “NATO wants to deploy 300,000 men in Eastern Europe. The US would put up 100,000, but the rest of the countries have to provide a total of 200,000. If they make four rotations a year, 800,000 troops are needed. These are numbers that, unless they announce an all-out mobilization, cannot be provided.

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“So we don’t have nearly what we had at the heart of the Cold War..”

US, NATO Weapons Stockpiles at ‘Dangerously Low’ Levels: Top General (ET)

The weapons stockpiles of the United States and its NATO allies are becoming “dangerously low,” with no “short-term” solutions, according to a top U.S. Air Force commander. Gen. James Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and Air Forces Africa, made the remarks at the Chief of the Air Staff’s Global Air & Space Chiefs’ Conference in London, Breaking Defense reported. The air force general urged NATO allies to think seriously about their stockpiles. “I think it’s very important that we kind of take stock of where we are in our weapons state across the 32 nations of NATO, and we’re getting way down compared to where we were,” Gen. Hecker said, while speaking on a panel with the air chiefs of the UK and Sweden at the conference, the outlet reported.

“And it’s probably not going to get better—well, it’s not in the short term—but we’ve got to make sure in the long term we have the industrial base that can increase what we have,” he said at the July 12–13 event, urging all NATO nations to start making deeper investments. The United States is at “roughly half the number of fighter squadrons” it had compared to when it engaged in Operation Desert Storm, a U.S.-led operation that started in January 1991 as part of a response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, according to the general. He noted that there has been a similar decrease in fighter squadrons for the UK. “So we don’t have nearly what we had at the heart of the Cold War,” he said.

“Now you add that we’re giving a lot of munitions away to the Ukrainians, which I think is exactly what we need to do, but now we’re getting dangerously low and sometimes, in some cases. even too low, that we don’t have enough,” Gen. Hecker said. “And we need to get industry on board to help us out so we can get this going.” The United States has provided Ukraine with more than $41.3 billion in security assistance as of July 7, since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to the U.S. State Department. That total encompasses more than $15 billion in weapons and equipment delivered to Ukraine from U.S. military stocks since the Russian invasion.

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“Until now, we have not used them… we did not need to, despite also previously experiencing a shortage of ammunition..”

‘They’re Running Out of Ammo’: Putin on US Sending Cluster Bombs to Kiev (Sp.)

The Biden administration unveiled a new military assistance package for Ukraine on July 7, which included cluster bombs. The lethal weapons are banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which has been ratified by 123 countries, excluding the US and Ukraine, and several other nations. The US decided to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine because the Western-fueled proxy war against Russia is running low on ammo, President Vladimir Putin told local media. “They [the United States] are doing this not because of ‘the good life’, but because they are running low on ammunition in general,” the head of state said, answering a question from a Russian journalist. The Russian leader recalled that Washington previously referred to the use of cluster bombs as a “crime.”

“As for cluster munitions, the US administration itself provided an assessment of these munitions with comments by its staff some time ago, when the use of cluster munitions was called a crime by the US administration itself. This is how I think it should be regarded,” he said. Moscow reserves the right to respond accordingly in case of cluster munitions use against the country, emphasized the Russian president. “Of course, if they are used against us, we reserve the right to mirror actions,” Putin said in the interview for Russian television. He underscored that Russia, which has various kinds of cluster munitions, has not yet needed to resort to using the lethal weapons. “Russia has in its possession a sufficient stockpile of various types of cluster munitions. Until now, we have not used them… we did not need to, despite also previously experiencing a shortage of ammunition,” Putin noted.

The US-pledged cluster munitions have already been delivered to the Kiev regime, the Pentagon confirmed on Thursday. Lt Gen Douglas Sims, Joint Staff J3 director of operations, said that the bombs “have indeed been delivered to Ukraine at this point.” The Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to the Russian military, have previously resorted to the use of the controversial cluster munitions for shelling Donbass, in particular Donetsk. According to Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, this indicates that the goal of the Ukrainian military is to kill a maximum number of civilians. Cluster bombs are extremely deadly containing dozens or hundreds of explosive submunitions, or bomblets, and are designed to maximize damage to enemy forces across an area of up to several hundred square meters.

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“The sight of Western armor ablaze does not make good advertising. Consequently, the US defense contractors must be very eager to stop this steady stream of negative advertising for their products to stop right this second..”

The Incredible Shrinking NATO (Dmitry Orlov)

NATO is a captive buyers’ club for US-made weapons. That is what vaunted NATO standards, with which the Ukraine must comply before it is deemed worthy to be invited to join NATO, are all about: to comply with these standards, your weapons have to be mostly US-made. That is also the reason for all of the various wars of choice, from Serbia to Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya and Syria: these were demonstration projects for US weapons, with the additional goal of using up the weapons and the munitions so that the Pentagon and the rest of NATO would have to reorder them. The geopolitical rationales for these military conflicts are mere rationalizations. For instance, between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. dropped more than 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos during 580,000 bombing sorties—equal to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years.

What was the geopolitical rationale? Nobody can even remember if there ever was one. But those bombs were about to expire and needed to be used up and reordered to keep the money flowing. In response to such strange inducements, US-made weapons tend to be overly complex (so that their makers can charge more for the useless extra features) and rather fragile (never tested against a peer adversary like Russia or China, or even against Iran), developed slowly (to clean up on R&D funding), built slowly (because what’s the rush?) and very high-maintenance (so that US defense contractors can get even richer delivering spare parts and service). These weapons were supposed to be tested every so gently by giving hell to backward tribesmen armed with old Kalashnikovs and RPGs.

Ukraine is a different story altogether. There, the Ukrainians, with their mismatched hand-me-down Western armor, are being asked to penetrate three lines of hardened Russian defenses. After about a month of effort and staggering losses of men and equipment, they haven’t yet been able to reach the first defensive line. The sight of Western armor ablaze does not make good advertising. Consequently, the US defense contractors must be very eager to stop this steady stream of negative advertising for their products to stop right this second — before their reputations end up completely ruined; hence the unseemly haste with which the entire Ukrainian project is being orphaned.

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Russia is angry now.

Ukraine Behind New Crimean Bridge Attack – Media (RT)

The Crimean Bridge was damaged in a joint “special operation”conducted by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and naval forces, media outlets reported on Monday. The Russian authorities have yet to announce the reason behind the incident. According to a source for RBK Ukraina, the key infrastructure linking the peninsula with mainland Russia was attacked by an unspecified number of sea surface drones. “It was difficult to reach the bridge, but finally the task was accomplished,” he said. Ukrainian officials have cheered the incident but have yet to confirm their direct involvement in the reported attack.

Andrey Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, described the Crimean Bridge as a “redundant construction,” but refused to elaborate. Traffic on the bridge was stopped in the early hours of Monday, with Crimean Governor Sergey Aksyonov citing an unspecified “emergency.” Later, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that a married couple from his region was killed in the incident and their daughter was injured. Russia’s Ministry of Transport said the road surface of one of the tracks was damaged, while the bridge’s supports remain intact.


Ukraine has attempted to target the strategic link in the past, according to Moscow. Last week, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Kiev attempted to strike the bridge with a missile, but failed to penetrate the air defenses. In October last year, the bridge was damaged in a deadly truck bombing, which Moscow said was orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence services. At the time, Russia responded by intensifying missile strikes on Ukraine’s military and energy infrastructure.

Bridge

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“..despite the losses, the Ukrainians have so far taken just five of the 60 miles they hope to cover to reach the sea in the south and split the Russian forces in two.”

Real War To Defeat, Fake Propaganda To Victory – Nato Is In Two Minds (Helmer)

What is new now is that the Ukraine, the US and NATO are losing their war against Russia on the battlefield, and risk losing all the deterrence which NATO has been designing, building, buying, and deploying since 1949. With or without desperation measures, Swiss colonel Jacques Baud tells War of the Worlds, Russia has already won the war. “Colonel Douglas Macgregor hasn’t this courage,” a US NATO veteran comments, referring to the Trump Administration appointee now broadcasting against the Biden Administration. Russian military bloggers and the Defense Ministry in Moscow are reporting that the so-called mosquito tactic of numerous small Ukrainian attacks on the Russian lines, run simultaneously, are resulting in Russian feints followed by artillery counter-fire; ending in heavy Ukrainian losses followed by retreat without territorial gains.

“It is within the realm of possibility that Ukrainian forces have seen losses at this level,” the New York Times quotes a British security analyst, adding that “ a significant level of lost weapons was generally a hallmark of wars of attrition, like the one in Ukraine.” The newspaper adds the claim: “In the first two weeks of Ukraine’s gruelling counteroffensive, as much as 20 percent of the weaponry it sent to the battlefield was damaged or destroyed, according to American and European officials. The toll includes some of the formidable Western fighting machines — tanks and armored personnel carriers — the Ukrainians were counting on to beat back the Russians. The startling rate of losses dropped to about 10 percent in the ensuing weeks, the officials said, preserving more of the troops and machines needed for the major offensive push that the Ukrainians say is still to come.

Some of the improvement came because Ukraine changed tactics, focusing more on wearing down the Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles than charging into enemy minefields and fire. But that good news obscures some grim realities. The losses have also slowed because the counteroffensive itself has slowed — and even halted in places — as Ukrainian soldiers struggle against Russia’s formidable defences. And despite the losses, the Ukrainians have so far taken just five of the 60 miles they hope to cover to reach the sea in the south and split the Russian forces in two.”

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“This crisis demonstrates the inability of Westerners to think and act according to facts, rather than expectations. The Ukrainian people are beginning to understand this.”

The Wagner Mutiny (Jacques Baud)

Clearly, Putin did everything he could to prevent the mutineers from reaching Moscow, where any clashes could have fed into Western propaganda. Playing with Lukashenko’s mediation, Putin reacted with a mixture of firmness (adoption of anti-terrorist measures, trenches on access roads to Moscow, placing territorial units on alert) and magnanimity (offering a way out via Belarus) to calm things down. It should be noted that, despite his tough talk about “treason,” and contrary to the claims of Western propagandists, the indictment of the mutineers does not refer to article 275 of the penal code (treason), but to article 279 (armed rebellion), which is less serious, as explained by John Helmer in an excellent podcast.

That said, Vladimir Putin’s statement on June 27 that Russian forces had “prevented a civil war” seems to have unnecessarily over-dramatized the situation. He probably wanted to give importance to the role of the armed forces in this crisis, but at the same time, he also suggested a greater fragility than the events had shown. As to the idea that the intelligence services had foreseen this mutiny, it is most probably false. In fact, Westerners are watching Russia’s domestic situation for the slightest hint of regime change, which is the ultimate goal of our support for Ukraine. This is why, as early as May, with the first Prigozhin videos, Western services raised the possibility of a coup in Moscow. But, in terms of intelligence methodology, these are not “predictions,” but simply working hypotheses and scenarios.

For an intelligence service, predicting an event implies having indicators and concrete indications on which to draw conclusions. However, neither the Ukrainians, nor the Americans, nor the French had the slightest indication, but only the hope that such a mutiny might take place. As a member of Ukrainian military intelligence told the French channel France 24. In reality, everyone was surprised, and no international actor has been able to exploit in Ukraine or elsewhere what could have been the beginning of a power crisis in Russia. This also shows that Western understanding of the conflict is based exclusively on hypotheses, which are themselves often based on Ukrainian wishful thinking, but very rarely on facts. This is why we are pushing Ukraine towards defeat.

It is very likely that there was no Western involvement in Yevgeny Prigogin’s decision. The USA made every effort to demonstrate its distance from the Prigozhin mutiny. Westerners, on the other hand, saw it as the realization of their “dream” and clearly stirred up the situation in the hope that it would lead to internal conflict. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky tweeted that he might spend his vacation in Crimea. Besides a childish behavior, it shows that he has understood absolutely nothing about the dynamics of events in Russia. In the end, this situation was nothing more than that of a company director trying to save his business and doing so impulsively and thoughtlessly, with potentially dramatic consequences for combatants on both sides in Ukraine. This crisis demonstrates the inability of Westerners to think and act according to facts, rather than expectations. The Ukrainian people are beginning to understand this.

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“They take territory at great loss of life and equipment only to relinquish the same territory a few days layer with more losses.”

Cracks in NATO’s Ukraine Project (Hahn)

Western and Ukrainian expectations and claims regarding the potential of the counteroffensive are exposing the hideously phantasmagorical expectations of most in Washington, Brussels, and Kiev. After six weeks of Ukraine’s highly costly counteroffensive, instead of territorial gains Kiev’s forces are being routed, experiencing enormous casualties, losses of territory on the Oskol river, an operational encirclement of Avdiivka, and successful Russian advances on the Kupyansk-Liman front lines. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed on July 11th that the Ukrainians have suffered 26,000 casualties and lost 3,000 units of equipment, including 1,244 tanks and fighting vehicles as well as APCs, artillery pieces, and mortars, since June 4th when the counteroffensive began.[2]

To put this into the perspective of Ukrainian weapons requests and NATO capacity and willingness (or unwillingness) to meet them, in December 2022 last year Zalyuzhniy told The Economist that he needed “300 tanks, 600-700 IFVs, 500 Howitzers.” In such case, he thought it “completely realistic to get to the lines of February 23rd.” But the Ukrainians never received anything like this, and the West nevertheless pressed Zelenskiy to underataken the ill-considered idea of a broad counter-offensive against the revived Russian army. The Ukrainians have lost more equipment in just six weeks of the counteroffensive than Zalyuzhniy had requested; this without even reaching the first line of the Russian forces’ three well dug-in defense lines in the south and making even less progress in the east. Ukrainian forces have not been able to take and hold even one small settlement along the entire line of contact extending from Kherson to Kharkov. They take territory at great loss of life and equipment only to relinquish the same territory a few days layer with more losses. Not surprisingly, cracks are appearing in the Ukrainian ranks.[3]

On this background it is hardly surprising that tensions between Kiev and its Western patrons are running high, with each side blaming the other for the military farce. Both Zalyuzhniy and Zelenskiy are at odds with the West for its failure to provide sufficient military equipment for a counteroffensive the West itself has demanded as a kind of test as to whether Kiev deserves continuing military aid. In turn, Zelenskiy made his disenchantment with NATO and the West known both before and during the summit. In a June 30th Washington Post interview, Zalyuzhniy seemed to be airing both his opposition to the conduct of the counteroffensive without sufficient fire power (recall the pre-offensive pressure from Kiev for the provision of F-16s) as well as Kiev’s grievances regarding insufficient arms, thus setting up the West as scapegoat for the counteroffensive’s failure.

[..] Years of successfully pulling the wool over people’s eyes and Western fawning over him since February 2022 led Zelenskiy to overestimate the power of his personality and his communication skills. There was never any chance that the NATO summit in Vilnius would offer Ukraine membership, a membership action plan (MAP), or a shortcut to membership no matter how charismatic Zelenskiy imagines himself to be. These hopes were as delusional as were the repeated Ukrainian decisions not to forego NATO membership before and after Maidan, before and after Minsk, before and after Putin’s proposals on a new European security architecture and his massing of troops on Ukraine’s borders, before and after his February 2022 invasion, and before and after the March 2022 agreement to end the war by Kiev renouncing the goal of NATO membership and returning to the Minsk format.

What kind of policy is it that demands Ukraine’s movement towards NATO membership, backs a coup to achieve it, and then arms the intensely anti-Russian Maidan regime while not offering Kiev NATO membership in the face of decades of protestations from the military and nuclear power next door that it views such actions as a grave threat to its national security? But it is worse than that.

The Washington/Brussels consensus tells us that Putin is a hungry, imperial dictator determined at all costs to conquer ‘all of Ukraine’ and reestablish the former USSR, meaning taking all the Baltic and Transcaucasus countries as well. If we are to be guided by the concensus’s analysis, then we are left with the unavoidable conclusion that Washington and Brussels pushed Ukraine into the claws of the aggressive, angry bear they themselves riled and aggravated. No matter. United together, ‘we will not waver’: Ukraine will fight ‘as long as it takes’ to defeat the bear on behalf of the United States and its subservient allies.

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“How much does the USA spend on military hardware? How much has the United States sent to Ukraine? How many billions and billions of dollars? How many other countries have thrown billions and billions of dollars into this? And they’re gonna run out of ammunition? What? What?!”

Failed Proxy War With Russia Shows US Can’t ‘Pick on Someone Its Own Size’ (Sp.)

In a string of statements last week justifying cluster bombs’ deployment, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials characterized it as a stopgap measure that should allow US defense industry to ramp up its “depleted” stocks of 155 mm shells. Secretary of State Antony Blinken even suggested that Ukraine would be “defenseless” if Washington did not urgently send the weapons. “The stockpiles around the world and in Ukraine of the unitary munitions, not the cluster munitions, were running out, about to be depleted. And so, the hard but necessary choice to give them the cluster munitions amounted to this: if we didn’t do it, we don’t do it, then they will run out of ammunition. If they run out of ammunition, then they will be defenseless,” Blinken said.

“I don’t understand how a cluster bomb is a ‘defensive’ weapon,” veteran US-based journalist and political analyst Caleb Maupin told Sputnik. “This is something you drop from a plane or you deploy and it goes across a widespread area and explodes, or it remains undetonated and then someone walks by and gets blown up. So the idea that they would be ‘defenseless’ without the cluster bombs, that doesn’t add up [if you] look at what a cluster bomb is.” Maupin also questioned how it was that the US and its NATO allies, which outspend Russia militarily multiple times over, and have sent more weapons to Ukraine than Moscow spends on defense in a year, could be “running out” of ammunition.

“How much does the USA spend on military hardware? How much has the United States sent to Ukraine? How many billions and billions of dollars? How many other countries have thrown billions and billions of dollars into this? And they’re gonna run out of ammunition? What? What?! And you look at Russia, and you look at Belarus, the countries that are on the other side in Ukraine, they don’t seem to have this problem. They’re not running out of ammunition. They’re not running out of military hardware and weapons,” Maupin said.

“The United States has spent so much more money on this and so many billions of dollars have been piled into Ukraine. What’s going on here? What in the world is going on here? You almost wonder if this military-industrial complex thing where weaponry has been turned into a mechanism for stabilizing the economy, we dump lots of money into military expenditures – you wonder if a lot of these weapons are produced with the thought that they might never be used. They’re simply a moneymaking cash cow for certain Pentagon contractors. And with that being the situation, you have to wonder why we are going through them so quickly and what’s really going on here,” he added.

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The numbers are interesting. They don’t seem to confirm what RFK claims.

Why Dennis Kucinich Should Now Threaten His Candidate RFK Jr. (Zuesse)

The former Congressman Dennis Kucinich is RFK Jr.’s campaign manager, which is a crucial advisor to any Presidential candidate; he now needs to lay down the law to his candidate and threaten to resign unless RFK Jr. will promise never again to be so sloppy in his wordings as to leave his many enemies on both the left and the right an opportunity to splash headlines against him that will take advantage of those sloppy wordings from him so as to accentuate still further the candidate’s existing propaganda-vulnerabilities. RFK Jr. has now done this twice — once in a way that will antagonize Palestinians and any progressive Jews who support them against Israel; and, now, this time, on July 12th, in an incident that the intensely pro-Israel Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post headlined about on July 15th, “RFK Jr. says COVID was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews”. (A more honest headline would have been “RFK Jr. says COVID was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews and Chinese,” but Murdoch knows that Democratic Party primaries candidates need votes mainly from Jews and from Blacks, not from Chinese; and, so, playing the ‘anti-Semite’ card against Kennedy would hit him where any Democratic Party Presidential candidate would be hurt the most.)

Kennedy said there that scientific studies had shown that because of certain details of the structure of the virus that causes the covid-19 disease, and because of certain genetic structures that are more commonly found in Jews and in Chinese and that are least commonly found generally among both Whites and Blacks, the ratios of Jews and of Chinese who have fallen victim to the covid-19 virus have been remarkably low, and the ratios of all Whites and of all Blacks who have fallen victim to it have been remarkably high. He apparently felt that more research needs to be done on this, especially if covid-19 was created as a bioweapon (and so maybe targeted against Whites and Blacks). If those allegations are truthful, then any rational person would agree with them, but RFK Jr.’s having worded his argument as carelessly as he did was a gratuitous invitation for his enemies to use his statements there as a weapon against him so as to prevent him from becoming the Party’s nominee instead of for Joe Biden to become that.

This was the second such incident. The first was pandering for the pro-Israeli or “zionist” Jewish vote on June 13th by telling Glenn Greenwald that “Israel is a democracy” (as-if an apartheid nation can even POSSIBLY be that), and he refused to answer Greenwald’s question of whether if he will become President he will act so as to stop U.S. taxpayers from continuing to donate $3.8 billion per year to Israel’s Government, $3.3 billion of that to be spent on buying weapons made by U.S. weapons-manufacturing corporations to be used against Palestinians and against Iran. He wouldn’t answer it.

[..] I myself am skeptical even of the truthfulness of what Kennedy said there about the covid-19 virus and its vaccines [..] look at Israel there: It has had 517,874 covid-19 cases per million inhabitants, and that is the 23rd-highest infection-rate among the 228 nations on the planet. Israel has had 1,348 covid-19 deaths per million population, and that’s the 85th-highest covid death-rate. So, since Israel has the world’s highest population-percentage who are Jews, why does that country have among the world’s highest infection-rates and even of death-rates from that virus? And how can this be the case if what RFK Jr. said on July 12th is actually true? Obviously, it can’t. On the other hand: China has had only 347 cases of covid-19 per million people, and that is the lowest of all nations (except for Western Sahara which has a total population of only 626,161 spread over its entire desert, and that’s too small a population over too large an area for it to be at all comparable to China.)

But look at what is the world’s second-lowest: Niger. And its population is 26,083,660. There is no reason to doubt its covid-19 statistics; moreover, some others among the best-performing covid-19 countries are also Black African nations.

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“..the Cocaine was for use by Hunter, & probably Crooked Joe, in order to give this total disaster of a President a little life and energy!”

Hunter Biden Threatens Trump With ‘Legal Trouble’ (RT)

Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, sent a ‘cease and desist’ letter to former president Donald Trump on Thursday, warning that continuing to target the troubled 53-year-old on social media could result in “even more legal trouble” for the Republican presidential hopeful. Trump’s online comments – including his suggestions that one or both Bidens was responsible for the cocaine recently discovered in the White House – “could lead to [Hunter’s] or his family’s injury,”Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for the younger Biden, told ABC News on Friday. Lowell cited previous incidents, including the January 6 Capitol riot, the assault on then House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in October, and the arrest of a heavily-armed man near the Obama’s home last month, as being inspired by past Trump comments and warned Trump’s attorneys, “We are just one such social media message away from another incident.”

“You should make clear to Mr. Trump – if you have not done so already – that Mr. Trump’s words have caused harm in the past and threaten to do so again if he does not stop,” Lowell continued, urging the ex-president’s lawyers to impress upon their client “how his incitement can further hurt people and cause himself even more legal trouble.” Trump recently skewered Hunter with a series of posts on his Truth Social platform, arguing the cocaine discovered in a cubby in the White House’s West Wing earlier this month belonged to the younger Biden, whose struggles with crack addiction are well-documented. “THEY 100% KNOW WHO IT IS,”Trump wrote regarding the cocaine culprit on Monday, claiming, “If they don’t release information, it means they destroyed the tapes & the Cocaine was for use by Hunter, & probably Crooked Joe, in order to give this total disaster of a President a little life and energy!”

In an earlier post, he asked if “anyone really believe[d] that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, [was] for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden.” Trump renewed his attacks after the younger Biden pleaded guilty last month to two misdemeanor tax charges following a years-long investigation, in a plea deal that is expected to keep him out of prison. The Republican 2024 frontrunner lamented that the prosecutor “gave out a traffic ticket instead of a death sentence.” The former president’s own legal troubles continue to pile up, as a Georgia grand jury considers charging him over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. He has already been indicted both federally and by the state of New York and has pled not guilty to all charges.

Read more …

So much for protected free speech.

Almost Half of Millennials Want Jail Time for “Misgendering” (Turley)

A recent survey by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for Newsweek, found that 44 percent of millennials (between ages 25-34) favor criminal charges for people who use the wrong pronouns for others or so-called “misgendering.” We have previously discussed how misgendering is now a crime in countries like Great Britain. Misgendering has been referred to as an “act of violence” at some U.S. universities. There has been a concern that we are seeing the rise of a generation of censors, who have been taught since a young age that speech is harmful and even violent. Yet, hate speech is protected in the United States. Given that fact, it is astonishing to claim that a pronoun violation could lead to incarceration. Only 31 percent of the millennials disagreed with the proposition. They are not alone. Recently, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who is a lawyer, said that “if you espouse hate … you’re not protected under the First Amendment.”


Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean declared the identical position: “Hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.” Even some dictionaries now espouse this false premise, defining “hate speech” as “Speech not protected by the First Amendment, because it is intended to foster hatred against individuals or groups based on race, religion, gender, sexual preference, place of national origin, or other improper classification.” If hate speech is constitutionally protected, pronoun use or misuse is also protected as a criminal matter. (There is ongoing litigation of the protection in an employment setting for civil liability or disciplinary action). Yet, the most serious concern is the inclination of this generation to use criminal laws to police such questions. It reflects the erosion of free speech principles with younger generations. That crisis of faith could prove disastrous with free speech in a virtual free fall in Europe.

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Media – It’s hot in Europe & people are going to stop going on holiday. Except here’s a map of July 1973 for Greece. It didn’t stop European holidays, they increased to +538 million tourists, predicted to increase by 9 million per year.

 

 


42°C in Novara, Northern Italy, back in 1952.

 

 

 

 

Pool

 

 

cat rooster
https://twitter.com/i/status/1680817457177542656

 

 

Puffer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1680609418071756801

 

 

WHEN I AM OLD
When I am old… I will wear soft gray sweatshirts… and a bandana over my silver hair… and I will spend my social security checks on my dogs. I will sit in my house on my well-worn chair and listen to my dogs breathing. I will sneak out in the middle of a warm summer night and take my dogs for a run, if my old bones will allow… When people come to call, I will smile and nod as I show them my dogs… and talk of them and about them…

the ones so beloved of the past and the ones so beloved of today… I will still work hard cleaning after them, mopping and feeding them and whispering their names in a soft loving way. I will wear the gleaming sweat on my throat, like a jewel, and I will be an embarrassment to all… especially my family… who have not yet found the peace in being free to have dogs as your best friends… These friends who always wait, at any hour, for your footfall… and eagerly jump to their feet out of a sound sleep, to greet you as if you are a God, with warm eyes full of adoring love and hope that you will always stay,

I’ll hug their big strong necks… I’ll kiss their dear sweet heads… and whisper in their very special company… I look in the mirror… and see I am getting old… this is the kind of person I am… and have always been. Loving dogs is easy, they are part of me. Please accept me for who I am. My dogs appreciate my presence in their lives… they love my presence in their lives… When I am old this will be important to me… you will understand when you are old, if you have dogs to love too.

Author Unknown (DM)

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 132023
 
 July 13, 2023  Posted by at 8:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  53 Responses »


John Atkinson Grimshaw A moonlit lane 1874

 

Ukraine To Pay High Price For Security Guarantees From G7 – Zakharova (TASS)
Moscow Reacts To NATO Summit (RT)
NATO Summit Exposes Fractures in Alliance Over Support for Ukraine (Sp.)
The US May Never Allow Ukraine To Join NATO (Bordachev)
NATO Spent Years Preparing For Proxy War With Russia in Ukraine (Sp.)
Peace Is Always Priority For Russia Over Combat – Lavrov (TASS)
Stoltenberg: Sending Advanced Weapons, Munitions To Kiev Priority For NATO (TASS)
NATO Offers Up Slim Pickings For Kiev At Vilnius Summit – Hungarian FM (TASS)
‘We’re not Amazon’ – UK Responds To Ukraine’s Weapons Requests (RT)
NATO Leaders Tell Zelensky ‘Cool It’ In Rare Dressing Down At Summit
Poland Wants Ukraine To Admit Guilt For Nazi-linked WWII Massacre (RT)
Elon Musk Sets Up New AI Company (RT)
Greek Coastguard ‘Pressured’ Migrant Boat Survivors (BBC)
Julian Assange, Who ‘Aims To Change The World’, Awarded Konrad Wolf Prize (AR)

 

 

 

 

Wray
https://twitter.com/i/status/1679234587459825664

 

 

DOJ

 

 

 

 

Roseanne

 

 

RFK Saddam

 

 

One of these things…

 

 

 

 

“The price is not a secret: a Ukraine cleared of Ukrainians by Western weapons but with enough population left to serve NATO troops.”

Ukraine To Pay High Price For Security Guarantees From G7 – Zakharova (TASS)

The price of security guarantees from the Group of Seven (G7) is a Ukraine cleared of Ukrainians by Western weapons, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday. Earlier, Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov expressed concern over the G7’s security guarantees, saying that “Kiev will not believe in them until it finds out what their price is.” “The price is not a secret: a Ukraine cleared of Ukrainians by Western weapons but with enough population left to serve NATO troops. There is no need to deport anyone to Western Europe any more because people have moved there themselves,” the diplomat wrote on Telegram.

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“NATO’s achievements are well known: the growing instability, destruction of countries, rampant terrorism, war crimes that are committed with impunity, the blood of civilians, including children, and the endless flow of refugees..”

Moscow Reacts To NATO Summit (RT)

The North Atlantic alliance intends to use Ukraine as a proxy for endless war while expanding into the Arctic and Asia in pursuit of neocolonial objectives, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, after a NATO meeting wrapped up in neighboring Lithuania. “The ‘collective West’ led by the US is not willing to accept the formation of a multipolar world and intends to defend its hegemony by all available means, including military ones,” the ministry said in a statement. What the West calls the “rules-based order” is nothing but a “license they granted themselves to violate international law,” and has nothing to do with the UN, which NATO frequently invokes, according to Moscow.

“NATO’s achievements are well known: the growing instability, destruction of countries, rampant terrorism, war crimes that are committed with impunity, the blood of civilians, including children, and the endless flow of refugees,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. The bloc is now determined to “NATO-ize” Ukraine, treating the country as an expendable resource in a hybrid war against Russia, supplying Kiev with long-range weapons in order to prolong the conflict for as long as possible, the ministry added. Meanwhile, the US military-industrial complex is “happily rubbing its hands” at the prospect of selling its European allies replacements for weapons destroyed in Ukraine, at exorbitant prices. The ministry stated that the Western alliance was working to “ensnare” Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Moldova, as well as looking to turn the Arctic into “a zone of confrontation,” and to expand beyond the North Atlantic to the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia-Pacific, in pursuit of a “global NATO.”

“Washington and its allies are trying to impose their own rules and drain resources along their to proven neocolonial patterns,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. The ministry said Russia will respond to threats “in a timely and appropriate manner, using all means and methods at our disposal,” the statement concluded. The Russian government sent a comprehensive security proposal to the US and NATO in December 2021, asking the bloc to withdraw its troops from Eastern Europe and guarantee Ukraine’s neutrality. Both Washington and NATO rejected Moscow’s request in January 2022. Russia views the bloc’s eastward expansion as a threat and has cited its ties with Kiev as one of the root causes of the armed conflict with Ukraine.

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“..I think there’s seven principles that they have to meet, and Ukraine maybe meets two of them..”

“..unless they break every rule and principle they have, Ukraine does not meet the requirements for NATO..”

“He was saying in effect that the Ukrainians have failed in their counter-offensive and consequently Western military and financial aid to them will be winding down..”

NATO Summit Exposes Fractures in Alliance Over Support for Ukraine (Sp.)

Amid the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Group of Seven (G7) nations issued a statement pledging long-term security guarantees for Ukraine, including ensuring it has an advanced military and stable economy, and supporting reforms that would help Kiev to join Western blocs such as the European Union or NATO. The G7 statement came after NATO doubled down on refusing Ukraine’s admission while it remains locked in a military conflict with Russia, and back-and-forth criticisms between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO members. Gilbert Doctorow, an international relations and Russian affairs analyst, told Sputnik it was “irrelevant” which international institution the West chooses to provide Ukraine with security guarantees.

“The only force that can provide meaningful security guarantees is the United States, and the US will not give Ukraine such guarantees because Congress will not give its consent,” he said. “Period.” “The NATO summit has been a disaster for Zelensky,” Doctorow said. “He failed on the battlefield, losing 26,000 soldiers and officers in the past month of his counter-offensive as well as losing most of the tanks, personnel carriers and other advanced equipment which NATO countries had supplied in the preceding weeks. The decision by the USA to quietly pull the plug on the Ukrainians is only natural and certainly not ‘absurd.’ The game is up.” Doctorow noted that UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace criticized Kiev at the NATO summit, saying Zelensky’s government should be more grateful for the aid it’s received, observing that over the last year, the Ukrainians have simply pivoted from pushing for one type of weapon until they receive it, then immediately pressing for another.

“I told them that last year, when I drove 11 hours to be given a list, that I’m not like Amazon,” Wallace said. Doctorow said Wallace’s remarks “should not be taken too seriously.” “He was saying in effect that the Ukrainians have failed in their counter-offensive and consequently Western military and financial aid to them will be winding down,” the analyst noted. Earl Rasmussen, a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and international consultant, told Sputnik, “I personally don’t think they’ll ever be part of NATO – they are intended to be a battering ram and a mechanism to meet and confront Russia.” “No matter what was said back in 2008 and more recently, unless they break every rule and principle they have, Ukraine does not meet the requirements for NATO. I don’t know if they ever will,” he said.

“If you look at it, I think there’s seven principles that they have to meet, and Ukraine maybe meets two of them. The rest definitely not – nothing as far as democracy goes, as far as corruption goes, as far as a stable government, sound government practices and stuff it does not meet in that area at all.” “Also, they’re not even self-sufficient now. If it wasn’t for the funding coming from the West, the whole economy and the government would completely collapse. So they don’t want to put up notices. There’s no discussion on the action plan, no timeline provided whatsoever. It’s just a continual carrot to keep Ukraine [fighting] basically to the last Ukrainian. So it could drag this conflict on as long as possible. That’s their intention. It always was, it was the intent to weaken Russia – although that’s not going too well. But they have no reverse gear. They seem to want to double down no matter what.

[..] “A lot of soul searching is going on [in NATO] in the background. I don’t think you’re going to get a NATO majority – definitely Hungary wouldn’t support it, I think a lot of other countries would not as well, and it’d just be catastrophic to Europe if they got fully involved in [Ukraine] because NATO will not win. They would have to escalate to nuclear [war], and then nobody wins. But from a conventional perspective, Russia will win any type of confrontation with it. Even if the US got involved, I think Russia would win, at least if you look at the logistical perspective and the planning, the methodical nature, the percentage of artillery firing, the technology of the weapons systems, and the terrain that’s being fought [on]. Russia’s got escalatory dominance in this nature, not just over Ukraine, but over NATO in general. Bad mistake to push for Ukraine’s entry into NATO and to provoke Russia. It was a very, very bad mistake on the West’s behalf.”

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It won’t exist long enough.

The US May Never Allow Ukraine To Join NATO (Bordachev)

The Ukrainian crisis marks the first time in history that the United States has exposed itself to serious risks in defining the limits of its military presence in Europe. Any genuine move by Washington to invite Kiev into NATO would imply a willingness to enter into a direct military confrontation with Russia. A less risky option, many believe, would be to promise the Vladimir Zelensky regime some special bilateral guarantees. The NATO military bloc was created on the basis of the real division of Europe into zones of influence between the US and the USSR after the Second World War. As a result of the greatest armed confrontation in the history of mankind, the bulk of European states lost forever the ability to determine fundamental issues of their national policy.

These included, first and foremost, defense and the ability to form alliances with other countries. Europe was divided between the real winners of the conflict – Moscow and Washington. Only Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and a small part of Switzerland were outside their zone of dominance. Both of the great powers had an informal right to determine the internal order of the territories under its control. This was because the countries concerned had lost their sovereignty as such. Even France, which continued to demonstrate freethinking for several decades, had no doubt on whose side it would fight in the event of a new global conflict. NATO was created in 1949 to formally deprive American allies of the ability to make their own foreign policy decisions and military doctrines. In this respect, the alliance was no different from the Warsaw Pact that had emerged in the USSR’s sphere of influence.

The relationship between the United States and other NATO countries has never been an alliance in the traditional sense. In the last century, classic alliances ceased to exist altogether – the gap in military capabilities between the nuclear superpowers and every other country in the world became too great. A military alliance between relative equals is possible, as it was until the middle of the last century, but nuclear weapons have made this impossible. The former sovereign states of Europe became a territorial base from which the great powers could negotiate in peace and act in war. The creation of NATO and the subsequent accession of countries such as Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany to the alliance was a formalization of the boundaries of US dominance that the USSR had already agreed to in bilateral relations.

After the Soviet collapse, extending American rule to Moscow’s former allies in Eastern Europe and even the Baltic republics was also not a policy that posed serious risks for Washington. Incidentally, this is why NATO has an informal rule of not admitting countries with unresolved territorial disputes with third states – the US has never been willing to occupy land whose ownership is disputed. NATO’s post-Cold War expansion was based on deception, with the US promising Moscow that it would not expand NATO to Russia’s borders. But, initially, Russia did not have the physical strength to resist. This meant that the US could occupy “unclaimed” states without the threat of immediate military conflict. The US approach to NATO remained true to the philosophy of the 1945 victors: there are no sovereign states, only controlled territories.

Once the decision was taken in Washington, it was only a matter of strategy to ensure that local governments made the “right” decisions. This was all the more so as the accession of new countries to NATO in the 1990s and 2000s was ‘packaged’ with the enlargement of the European Union. This gave local elites every reason to aspire to join the bloc, from which they expected tangible material benefits. For some – the Baltic states and Poland – membership in the club also provided the possibility of solving internal problems through an aggressive anti-Russian policy by fostering fear of the big neighbor to the east. In the Baltic states, the status of an American outpost was also used by elites to combat any local opposition from radical nationalists. For the countries that joined the bloc, NATO became a guarantee of internal stability. Since the most important decisions for them were taken outside their national political systems, there was no reason for internal competition and no danger of serious destabilization.

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Orwell’s never far away: “..and included it in the Partnership for Peace program in 1994..”

NATO Spent Years Preparing For Proxy War With Russia in Ukraine (Sp.)

The US neocons and their likeminded NATO allies have long been apparently seeking to knock Russia out of the political arena before trying to crack down on China in a bid to preserve the US dominance, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski believes. “I think that the US officials and advisors (along with those in NATO) believe that they must be able to exploit Russian resources prior to any direct confrontation with China,” Kwiatkowski, who is also a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik. “The neoconservative ideology that over half of Congress embraces, and that the US defense and security complex embraces, envisions and demands a unipolar globe, with the US and its debt-funded governmental system, at the top. For them, this is an existential issue, albeit most Americans don’t see it that way.” It seems that Ukraine appeared a convenient candidate for the role of a “hammer” against Russia.

Ukraine has been a leading recipient of Western military supplies since the early 1990s when the country gained independence, with the US spearheading the initiative. In the first ten years after independence, Ukraine received almost $2.6 billion in assistance from the US. Until 2014, Ukraine had been receiving an estimated $105 million per annum, including foreign military financing. NATO’s North Atlantic Cooperation Council embraced Ukraine as a “partner country” in 1991 and included it in the Partnership for Peace program in 1994. Washington’s NATO ally, the UK, played an important role in the effort, holding joint military exercises with the Ukrainians, as well as providing training and funding to the nation’s armed forces. Thus, the first joint Ukrainian-British military exercises “Cossack steppe” were held in the second half of the 1990s as part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.

The NATO-Ukraine Commission was established in 1997 with the aim of developing the relationship between the nation and the bloc and directing cooperative activities. As per UK government documents, the Ministry of Defense spent approximately £3.9 million supporting Ukraine through the Defense Assistance Fund and the Conflict Pool between 2009 and 2014. Many of the activities funded through these mechanisms supported “command, control and communications capabilities (C3).” In particular, the UK held joint exercises with the Ukrainian military, provided military education to the nation’s specialists, and “contributions to NATO coordinated activities.” Both UK civilian and military personnel had been deployed to Ukraine during that period of time while Ukrainian personnel were sent to the UK.

Following the illegitimate coup d’etat in Kiev in February 2014, the West stepped up military assistance to the new Ukrainian authorities. Between 2014 and 2021, the United States provided over $2.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, which included the provision of trainers, selected weaponry systems (such as counter-mortar radars), and Javelin anti-tank missiles. The boost in military assistance was justified by NATO member states by the alleged “Russian invasion” in Donbass. However, it is well documented that Donbass declared independence in response to the illegitimate coup d’etat in Kiev fomented with the assistance of nationalist and neo-Nazi paramilitary groups and subsequent Russophobic policies of the new government. The Donbass breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk Republics started largely forming militias after the interim Kiev government kicked off what it called “anti-terrorist” operations (ATO) against the region.

“Kiev had been on the offensive with the Donbass with Western support, for a number of years, even before 2014, and this is well documented,” explained Kwiatkowski. “Other Eastern and Southern European countries had been ‘encouraged’ by Western powers, as we saw with Yugoslavia, to break up into smaller national and ethno-cultural countries, and the peaceful divide between the Czech Republic and Slovakia was also allowed and supported. This is primarily because the newly smaller countries added potential members to NATO and the EU – all controlled and controllable by the US-EU elites.”

NATO

Read more …

Two articles about priorities. They differ.

Peace Is Always Priority For Russia Over Combat – Lavrov (TASS)

Peace has always been a priority for Russia over combat, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Lenta.ru online daily commenting on peace initiatives regarding Ukraine. Asked whether ceasefire peaceful initiatives proposed by China, Indonesia, Vatican and Africa were premature Lavrov replied in the negative. “I would like to express my gratitude to our partners for their efforts to search for ways to settle the Ukrainian crisis peacefully,” he said. “We do not find their initiatives premature: for the Russian side, peace always has priority over combat.”


“So, let me remind you that we already participated in a negotiation process with Kiev, in the spring of 2022, and came close to a positive outcome,” he continued. “However, all efforts were undermined by the Anglo-Saxons, whose plans clearly did not include the cessation of hostilities. They have remained obsessed with the manic idea of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia,” Lavrov added.

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“..the most urgent, the most important task is a continued flow of military support..”

Stoltenberg: Sending Advanced Weapons, Munitions To Kiev Priority For NATO (TASS)

NATO believes its priority is to supply Kiev with advanced weapons systems and a huge amount of ammunition and spare parts for them, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. “I think we realized many months ago that this is a war of attrition, meaning a battle of logistics. It’s important that we deliver different advanced weapons systems, but as important as delivering new systems is that we are able to maintain and sustain all the systems that are already there. An enormous amount of ammunition, spare parts maintenance and repair capacity,” he said at a news conference following a NATO summit.


Stoltenberg also said Ukraine’s future position at the negotiating table will hinge on the outcome of its counteroffensive. “I think it’s wrong to speculate exactly how this will be done in the future after the war ends. The most important thing now is to ensure that the war ends in a just and lasting way. That’s the reason why the most urgent, the most important task is a continued flow of military support,” he said. The NATO official earlier said the bloc had decided to spare Ukraine the requirement of executing a Membership Action Plan and pledged to invite the country to the alliance when all the conditions were met.

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“Only the Ukraine-NATO commission has been upgraded to the council level,” the top Hungarian diplomat pointed out, adding that in the current situation, “this was the only right decision.”

NATO Offers Up Slim Pickings For Kiev At Vilnius Summit – Hungarian FM (TASS)

Vilnius summit has produced only modest, small-bore results for Ukraine, with Kiev failing to obtain any timetable for accession to the bloc, while getting formal interaction upgraded to the council level as a consolation prize, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said. “The big question before the NATO summit was what Ukraine would obtain. Compared to the [pre-summit] expectations, held mostly by the Ukrainians themselves, the actual practical results were exceedingly modest,” Szijjarto, who is attending the summit together with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said in an interview with Hungary’s M1 TV channel. He noted that Ukraine received neither an invitation nor a timetable for joining the alliance.

“Only the Ukraine-NATO commission has been upgraded to the council level,” the top Hungarian diplomat pointed out, adding that in the current situation, “this was the only right decision.” “It is quite clear that a country in a state of a war cannot be accepted into NATO because, according to the alliance’s own rules, this would entail the bloc as a whole being dragged into this war. So, I think that, right now, NATO made a responsible decision while managing to avoid an escalation in military action,” he explained. Szijjarto noted that Ukraine will now start drafting what is known as the annual national program for interacting with NATO, which should reflect reforms of both a military and political nature.

“NATO is not only a defensive alliance but also a values-based community. Thus, for example, Ukraine should take on the obligation to respect and protect the rights of minorities,” he said, emphasizing that Hungary will be paying special attention to this issue given Budapest’s concern over the treatment of ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine. According to him, a decision on Ukraine’s compliance with the bloc’s membership criteria will be made later, taking into account the country’s actual performance. Earlier, Budapest had repeatedly stated that it would not support Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO and the EU until the Ukrainian leadership stopped infringing on the rights of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region.

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Piss off your biggest supporter…

‘We’re not Amazon’ – UK Responds To Ukraine’s Weapons Requests (RT)

Ukraine should adopt a less demanding tone when speaking to nations that are arming it to fight against Russia, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has suggested. “We are not Amazon,”he said. The remarks, which were quoted by the British media, were made during an event on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Lithuania on Wednesday. Wallace, who is normally a vocal supporter of Kiev, said it would help Ukraine’s cause if they displayed some gratitude. “Sometimes you are asking countries to give up their own stocks,” Wallace said. “Sometimes you have to persuade lawmakers on [Capitol] Hill in America. You have to persuade doubting politicians in other countries that it is worth it.” The British official said he heard complaints from US counterparts that Ukraine was treating their nation like an Amazon store, even as it provides billions of dollars worth of military assistance.

Wallace confirmed that this was “true,” and said he had been personally subjected to this kind of treatment by Ukrainian officials. He recalled driving for 11 hours to meet with a delegation last June only “to be given a list” of requests. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made a similar public remark in Lithuania, asserting that “the American people do deserve a degree of gratitude from the US government for their willingness to step up [and aid Ukraine] and from the rest of the world as well.” Ukrainian officials, including President Vladimir Zelensky, have been critical of the US and its allies for not providing enough support or for providing it too slowly. The Ukrainian leader cited the supposedly unhurried pace of weapons deliveries as a key reason for underwhelming results from Kiev’s counteroffensive last month.

One of the latest outbursts from Zelensky came during the current summit, as NATO leaders declined to provide a roadmap for Ukraine’s accession to the US-led military bloc and said the country would still have to meet some conditions to qualify. He called the position “unprecedented and absurd.” The US delegation in Vilnius was reportedly infuriated by the verbal attack. The Americans perceived it as an attempt by Zelenksy to pressure the alliance into reconsidering its decision, according to media reports. It’s not the first time that Western irritation with Kiev’s communication style has been reported. Last June, US President Joe Biden reportedly told Zelensky to show “a little more gratitude”after snapping during a phone call.

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“..While it’s not quite yet a full on ‘hero to zero’ story… things are certainly sliding in that direction..”

NATO Leaders Tell Zelensky ‘Cool It’ In Rare Dressing Down At Summit

Bloomberg is just out with a devastating behind-the-scenes account of a hot-headed Zelensky at the NATO summit in Vilnius, and the growing Western backlash in the face of his obvious frustration and what’s being seen as ingratitude for the steady flow of billions of dollars in arms to Kiev. Apparently even the mainstream media agrees with our own assessment of the Ukrainian leader having thrown a “tantrum” as he complained about the “weak” and “absurd” NATO stance on Ukraine’s membership. The blistering tweet he issued in English while en route to Lithuania exposed cracks in the alliance, as Bloomberg highlights in the opening of its very revealing Wednesday piece:


Volodymyr Zelenskiy was running hot ahead of his sit-down with NATO leaders on Tuesday evening. The Ukrainian president had been angered earlier in the day by what he said was an “absurd” reluctance to give his country a clear timeline on membership. That outburst in turn riled the partners who have funneled billions of dollars of weaponry and aid into Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion — the US had been given no warning before Zelenskiy unleashed his attack on social media.

All day Wednesday, the above (very real) photo of an isolated and defeated-looking Zelensky standing amid NATO heads of state (with backs turned) circulated widely on social media. And things were even more tense behind the scenes, as Bloomberg writes: “Over dinner in Vilnius, with US President Joe Biden back at his hotel, the other leaders delivered a clear message to Zelenskiy, according to one person who was present. You have to cool down and look at the full package, Zelenskiy was told.” While it’s not quite yet a full on ‘hero to zero’ story… things are certainly sliding in that direction, given it’s unprecedented that the Ukrainian president who previously enjoyed rockstar status in Western capitals since the start of the invasion could be told to basically ‘cool it’!.

Bloomberg continues in reference to Zelensky: “He had, after all, been given a renewed commitment to eventual membership and new security guarantees from the Group of Seven nations. By the next day, the message appeared to be sinking in.” The publication was privy to some key Western leaders’ exact words, presenting the rare dressing down as follows: “Whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude,” UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told reporters the following morning. “You’re persuading countries to give up their stock” of weapons and ammunition, he added.

This account of the behind-the-scenes wrangling is based on interviews with more than a dozen diplomats and officials involved in the summit who asked not to be named discussing private conversations. NATO leaders were trying to thread a needle on Ukraine’s membership bid when they arrived in Vilnius: They were seeking language that looked like progress and that Ukraine could sell as progress but fundamentally didn’t leave them any closer to getting dragged into a war with nuclear-armed Russia.

Ultimately the hawks (mainly among the Baltic and Eastern Europe states) have lost at Vilnius. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has admitted “There was a lack of political will.” Thus it appears that Zelensky’s angry, desperate tweet lashing out at Western partners was a last ditch effort at shaming NATO into conceding to its demands of being immediately fast-tracked to membership. Bloomberg reveals further, that “Crucially, it was the US and Germany that insisted on dialing back the commitment to Ukraine joining the alliance. Earlier drafts of the communique offered a clearer pathway to Ukraine eventually joining, but Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz were wary of going too far.”

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“In the attacks by OUN and UPA units, supported by part of the local Ukrainian community, over 100,000 Poles were murdered..”

Poland Wants Ukraine To Admit Guilt For Nazi-linked WWII Massacre (RT)

Accountability for the mass killings of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II is essential for reconciliation between the two nations, a resolution passed by the lower house of parliament in Warsaw has said. The document was adopted by lawmakers in the Sejm on Tuesday, as Poland commemorated the victims of wartime atrocities in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia 80 years ago. Members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the militant wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), were the main perpetrators of the crimes, which Poland considers an act of genocide.

“In the attacks by OUN and UPA units, supported by part of the local Ukrainian community, over 100,000 Poles were murdered, often in a very brutal way,” the Polish MPs said. “Several hundred thousand people fled… fearing the same fate.” The OUN allied with Nazi German invaders in the hope of creating a Ukrainian nation state, and slaughtered groups that they deemed to be obstructing their cause. Their victims also included Jews, Czechs and Russians, along with ethnic Ukrainians who opposed the purges, the Polish resolution noted. The ethnic cleansing campaign was accompanied by the destruction of property, including items of cultural and religious significance.

“Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation, which was built over years by representatives of both nations, must also include recognition of guilt and commemoration of the victims,” the lawmakers stressed. Many Polish officials have said they expected Kiev to make gestures of accountability during the 80th anniversary of the tragedy. The Ukrainian government considers the UPA and its leaders to be national heroes, as they were fighting for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky joined his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda last week for a joint commemoration in Western Ukraine, but did not offer a formal apology. Kiev’s ambassador to Warsaw, Vasily Zvarych, previously advised Poland against attempts to “pressure” his nation into taking “unacceptable” steps regarding their shared past.

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“..to understand the true nature of the universe.”

Elon Musk Sets Up New AI Company (RT)

The owner of Twitter and the founder of Tesla and SpaceX said on Wednesday that he has set up an artificial intelligence venture, xAI, which aims to figure out the world itself. “Announcing formation of xAI to understand reality,” Musk tweeted, with a link to the company’s freshly created profile on his social network. xAI is technically a separate company from Musk’s X Corp, but will work closely with his other enterprises “to make progress towards our mission,” according to the company website, which defines that mission as “to understand the true nature of the universe.” The people involved with xAI have previously worked at OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Tesla, as well as the University of Toronto in Canada, and say they have contributed to “some of the most widely used methods” in the field of artificial intelligence, as well as breakthroughs such as the GPT chatbot.

Tesla’s shares rose 1.5% following the xAI announcement. According to public records, xAI was incorporated in March in the US state of Nevada. Musk is listed as the sole director. More details will be made available in a Twitter Spaces chat scheduled for Friday, the company promised. There has been speculation ever since about Musk’s intention to establish an AI enterprise. According to a disclosure from Business Insider, Musk acquired a substantial number of graphic processing units (GPUs) to fuel an upcoming generative AI offering. The Financial Times has also mentioned Musk’s aspirations to establish an AI company in direct competition with OpenAI, which has the support of Microsoft. It has been reported that Musk approached investors of SpaceX and Tesla to secure funding for the venture.

Two weeks after incorporating xAI, Musk signed an open letter with more than 1,000 researchers and tech executives, warning that AI could pose “profound risks to society and humanity.” The letter called for a six-month global pause on AI development in order to “give society a chance to adapt” to the rapidly-advancing technology. Musk has also spoken out on the potential for “civilizational destruction” posed by AI, pointing to the race between products such as ChatGPT and Bard. While Musk helped to found ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI in 2015, he left its board of directors by 2018 and has since criticized the company as a “closed source maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.” One of the people Musk has brought on board xAI as a senior adviser is Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit that seeks to reduce the risks posed by the technology.

Read more …

The story gets uglier.

Greek Coastguard ‘Pressured’ Migrant Boat Survivors (BBC)

New evidence found by BBC News casts further doubt on the Greek coastguard’s version of events surrounding last month’s deadly migrant boat sinking, in which up to 600 people died. Two survivors have described how the coastguard pressed them to identify nine Egyptians on board as traffickers. A new video of the overcrowded boat foundering at sea also challenges the Greek coastguard’s account. It was taken when the boat was said to be on a “steady course”. BBC Verify has confirmed the footage was filmed when the coastguard claimed the boat was not in need of rescue. We have also confirmed that the larger vessel in the background is the oil tanker Faithful Warrior, which had been asked to give supplies to the migrant boat.

The official Greek coastguard account had already been challenged in a BBC Verify report – but now we have seen court documents which show serious discrepancies between survivors’ witness statements taken by the coastguards, and the in-person evidence later presented to a judge. A translator has also come forward with his account of a people-smuggling investigation last year, after a another group of migrants were rescued by the coastguard. He describes how witnesses from that incident were intimidated by the coastguard. The legal case collapsed before it could reach trial. The revelations raise fresh questions about how the Greek authorities handle such disasters. Both the Greek coastguard and Greek government did not comment and declined our requests for interview. Soon after the 14 June sinking, nine Egyptian men were detained and charged with manslaughter and people-smuggling.

But two survivors of the disaster say migrants were silenced and intimidated by Greek authorities, after suggesting the coastguards may have been to blame for the tragedy. For the past month, allegations have been made that the coastguard used a rope to tow the fishing vessel, causing it to sink. The two survivors we spoke to in Athens – who we are calling Ahmad and Musaab to protect their identities – say that is what happened. “They attached a rope from the left. Everyone moved to the right side of our boat to balance it,” says Musaab. “The Greek vessel moved off quickly causing our boat to flip. They kept dragging it for quite a distance.” The men described how they spent two hours in the water before being picked up by the coastguard.

When I ask how they knew it was that amount of time, Musaab says his watch was still working so he could tell. Once on land, in Kalamata, they claim the coastguard told survivors to “shut up” when they started to talk about how the Greek authorities had caused the disaster. “When people replied by saying the Greek coastguard was the cause, the official in charge of the questioning asked the interpreter to tell the interviewee to stop talking,” says Ahmad. Ahmad says those rescued were told to be grateful they hadn’t died. He says there were shouts of: “You have survived death! Stop talking about the incident! Don’t ask more questions about it!”

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“His work embodies journalistic awareness-building at its best, and aims to change the world by democratic means – something that is direly needed.’”

Julian Assange, Who ‘Aims To Change The World’, Awarded Konrad Wolf Prize (AR)

The Akademie der Künste in Berlin has said it will award its annual Konrad Wolf Prize to Julian Assange. Though the Australian activist and founder of WikiLeaks is unlilkely to be able to attend the October ceremony as he is currently held at Belmarsh top security prison in London. Since 2019 he has been fighting attempts to extradite him to the US, where he is charged with the hacking – abetting former army private and whistleblower Chelsea Manning – of one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of America.

The jury said: ‘Julian Assange’s work and positions have focused our attention on illegal state actions, injustices, murders and war crimes – things that were meant to remain concealed and obscured from the public view, from the citizens – from us. Assange’s work has resulted in the disclosure of financial flows, hidden accounts and official e-mail correspondence, has uncovered images of murdered unarmed civilians and journalists in Iraq by members of the U.S. Army, disclosed arbitrary killings of civilians in Afghanistan and secret service projects aimed at the manipulation of public opinion, has brought to light the humiliation and torture in photos taken by laughing perpetrators at Abu Ghraib Prison and exposed the inhumane conditions of the still operational detention centre at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, which reminded us of what waterboarding means.

The list goes on. Julian Assange’s Wikileaks publicizes information about this – our – reality, so that we as citizens can recognize this reality and take action. ‘We open governments’ so that we know. It is a democratic act. Assange is a worthy laureate, who with his Wikileaks project has exposed government activity, wartime lies, war crimes and cover-ups. His work embodies journalistic awareness-building at its best, and aims to change the world by democratic means – something that is direly needed.’

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Birth rates
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678873566861828097

 

 

 

 

Kamala
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678711066560282625

 

 

Hypno chicken

 

 

Otter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678789677438980097

 

 

SNL

 

 

 

 

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Mar 262023
 
 March 26, 2023  Posted by at 11:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  23 Responses »


Jasper Johns Three flags 1958

 

Andrew Korybko:

The US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) began reporting more accurately on the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine since the start of the year, but the true test of their comparatively improved integrity will be whether they raise awareness about Zelensky’s latest damning admission. In an interview with Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, he candidly told his interlocutors that “We do not have ammunition. For us the situation in the East is not good.”

This is a major revelation for several reasons. First, it proves that Russia is winning NATO’s self-declared “race of logistics” in the sense that its armed forces still have ammo to continue fighting while the West’s Ukrainian proxies already ran out of that which their patrons provided over the past year. Second, the aforesaid aid that was already extended to this crumbling former Soviet Republic exceeds $100 billion, which makes Russia’s leading position in this “race of logistics” all the more impressive.

Third, Zelensky’s admission adds credence to what the Washington Post recently reported regarding how poorly Kiev’s forces are faring in this conflict, especially its “severe ammunition shortages” that one of its sources spoke about. Fourth, the preceding points drastically decrease the chances that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will achieve much of anything and actually make it increasingly likely that such a move would be an epic mistake that could ultimately lead to a decisive Russian breakthrough.

And finally, it can therefore be expected that Zelensky and his agents of influence across the West will beg for even more aid, arguing that the failure to pay up would risking making their prior investments in this proxy war all for naught if Kiev ends up losing to Russia. The problem, however, is that no amount of money can make ammunition appear out of thin air since it requires a lot of time to scale production accordingly to meet these newfound exorbitant needs.

The very fact that Ukraine is out of ammunition proves that the West’s defeat in its self-declared “race of logistics” with Russia might already be a fait accompli by this point since it’s clear that Kiev can’t keep pace with its opponent despite being backed by all of NATO’s military-industrial capacity. Zelensky almost certainly didn’t realize that his candid admission essentially amounted to this, but it’s presently unclear whether the MSM will inform their audience about this or not.

On the one hand, doing so could contribute to his forthcoming begging campaign, but it could also backfire if taxpayers start asking whether it’s worth ponying up even more money if Ukraine already ran out of ammo despite the over $100 billion in aid that it’s received thus far. After all, if that astronomical sum wasn’t enough to keep their guns firing, then there’s no telling how much will be needed for Kiev to reconquer more of its lost territory like it intends to do.

Not only that, but as was earlier explained, no amount of money can make ammunition appear out of thin air. Quite clearly, fundamental changes in the Ukrainian Armed Forces are needed in order to indefinitely perpetuate this conflict like the US is plotting to do, but its fighters can’t immediately transition to using exclusively Western equipment when they’re used to operating Soviet-era wares. This poses a dilemma since Russia keeps moving further ahead in this “race of logistics” as each day goes by.

Objectively speaking, the military-strategic dynamics are trending in the Kremlin’s favor, which would ordinarily compel Kiev to seriously consider China’s peace plan if it wasn’t for its American overlords preventing it from doing so. The longer that Zelensky remains resistant to the very thought of a ceasefire, the greater the chances are that Russia will transform its growing advantage in its “race of logistics” with NATO into a decisive victory that could result in Ukraine losing even more territory.
 

 

 

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Feb 172023
 
 February 17, 2023  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Tomb of the diver, Paestum c480 BCE

 

Seymour Hersh Calls Pipeline Sabotage ‘Dumbest’ US Act In Years (RT)
The US Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline. Interview with Seymour Hersh (GR)
US Presidents Renege on Agreements with Russia (Parsons)
Ukraine Conflict Will Likely Have No Military Winner – Milley (RT)
Russia Has Lost ‘Strategically, Operationally And Tactically’ – Milley (G.)
The Horrifying Endgame in Ukraine (Rickards)
Nuland Outlines US Goals In Ukraine (RT)
Beijing Challenges Western Press On Nord Stream Blasts (RT)
The West Has Long Planned A Proxy War With Russia In Ukraine (Sukharevskaya)
Russia Acted Out Of Necessity To Implement Minsk Accords – Kremlin (TASS)
Implications of US Destruction of Nordstream 2 Pipeline (Fuller)
Russian Diplomats Issue Dire Warnings that War with US Is Close (LI)
Bombshell New Emails Unsealed Between Epstein and JP Morgan Executive (TP)
NFL Players Association Urged to Screen for Vaccine Side Effects (ET)

 

 

 

 

Ukraine’s new troops
https://twitter.com/i/status/1626469724807696384

 

 

 

 

Douglas Macgregor – The Russian Onslaught

 

 

 

 

East Palestine water

 

 

 

 

Bulgaria

 

 

 

 

Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1620598762216517632

 

 

2019 Zel

 

 

 

 

“What [Biden] did is he said, ‘I’m in a big war with Ukraine. It’s not looking good. I want to be sure I get German and West European support,’”

Seymour Hersh Calls Pipeline Sabotage ‘Dumbest’ US Act In Years (RT)

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has slammed Washington’s alleged involvement in bombing the Nord Stream gas lines as one of the “dumbest” decisions taken in years, warning that the move will have “horrific” consequences for Europeans and further undercut the already “supremely useless” NATO alliance. Speaking to Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman for an interview on Wednesday, Hersh outlined his recent report on the destruction of the pipelines last year, which found that the US played a key role in planting and detonating explosives on sections of the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea. “I think the consequences politically for us are enormous,” he said, adding that the long-term effects for Europe would be “horrific” and “cut into the notion that they can depend totally on America, even in a crisis.”

“I think that this has probably been, in the view of some of the people who did it, one of the dumbest things the American government has done in years – and we’ve had four years of Trump.” Hersh argued that US officials have long seen cheap energy alternatives for Europe as a “threat,” noting that Washington has “always wanted to isolate Russia” to prevent oil and gas sales to the EU. He said the Joe Biden administration feared Europe would “walk away” from the conflict in Ukraine and felt the need to pressure allies to stay the course. “What [Biden] did is he said, ‘I’m in a big war with Ukraine. It’s not looking good. I want to be sure I get German and West European support,’” Hersh continued. He added that the president did not want Berlin to reverse course and reopen the Nord Stream lines, which had been under sanctions, “so he took away that option,” effectively telling his European partners “You’re second rate.”

“I know people that are paying five times as much now for electricity. People are paying three or four times more for gas. There’s not enough of it. It’s very expensive,” he said, arguing that Europe is now forced to obtain energy from other sources than Russia, including the United States itself. “And I think it’s going to undercut NATO, which I always found to be supremely useless,” he added. While the Biden administration has vocally denied Hersh’s report, with State Department spokesperson Ned Price calling it “utter and complete nonsense,” the journalist has stuck by his unnamed source, insisting the information relayed to him was accurate. He told Democracy Now! that he would continue to report on the issue in the future, saying there are “still things I need to write about.”

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“I can tell you that the people involved in the operation saw the president as choosing to keep Germany cold for his short-range political goals, and that horrified them.”

The US Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline. Interview with Seymour Hersh (GR)

Joe Biden decided not to blow them up. It was in early June, five months into the war, but then, in September, he decided to do it. I’ll tell you something. The operational people, the people who do kinetic things for the United States, they do what the president says, and they initially thought this was a useful weapon that he could use in negotiations. But at some point, once the Russians went in, and then when the operation was done, this became increasingly odious to the people who did it. These are well-trained people; they are in the highest level of secret intelligence agencies. They turned on the project. They thought this was an insane thing to do. And within a week, or three or four days after the bombing, after they did what they were ordered to, there was a lot of anger and hostility. This is obviously reflected in the fact that I’m learning so much about it.And I’ll tell you something else. The people in America and Europe who build pipelines know what happened. I’m telling you something important. The people who own companies that build pipelines know the story. I didn’t get the story from them but I learned quickly they know.
.
[..] The secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, said a few days after the pipeline was blown up, at a news conference, that a major economic and almost military force was taken away from Vladimir Putin. He said this was a tremendous opportunity, as Russia could no longer weaponize the pipelines — meaning that it was not able to force Western Europe not to support the United States in the war. The fear was that Western Europe would not go along any longer in the war. I think that the reason they decided to do it then was that the war wasn’t going well for the West, and they were afraid with winter coming. The Nord Stream 2 has been sanctioned by Germany, and the United States was afraid that Germany would lift the sanctions because of a bad winter.
.
FABIAN SCHEIDLER: According to you, what were the motives when you look behind the scenes? The US government was opposed to the pipeline for many reasons. Some say they were opposed to it because they wanted to weaken Russia, to weaken the ties between Russia and Western Europe, Germany especially. But maybe also to weaken the German economy, which, after all, is a competitor to the US economy. With the high gas prices, enterprises have started to move to the United States. So what’s your sense of the motives of the US government, if they blew up the pipeline?
.
SEYMOUR HERSH: I don’t think they thought it through. I know this sounds strange. I don’t think that Blinken and some others in the administration are deep thinkers. There certainly are people in the American economy who like the idea of us being more competitive. We’re selling LNG, liquefied gas, at extremely big profits; we’re making a lot of money on it. I’m sure there were some people thinking, boy, this is going to be a long-time boost for the American economy. But in that White House, I think the obsession was always reelection, and they wanted to win the war, they wanted to get a victory, they want Ukraine to somehow magically win. There could be some people who think maybe it’ll be better for our economy if the German economy is weak, but that’s crazy thinking. I think, basically, that we’ve bitten deep into something that’s not going to work. The war is not going to turn out well for this government.

[..] What I know is there’s no way this war is going to turn out the way we want, and I don’t know what we’re going to do as we go further down the line. It scares me if the president was willing to do this.And the people who did this mission believed that the president did realize what he was doing to the people of Germany, that he was punishing them for a war that wasn’t going well. And in the long run, this is going to be very detrimental not only to his reputation as the president but politically too. It’s going to be a stigma for America.So what you have is a White House that thought it may have a losing card: Germany and Western Europe may stop giving the arms we want and the German chancellor could turn the pipeline on — that was always a fear. I would be asking a lot of questions to Chancellor Scholz. I would ask him what he learned in February when he was with the president. The operation was a big secret, and the president wasn’t supposed to tell anybody about this capability. But he does talk. He says things that he doesn’t want to.

[..] The point is that Biden chose to keep Germany cold this winter. The president of the United States would rather see Germany cold [because of energy shortages] than Germany possibly not supportive in the Ukraine war, and that, to me, is going to be a devastating thing for this White House. For me, and I think also for the people on the mission, it was appalling. [..] I can tell you that the people involved in the operation saw the president as choosing to keep Germany cold for his short-range political goals, and that horrified them. I’m talking about American people that are intensely loyal to the United States. In the CIA, it’s understood that, as I put it in my article, they work for the Crown, they don’t work for the Constitution.

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“..what possible explanation could be offered when the Biden co-conspirators, millions of Americans and Putin’s Security Council all know the truth..”

US Presidents Renege on Agreements with Russia (Parsons)

A week after Sy Hersh’s expose on the Nord Stream pipeline explosions, there is still no word that pretend President Biden who denies any knowledge or involvement in causing an Act of War in the Baltic Sea has yet to offer an explanation to the American public or reach out to Russian President Vladimir Putin – but what possible explanation could be offered when the Biden co-conspirators, millions of Americans and Putin’s Security Council all know the truth. Even though the balloon distraction consumes the American mainstream media with the anonymous buoyant inflatable nonsense of a psyop as if to avoid the inescapable moment of truth – which will come inevitably. In any case, a good guess is that the Russians are not amused by whatever game the Biden Administration has conjured up to deflect attention from the reality of a world level Act of War crisis.


While the media remains aflutter with the guessing-game possibilities, TPTB appear confident that because Russia has been restrained and prudent in its reactions during its special military operation; including the unrelenting NATO lies but especially to the inhumanity of the Ukraine Nazi’s. There is a general refusal on the part of the Americans to believe that The Bear would ever retaliate, that they could never be pushed so far until there was nowhere else to go. Perhaps as the European mainland flounders in an energy and economic crisis of its own making, they are experiencing a resurgence of lost sovereignty and awareness of their loss of independence at the hands of the US. As the US and rest of the world await Russia’s response to the Biden Administration’s denial, legendary professor, historian, philosopher and political analyst emeritus Noam Chomsky has reminded us of the reckless and provocative impact of the US withdrawal of arms control agreements on Russia’s well-defined borders and legitimate security interests.

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Translation: we are losing.

Ukraine Conflict Will Likely Have No Military Winner – Milley (RT)

The Ukraine conflict can only end through a negotiated peace deal because neither side is likely to achieve its goals on the battlefield, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday. “It will be almost impossible for the Russians to achieve their political objectives by military means,” Milley claimed without providing specific reasons for his stance. “It is unlikely that Russia is going to overrun Ukraine. It’s just not going to happen.” He added that it also would be “very, very difficult for Ukraine this year to kick the Russians out of every inch” of the territory that Moscow’s forces have already captured.

America’s top-ranking military officer made his comments after traveling to Brussels earlier this week to coordinate efforts with NATO allies on shoring up Ukraine’s firepower for a planned spring counter-offensive. Kiev is burning through weaponry at a rate “many times higher” than its Western allies can produce it, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Monday. Milley said the ammunition strain has forced the Pentagon to review its weapons inventories and contemplate increases in spending. US officials are re-examining their assumptions about supply needs after decades of focusing on counterterrorism missions and unconventional warfare.

“One of the lessons of this war is the very high consumption rates of conventional munitions, and we are re-examining our own stockages and our own plans to make sure that we got it right,” Milley told FT. “We’re trying to do the analysis so that we can then estimate what we think the true requirement would be, and then we have to put that in the budget. Ammunition is very expensive.” The Pentagon’s current annual budget stands at $817 billion, exceeding the combined total for the rest of the world’s ten largest military spenders combined. Washington has already allocated more than $110 billion in aid for Ukraine since Russia’s military operation began last February.

Republican lawmakers, such as Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Andy Biggs of Arizona, have criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for severely depleting US weapons stockpiles to arm Ukraine. Earlier this week, Milley told reporters in Brussels that Russia has already lost. “They’ve lost strategically, operationally and tactically, and they are paying an enormous price on the battlefield.” Retired US Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor, a former Pentagon adviser, said such claims have eroded the Biden administration’s credibility. “General Milley has made it very clear that he’s aligned with the left, he is part of this administration, he’s going to say whatever they want him to say.”

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Translation: there will be no winner, but Russia lost.

Russia Has Lost ‘Strategically, Operationally And Tactically’ – Milley (G.)

General Mark Milley, chairman of America’s joint chiefs of staff, has said Russia has lost “strategically, operationally and tactically” and that they are “paying an enormous price on the battlefield” in Ukraine. Milley, speaking at a joint news conference with US defence secretary Lloyd Austin, said President Vladimir Putin believed he could defeat Ukraine quickly when he ordered his troops to invade almost a year ago. [Putin] was wrong. Ukraine remains free. They remain independent. Nato and its coalition has never been stronger. Now, Russia is a global pariah and the world remains inspired by Ukrainian bravery and resilience. In short, Russia has lost – they’ve lost strategically, operationally and tactically and they are paying an enormous price on the battlefield.

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“It doesn’t really make sense to send tanks to Ukraine unless you send combat aircraft to give them cover.”

The Horrifying Endgame in Ukraine (Rickards)

I’ve written extensively about two facets of the war in Ukraine that you don’t hear from legacy media in the United States or U.K. The first is that Russia is actually winning the war. U.S. outlets such as The New York Times (a channel for the State Department) and The Washington Post (a channel for the CIA) report endlessly about how Russian plans have failed, about how incompetent they are about how the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have pushed back Russians in the Donbass, and how NATO weapons such as U.S. Abrams tanks, U.K. Challenger tanks and German Leopard tanks will turn the tide against Russia soon. This is all nonsense. None of it is true.

First off, the Ukrainian advances that took place in late summer were against lightly defended positions that the Russians quickly conceded to conserve forces. The Russians were willing to give up the land so that they wouldn’t lose valuable men and materiel. The Russians withdrew to more defensible positions and have been badly mauling Ukrainian attacking forces ever since. Ukraine has wasted incredibly large amounts of men and equipment in these futile and ill-advised attacks. In all, credible reports indicate that AFU casualties are nearing 500,000 and are increasing at an unsustainable rate. On the other hand, reports of 100,000 Russian dead are almost certainly wild exaggerations put out by Ukraine. The BBC attempted to verify these numbers and could only find about 20,000 confirmed Russian dead based on extensive searches on funeral notices, public records, etc.

What about the tanks NATO is supposedly sending? Well, the tanks have not been delivered yet and most won’t be for months or longer. Our own M1 Abrams tanks might not even arrive for a year or more. We actually have to custom build these tanks so that they don’t have the special armor and other advanced systems that our own M1s have. The Pentagon doesn’t want them falling into Russian hands if they’re destroyed or captured. Besides, we’re only sending 31 tanks anyway. When the NATO tanks do arrive, they’ll likely quickly be destroyed by Russian artillery, anti-tank weapons and precision missiles. They’re good tanks, but far from invincible. For decades, the Russians have been developing powerful weapons specifically designed to destroy these NATO tank models. The Russians aren’t particularly worried about them.

Aside from that, tanks rely on effective air cover for protection, which Ukraine lacks. They’ll be sitting ducks on the battlefield. It doesn’t really make sense to send tanks to Ukraine unless you send combat aircraft to give them cover. Meanwhile, Russian forces have nearly encircled the city of Bakhmut, which is a major transportation and logistics hub, with several key roads and rail lines passing through it. It’ll probably fall to the Russians within weeks. Losing Bakhmut will be a major blow to Ukraine, despite claims in the western media that it really isn’t very important. Ukraine’s entire 800-mile defensive line would probably begin to crumble, and they don’t have heavily fortified positions to fall back on. Ukrainian troops, while brave and competent soldiers, are exhausted and running out of supplies as it is.

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“..She also expressed a preference for Russians overthrowing their government for a “better future” offered by the West..”

Nuland Outlines US Goals In Ukraine (RT)

Unless the Crimean peninsula is at the very least “demilitarized” Ukraine won’t feel safe, while the ideal end to the current conflict is with a revolution in Moscow, the US Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said on Thursday. Ukrainians “have to get to a map that is more sustainable for them,” Nuland said in a video interview with the Washington think tank Carnegie Endowment. They have “significant chunks of territory they need to be a viable state, before you even get to the question of Crimea, and that’s what they’re focused on now.” The US position is that Ukraine is “owed and due all of their territory within their international borders,” which means Crimea as well, Nuland added.

Assigned to Ukraine by the Soviet Union in 1954, Crimea voted to rejoin Russia in March 2014, after the violent coup in Kiev that Nuland helped “midwife,” according to the infamous phone call intercept. “Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is – at a minimum, at a minimum – demilitarized,” Nuland insisted on Thursday, claiming that Moscow had turned the peninsula into a military base, with command posts, logistics depots and airfields for “Iranian drones.” “Those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them, and we are supporting that,” she said. Earlier this week, Politico quoted two anonymous officials to imply that Nuland’s boss, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, had admitted the US was not “actively encouraging” Ukraine to seize Crimea and that any moves on the peninsula would be “Kiev’s decision alone.”

Nuland, however, told Carnegie that the battlefield objectives of Washington and Kiev overlap “in terms of what the Ukrainians want to do on the battlefield, and what we’re enabling them to plan to do.” Asked how she saw the conflict ending, Nuland said the West “must never trust, as long as Vladimir Putin is in power, or somebody like him, that this is truly over.” Even if the fighting ends on Ukraine’s terms, there “has to be a long-term plan” to build up Ukraine’s military as a deterrent. She also expressed a preference for Russians overthrowing their government for a “better future” offered by the West.

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“What exactly do they know? Is there anything they are trying to hide? I suppose any truly objective, impartial and professional media will want to seek out the truth..”

Beijing Challenges Western Press On Nord Stream Blasts (RT)

Beijing has mocked mainstream Western media for its apparent reluctance to look into recent allegations by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, that the US was responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream undersea pipelines last year. The sabotage of the natural gas routes last September had a major economic and environmental impact and caused global concern over the safety of cross-border infrastructure, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said during a press briefing on Thursday. “Immediately after the explosions, we saw extensive coverage in US and other Western media with one-sided speculations on who was ‘responsible’ for the sabotage,” he said. “What we see now, however, is that these media, hailed as free, professional and impartial, have fallen silent over Seymour Hersh’s detailed report.”

The veteran investigative journalist reported last week that US President Joe Biden had ordered a secret operation to sabotage the crucial energy link. According to his source, which Hersh did not reveal, the US colluded with Norway to plant explosives under the guise of a NATO naval exercise and detonate it remotely months later. Both nations have denied the allegations. Wang wondered if Western outlets really wanted to know the truth about what happened, suggesting that some may be covering up for the Biden administration. “What exactly do they know? Is there anything they are trying to hide? I suppose any truly objective, impartial and professional media will want to seek out the truth,” the Chinese diplomat said.

Russia, which argued from the outset that the US had most to gain from knocking out the Nord Stream pipelines, expressed similar sentiments. “We consider this incident an act of international terrorism that warrants a comprehensive and independent investigation,” Igor Girenko, the spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington said. He urged Washington to “at least try to prove that they were not involved in the destruction of the gas pipelines.”

Clare Daly

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Olga Sukharevskaya is a former Ukrainian diplomat.

The West Has Long Planned A Proxy War With Russia In Ukraine (Sukharevskaya)

Western ‘aid’ is killing Ukrainians by the thousands. In November 2022, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, estimated that Kiev had lost at least 100,000 servicemen, before deleting her comments after uproar from supporters of Ukraine. Three more months have passed since then. Big expansions to cemeteries have sprouted up all over Ukraine. Trying to make up for losses, the authorities have ordered more mobilization. This process has turned into a hunt, with men being dragged to war by force, as dozens of videos freely available online show. Given equipment losses, it’s likely that attacks on the civilian population of Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson, as well as Russia’s border regions, are carried out almost exclusively using Western weapons.

Evidence of this is seen from video footage of destroyed civilian infrastructure in Donbass. American “gifts” in the form of HIMARS strike residential areas in Donetsk and in the deep rear of the Lugansk city of Schastye. The Kalinin hospital in Donetsk and a hospital in Novoaidar, Lugansk, were both destroyed by NATO weapons. And this is only a small portion of the slaughter being committed by Kiev, using Western supplies. According to UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu, at least 7,100 civilians have been killed in the course of combat operations since February 2022. “The real numbers are probably much bigger,” Nakamitsu said. Norwegian Chief of Defense Eirik Kristoffersen estimates civilian casualties at 30,000 people.

There is also evidence that some long-range missiles currently publicly only under discussion have already been provided to Kiev. The head of the administration of the Russian part of Zaporozhye Region, Vladimir Rogov, has reported that Ukrainian missiles hit the hotel complex ‘Hunter’s Camp’ in Melitopol, resulting in civilian deaths. However, the city is located more than 100 km from the frontline. The lives of the Ukrainian people have been sacrificed in the interests of a geopolitical confrontation planned by the West. At a meeting of the Council of Europe on January 24, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said, “We (the EU) are waging a war against Russia, not against each other.” She was subsequently forced to take her words back, but other Western officials have said the same thing, even if in less straightforward ways.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has stressed, “If Putin prevails, it will mean a defeat not only for Ukraine but for all of us.” As for Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, he went so far as to call the defeat of Russia “the Polish and European meaning of life.” Politicians generally tell the truth only after resigning. Statements from former German chancellor Angela Merkel and former French president Francois Hollande have revealed that the 2014 and 2015 Minsk (peace) Agreements were signed only in order to arm Ukraine and buy it time before a full on military confrontation with Russia. In other words, waging war with Russia by proxy through Ukraine has been a meticulously planned strategy, long in the making.

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“The deal outlined moves to declare a ceasefire, withdraw weapons, declare amnesty, restore economic ties and conduct constitutional reform in Ukraine..”

Russia Acted Out Of Necessity To Implement Minsk Accords – Kremlin (TASS)

Russia took into account the need to implement the Minsk Accords and exerted numerous efforts to make sure that the commitments under the deal were implemented by Ukraine, France, and Germany, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. The Russian presidential spokesman responded with a negative reply to a question as to whether Moscow assumed that the deal would not be carried out once the accords were signed. “You know how much effort the Russian side invested into the negotiating track in order to force both the Ukrainian side and Berlin and Paris to go down the path of fulfilling the commitments that the parties had undertaken under the Minsk agreements,” he continued.

According to Peskov, Moscow “exerted a great deal of effort” into the Minsk Accords. He recalled that the talks on the issue involved the personal participation of President Vladimir Putin, ex-Presidential Aide Vladislav Surkov and Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Dmitry Kozak. “Undoubtedly, the main objective was to force Kiev to fulfill its obligations,” Peskov told the news briefing. The Minsk Accords were the cornerstone of the Donbass peace process. The deal outlined moves to declare a ceasefire, withdraw weapons, declare amnesty, restore economic ties and conduct constitutional reform in Ukraine through dialogue with the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR, LPR), aimed at decentralizing power and providing a special status to certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

However, the negotiation process had actually stalled because of Kiev’s refusal to fulfill the political provisions of the Minsk accords. In particular, Kiev rejected holding any direct dialogue with the DPR and the LPR, opposed the consolidation of the regions’ special status in the constitution, and also demanded that a section of the border with Russia in Donbass be placed under Ukrainian control until the political part of the deal was implemented.

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“These states of the Global South are also developing plans for new international reserve currency designed to undercut the ability of Washington to dictate international policy..”

Implications of US Destruction of Nordstream 2 Pipeline (Fuller)

The stunning recent and detailed reportage of direct American sabotage of the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline represents a major geostrategic watershed in two senses: First, the implications of Washington’s act of war with disastrous economic impact upon Europe will not subside easily. But more importantly this event has demonstrated America’s successful cowing of any public commentary on the event — across U.S. media but more so across all European media itself, including in the most economically victimized state —Germany. We observe stunning, nearly inexplicable silence over this major international event. And Russia has gotten the message — American policies and statements have deeply reinforced Russia’s long-standing belief that the West is implacably hostile to any Russian role in the West — going back to the bitter and irrevocable split of Christendom between Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1054. That was later followed up by two devastating European invasions of Russia (Napoleon and Hitler).

Growing European trade ties — especially Germany — with Russia since the end of the Cold War have been thrown on the trash heap by NATO expansion east. The hostility of East-West relations has been reinforced and deepened. Washington has no desire to work out a new common-European security policy that includes Russian interests as well. And these U.S. policies have helped ensure that Russia’s future now firmly lies in the East–Vladivostok and with China in a shared rejection of U.S. global hegemony. The rise of a new Great Wall that blocks off Russia from Western Europe is one of the most striking outcomes of this war: European officialdom seems to have cast in its lot, perhaps reluctantly but irrevocably, with the American strategic goals in the world.

Those goals now even speak of creating a new “NATO Pacific” designed to challenge Chinese power economically and strategically in China’s own backyard — at great potential economic cost to Europe. But for all this demonstration of Washington’s hold over Europe, it is also striking to note how the great majority of the world has indeed not gone along with U.S. strategic ambitions to weaken and humble Russia or to impose Washington’s own geopolitical architecture on most of the rest of the world. Broadly speaking Latin America, the Middle East and Africa do not perceive their strategic interests as aligning with Washington’s. Apart from some lip service criticism of Russia, few states including large segments of Asia and India itself have imposed any meaningful sanctions against Russia.

More vividly, we see the emergence of new non-Western alliances such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) with many other major states lining up to include Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. These states of the Global South are also developing plans for new international reserve currency designed to undercut the ability of Washington to dictate international policy through U.S. dollar-based sanctions.

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“If you are dealing with a nuclear power and if you are citing the goal of inflicting defeat to this nuclear power, you should have all the options in mind of our possible response.”

Russian Diplomats Issue Dire Warnings that War with US Is Close (LI)

Starting in 2008, NATO has repeatedly declared its intention to someday allow Ukraine to become a member, again reiterating that pledge at a recent alliance summit. The move would cross the “brightest of all red lines” for Moscow, as was previously noted by then-State Department official and current CIA Director William Burns, who penned a 2008 memo warning of the geopolitical perils of extending membership to Kiev. Still, President Joe Biden has refused to change course, insisting it is up to Ukraine whether it would like to join the US-led military bloc while effectively making Kiev a de facto member in the meantime. In an interview with Newsweek on Tuesday, Russia’s UN envoy Dmitry Polyanskiy argued that the West has not respected Moscow’s core security concerns, and has become directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine.

“All the red lines have already been crossed by Western countries. There is already semi-direct involvement of NATO in the conflict because it’s not only weaponry but it’s intelligence,” he said. “It’s the situation when the targets of certain artillery systems, in particular HIMARS, these targets can be hit only with the coordination with Washington.” Last week, the Washington Post reported that Ukraine relies on American intelligence for selecting targets. Since the start of the year, the White House has authorized the shipment of main battle tanks and long-range rockets to Kiev. Additionally, NATO appears to be preparing to send Western-made warplanes to Ukraine. ”It means that NATO is not only providing weapons but also are choosing the targets for Ukrainian strikes,” Polyanskiy continued.

He went on to allege that citizens from NATO countries are already fighting – as well as getting captured and killed – in Ukraine. ”We know this from the people that we capture and from the bodies that we see on the battlefield.” The ambassador said Western weapons would only escalate the conflict, even warning that foreign intervention could eventually trigger a nuclear war. “It’s absolutely clear that any deliveries of weapons to the zone of conflict, of course, is like pouring oil into the fire,” he said, adding “If you are dealing with a nuclear power and if you are citing the goal of inflicting defeat to this nuclear power, you should have all the options in mind of our possible response.”

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Staley’s done. Now for the rest.

Bombshell New Emails Unsealed Between Epstein and JP Morgan Executive (TP)

Newly unsealed documents relating to the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein lawsuit against JPMorgan begin to paint a larger picture of how the Epstein sex trafficking operation was conducted. Newly unsealed passages of a federal lawsuit have revealed that as far back as 2006, former top executives at JPMorgan privately discussed abuse allegations surrounding the late predator Jeffrey Epstein, and more than 20 of his sex trafficking victims were paid through accounts at the mega bank. “These women were trafficked and abused during different intervals between at least 2003 and July 2019, when Epstein was arrested and jailed, and these women received payments, typically multiple payments, between 2003 and 2013 in excess of $1 million collectively,” a passage states.

“Epstein also withdrew more than $775,000 in cash over that time frame from JP Morgan accounts, especially significant as Epstein was known to pay for “massages,” or sexual encounters, in cash.” Earlier, the allegations, along with some others, were concealed with redactions by the government of the Virgin Islands while submitting its legal action against JP Morgan Chase, citing its involvement in Epstein’s offenses. Late Wednesday, the Virgin Islands unsealed more documents relating to their investigation. The bombshell documents reveal just how involved JP Morgan was with Epstein. Not only did they know what Epstein was up to, but they were complicit. JPMorgan’s then-senior executive Jes Staley had a very close relationship with Epstein, sending him 1,200 emails that suggest he was involved in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.

“Between 2008 and 2012, Staley exchanged approximately 1,200 emails with Epstein from his JP Morgan email account,” the lawsuit says. “These communications show a close personal relationship and ‘profound’ friendship between the two men and even suggest that Staley may have been involved in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.” One Staley email was even sent from Epstein’s Little St. James in 2009 when Epstein was in jail in Florida. “So when all hell breaks lo[o]se, and the world is crumbling, I will come here, and be at peace,” the email read. “Presently, I’m in the hot tub with a glass of white wine. This is an amazing place. Truly amazing. Next time, we’re here together. I owe you much. And I deeply appreciate our friendship. I have few so profound.”

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“..a testing and screening program to determine whether players have been adversely affected by the injections and to develop a set of functional medical protocols and treatments in order to address and heal any deleterious effects of the vaccines..”

The players don’t want to be tested, afraid they can’t play.

NFL Players Association Urged to Screen for Vaccine Side Effects (ET)

The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) is being urged to offer players cardiac screening in light of the growing concern over COVID-19 vaccines causing heart inflammation. The Health Freedom Defense Fund urged the association in a recent letter to implement screening because the vaccines can cause myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation. Young males are the most at risk. Most NFL players received a COVID-19 vaccine under pressure from teams and the league. “Safety signals illustrate that the near and long-term health outcomes of the COVID-19 vaccines remain uncertain,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the fund, told DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the players association, in the letter.

RFK jr
https://twitter.com/i/status/1626318214325055490

“A multitude of adverse reactions to these injections, including myocarditis, are wide-ranging and confirmed, and as such, prudence dictates that the NFLPA investigate the extent to which the COVID-19 shots may have resulted in injury, compromised health or death of players,” Manookian said. She pointed out that Damar Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, suffered a cardiac arrest on the field during a Monday Night Football game in January. The reason for the incident remains unknown; Hamlin declined to convey during a recent televised interview what his doctors told him about the incident. Former NFL players also have suffered heart attacks and strokes following vaccination. The NFLPA should introduce “a testing and screening program to determine whether players have been adversely affected by the injections and to develop a set of functional medical protocols and treatments in order to address and heal any deleterious effects of the vaccines,” Manookian said.

[..] Manookian informed the NFLPA that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration placed a warning regarding myocarditis and a related condition, pericarditis, on the labels for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. She also pointed to research papers on post-vaccination myocarditis. Among them were a study by Florida authorities that found a jump in cardiac-related deaths among the vaccinated; a study that found an increased risk of myocarditis and myopericarditis after a second dose of Pfizer’s vaccine and the first and second doses of Moderna’s vaccine, with the highest risk in young males; a reanalysis of the original clinical trials that found a higher number of serious adverse events of special interest among the vaccinated; and experts in Germany reporting, after analyzing autopsies, that some of the deceased likely died from vaccine-induced myocarditis.

“We have a growing body of scientific evidence showing that there is a risk to young males in particular, and many of them have some critical cardiac problems,” Manookian said. The NFLPA did the right thing when it comes to concussions, supporting stronger protections for players, she said. “I think that we should be doing the same thing with respect to these COVID injections and the potential for subclinical cardiac issues,” Manookian said.

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Biden walk

 

 

Salamander
https://twitter.com/i/status/1626276298694828032

 

 


In 1970, students in a fifth-grade class at Hawthorne School in Beverly Hills were assigned to write a letter to someone they admired, asking them “What makes a good citizen?”10yr old Joel Lipton wrote to Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz. Joel got a reply…

 

 

Abandoned ant hill
https://twitter.com/i/status/1626164699191451651

 

 

Cuttlefish
https://twitter.com/i/status/1626293722752188419

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jan 302023
 


Charles Camoin Village Street in Collioure 1912

 

Boris Johson “Reveals” Vladimir Putin’s Threat To Assassinate Him (DM)
Ukraine: The War That Went Wrong (Chris Hedges)
Is The Mood Shifting In Washington? (Livshitz)
Scholz Says He Will Continue Telephone Talks With Putin (TASS)
German MP Condemns ‘US-led Proxy War Against Russia’ (GPE)
Latin America Refuses To Send Ukraine Weapons, Despite Western Pressure (Norton)
2nd Hunter Biden Email From Laptop With Classified Information Uncovered (GP)
A “Debt Doom Loop” Is Now Fully Engaged (QTR)
How to Create your own Shadow Government (Ugo Bardi)
FDA Sued for Withholding COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Analyses (ET)
Top Israel Scientist Speaks Out Against COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines (Pulse)
Deaths Running 26% Above Pre-Pandemic Levels – Vaccines a Leading Suspect (DS)
Do COVID-19 RNA-Injections Affect Male Fertility? (PF)
Link Between Massive Drop in Birth Rates, mRNA Vaccines Undeniable (Latypova)

 

 

 

 

Bhakdi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1619962132115902464

 

 

 

 

MIT Prof

https://twitter.com/i/status/1619949843052462082

 

 

Gohmert

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ha ha ha! Boris misses the spotlight, he wants to feel important. It’s a fine line between important and impotent.

Boris Johson “Reveals” Vladimir Putin’s Threat To Assassinate Him (DM)

Vladimir Putin threatened to assassinate Boris Johnson in the run-up to the Ukraine war, it emerged last night. The former prime minister said the Russian leader had bragged it would ‘take only a minute’ to kill him with a missile after he warned him to abandon his plans to attack Ukraine. The astonishing threat was made in February last year after Mr Johnson visited Kyiv to assure Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky that Britain would back his country if Russia invaded. Mr Johnson said that on his return, he had ‘a very long, most extraordinary call’ with Putin. At the time, the Russian president was publicly denying that he planned to invade Ukraine, despite massing tens of thousands of troops on its borders. Mr Johnson told him that war would be an ‘utter catastrophe’ and trigger unprecedented Western sanctions.


He played down the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato, given the opposition from members such as France and Germany, but warned that war could galvanise support behind Kyiv and would result in ‘more Nato, not less Nato’ on Russia’s borders. Mr Johnson said: ‘He said, “Boris, you say that Ukraine is not going to join Nato any time soon… what is any time soon?” And I said, “Well, it’s not going to join Nato for the foreseeable future. You know that perfectly well”. ‘He sort of threatened me at one point and said, “Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile it would take only a minute”.. ‘I think from the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have, he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate.’ The revelation comes in a BBC documentary series called Putin v the West, which is due to be broadcast tonight.

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“Empires in terminal decline leap from one military fiasco to the next.”

Ukraine: The War That Went Wrong (Chris Hedges)

Empires in terminal decline leap from one military fiasco to the next. The war in Ukraine, another bungled attempt to reassert U.S. global hegemony, fits this pattern. The danger is that the more dire things look, the more the U.S. will escalate the conflict, potentially provoking open confrontation with Russia. [..] NATO military commanders understand that the infusion of these weapons systems into the war will not alter what is, at best, a stalemate, defined largely by artillery duels over hundreds of miles of front lines. The purchase of these weapons systems — one M1 Abrams tank costs $10 million when training and sustainment are included — increases the profits of the arms manufacturers. The use of these weapons in Ukraine allows them to be tested in battlefield conditions, making the war a laboratory for weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin. All this is useful to NATO and to the arms industry. But it is not very useful to Ukraine.

The other problem with advanced weapons systems such as the M1 Abrams, which have 1,500-horsepower turbine engines that run on jet fuel, is that they are temperamental and require highly skilled and near constant maintenance. They are not forgiving to those operating them who make mistakes; indeed, mistakes can be lethal. The most optimistic scenario for deploying M1-Abrams tanks in Ukraine is six to eight months, more likely longer. If Russia launches a major offensive in the spring, as expected, the M1 Abrams will not be part of the Ukrainian arsenal. Even when they do arrive, they will not significantly alter the balance of power, especially if the Russians are able to turn the tanks, manned by inexperienced crews, into charred hulks. So why all this infusion of high-tech weaponry? We can sum it up in one word: panic.

Having declared a de facto war on Russia and openly calling for the removal of Vladimir Putin, the neoconservative pimps of war watch with dread as Ukraine is being pummeled by a relentless Russian war of attrition. Ukraine has suffered nearly 18,000 civilian casualties (6,919 killed and 11,075 injured). It has also seen around 8 percent of its total housing destroyed or damaged and 50 percent of its energy infrastructure directly impacted with frequent power cuts. Ukraine requires at least $3 billion a month in outside support to keep its economy afloat, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director recently said. Nearly 14 million Ukrainians have been displaced — 8 million in Europe and 6 million internally — and up to 18 million people, or 40 percent of Ukraine’s population, will soon require humanitarian assistance. Ukraine’s economy contracted by 35 percent in 2022, and 60 percent of Ukrainians are now poised to live on less than $5.5 a day, according to World Bank estimates.

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“..the extent of NATO allies’ indirect involvement in the war is breathtaking in scope..”

Is The Mood Shifting In Washington? (Livshitz)

The RAND Corporation, a highly influential elite national security think tank funded directly by the Pentagon, has published a landmark report stating that prolonging the proxy war is actively harming the US and its allies and warning Washington that it should avoid “a protracted conflict” in Ukraine. The report has an unequivocal title, “Avoiding a long war: US policy and the trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” which provides a strong indication as to its contents. It starts by stating that the fighting represents “the most significant interstate conflict in decades, and its evolution will have major consequences” for Washington, which includes US “interests” being actively harmed. The report makes it very clear that while Ukrainians have been doing the fighting, and their cities have been “flattened” and “economy decimated,” these “interests” are “not synonymous” with Kiev’s.

The US ending its financial, humanitarian and particularly military support promptly would cause Ukraine to completely collapse, and RAND cites several reasons why doing so would be sensible, not least because a Ukrainian victory is regarded as both “improbable” and “unlikely,” due to Russian “resolve,” and its military mobilization having “rectified the manpower deficit that enabled Ukraine’s success in the Kharkiv counteroffensive.” From the perspective of US “interests,” RAND warns that while the Kremlin has not threatened to use nuclear weapons, there are “several issues that make Russian use of nuclear weapons both a plausible contingency Washington needs to account for and a hugely important factor in determining the future trajectory of the conflict.”

The think tank believes the Biden administration “has ample reason to make the prevention of Russian use of nuclear weapons a paramount priority.” In particular, it should seek to avoid a “direct nuclear exchange” with Moscow, a “direct conflict with Russia”, or wider “NATO-Russia war.” On the latter point, RAND worries that US general Mark Milley’s demand that the conflict stay “inside the geographical boundaries of Ukraine” is on the verge of being disrespected, as “the extent of NATO allies’ indirect involvement in the war is breathtaking in scope,” including “tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and other aid” and “tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support,” along with “billions of dollars monthly in direct budgetary support to Kiev.”

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Call Boris.

Scholz Says He Will Continue Telephone Talks With Putin (TASS)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz considers it necessary to continue telephone talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I will have telephone conversations with Putin again as it is necessary to talk to each other,” Scholz said in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel daily published on Sunday. The tone of such conversations “is not impolite,” despite “absolutely different” views on the situation, the German chancellor noted, referring to Russia’s special operation in Ukraine in this context as “an awful senseless war.” “Sometimes the issue was about particular questions of prisoner swap, grain export, Zaporozhye NPP,” Scholz said. “But I consider it important to always bring the conversation back to a particular topic on the way for the world to get out of this awful state. The conditions for that are clear – the pullout of Russian troops,” he added. German Chancellor and Russian President last had a telephone conversation on December 2, 2022.

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“Sevim Dagdelen has been a member of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, since 2005. She is the spokeswoman for the Die Linke (Left Party) parliamentary group on the Bundestag’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, a deputy member of the Defense Committee, and spokeswoman for international policy and disarmament.”

German MP Condemns ‘US-led Proxy War Against Russia’ (GPE)

I would like to deal in my talk with the following questions: How can the origins of this war be explained? What are the global effects of the war, particularly on countries of the Global South that are not involved in the war but are severely affected by its consequences? What ways could there be to resolve this conflict, and what prospects could there be for a world order based on peaceful coexistence and fairness?The war in Ukraine has set humanity back several years, if not decades, on this path. Against this backdrop, I would like to deal in my talk with the following questions: How can the origins of this war be explained? What are the global effects of the war, particularly on countries of the Global South that are not involved in the war but are severely affected by its consequences? What ways could there be to resolve this conflict, and what prospects could there be for a world order based on peaceful coexistence and fairness?

My initial hypothesis comprises three parts. Firstly, the proxy war in Ukraine is indicative of an attempt by the United States to preserve its absolute global predominance in the twilight of a unipolar age. An elementary part of this strategy has been the US quest since the end of the Cold War to prevent the creation of a common security system in Europe that includes Russia. The resultant war is therefore partly due to the inability of Europe and the EU, because of the political rule of a comprador bourgeoisie, to cast off their dependence on the United States and to pursue a sovereign policy attuned to the interests of their own population, a policy aimed at peace, stability, and prosperity. Secondly, the war against Russia, which is being waged primarily on the economic front, is also an inwardly targeted social assault.

In Europe, the senseless economic war is tantamount to economic self-amputation, and is conducive to a shift in the balance of power within the Western alliance in favor of the United States. The unprecedented militarization in the context of the mobilization against Russia is also being accompanied by a massive bottom-up redistribution of wealth within NATO countries. While low-earners despair of meeting the rocketing cost of energy and food because of the economic sanctions, the energy companies are reaping billions in windfall profits. Thirdly, in the hegemonic conflict with Russia, the West is holding the countries of the Global South hostage, and so is increasingly isolating itself.

Orban

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“How can the world’s largest economic power say that it has no milk for children after President Biden announced $40 billion to buy arms meant for the war in Ukraine?”

Latin America Refuses To Send Ukraine Weapons, Despite Western Pressure (Norton)

Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have rejected requests by the United States and European Union that they send weapons to Ukraine. The commander of the US military’s Southern Command (Southcom), which operates in Latin America and the Caribbean, revealed on January 19 that Washington has been pressuring countries in the region to arm Ukraine. Southcom wants Latin American nations to “replace [their] Russian equipment with United States equipment – if those countries want to donate it to Ukraine”, said Army General Laura J. Richardson. But Latin America’s left-wing leaders have refused, instead maintaining neutrality and urging peace. The socialist governments in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua blamed NATO expansion and US meddling for causing the war in Ukraine.

Mexico’s progressive President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) offered to hold peace talks to end the conflict. And the leftist governments in Bolivia and Honduras have joined Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia in refusing to be part of the proxy war. Germany announced on January 25 that it would send tanks to Ukraine, in a significant escalation of the NATO proxy war against Russia.Berlin subsequently asked Brazil to ship tank munitions to Kiev. But newly inaugurated left-wing President Lula da Silva declined to do so. Lula was a co-founder of the BRICS bloc, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. He has long called for a multipolar world, and supports South-South cooperation and regional integration.

Lula has denounced Western governments for ramping up the violence in Ukraine instead of encouraging peace negotiations. During his presidential campaign in 2022, Lula criticized the White House, asking, “How can the world’s largest economic power say that it has no milk for children after President Biden announced $40 billion to buy arms meant for the war in Ukraine?”.

Norton

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And still no inquiry?

2nd Hunter Biden Email From Laptop With Classified Information Uncovered (GP)

The Biden crime family made millions in Ukraine performing nefarious and criminal activities including espionage. TGP reported on Thursday that the Bidens were using classified information to the benefit of the Hunter Biden family business. Miranda Devine provided one email that appeared to include classified material from the US government. TGP determined that this information from the 22-point email came from the US State Department and it was classified. This email included this classified information and Hunter had no security clearance or reason to have this information. This was not the first time Hunter Biden had access to classified information. Today we have another email showing more Biden family crimes. A second email on Hunter’s laptop shows that Hunter Biden had access to classified information and used it to the Biden family’s financial advantage.

The Biden’s were asked to obtain visas for Burisma executives to travel to the US in early November of 2015. In a response to the request, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer reached out to a friend with ties to the US Deep State, John Sandweg. John Sandweg worked as the Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from August 2013 to February 2014. Sandweg had a short tenure working in this role for the Obama administration. Sandweg was happy when the Biden gany replaced the Trump administration and expressed his happiness that habitual liar Alejandro Mayorkas was taking over Homeland Security. John Sandweg, a former Homeland Security Department official in the Obama administration, said his former colleagues still in government told him there is a hopeful atmosphere as Trump officials made way for their Biden replacements.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Sandweg. “There is a very palpable sense of excitement that [DHS Secretary-designate Alejandro] Mayorkas is coming back. It’s not tied to policy or politics. It’s a management and leadership issue.” In the email string below taken from the Hunter laptop, Sandweg emailed Eric Schwerin at Rosemont Seneca (Hunter Biden’s firm) on November 2, 2015. Sandveg relayed information on one of the individuals from Burisma for whom Hunter was trying to get a visa for was Mr. Zlochevskyi. Sandweg in his email says that he obtained a search:”…from the Department of Homeland Security and Customs databases did not reveal any prohibitions on Mr. Zlochevskyi ability to enter the United States. Unfortunately, after receiving the initial report, I suspected that the individual I asked to run the search only queried DHS/Customs databases and not State Department databases. As such, I asked another individual to query both databases. This search revealed the cancellation of the visa and the legal basis for the cancellation.”

Sandweg includes two attachments, one of which is labeled “Zlochevski Visa Denial”. Schwerin shared this information with Burisma, Hunter, and Devon Archer. Here are the problems with what was revealed in this email.
• Sandweg worked for Homeland Security and Customs last in 2014 and this email was from November 2015.
• Sandweg obtains information from the Department of Homeland Security and Customs databases which he should not have access to. He may have a security clearance but this would not grant him access to the systems. The information that he obtained on the visa application denial is classified.
• Sandweg shares the classified visa information with Hunter’s firm which is not a government agency.
• Hunter’s firm shares the classified information that he never should have had with Burisma, a foreign company – this is espionage.

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“We have seen this movie before..”

A “Debt Doom Loop” Is Now Fully Engaged (QTR)

We have seen this movie before. The Fed tightens, things break, the Fed reacts by opening the monetary flood gates and the cycle begins all over again. Before things break you generally see signs that trouble is coming. We call this rivets popping. There is always a lag effect between monetary policy and economic results. This current period reminds us of Summer 2007 when the Bear Stearns CDS funds failed. The GFC was 15 months later in the second half of 2008. One very large rivet that has already popped is Great Britain as we described above. Another hugely important rivet that has not popped yet, but in our opinion is close is the US Stock Market.


We think the pain has just started. Particularly in the stock market where as the chart below shows, street estimates (blue bars) are looking for continued earnings growth as if no recession is imminent. Green bars show earnings decline in recessions. The economy is slowing rapidly and will almost surely enter a recession given the record inversion in the yield curve as seen in the 2year/10year bond spread. With softening demand and increased labor costs, earnings will suffer. The Wall Street analysts who are projecting further earnings growth are on drugs in our opinion. Additionally, with higher interest rates, price multiples to earnings will compress.

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“..if you can rule from the shadows, you save yourself a lot of hassles and, if things really go bad, you may avoid most of the blame..”

How to Create your own Shadow Government (Ugo Bardi)

Not long ago, a friend of mine explained to me that he was completely sure that our elites are not just evil, but they actually practice worship of an evil deity called “Baphomet.” I must admit that I was skeptical, even though he showed me an image found somewhere in the dark web, purportedly showing the hierarchy of the worshiping organization. Yet, after some mulling over, I came to think that there is something in this idea. Much more than it would seem at first sight. Of course, I understand that you are probably already moving your mouse to click away from this page. But, if you don’t succumb to the anti-conspiracy memes implanted in your brain, let me try to explain what I have in mind. I am not saying that Baphomet could exist for real (but, who knows?) but, in our times, when politicians “create their own reality,” astral entities such as Baphomet may have assumed a memetic consistency that makes him (?) a force to be reckoned with. An AI called “Baphomet” could actually be worshiped.

Suppose you want to build a shadow government to take control of the state. It is a good idea for several reasons, the main one being that, not having to report to anyone or justify what you are doing, you can do a lot of evil things that normal governments have a harder time doing. Then, if you can rule from the shadows, you save yourself a lot of hassles and, if things really go bad, you may avoid most of the blame. But how to create such a hidden government? There have been historical cases of governments dominated by an “éminence grise,” someone who has a great influence on the leader(s). One is that of the Roman philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, said to have been the actual ruler of the Roman Empire as long as he could control his pupil, Emperor Nero. Unfortunately for Seneca, Nero eventually decided that he wanted to rule alone and got rid of his old master by ordering him to commit suicide.

That’s typical: the shadow leader gets older with time, while the young leader becomes bolder and more experienced. The end of the story is obvious. So, if you want to build a working shadow government you need to do much more than have an old man whispering words of wisdom in the ear of the leader. You need a hidden structure that controls all the layers of the apparent government. It needs to be a true alternate government, even though hidden from sight. But how could such a structure be created? How could it function? What could give it the power to operate? Let’s see if we can learn from one of the first known attempts in this sense: the Knights Templar.

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Pull the plug.

FDA Sued for Withholding COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Analyses (ET)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been sued for withholding the results of key COVID-19 vaccine safety analyses. The FDA’s actions violate federal law, the new lawsuit, filed on Jan. 26 in federal court in Washington by the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense (CHD), alleges. The suit is seeking the raw results from the FDA’s analyses of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The system, which the FDA runs with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), accepts reports of post-vaccination adverse events. As part of its vaccine safety monitoring, the FDA pledged to run an analysis called Empirical Bayesian (EB) data mining on the reports to see if any safety signals were triggered. These signals give agencies an idea of which problems may be caused by vaccines.


Agencies are supposed to research signals to verify them or rule them unrelated to vaccination. “A report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event. But VAERS can give CDC and FDA important information. If it looks as though a vaccine might be causing a problem, FDA and CDC will investigate further and take action if needed,” the CDC states on its website. The FDA denied CHD’s request for the results of the data mining, claiming that the records are “intra-agency memoranda consisting of opinions, recommendations, and policy discussions within the deliberative process of FDA, from which factual information is not reasonably segregable.” The FDA also claimed that the sought-after information “contains a discussion of legal and policy matters and fall within the attorney work product and attorney-client privileges as enunciated by the Supreme Court.”

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“There are other vaccines that are far more effective. There are countries with lower vaccination rates that bore [the pandemic] just fine,”
– Shapira

Top Israel Scientist Speaks Out Against COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines (Pulse)

Professor Shmuel Shapira, M.D., MPH, who served as the Director General of the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) between 2013 and 2021, is one of thousands of renowned scientists who have raised serious concerns with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic marked the first time in history when renowned vaccine experts, developers, scientists and doctors were ridiculed and labelled as “anti-vaxxers” en masse. [..] Shapira is also the former head developer of Israel’s experimental coronavirus vaccine. He played a central role in the original development of Israel’s BriLife COVID-19 vaccine. It was a protein based live virus vaccine, not an mRNA shot.

The IIBR was tapped early in the pandemic, in February 2020, to develop a vaccine and seemed to be making significant progress until efforts were slowed and Israel launched its mass vaccination campaign with the Pfizer-BioNTech shot last December. The vaccine was eventually scraped, and ever since he has been quite critical about mRNA based COVID-19 vaccines. Despite having been vaccinated himself, Shapira feels that he and many others were coerced, pressured, and forced to take the jab. Lest we forget, many people lost their ability to work, put food on the table, pay their bills, travel, and more for choosing not to get vaccinated.

According to Shapira, the approval and distribution of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines was not done from a place of ‘good’ and with the intention to serve others, but rather to “rake in billions.” He stated that they are “mediocre” vaccines and calling them even moderately effective is “pretty generous.” Last May, Shapira stepped down from the directorship of the Biological Institute in a surprise turn of events that cast doubt on the future of the local inoculation venture. In a new book, he claimed that heavy government interference, unexplained regulatory delays, and some level of “sabotage” were also at play.

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“The appearance is of something generally raising the likelihood of death, or equivalently, reducing life expectancy.”

Deaths Running 26% Above Pre-Pandemic Levels – Vaccines a Leading Suspect (DS)

Deaths continue to run at extraordinary levels in England and Wales. In the week ending January 13th 2023 there were 17,381 deaths, which is 2,837 or 19.5% above the five-year average. This is despite the five-year average having risen due to the early 2021 Covid wave. Compared to the pre-pandemic five-year average of 13,822 it is 3,559 or 25.7% above average. There were 922 deaths with Covid registered on the death certificate, of which 654 were registered as due to Covid as underlying cause. This leaves 2,183 excess deaths from a different underlying cause. Since the wave of excess non-Covid deaths began in April the total now stands at 34,691.

[..] It’s clear, however, that these correlations with booster rollouts are far from determinative of the overall shape of the curve. In particular, deaths remained high during the summer and have spiked over the winter, despite few boosters being delivered in those periods. The Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART) has noted this week that high-level mortality data like these do not contain an “obvious smoking gun” pointing to vaccines causing high numbers of deaths specifically during the vaccination campaigns. Rather, the excess deaths are broadly spread throughout the year. The appearance is of something generally raising the likelihood of death, or equivalently, reducing life expectancy.

The lack of correlation with vaccination programmes has led some to question the role that vaccines are playing in driving the excess deaths and advance arguments in support of other possible explanations, such as Long Covid, the NHS crisis and the legacy of lockdown including missed treatment. While some of these other contributors may be valid, it would be wrong to rule out a role for the vaccines simply on the basis of a lack of correlation with vaccination campaigns. This is because the mechanisms by which a vaccine may injure a person are not fully understood, and those for which understanding is more developed, such as auto-immune reactions due to the persistence of spike protein in the blood and organs, give plenty of scope for a delayed effect. In particular, we should note that many of the excess deaths are related to the heart and circulatory system, and the vaccines are known to increase the risk of such deaths.

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9 months.

Do COVID-19 RNA-Injections Affect Male Fertility? (PF)

The study entitled “Do COVID-19 RNA Injections Affect Male Fertility? Latest Facts and Perspective” from Germany provides a detailed overview of the data on vaccination side effects as a result of Covid injections on male fertility. The authors are the German molecular biologist Prof. Dr. Klaus Steger, who conducts research in the field of molecular andrology at the Biomedical Research Center of the University of Giessen, and Prof. Dr. Werner Bergholz – an expert in quality management and data analysis. Various databases on the occurrence of male reproductive tract diseases as a result of Covid injections were analyzed, as well as previously published studies investigating the effects of Covid injections on sperm quality or the success rate of assisted reproduction treatments. A comprehensive molecular biology background analysis details the actual long-term risks posed by vaccination side effects of mRNA technology on the male reproductive tract.

In summary, previously published studies on pre- & post-analysis of semen samples show massive deficiencies in the study design – especially the observed measurement periods over which vaccination side effects should be measured. Database analyses (UK Yellow Card, US VAERS as well as deStatis) show a clear association between erectile dysfunction (ED) and heart failure as well as a significant decline in fertility exactly 9 months after the start of the vaccination campaign, which may also be attributable to secondary infertility (infertility due to concomitant diseases of the reproductive tract). It was also pointed out that the mRNA used is not “simple mRNA”, as is often claimed, but so-called “modRNA” (modified RNA), which has a completely different effect in the body and inevitably entails hitherto unnoticed risks.

A significant decline in live births was observed in Europe and worldwide at the beginning of 2022. In particular, the decline in live births also started in Germany exactly 9 months after the start of the vaccination campaign, with the authors concluding: “However, vaccination and birth statistics are considered accurate, at least within a margin of error of 10%. Therefore, the presented coincidence between vaccination and the nine-month delayed abrupt decline in live birth rate can be considered statistically certain.” Accurate correlations in this sense can also be derived in Switzerland, even depending on the vaccination rate of the canton.


Figure 1: Monthly statistics for Germany showing a time lag of exactly nine months between vaccination of the relevant age cohorts and the abrupt decline in live births. Similar correlations exist for most other European countries. Taken from Bergholz & Steger, 2023

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9 months.

Link Between Massive Drop in Birth Rates, mRNA Vaccines Undeniable (Latypova)

During 2022 births per 100,000 women 18-45 yo in Sweden have declined progressively, reaching the lowest levels -12.7% and -11.5% in October and November, respectively. For the year, the average was -8.6% compared to same period in 2020-2021. Swedish birth rates have followed a declining trend over the last century. Exceptional negative or positive changes (plus or minus 6% over the birth rate from the preceding year) have occurred, for example following the significant peak in the 1920s and after baby booms in the 1940s, 1960s and 1990s. Except for 1922, however, there has never been such a sharp decline in birth rate over a single year as occurred in 2022.


In contrast to the alarming trend in the birth rates is Sweden’s excess mortality data that shows overall lack of excess deaths post vax rollout despite very high uptake. However, in my opinion, the graphs in this dataset are a bit bizarre – why are 70-79 and 50-59 age groups exhibiting completely opposite trends (and so are the 80+) from the rest of the population? It should be noted that Sweden is exhibiting same alarming birth rate declines starting 9 months after the rollout of the vaxxes as the rest of Europe and other countries with high uptakes of the miracle juice. Why their mortality data is so different – I have no idea. Speculations include manipulated death statistics (not out of the question) and the possibility of different formulations applied in particular countries.

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Dolphin

 

 


Painted grasshopper (Poekilocerus pictus)

 

 

Crows

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 102022
 


James Ensor The oyster eater 1882

 

Washington Starts Blame Game Over Defeat In Ukraine (MoA)
We’re Almost Out Of Ammunition And Relying On Western Arms, Says Ukraine (G.)
The US/UK Proxy War Forestalling Peace Negotiations in Ukraine (CD)
Nuclear Deployments in Finland & Sweden Not Ruled Out, NATO Says (LI)
Greek Court Overturns Ruling on Seizure of Iranian Ship (GR)
Will The Global South Break Free From Dollarized Debt? (Escobar)
Dershowitz Says Admin Using ‘Stupidest Argument’ On Executive Privilege (JTN)
Trump: ‘January 6th Was Not Simply a Protest’ (GP) /span>
So You Say You Want a Revolution? (Turley)
COVID Vaccines Appear To Cause Abnormally Long Blood Clots (JTN)
Unfunded State Pension Liabilities Grow To $8.28 Trillion (JTN)
Welsh Schools to Feed Primary Students Insects (VT)
Judge: CIA May Have Received Illicitly Recorded Assange Conversations (ElP)

 

 

 

 

Jan 6

 

 

“Those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.”
— Hannah Arendt

 

 

Tucker Jan 6

 

 

 

 

“It is cover your ass time and Zelensky prominence in the ‘west’ makes it possible to blame him personally for the outcome of the war.”

Washington Starts Blame Game Over Defeat In Ukraine (MoA)

The New York Times, here via Yahoo, has some rather weird piece over alleged lack of intelligence on Ukrainian warplanes: U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials Say: “President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has provided near-daily updates of Russia’s invasion on social media; viral video posts have shown the effectiveness of Western weapons in the hands of Ukrainian forces; and the Pentagon has regularly held briefings on developments in the war. But despite the flow of all this news to the public, U.S. intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures, according to current and former officials.”

[..] Andrei Martyanov rants about the piece: “Well, NYT decided to start steering clear of this whole Russia “lost in Ukraine” BS it promoted together with neocon crazies, and begins this ever familiar tune of the “intel failure”. Right.” […] Larry Johnson thinks there is another another motive behind the story: “Frankly, I find it hard to believe that there are not solid analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency who know the answers to all these questions. The real problem may not be a lack of intelligence. Nope. It is the fear of telling the politicians hard truths they do not want to hear.”

I do not believe for one moment that U.S. intelligence services do not know what is going on in Ukraine and in Kiev. They know that the Ukraine has lost the war and will have to sue for peace as soon as possible. They also have told the White House that this is a case and that the whole idea of setting up the Ukraine to tickle the Russian bear was idiotic from the get go. The question now is who will take the blame for the outcome. Who can the buck be passed to? There is always the option for politicians, as Andrei assumes is the case, to blame the intelligence and the various agencies which provide it. This was done when the war on Iraq, based on false claims weapons of mass destruction, started to go bad for the U.S.

But what the NYT piece does is passing the buck from the intelligence community to president Zelensky of Ukraine: “He did not inform us about the bad position his country was in.” It is cover your ass time and Zelensky prominence in the ‘west’ makes it possible to blame him personally for the outcome of the war.

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Straight from the Lockheed Martin PR department.

We’re Almost Out Of Ammunition And Relying On Western Arms, Says Ukraine (G.)

Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence has said Ukraine is losing against Russia on the frontlines and is now almost solely reliant on weapons from the west to keep Russia at bay. “This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”. “Everything now depends on what [the west] gives us,” said Skibitsky. “Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces. Our western partners have given us about 10% of what they have.” Ukraine is using 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, according to Skibitsky.

“We have almost used up all of our [artillery] ammunition and are now using 155-calibre Nato standard shells,” he said of the ammunition that is fired from artillery pieces. “Europe is also delivering lower-calibre shells but as Europe runs out, the amount is getting smaller.” The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said last week that between 60 and 100 Ukrainian soldiers were dying each day and a further 500 were being injured. Ukraine has kept the total number of its military losses secret. Soldiers speaking to the Guardian from Ukraine’s frontlines this week painted a similar picture. Skibitsky emphasised the need for the west to supply Ukraine with long-range rocket systems to destroy the Russian artillery pieces from afar.

This week the Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told the Guardian that Ukraine needed 60 multiple-rocket launchers – many more than the handful promised so far by the UK and US – to have a chance of defeating Russia. Ukraine is set to ask the west for a list of weapons and defensive equipment at the contact group meeting with Nato in Brussels on 15 June. Skibitsky thinks the conflict will remain predominantly an artillery war in the near future and the number of rocket attacks – which can be launched from Russia and have hit civilians – will remain at their current rate.

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“If you are ready to sign some guarantee agreements with him, we are not..”

The US/UK Proxy War Forestalling Peace Negotiations in Ukraine (CD)

The British government, as ever following the US lead, is sending longer range missile systems to Ukraine for the first time. The government described the M270 weapon system they are despatching as a “cutting edge” military asset which can strike targets up to 80 kilometres away “with pinpoint accuracy.” Ukrainian soldiers are due to be brought to Britain for training in how to use the missiles. Britain and the US appear to have abandoned even the limited military restraint they showed early on in the war. Their policy of pumping in the weapons and pushing for outright victory risks disaster. They must be stopped.

As even some of the mainstream media point out, on top of the four precision-guided, medium-range rocket systems sent by the US last week, this decision marks a new stage in the war in which the West is prepared to provide the Ukrainian military with the capacity to strike deep in to Russian territory, something they previously carefully avoided. This is one in a series of escalations on the part of the Western powers. It provoked immediate retaliation in words and deeds from Vladimir Putin—including the first bombardment of Kiev for five weeks—as Western leaders must have known it would. It underlines the fact that the West is still pushing for nothing less than the complete defeat of Russia while Russian troops continue their offensive.

As British Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, said in a statement announcing the new weapons shipment, “If the international community continues its support, I believe Ukraine can win”. As part of this policy of proxy war, the West has been deliberately trying to head off moves towards serious negotiations. The leading pro–Western Ukrainian newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda reported recently that Boris Johnson himself appeared in Kyiv early in May almost without warning, urging Zelensky not to negotiate with Putin. “If you are ready to sign some guarantee agreements with him, we are not,” Johnson said, insisting it was instead the time to “press him.” Johnson later confirmed to French president Emmanuel Macron that he had “urged against any negotiations with Russia on terms that gave credence to the Kremlin’s false narrative for the invasion.”

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“I do not believe it is necessary, in the current context, to provide any guarantees whatsoever to Russia on our military posture in the region.”

Nuclear Deployments in Finland & Sweden Not Ruled Out, NATO Says (LI)

The NATO military alliance will not offer Russia any guarantees regarding the deployment of nuclear weapons to prospective member states Sweden and Finland, with a senior official in the bloc stressing that such decisions must be left to individual nations. Speaking to Swiss broadcaster RTS for an interview over the weekend, NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment Camille Grand was asked whether Western powers should provide nuclear assurances to Moscow in light of recent membership applications from Stockholm and Helsinki, which asked to join alliance following Russia’s attack on Ukraine earlier this year.

“Every country is free in the nuclear field to deploy or not to deploy such weapons. We are not talking about setting up some principle restrictions on the possible actions of the alliance,” he said, adding “This is a discussion that centers on the sovereignty of each member state of the alliance.” Five NATO states currently host American nuclear weapons on their soil, including Turkey, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Seven other members participate in the bloc’s SNOWCAT program – under which non-nuclear nations offer conventional air support for nuclear operations – while all 30 members of the alliance with the exception of France belong to its nuclear planning group.

Grand went on to say that the accession of the two Nordic states would not “radically change the strategic or military situation” in the region, arguing that “We do not have the intention nor the means to invade Russia, or carry out offensive actions against Russia,” and that Moscow “know this very well.”

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It might not be the smartest move to start seizing ships if you have so many ships out there yourself.

Greek Court Overturns Ruling on Seizure of Iranian Ship (GR)

A Greek court on Wednesday overturned an earlier court ruling that allowed the confiscation by the United States of part of a cargo of Iranian oil on an Iranian-flagged tanker off the Greek coast. The incident had led to an angry response by Iran, with Iranian forces last month seizing two Greek tankers in the Gulf after Tehran warned it would take “punitive action” against Athens. The Iranian embassy in Greece had earlier announced that “Following intensive follow-ups, the Greek Court of Appeals will revoke the ruling of the initial court to confiscate oil belonging to Iran and the entire oil shipment will be returned.” On April 19, the Greek Coast Guard seized the Russian tanker Pegasus, operating under the Iranian flag, off the island of Evia.


The Greek government announced that it would deliver 115,000 tons of Iranian oil on the Lana tanker to the United States, but Tehran called the move an act of piracy by Athens. Iranian Ambassador to Greece Ahmad Naderi, in continuation of intensive diplomatic and legal activities over the past few weeks to prevent US piracy off the coast of Greece, visited the port of Karistos and met with the captain of the ship to review the latest developments, according to a report in the Iranian News Agency MNA. Following the seizure of the Iranian ship in Greek waters, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Greek Charge d’affaires to convey a strong protest of Iran to the Greek officials.

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“The US economy is indeed a lame post-modern remake of the late Roman empire: “dependent on foreign tribute for its survival in today’s global rentier economy.”

Will The Global South Break Free From Dollarized Debt? (Escobar)

With The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism, Michael Hudson, one of the world’s leading independent economists, has given us arguably the ultimate handbook on where we’re at, who’s in charge, and whether we can bypass them. Let’s jump straight into the fray. Hudson begins with an analysis of the “take the money and run” ethos, complete with de-industrialization, as 90 percent of US corporate revenue is “used to share buybacks and dividend payouts to support company stock prices.” That represents the apex of “Finance Capitalism’s” political strategy: to “capture the public sector and shift monetary and banking power” to Wall Street, the City of London and other western financial centers.

[..] To a large extent, nostalgia for the rape-and-pillaging of 1990s-era Russia fuels what Hudson defines as the New Cold War, where Dollar Diplomacy must assert its control over every foreign economy. The New Cold War is not waged only against Russia and China, “but against any countries resisting privatization and financialization under US sponsorship.” Hudson reminds us how China’s policy “followed almost the same path that American protectionism did from 1865 though 1914 – state subsidy for industry, heavy public-sector capital investment…and social spending on education and health care to upgrade the quality and productivity of labor. This was not called Marxism in the United States; it was simply the logical way to look at industrialization, as part of a broad economic and social system.”

But then, finance – or casino – capitalism gained steam, and left the US economy mainly with “agribusiness farm surpluses, and monopolies in information technology (largely developed as a by-product of military research), military hardware, and pharmaceutical patents (based on public seed-money to fund research) able to extract monopoly rent while making themselves largely tax-exempt by using offshore banking centers.” That’s the current State of Empire: relying only “on its rentier class and Dollar Diplomacy,” with prosperity concentrated in the top one percent of establishment elites. The inevitable corollary is US diplomacy imposing illegal, unilateral sanctions on Russia, China and anyone else who defies its diktats.

The US economy is indeed a lame post-modern remake of the late Roman empire: “dependent on foreign tribute for its survival in today’s global rentier economy.” Enter the correlation between a dwindling free lunch and utter fear: “That is why the United States has surrounded Eurasia with 750 military bases.” Delightfully, Hudson goes back to Lactantius, in the late 3rd century, describing the Roman empire on Divine Institutes, to stress the parallels with the American version: “In order to enslave the many, the greedy began to appropriate and accumulate the necessities of life and keep them tightly closed up, so that they might keep these bounties for themselves. They did this not for humanity’s sake (which was not in them at all), but to rake up all things as products of their greed and avarice. In the name of justice they made unfair and unjust laws to sanction their thefts and avarice against the power of the multitude. In this way they availed as much by authority as by strength of arms or overt evil.”

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“Who’s ever going to talk to a president in confidence when she or he knows that their conversation can be revealed if the new president of a different party decides to waive the privilege..”

Dershowitz Says Admin Using ‘Stupidest Argument’ On Executive Privilege (JTN)

Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said the Biden Administration is putting forward “the stupidest, dumbest legal argument” he has heard by claiming that the current president can waive the executive privilege of a former president. Dershowitz, who admitted to voting for President Joe Biden in 2020, slammed the White House’s legal claims during an interview with “Just the News, Not Noise” on Thursday. “The way it works is if Congress wants to enforce a subpoena, it goes to court. It has a hearing in which both sides are presented, not to a political body like Congress, but to a neutral judicial body like the court and the court decides whether or not the claim of privilege prevails,” Dershowitz responded to editor-in-chief John Solomon, who had asked for the legal scholar’s opinion on the case of former Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro.


The former White House advisor was arrested last week for defying a Jan. 6 committee subpoena, which he refused to follow citing executive privilege. “I voted for Biden,” Dershowitz prefaced before continuing: “The Biden administration has put forward the dumbest legal argument I have heard in my almost 60 years of practicing law, the dumbest legal argument. “They claim that the current president, Joe Biden, can waive executive privilege that was invoked by the former president. That would mean the end of executive privilege,” he warned. “Who’s ever going to talk to a president in confidence when she or he knows that their conversation can be revealed if the new president of a different party decides to waive the privilege. It is the stupidest, dumbest argument,” Dershowitz stressed.

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“The Unselects have ruled Pelosi ‘off limits, no questions.’ The hearing is another political HOAX to counter Inflation etc.”

Trump: ‘January 6th Was Not Simply a Protest’ (GP)

Donald Trump has weighed in on January 6 ahead of the made-for-tv House committee hearing spearheaded by Democrats and a few RINOS. In a post on his social media platform, TRUTH Social, Trump said that “January 6th was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.” Trump began, “The Unselect Committee didn’t spend one minute studying the reason that people went to Washington, D.C., in massive numbers, far greater than the Fake News Media is willing to report, or that the Unselects are willing to even mention, because January 6th was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again. It was about an Election that was Rigged and Stolen, and a Country that was about to go to HELL..& look at our Country now!”

An hour later, in a subsequent post, Trump added, “The Unselect Committee of political Thugs, essentially the same group who brought you the now fully debunked and discredited RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX (and many others!), refused to study and report on the massive amount of irrefutable evidence, much of it recently produced, that shows the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged and Stolen. They want NOTHING to do with that topic because they cannot win on the facts. CANCEL & DENY, call it ‘THE BIG LIE,’ is all they can do. Corrupt Politicians!” Trump pointed out that he had suggested and offered up 20,000 National Guard troops prior to January 6, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined.

“The Unselect Committee has now learned that I, as President, suggested & offered up to 20,000 National Guard, or troops, be deployed in D.C. because it was felt that the crowd was going to be very large,” Trump continued. “Crazy Nancy Pelosi turned down the offer, she didn’t like the way it looked. Likewise, the Mayor of D.C. Had they taken up the offer, there would have been no January 6th. The Unselects have ruled Pelosi ‘off limits, no questions.’ The hearing is another political HOAX to counter Inflation etc.”

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“He expressly told his followers “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

So You Say You Want a Revolution? (Turley)

“So you say you want a revolution.” When they sang those lines, the Beatles could well have been talking about Democratic leaders today. Revolution seems much in the minds and the rhetoric of politicians who are continuing to threaten swift responses to the Court if it rules against their wishes. The latest armchair revolutionary is President Joe Biden himself who went on Jimmy Kimmel to do the first sit down interview in months. To his credit, Biden was promising only a “mini-Revolution.” Others have gone full revolutionary. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., joined the growing ranks of members of Congress in issuing a warning to the Supreme Court: reaffirm Roe v. Wade or else. The “else” varies from promises to pack the Court to personal accountability for justices. For Shaheen, it is a promise of “revolution.”

Clearly, these leaders are using over-heated rhetoric and do not support violence. They no more want true revolution than Sen. Chuck Schumer was calling for the killing of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch when he declared on the steps of Supreme Court “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Calling for revolutionary change in politics is as common as calling on people to “fight” political opponents or legislative actions. For example, with rioting continuing in Brooklyn Center, Minn. and around the country, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, went to Minnesota and told the protesters that they “gotta stay on the street” and “get more confrontational.”

However, these same politicians have insisted that such references are literal when made by their opponents. Notably, Democrats are holding hearings this week on how Republicans bear responsibility for the Jan. 6th riot due to their calls to “fight” against certification of the 2020 election. On that day, there is no question that Trump whipped the crowd into a frenzy. I was critical of the speech while he was giving it. However, Trump never actually called for violence or a riot. Rather, he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to express opposition to the certification of electoral votes and to support the challenges being made by some members of Congress. He expressly told his followers “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

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2-3-foot-long clots…

COVID Vaccines Appear To Cause Abnormally Long Blood Clots (JTN)

Unusually long blood clots are being found in people who received COVID-19 vaccines, according to Dr. Ryan Cole of Cole Diagnostics in Boise, Idaho. Cole’s laboratory receives tissue samples from morticians across the country. He reports that they are finding long blood clots — including several that are inches-long and even a couple that are a foot long — in corpses that contained the COVID vaccine. Liberty Counsel, a religious freedom legal advocacy nonprofit currently representing military members seeking vaccine mandate exemptions, recently interviewed Cole. His lab “is able to determine the difference between a spike protein caused by the virus and a spike protein caused by the COVID shots, which are demonstrably different and much more pronounced and serious,” according to the organization.

Cole told Greg Hunter on USAWatchdog earlier this month that a Stanford University study found that, unlike a COVID infection, which leaves the body in a week or two, the vaccine causes the spike protein to remain in the body longer. “[T]hose who had a natural infection cleared the virus within that first week or two — their body had the ability to clear it,” Cole said. “But when you put the synthetic sequence in, the body is not clearing it,” he explained. “It’s persistently making spike protein. And that sequence is persisting, and then it’s damaging the organs chronically over time, it’s damaging the immune cells chronically over time, it’s causing clots … chronically over time.”

With mRNA vaccines, the spike protein can stay “up to 8 weeks postvaccination in some cases,” according to the study. Cole’s lab is “seeing mushy organs, we’re seeing incredibly inflamed organs,” he said. “We know the spike protein cause all the … bad outcomes that the virus did in 2020. And a lot of comorbid individuals, we know that spike protein is causing inflammation in the lung, the brain, the liver, the kidneys, the heart — it’s causing the same damage that the virus was causing.” However, “in the body, the shots are persisting and making more spike protein than if you had a natural infection,” he added. Cole also cited studies by South African doctor Resia Pretorius, who found that the COVID “spike protein alone causes the proteins in our blood to clump,” he said.

“That spike protein is thrombogenic — it causes clots, and it causes a lot of clots.” Morticians usually “put a dissolving fluid in to break up clots so they can get their embalming fluid in,” Cole said in a March interview with Steve Kirsch. “And they were getting back pressure on the system, saying, ‘What in the world is going on?’ They ended up “pulling out, you know, 6-inch clots, 12-inch clots, 2-3-foot-long clots,” he said. “Because you know from the hip down into the leg, you have a long vein called the saphenous vein. And so they were pulling long clots out of your longer veins. And … they hadn’t seen anything like this previously.”

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This has me wondering how other countries’ pension systems are doing.

Unfunded State Pension Liabilities Grow To $8.28 Trillion (JTN)

Unfunded state pension liabilities have climbed to $8.28 trillion, or nearly $25,000 for every person in the United States, according to a new report from the American Legislative Exchange Council. The American Legislative Exchange Council released the latest edition of its report on pensions in all 50 states Thursday. The report, “Unaccountable and Unaffordable 2021,” shows just a handful of states with outsize pension liabilities account for a large share of overall pension debt in the U.S. The report looked at 290 state-administered government pension plans and their assets and liabilities from fiscal year 2012 to fiscal year 2020. An example of state-administered government pension plans in Illinois would cover state employees, teachers, university workers, judges and lawmakers.

The states with the most unfunded liabilities were California ($1.53 trillion), Illinois ($533.72 billion), Texas ($529.70 billion), New York ($508.70 billion) and Ohio ($429.53 billion). These five states alone account for more than $3.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities, or about 43% of all unfunded liabilities in the U.S. The bottom 10 states make up $4.9 trillion, or 59.36% of all unfunded liabilities, according to the ALEC report. On a per capita basis, the bottom five state were Alaska ($42,829), Illinois ($41,656.79), Connecticut ($40,427.58), Hawaii ($39,939.43), New Jersey ($39,849.02) and California ($38,713.16).

“As state pension plans invest their funds in increasingly risky assets, the gap between expected rates of return and actual rates of return widens, with results falling far short of expectations,” the authors of the report wrote. “When investment returns fail to meet expectations, taxpayers and plan members must make up the difference through increased contributions.” [..] No state in the U.S. has fully funded its pension plans. The state with the highest funding ratio in the nation is Wisconsin at 56% and New Jersey was the lowest at 18%.

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Anyone ever wonder why our ancestors didn’t grow up eating insects? Much easier than hunting gazelle…

Welsh Schools to Feed Primary Students Insects (VT)

This week, students at four primary schools in Wales will be offered insects such as crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, locusts and mealworms to eat in an effort by researchers to determine their appetite for “alternative proteins.” Researchers are hoping to gain insight into how to best educate children on the environmental and nutritional benefits of edible insects and in turn, hope to influence their parents’ behavior concerning the dinner table. The project will employ surveys, workshops, interviews and focus groups to gauge students’ understanding and experiences concerning alternative proteins. One of the schools participating in the research is Roch Community Primary School in Pembrokeshire.


Carl Evans, the school’s Headteacher, said the research will provide students with insight into the connection between their local community and food production. “There is an important connection between our local community, food production and wider global issues surrounding sustainable development,” said said, adding that, “These issues are important to children, but also difficult to make sense of an can often be confusing for them.” One researcher involved in the study, Christopher Bear, of Cardiff University wants children to consider edible insects as a choice for nourishment today rather than in the future. “We want children to think about alternative proteins as real things for now, rather than just as foods for the future, so trying some of these foods is central to the research,” he said.

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It would make the entire process illegal.

Judge: CIA May Have Received Illicitly Recorded Assange Conversations (ElP)

The conversations between Julian Assange and his lawyers illicitly recorded by the Spanish security company UC Global at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder took refuge for years, could have been delivered to agents of the US secret services, according to Santiago Pedraz, the judge at Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, in charge of the espionage case. Delivery to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or to US authorities of details about the defense strategy of the cyberactivist, whom the US wants to have extradited from the UK, is reflected in a court order issued by Pedraz to which EL PAÍS has had access. In this document, which deals with procedural issues, the judge explains to the British authorities why he needs to take witness testimony from the British lawyers and Assange’s doctors who were spied on at the embassy.

These individuals include Gareth Peirce, 82, the famous British lawyer who was played by actress Emma Thompson in the 1993 movie In the Name of the Father. Proving that US intelligence services learned about Assange’s defense strategy by spying on his lawyers could annul the extradition by questioning the illegal methods used by the US to get Assange tried there, according to legal sources. If Spain is allowed to take testimony, as victims of US espionage, from lawyers and doctors who are now defending him in the extradition case, the British justice system would be left in an embarrassing situation, according to the same sources. It could be argued that the process was flawed because the right of defense was violated by the country requesting the extradition.

The judge sent a European Investigation Order (EIO) to the British justice more than two years ago, when he requested permission to question Assange in a videoconference from London as a witness in the case against Undercover Global. But British authorities have been reluctant to cooperate, and have asked for additional information on top of documents that were sent months ago without receiving a response. The EIO is a common judicial tool to speed up cooperation between judges and circumvent laborious rogatory letters based on instruments of international law. In this case, however, the British justice has been blocking the investigation. The British lawyers spied on at the embassy by order of UC Global owner David Morales, and whom Pedraz is asking to interrogate, are the same ones who are now defending Assange in the US extradition request that a British judge has just approved. Home Secretary Priti Patel, one of the toughest members of Boris Johnson’s government, has two months to make the final decision.

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We were small & thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops,
Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, & ourselves
So infinitesimally scaled
We could stream through the eye of a needle

– Seamus Heaney

 

 

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

 

 

 

May 022022
 


Andy Warhol Mick Jagger 1975

 

The Balance In Attrition (BoT)
Ukraine Is Now America’s War, Too (New Yorker)
Lavrov Interview With The Xinhua News Agency (Saker)
How Ukraine’s ‘Ghost Of Kyiv’ Legendary Pilot Was Born (BBC)
Russia Will Quit The International Space Station Due To Sanctions (DM)
Belarus Opposition Seeks US Technology Help (F24)
UK, EU Tell Elon Musk Free Speech Will Not Be Allowed on Twitter (DE)
Pfizer TV Ad Recommends People Take IVM, HCQ, Z-Pak, Fluvoxamine (Kirsch)
8,607 Unreported Vaccinated COVID Deaths In Canada (Yakk)
Food Shortages In Six Months (Alt-M)
Food Shortages: Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste (Fox)

 

 

Thank you so much for doing our laundry!

 

 

Chomsky Trump

 

 

 

 

Ukraine HRC

 

 

@Trevornoah: “In America you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortable.”
Unless your name is Julian Assange, in which case you face a gulag for the rest of your life.

 

 

CNN Musk

 

 

Twitter thread by “Baron of the Taiga”.

“..this is all ‘Phase 3’ stuff. Ukraine has to make it through Phase 2, and currently, even the most ardent Ukraine supporters who think Russia got battered in Phase 1, don’t think it is going well ..”

The Balance In Attrition (BoT)

However Russia used artillery in Phase 1, it is now using it several times more effectively, pressing its material and positional advantages in Donbas. It is following a method of wave strikes, taking however long they need to, before troops advance on the destroyed lines. We see Russia making good use of drones now, particularly for artillery correction. It is also locating and destroying more covert resource bases for the Ukrainian Army (like the aluminum plant recently). Russian air power is beginning to support infantry movement with success. On the other side, Ukraine is unable to respond effectively. It has an advantage in prepared fortifications and fallback positions set up well in advance (encirclement, while not impossible, is proving difficult outside a few stunning examples). But it is outgunned.

Whatever was going on in Phase 1, neither side was actually committed to a full-blown war of artillery. It was too slow for Russia’s phase objectives, and Ukraine lacked the equipment for it. It is now an artillery war, and NATO has really failed to equip the UAF to match Russia. Saying “we’re going to give you Dutch howitzers, they’ll be there in a month” is no good to Ukraine. They need top-of-the-line field guns, in Eastern Ukraine, yesterday. And they need a lot of them. The fact they continue to abandon anti-tank weapons in such numbers says a lot. By the time Russian tanks or other armored vehicles enter a settlement, not only have Ukrainian units been obliterated by artillery, but hardened infantry have swept in. Russia has learned its lesson.

If the current state of affairs persists, Russia will continue to decrease Ukraine’s holdings in Donbas. Many will not be encircled and captured, due to the way the defensive lines are set up, but those pushed out the other side will be decimated in terms of numbers. Of course, this plays into Kiev’s only strategy at this point, which is to buy time. It knows it cannot defeat Russia in Donbas, and certainly is not relying on any kind of logistical breakdown for Moscow (only Bellingcat thinks this will happen). Aside from whatever games are being played over Transnistria, the Ukrainian play seems obvious: • Maximize foreign support as much as possible • Reinforce every settlement west of the Dnieper with modern artillery, and at least a somewhat competent army.

If they can make the potential costs so high for Russia to advance on Nikolaev and especially Odessa, they could force a freeze in the battle lines, and then maybe play out some obscene hostage scenario in Tiraspol (unacceptable for Russia). A huge amount can go wrong (and is wrong) with this plan, including the lack of consideration of morale, how losing the east will affect western backing, the quality of any new army they can patch together, and how exhausted Russia might be. But of course, this is all ‘Phase 3’ stuff. Ukraine has to make it through Phase 2, and currently, even the most ardent Ukraine supporters who think Russia got battered in Phase 1, don’t think it is going well.

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Full proxy.

Ukraine Is Now America’s War, Too (New Yorker)

America has crossed a threshold in Ukraine, both in its short-term involvement and its long-term intent. The U.S. was initially cautious during the fall and winter as Russia, a nuclear country with veto power at the U.N. Security Council, amassed more than a hundred and fifty thousand troops along the Ukrainian border. It didn’t want to poke the Russian bear—or provoke Vladimir Putin personally. Two days after long convoys of Russian tanks rolled across the border, on February 24th, the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, still claimed that America’s goal—backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid—was simply to stand behind the Ukrainian people. The White House sanctioned Russia—initially targeting a few banks, oligarchs, political élites, government-owned enterprises, and Putin’s own family—to pressure the Russian leader to put his troops back in their box, without resorting to military intervention.

“Direct confrontation between nato and Russia is World War Three, something we must strive to prevent,” President Joe Biden said, in early March. Yet in just over nine weeks, the conflict has rapidly evolved into a full proxy war with Russia, with global ramifications. U.S. officials now frame America’s role in more ambitious terms that border on aggressive. The goal—backed by tens of billions of dollars in aid—is to “weaken” Russia and insure a sovereign Ukraine outlasts Putin. “Throughout our history, we’ve learned that when dictators do not pay the price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and engage in more aggression,” the President told reporters on Thursday. “They keep moving. And the costs, the threats to America and the world, keep rising.”

Having basically run out of appropriated funds, Biden has asked Congress for thirty-three billion dollars—for new military, economic, and humanitarian support—in the latest of several packages for Ukraine. “The cost of this fight is not cheap,” the President acknowledged. (As Politico noted, the new aid is about half the size of the entire Russian defense budget—and also more than half of the U.S. State Department’s annual budget. Over the next five months, U.S. aid to Ukraine will average more than two hundred million dollars a day.) The investment, Biden said, was a small price “to lessen the risk of future conflicts” with Russia.

For Putin, the war in Ukraine always seemed to be, at least in part, a proxy fight with nato and its U.S. leadership. Ahead of his invasion, he publicly expressed deep paranoia about the military alliance and its further expansion into countries once aligned with the Soviet Union. He also brokered a five-thousand-word agreement with the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to form a de-facto alliance of authoritarian regimes. They jointly opposed nato enlargement. Biden tried to resist that framing. At the start of the invasion, the U.S. invoked the principles of sovereignty, a democratically elected government, and territorial integrity. During the past week, however, Ukraine’s existential crisis has increasingly appeared to be America’s war, too. On April 24th, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took a train with blacked-out windows into Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and symbolically reinforce American support.

The stealthy trip reflected the increasingly ambitious U.S. goal. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin told reporters, near the border in Poland. Blinken said, “We don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.” On Tuesday, Austin assembled defense leaders from more than forty countries—well beyond the nato framework—at Ramstein, a U.S. base in southwest Germany, to coördinate support for Ukraine. Austin, a retired general involved in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, announced the formation of a new coalition of “nations of good will” that will meet monthly to “intensify” an international campaign to win “today’s fight and the struggles to come.” In appealing for more aid, Biden said, “We have to do our part as well, leading the alliance.”

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“..the Russian military personnel are doing everything in their power to avoid victims among civilians..”

Lavrov Interview With The Xinhua News Agency (Saker)

[..] the special military operation is proceeding according to plan. Under this plan, the Russian military personnel are doing everything in their power to avoid victims among civilians. Blows are carried out with high-precision weapons, first of all at military infrastructure facilities and places where armoured vehicles are concentrated. Unlike the Ukrainian army and nationalist armed groups that use people as living shields, the Russian army provides the locals with all kinds of assistance and support. Humanitarian corridors open daily from Kharkov and Mariupol to evacuate people from dangerous districts, but the Kiev regime demands that the “national battalions” in control of those areas do not release the civilians. Nevertheless, many are able to leave with the assistance of Russian, DPR and LPR servicemen.

During the special military operation, the hotline of the Interdepartmental Coordination Headquarters of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine has received requests for assistance in evacuating 2.8 million people to Russia, including 16,000 foreign citizens and employees of UN and OSCE international missions. In total, 1.02 million people have been evacuated from Ukraine, the DPR and LPR, of which over 120,000 are citizens of third countries, including over 300 Chinese nationals. There are over 9,500 temporary accommodation facilities operating in Russian regions. They have space for rest and hot meals, and everything that may be necessary. Newly arrived refugees are provided with qualified medical and psychological assistance.

Russia is taking measures to ensure civilian navigation in the Black and Azov seas. A humanitarian corridor opens daily, a safe lane for ships. However, Ukraine continues to block foreign ships, creating a threat of shelling in its internal waters and territorial sea. Moreover, Ukrainian naval units have mined the shore, the ports and territorial waters. These explosive devices disconnect from their anchor lines and drift into the open sea, so they pose a serious danger to both the fleets and the port infrastructure of the Black Sea countries.

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Obvious and abject nonsense from day 1. But it fits the overall coverage.

How Ukraine’s ‘Ghost Of Kyiv’ Legendary Pilot Was Born (BBC)

Ukraine’s fighter pilots are vastly outnumbered by the Russians, and have become legendary – thanks in part to the story of an alleged flying ace called the “Ghost of Kyiv”. This hero is said to have downed as many as 40 enemy planes – an incredible feat in an arena where Russia controls the skies. But now the Ukraine Air Force Command has warned on Facebook that the “Ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend whose character was created by Ukrainians!”. “We ask the Ukrainian community not to neglect the basic rules of information hygiene,” the message said, urging people to “check the sources of information, before spreading it”. Earlier reports had named the ace as Major Stepan Tarabalka, 29. The authorities confirmed that he was killed in combat on 13 March and honoured with a Hero of Ukraine medal posthumously.

Now, the air force stresses that “Tarabalka is not ‘Ghost of Kiev’, and he did not hit 40 planes”. It describes the “Ghost of Kyiv” as “a collective image of pilots of the Air Force’s 40th tactical aviation brigade, who defend the sky over the capital”, rather than a single man’s combat record. For weeks, Ukrainians did not have a name to go with the “Ghost of Kyiv” – but that did not stop the story going viral on social media. It was used as a marketing brand by a Ukrainian model aircraft manufacturer, while Ukrainian Iryna Kostyrenko showed off a military badge inspired by the legend. And the defence ministry tweeted a video celebrating Tarabalka’s heroism. Military experts told the BBC they doubted that one pilot could have downed as many as 40 Russian planes.

Ukrainian military historian Mikhail Zhirohov described the Ghost of Kyiv story as “propaganda for raising morale”. Speaking to the BBC from Chernihiv, he said that early on in the war the Russians dominated Ukrainian airspace, so a Ukrainian pilot “could only shoot down two or three”. “It’s essential to have this propaganda, because our armed forces are smaller, and many think we can’t be equal to them [the Russians]. We need this in wartime,” he said.


Took just 2 days…

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Russis has kept it running.

Russia Will Quit The International Space Station Due To Sanctions (DM)

Russia is set to pull out of the International Space Station and will no longer work with NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), according to the head of its space programme. General Director of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin told Russian state TV earlier today that Moscow will no longer co-operate with its international partners aboard the ISS, confirming that the decision to withdraw has already been taken. He said Roscosmos is not required to give an exact date of its withdrawal, but affirmed the Russian space programme will adhere to the stipulated year-long notice period. ‘The decision has been taken already, and we are not obliged to discuss it publicly, Rogozin told Rossiya 24 – though on Friday he said Russia would continue to work on the ISS ‘according to the time frame set out by our government, until at least 2024.’

It comes after Rogozin posted a storm of since-deleted tweets earlier this month in which he slammed Western sanctions imposed on Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine. ‘I believe that the restoration of normal relations between partners in the International Space Station and other joint projects is possible only with the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions,’ the space chief tweeted. Space is one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between Moscow and Western nations, and Russia has for decades carried American astronauts to and from the ISS on board its Soyuz rockets, but ceased to do so in 2020.

The U.S. and Russia were conducting negotiations for a resumption of shared flights in February, but the invasion of Ukraine put paid to the plans and triggered a wave of unprecedented sanctions on Russian state-linked entities. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei shared a Russian ride back to Earth in late March after a U.S. record 355 days at the ISS alongside two Russian cosmonauts, and suggested the relations between the crew aboard the ISS had remained unaffected by the war in Ukraine. ‘About my relationship with my Russian crewmates, they were, are and will continue to be very dear friends of mine,’ the American Vande Hei said during a press conference earlier this month.

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When was the last time the US tried a color revolution in Belarus? Two years ago?

Belarus Opposition Seeks US Technology Help (F24)

The leader of Belarus’ opposition said Friday that the United States is looking at stepping up technological assistance in the struggle against strongman Alexander Lukashenko. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who along with Western observers says she won a 2020 election against Lukashenko, spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior US officials and lawmakers on a trip to Washington. “I was assured of full support for the Belarusian democratic movement,” she told the State Department Correspondents’ Association. “We also spoke about providing Belarusian journalists and activists with equipment and technology,” she said. She said that she discussed ways to circumvent regime disinformation including broadcasts of forced confessions.


Franak Viacorka, a senior advisor to Tikhanovskaya, said pro-democracy forces have also spoken to US technology companies to seek an end to lumping Belarus into the “Russian media ecosystem,” which is closely censored. Lukashenko, who has grown closer to Moscow as he cracks down on dissent following the 2020 election, has been one of the main international supporters of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Tikhanovskaya said she shared with US officials evidence of Lukashenko’s support for the war as well as a list of companies and countries that help circumvent Western sanctions on the regime. “We spoke about making sanctions more effective, closing remaining loopholes, freezing Lukashenko’s assets and blocking the money given to him by the IMF,” she said.

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“The board [of Twitter] must be sure that if it operates in Europe it must fulfil the obligations..”

UK, EU Tell Elon Musk Free Speech Will Not Be Allowed on Twitter (DE)

Firms that fail to comply with British censorship after the passage of the Online Harms Bill would likely face fines of up to 10% of their global revenue, with executives facing consequences that include jail time if they refuse to placate Big Brother. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has also called for further regulation on social media sites in the name of preventing “prejudice.” “Free speech can’t imply a free go for hatred,” the mayor wrote online after information of the acquisition emerged. “We should not overlook the impacts of online hate speech, which followers the flames of prejudice and results in appalling and tragic real-world violence.” “Social media corporations should do extra, not much less, to guard their communities,” he additionally wrote.

While Britain has some of the most high-profile censoring regimes in the Western World, it is far not the only nation where lawmakers have been taking aim at the idea of unfettered social media discourse. Thierry Breton, the European Union’s Tsar for the Internal Market, has asked that Musk follow all of the EU’s laws and regulations, including those governing the censoring of unpopular ideas. “Elon, there are guidelines,” the Monetary Instances stories Breton is saying. “You’re welcome however these are our guidelines. It’s not your guidelines which are able to apply right here.”

“Anybody who desires to profit from this market must fulfil our guidelines,” the EU bigwig reportedly continued. “The board [of Twitter] must be sure that if it operates in Europe it must fulfil the obligations, together with moderation, open algorithms, freedom of speech, transparency in guidelines, obligations to adjust to our personal guidelines for hate speech, revenge porn [and] harassment.” “If [Twitter] doesn’t adjust to our regulation, there are sanctions — 6 per cent of the income and, in the event that they proceed, banned from working in Europe,” the EU bureaucrat went on to threaten.

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Pfizer won’t be allowed to market the Paxlovid brand until full FDA approval”

Pfizer TV Ad Recommends People Take IVM, HCQ, Z-Pak, Fluvoxamine (Kirsch)

See that pill? They are OBVIOUSLY promoting ivermectin, HCQ, Z-Pak, fluvoxamine, zinc, and vitamin D! Finally! Pfizer thinks they are promoting Paxlovid, but we all know what they are really promoting 🙂


“Pfizer said in its full-year earnings announcement last month that it expects Paxlovid sales worth an enormous $22 billion for 2022. Getting the word out now is a clear strategy to get antiviral treatments to patients. [..] Pfizer won’t be allowed to market the Paxlovid brand until full FDA approval. That explains why its COVID pill ad serves more as an awareness campaign of oral treatments in general.”

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Interesting Twitter thread by Sheldon Yakiwchuk.

8,607 Unreported Vaccinated COVID Deaths In Canada (Yakk)

There are currently 8,607 Unreported Vaccinated COVID deaths in Canada. This is up from 7994 from last month – average 20/day COVID mortalities missing. Why isn’t Health Canada Reporting them? If you visit the COVID tracker by Health Infobase Canada – PHAC, you will find the following chart. The chart indicates that From December 14, 2020 to April 10, 2022 that there were 15,775 (green) COVID mortalities.

In this, 9511 Unvaccinated have Died (60.3%) and 6264 (39.7%) from the various stages of vaccinated COVID deaths. What’s important about this is how many deaths are reported in this time. 15,775 – Dec14, 2020-Apr10, 2022. A look back to December 14, 2020 shows that on this day, there were 13,553 deaths. Vaccinations hadn’t rolled out in Canada yet, so these were 100% unvaccinated.

April 10, 2022 – due to delays in reporting, there were 37,935 COVID deaths – as of April 8th, 2022.

37,935 – 13,553 = Total Deaths in this Time period = 24, 382. Where as the Current Dashboard (top image) only shows 15,775 or a difference of 8,607 – unreported deaths. Having a 60/40 split on vaccinated deaths in this time is shocking in itself…but what if those missing deaths are all in various stages of being Vaccinated? We’d be adding the unreported 8,607 to the reported 6,264 given a possible total of 14,871 Vaccinated deaths. 14,871/24,382 ->61% of the deaths in Vaccinated. 9,511/24,382 -> 39% of the COVID reported Deaths in the Unvaccinated Camps – Completely reversing the reported Statistics. Which is even more shocking than a 60/40 split of unvaccinated to vaccinated.


Problem is…even as bad as these statistics look – having been corrected…a closer look actually reveals that in the last week over week comparison of these, 81% of deaths are in the vaccinated 55% are in the boosted. Moving from 40% of mortality to 60% is insane…moving that to 81% of COVID Mortalities being in the Vaccinated Community can no longer support the safe and effective, especially seeing as 55% of these ->greater than unvaccinated are in the fully boosted population. And the problem with the Health Canada Reporting of this, is that these deaths are: 1. Not being accurately recorded as Vaccine Injuries. 2. This problem has grown by over 600 deaths in the last Month.

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“The IMF, the BIS, World Bank, The UN, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Economic Forum, Bank of America and even Biden himself are all predicting a major food crisis in the near term..”

Food Shortages In Six Months (Alt-M)

A week ago there was a torrent of press releases from global institutions all mentioning the same exact same concern: Food shortages within the next 3 to 6 months. These statements line up very closely with my own estimates, as I have been warning regularly about impending dangers of inflation leading to food rationing and supply chain disruptions. The IMF, the BIS, World Bank, The UN, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Economic Forum, Bank of America and even Biden himself are all predicting a major food crisis in the near term, and it is not a coincidence that the policies of these very institutions and the actions of puppet politicians that work with them are causing the crisis they are now predicting. That is to say, it’s easy to predict a disaster when you created the disaster.


The claim is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the primary cause, but this is a distraction from the real issue. Yes, sanctions against Russia will eventually lead to less food supply, but the globalists and the media are purposely ignoring the bigger threat, which is currency devaluation and price inflation created by central banks pumping out tens of trillions of dollars in stimulus packages to prop up “too big to fail” corporate partners. In 2020 alone, the Fed created over $6 trillion from nothing and air dropped it into the economy through covid welfare programs. Add that to the many trillions of dollars that the Fed has printed since the credit crash in 2008 – It has been a nonstop dollar destruction party and now the public is starting to feel the consequences. Lucky for the central bankers that covid struck and Russia invaded Ukraine, because now they can deflect all the blame for the inflationary calamity they have engineered onto the pandemic and onto Putin.

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That energy transition they talk about? It will never happen.

Food Shortages: Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste (Fox)

A top Biden official said Sunday that the global food shortage crisis would push farmers toward relying on more green energy. “Never let a crisis go to waste,” U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Chief Samantha Power told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.” Speaking of the global consequences of Russia’s war with Ukraine, the Biden official said that fertilizer shortages would provide farmers the opportunity to “hasten” their “transition” from fertilizer to more “natural” resources. “Fertilizer shortages are real now because Russia is a big exporter of fertilizer. Even though fertilizer is not sanctioned, less fertilizer is coming out of Russia,” she explained. “As a result we’re working with countries to think about natural solutions like manure and compost and this may hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway. So never let a crisis go to waste.”


Power added that the administration was still asking Congress to pass more relief. Last week, President Biden requested an additional $33 billion from Congress for military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine. “But we really do need this financial support from the Congress to be able to meet emergency food needs, so we don’t see the cascading deadly effects of Russia’s war extend into Africa and beyond,” she said. President Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm made similar remarks back in March, pushing for Congress to use this crisis to pass “clean energy” legislation and to “wean off” fossil fuels. “This crisis in Europe, and the crisis our allies are facing and the reduction of supply of natural gas and oil from Russia creates a moment that we should be acting,” she said at a clean energy summit.

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Mar 302015
 
 March 30, 2015  Posted by at 9:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


John M. Fox “The new Hudson” 1948

How The Fed Is ‘Screwed,’ And What Happens Next (CNBC)
Cinderella’s New Moral: Be Rich Or Be A Pumpkin (Lynn Stuart Parramore)
The ECB’s Put – Explained By Draghi (CNBC)
Angola Joins Venezuela Among Biggest Losers Of Oil’s Tumble (CNBC)
China’s Developers Face More Price Pain (FT)
China Central Bank Governor Calls For Vigilance On Deflation (Reuters)
Greece Says Not Backing Down On Debt Relief Goal (Reuters)
How Greece Pushed Europe’s Creditors To The Edge (Telegraph)
Greek Bailout Proposals Lack Necessary Detail, Officials Say (WSJ)
Investors Fear Greece Will Impose Capital Controls (AFR)
Greek Markets Show All at Risk Should Mistake Trigger a Default (Bloomberg)
ECB Nerves Fray on Greece as Supervisors Rile Central Bankers (Bloomberg)
Globalist Financiers Fleece Greece (StealthFlation)
Australia To Introduce Tax On Bank Deposits (ABC)
Swiss Banking Model Is ‘Dead’, Says Abu Dhabi Finance Centre Chief (FT)
Kim Dotcom Loses $67 Million Of Assets To US Government (RT)
Who’s Fighting For Whom In Yemen’s Proxy War? (Reuters)
Ukraine’s Oligarchs Turn on Each Other (Robert Parry)
Risks Involved In UK Smart Meter Scheme Are ‘Staggering’ (BBC)
Antarctica Recorded Its Hottest Temperature Ever This Week (CP)

“There will never be a good time to raise rates off zero when you’ve been there for six years..”

How The Fed Is ‘Screwed,’ And What Happens Next (CNBC)

Call it a box, or perhaps even a paradox, but the Federal Reserve finds itself in an uncomfortable position heading into its first rate-hiking cycle in nearly a decade. A central bank that has prided itself on transparency during its ultra-easy cycle following the financial crisis is now doing an awkward dance with a market not quite sure what to make of the road to tightening financial conditions. The essential problem is this: When the Fed could have raised rates it didn’t want to. Now that it wants to raise rates, it may not be able to, at least not without causing substantial turmoil in the same financial markets it has sought so strenuously to soothe. The Fed hasn’t raised rates since June 2006. “There will never be a good time to raise rates off zero when you’ve been there for six years,” Peter Boockvar at The Lindsey Group, told CNBC. “The Fed’s screwed, essentially.”

The extension of the central bank’s dilemma, or box, or paradox, goes like this, as highlighted in Boockvar’s argument: Zero interest rates were a response to the worst U.S. economic crisis since the Great Depression. The economy, though, is far removed from its crisis days. The recession ended in mid-2009, gross domestic product has been on a steady if uninspiring march higher and financial markets, which have received by far the most benefit from Fed programs, have soared. While all that happened, the Fed could have begun the tightening process without disrupting the recovery. What’s left now, though, is a point where the Fed has indicated a desire to tighten at a time when its biggest global counterparts are easing. That’s resulted in a firming of the dollar, a looming earnings recession in which U.S. profits are forecast to decline in two consecutive quarters—and could well turn negative for the year—and first-quarter GDP gains that could be anemic or nonexistent.

“Zero … is just an unnatural rate six years into a recovery.” Boockvar said. “But the problem is that GDP growth hasn’t averaged more than 2.5% (during the recovery), so they’re stuck in this lackluster, mediocre-type growth rate.” Investors have recoiled amid the current conditions. Outflows from equity-based funds have reached their highest level since the darkest days of 2009, just as the recession was ending and the Fed was kicking its zero interest rate policy and quantitative easing into high gear. The central bank expanded its balance sheet to $4.5 trillion during QE as it bought bonds and injected liquidity into the capital markets.

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“..your chances of marrying outside your income bracket have been dropping since the 1950s because of something called assortative mating..”

Cinderella’s New Moral: Be Rich Or Be A Pumpkin (Lynn Stuart Parramore)

Once upon a time, during a brief egalitarian period in postwar America, people of different classes did not live in separate worlds. The promise of mobility and prosperity was alive throughout the land. In 1950, Walt Disney Productions was saved from bankruptcy with its smash hit Cinderella, which audiences cheered at a time when the future looked bright and it was still possible for the dream of marrying up to come true. A new Disney film of Cinderella is a big box-office success today, but how different things look! Cinderella marriages are getting to be as rare as golden coaches. Economist Jeremy Greenwood has found that your chances of marrying outside your income bracket have been dropping since the 1950s because of something called assortative mating, which means that we are increasingly drawn to people in similar circumstances.

Since the 1980s, inequality has grown and mobility has stalled. Today, the rich forge their unions in exclusive social clubs, Ivy League colleges and gated communities. Unless you have a fortune or a fairy godmother, you’re probably out of luck. Without that magic, the gates remain closed. At first glance, Kenneth Branagh’s remake of the classic Disney film seems to offer a sunny romp through the magic kingdom. But a closer look reveals a troubling economic message. Economists like Thomas Piketty have been warning that if we don’t do something to stop growing income inequality, we may end up back in a 19th-century world, where hard work won’t lift you up the economic ladder because the income you can expect from labor is no match for inherited wealth. This is the world of the new Cinderella.

More so than the original Disney film, Branagh’s version highlights what happens when people are forced to compete for illusive rewards in a harsh economy. Families turn on each other, chances to get ahead are few and you’d better hope for a magic wand. Subtle changes to the story bring the point home. In the original animated version, the father is a gentleman, a widower who remarries and then promptly dies, leaving a jealous stepmother and her mean-girl daughters to torment his beloved only child. But in Branagh’s film, the father is a merchant, and his death deprives the family of his income — leaving them all in straitened circumstances.

The stepmother’s first thought on hearing of her husband’s demise is entirely practical: How shall we survive economically? Her answer: Turn Cinderella into a servant and search for wealthy matches for her two daughters. The marriage market illustrated in the movie reflects what economists like Robert H. Frank describe as a tournament, a “winner-take-all” game associated with economies where wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top. In these cutthroat markets, only a handful of people can win big, while the rest are left with little.

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He makes it up afresh every morning.

The ECB’s Put – Explained By Draghi (CNBC)

Investors in euro-denominated assets can get very useful insights from important points that European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi made last week while addressing several committees of the Italian Parliament. At the outset, Draghi pointed out that the main purpose of the ECB’s asset purchase program (“quantitative easing”) was to create a more favorable environment for structural reforms. These reforms are an absolutely essential part of freeing up market mechanisms in Europe’s rigid economies and bloated welfare systems. They are supposed to create conditions necessary for steady and balanced economic growth. The rub is that the short-term impact of these reforms also creates flammable socio-political problems of rising unemployment and falling revenues.

No euro area government has a mandate for such policy outcomes. Those who tried sank to oblivion. Witness the social turmoil and political changes in Greece, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. All of these countries are currently experiencing a powerful pushback to reforms and austerity policies. The new leftwing government in Greece got an overwhelming popular vote to roll back most of the socially painful structural reforms and accompanying austerity policies. Last week’s regional elections in France showed a similar result. Spain’s Podemos party, an upstart anti-austerity movement, is breaking up the country’s traditional two-party system, leading to a huge defeat of the center-right government in regional parliamentary elections a week ago.

And tens of thousands of people were marching in Rome last Saturday to protest against new regulations introducing a bit of much-needed flexibility to an excessively rigid Italian labor market. These are the people Mario Draghi was addressing while speaking two days earlier to Budget, Finance and European Affairs Committees of the Italian Parliament. What he said there is that the ECB can help with expansionary monetary policies to ease the (short-term) pain of structural reforms, but that without these reforms the euro area recovery will peter out, bringing the economies back to stagnation, falling output and rising unemployment. [That reminded me of a good old Spanish proverb: “Pan de hoy, hambre de mañana,” literally translated as “bread today, hunger tomorrow”.]

Elaborating on this argument, Draghi told Italian legislators that the encouraging signs of improving economic activity in the euro area are mainly the result of falling energy costs, cheap credit (and the sinking euro)and favorable effects of structural reforms in some member countries. But he warned that what he sees is a “cyclical recovery” rather than a more sustainable “structural recovery,” which rests on flexible markets, rising productivity and an increasing non-inflationary growth potential.

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Emerging countries are no longer that.

Angola Joins Venezuela Among Biggest Losers Of Oil’s Tumble (CNBC)

Plunging oil prices have been an economic windfall for U.S. consumers, primarily through greater savings at the pump. In energy-reliant countries around the world like Angola, however, the effect has been far less beneficial. Social and economic turmoil in countries like Venezuela and Russia—largely because of the swoon in global oil prices—has drawn attention away from Angola, an OPEC member that is Africa’s second-largest oil producer. The country churns out 1.75 million barrels of oil per day, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA). The sub-Saharan country is hugely dependent on oil production to generate revenue for its economy, which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says accounted for 97% of total export revenues in 2012, marginally more than Venezuela’s 95%.

Although Angola’s economic tumult is not as bad as Venezuela’s, the situation in the country is pretty grim. Last year, Angola saw net oil export revenue plunge by more than 12% to $24 billion, due to tumbling production and crude prices, EIA data notes. Its oil exports account for 50% of its domestic economy, and Angola had to drastically slash its 2015 oil price assumptions to $40 per barrel, from $81 per barrel. The tumble in black gold has precipitated massive created wrenching adjustment in the country, which Rabah Arezki, head of the commodities research team at IMF, said puts upward pressure on domestic oil prices, resulting in “social unrest” and a recently proposed $14 billion in budget belt-tightening.

The massive budget cuts “is of course a huge shock,” Arezki told CNBC, suggesting that “the government may decide to cushion the shock using fiscal buffers.” And not unlike Venezuela, Angola’s oil crisis has created a crisis that has sent its currency, the Kwanza, to an all-time low. Arezki points out that is likely to hinder the effectiveness of monetary policy. The situation has put Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos in the crosshairs of public anger. Luanda has been forced to reach out to international lenders for at least $1 billion in loans, the Financial Times reported recently, and is reportedly soliciting banks like Goldman Sachs for millions in private loans.

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China saw the west lying about its wealth and thought: why stop there?

China’s Developers Face More Price Pain (FT)

Chinese property developers are finding themselves forced to sacrifice profits to boost sales, as the downturn in the housing market saddles them with bulging inventories and limited access to new funding. Most listed mainland homebuilders recorded a steady rise in revenue last year but sharp declines in profit for many are a symptom of aggressive price-cutting designed to shift stock and generate much-needed cash in the debt-laden sector. Revenue at Agile Property increased 8% in 2014, the company said in its latest earnings report yet profits sank 11%. Profit fell by 15% at Guangzhou R&F and by 8% at Yuzhou Properties, even as both reported growth in sales. “We expect prices will remain under pressure over the next few months as developers continue to offer price incentives for their projects,” Moody’s analysts wrote in a report.

Margins at some of the more successful companies also have come under pressure. Country Garden’s income rose by more than a third last year, yet profit was up by only a fifth. Still, China Vanke – the country’s largest builder by sales – reports earnings on Monday, and is expected to show operating profit rising by over 30%. Weakness in the housing market has been a key factor in China’s broad slowdown. The economy grew 7.4% last year, the slowest pace in more than 20 years, as the government sought to reduce dependence on credit-fuelled construction. Overall home sales dropped 8% last year, according to official figures.

“With the downward pressure on the economy, the real estate industry will continue to undergo a period of profound correction,” said Cao He, chairman of Hong Kong-listed builder Franshion. “Property developers will face challenges including shrinking profit margins and intensifying competition.” Kiyan Zandiyeh and Daili Wang of Roubini Global Economics warn that the current “supply glut” in Chinese housing is likely to get even more severe. “With companies trying to meet sales growth and defend market share, the incentive has been to keep building – meaning today’s excess supply in the market will only worsen,” they wrote in a report. “Developers will struggle with stronger headwinds from falling house prices, given that most of them are operating with unsustainable levels of inventory and debt.”

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Spending in China is way down, so deflation is a fact.

China Central Bank Governor Calls For Vigilance On Deflation (Reuters)

China’s central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan warned on Sunday that the country needs to be vigilant for signs of deflation and said policymakers were closely watching slowing global economic growth and declining commodity prices. Zhou’s comments are likely to add to concerns that China is in danger of slipping into deflation and underline increasing nervousness among policymakers as the economy continues to lose momentum despite a raft of stimulus measures. “Inflation in China is also declining. We need to have vigilance if this can go further to reach some sort of deflation or not,” Zhou said at a high-level forum in Boao, on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.

Zhou added that the speed with which inflation was slowing was a “little too quick”, though this was part of China’s ongoing market readjustment and reforms. Beijing is determined to keep the world’s second-largest economy from taking the same path of recession and deflation that has blighted its neighbor Japan for the past 20 years. The central bank’s newspaper warned last month that China is dangerously close to slipping into deflation. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has cut interest rates twice since November and taken other steps to support growth, but economists believe it will be forced to take more aggressive measures in coming months if prices and the economy weaken further.

Zhou also said China had a “clear direction” in terms of interest rate liberalization – a long-term goal – although he added it was difficult to put a clear timetable on the move. He pointed to comments made last year when he said the country’s deposit rates were likely to liberalized in one to two years. Last week, Zhou said China could undermine structural reforms if it adopts an excessively loose monetary policy, while pledging to relax capital controls to help make the yuan currency fully convertible. Zhou also said on Sunday that China hoped to work on streamlining regulations around foreign exchange this year and that through the adoption of new rules China would eventually be able to achieve capital account convertibility.

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And they won’t.

Greece Says Not Backing Down On Debt Relief Goal (Reuters)

– Greece has not given up on its aim to renegotiate its debt to render it manageable, the country’s deputy finance minister said on Monday as talks between Athens and its lenders on reforms to unlock aid continue. “The government has not abandoned any claim regarding its aim to make the country’s debt viable,” Deputy Finance Minister Dimitris Mardas told financial daily Naftemporiki. Greece’s public debt burden reached more than 177% of national output last year. The country’s new government came to power in January promising to demand that its euro zone partners let it write off a large part of that debt.

But it has said little about the issue in recent weeks, as Greece struggles to cope with a cash crunch and the government focuses on reaching agreement with its lenders on reforms that would unlock the remaining funds of the country’s bailout. “The solutions are known — either there will be a haircut or it will be extended, or (repayment) will be linked to an increase in output or exports, or there will be lower interest rates,” Mardas told the paper. He reiterated a plan to link the repayment of Greece’s 318 billion euros of debt with economic growth or exports, along the lines of a deal applied for post-World War Two Germany.

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“The ECB has always been the most powerful but least accountable player in bail-out talks”.

How Greece Pushed Europe’s Creditors To The Edge (Telegraph)

Greece has pleaded for forbearance from its creditors. The parlous state of the government’s coffers has led to fears it could run out of cash to make wage and pensions bill in the coming weeks. After a brief reprieve, deposit flight has resumed apace. A primary budget surplus registered over the same period last year, has disappeared. Ratings agency Fitch slashed the country’s sovereign bonds citing the “tight liquidity conditions” that have put “extreme pressure on Greek government funding”. The spectre of an “accidental” Greek exit – or “Grexident” – now looms over the eurozone. “Grexit will not happen” assured Greece’s central bank governor Yannis Stournaras to an audience at the London School of Economics last week. “The eurozone has all the tools to ensure a Grexident cannot occur.”

But of the all the institutions that has pushed his country to the brink, it is the European Central Bank’s role in the saga that has come under the fiercest criticism from Athens. The ECB has long disbanded providing its ordinary loans to Greece’s banks, who have been reliant on emergency funding to keep themselves alive. The limits on this lifeline have been repeatedly hit as deposits flee the country. ECB funding for Greek banks has now topped €100bn. “The ECB has always been the most powerful but least accountable player in bail-out talks” says Raoul Ruparel, head of economic research at Open Europe. “As in Cyprus, they have the power to squeeze liquidity, but it’s a power that has never been properly scrutinised. It’s a concern the eurozone is not paying attention to,” adds Mr Ruparel.

Moves to withdraw a collateral waiver on Greek bonds, and officially ban banks from increasing their holdings of treasury debt has led to accusations the central bank is acting “ultra vires”. When asked about the Bank’s position, the ECB’s chief economist Peter Praet chose to exercise “verbal constraint in a moment of crisis” – itself a tacit admission that the Greek saga still has a way to run before the ECB will alleviate the funding pressures on the nascent government. In a drama littered with soft deadlines, Greece has now promised to present a final list of fleshed out reforms to creditors on Monday. Yet the pattern of over-promising and under-delivering is one that may well repeat itself in April, says Mr Ruparel. “Negotiations have gone in such a way that Greece presents the reforms, and the list underwhelms. This could well happen again – the key is where the eurogroup now draws the line. Maybe the Greeks have convinced them the situation is now dire enough.”

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Well, what a surprise.

Greek Bailout Proposals Lack Necessary Detail, Officials Say (WSJ)

Greek proposals for a revised bailout program don’t have enough detail to satisfy the government’s international creditors, eurozone officials said, making it more likely that Athens will need to go several more weeks without a new infusion of desperately-needed cash. Officials from Greece’s leftist government were in Brussels over the weekend to present the proposals to officials from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund—the trio of institutions representing the government’s creditors. Getting their thumbs-ups is crucial for Athens to regain access to bailout funds and restore normal lending from the ECB. The Greek government is facing a dire shortage of cash: It must pay salaries and pensions at the end of the month and repay debts to the IMF on April 9.

While talks over the weekend were friendly, officials said, mistrust at a political level continues to stew between the outspoken government in Athens and the rest of the eurozone. Following a meeting last week between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Greece said it would submit a list of bailout proposals to its creditors on Monday. Officials hoped that discussions over the weekend would ensure the list is roughly in line with the creditors’ demands. But officials say crucial details were again missing from the Greek proposals after talks that started Friday night, lasted all day Saturday and continued on Sunday. “The proposals were piecemeal, vague and the Greek colleagues could not explain technically what some of them actually implied,” a eurozone official said. “So, let’s hope that they present something more competent next week.”

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Sure, real scary.

Investors Fear Greece Will Impose Capital Controls (AFR)

Will Athens be able to avoid imposing capital controls? That’s the question anxious investors are asking as they wait to see whether the long-awaited reform package proposed by the radical leftist government of Alexis Tsipras does the trick in terms of unlocking billions of euros in badly needed cash. Representatives of Greece’s Troika lenders spent the weekend debating the draft list of economic reforms sent through by Athens on Friday. The approval of the “Brussels Group” (formerly known as the “troika”), followed by the blessing of eurozone finance ministers, will be needed for Athens to be able to tap the frozen aid money and stave off bankruptcy.

The list of reforms include 18 measures aimed at boosting state revenues by €3 billion in 2015, and allowing the country to achieve a primary budget surplus (which excludes debt servicing costs) of 1.5% of GDP. The Greek government is counting on economic growth of 1.4% this year. The main thrust of the reforms is aimed at combating tax evasion and increasing the amount of tax paid by the wealthy. The government’s coffers will also be boosted by measures such as raising the sales tax on certain luxury products, and forcing Greek television chains to pay licence fees. Although Athens has previously ruled out lifting the retirement age or cutting pension payments, the reform package also includes some restrictions on the payment of early pensions,

In addition, the Tsipras government has agreed to proceed with planned privatisations, even though it wants to retain some management control of the businesses after selling off stakes. Investors are hoping that intensive negotiations between Athens and Brussels over the next few days result in a compromise package that goes far enough to persuade the European Union and the IMF to unfreeze at least some of the €7.2 billion that remains from Greece’s last international bailout, allowing the country to stave off bankruptcy. Cash-strapped Greece is hoping that eurozone finance ministers will meet and approve its reform program this week. The head of the group of eurozone finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, has previously signalled that €1 to €2 billion Greece’s remaining aid money could be released quickly if Athens is able to reach agreement with its lenders.

But Brussels is in less of a hurry. EU officials are refusing to call a new meeting of the region’s finance ministers unless Athens is prepared to agree to “significant” reforms. As a result, the crucial meeting of euro zone finance meetings may not take place until after Easter. The Europeans are confident that the immediate risk of a Greek default has receded because the Tsipras government has forced state-controlled corporations and social security funds to transfer their cash reserves to the central bank. As a result, the country now has enough money to pay the €1.7 billion bill for pensions and public-sector wages at the end of March.

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“The only feasible solution in the absolute extreme would be to turn all the official debt into a perpetual bond so it never gets repaid.”

Greek Markets Show All at Risk Should Mistake Trigger a Default (Bloomberg)

In Athens, the unspeakable is at risk of becoming the inevitable. Market metrics show Greece is in danger of sinking under the burden of its debt, putting repayments of about €500 billion owed to European taxpayers, rescue funds, banks and bondholders in jeopardy. PM Alexis Tsipras is locked in talks with creditors over measures attached to Greece’s bailout loans and a government official said on Friday the country won’t service its debt if creditors don’t release the funds. The government has also floated a restructuring that would link some future payments to economic growth, reduce interest rates and allow more time for repayments. While their intention is to exclude private bondholders, the danger is that talks collapse and Greece leaves the euro, leaving all parties facing losses.

“The biggest fear now is that Greece exits by mistake,” said Padhraic Garvey at ING in London. “The only feasible solution in the absolute extreme would be to turn all the official debt into a perpetual bond so it never gets repaid.” With the country running out of cash, credit-default swaps indicate a 72% chance of Greece reneging on its debt within five years compared with 67% at the start of the month, according to CMA. Three-year note yields are almost 10 %age points higher than 10-year rates. Typically investors get more to lend for a longer period to compensate for inflation. With Greece, the immediate worry is whether they get their cash back. The price of five-year securities has tumbled to 68% of face value, from almost 100% after they were sold a year ago.

Greece sold the current three-year notes in July 2014, its second tap of capital markets within three months, after a five-year debt offering in April that year had been hailed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a step toward normalcy. Sales of those securities, which totaled about €6 billion, increased the amount of Greek bonds outstanding to €67.5 billion, of which the ECB and national central banks own about 40%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The market was reduced when Greece enacted the biggest-ever debt restructuring in 2012, which saw private bondholders write off about €100 billion. The 10-year yield went as high as 44.21% in March 2012 as the country moved to restructure its debt.

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Infighting!

ECB Nerves Fray on Greece as Supervisors Rile Central Bankers (Bloomberg)

Inside the five-month-old union between monetary policy and financial oversight at the ECB, nerves are beginning to fray. As officials seek to replace deposits fleeing Greek banks without blatantly financing the state, the efforts of the institution’s new Single Supervisory Mechanism to do its part are irking the old guard. Central bankers under ECB President Mario Draghi worry that overly-strict orders to lenders could worsen the Greek turmoil. After building an institutional pillar that has supervised the euro area’s largest banks since November, the ECB is now facing one of the worst flare-ups in six years of sovereign-debt crisis. Officials must work out how to align their two policy arms in a way that can find a path through the Greek turmoil and set a template for handling banking turbulence to come.

“Clearly there is tension, and it was obvious from the beginning that there would be,” said Nicolas Veron, a fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel research group. “But there’s a productive kind of tension, like there was between Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair Sheila Bair in 2008. It could end up creating the right mix of policy.” Just as those U.S. policy makers in the 2008 financial crisis had to choose between the moral hazard of bailing out banks and the economic chaos of watching them fail, European officials are trapped between giving in to Greek cash demands and the political debacle of letting the country leave the euro.

That stress is bubbling up inside the ECB, affecting the interaction between central bankers in their new premises in Frankfurt’s east end, and bank supervisors installed in a temporary home two kilometers away. SSM Chair Daniele Nouy may give clues on the relationship with the Governing Council when she testifies to the European Parliament on Tuesday. Her officials sought this month to prevent Greek banks from increasing holdings of short-term government debt, hours before critical meetings including Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Draghi. The move, which makes it harder for the state to fund itself, initially floundered as the ECB’s Governing Council balked at its severity and the monetary-policy goals that it referred to.

From the supervisory point of view, the proposal reflected the ECB’s restrictions on Emergency Liquidity Assistance for the Greek banking system. Since last month, the Governing Council has approved only small weekly increases in central- bank cash to its lenders, on concern funds might be used directly to buy illiquid government debt, violating European Union law. For some central bankers, the SSM proposal was a clumsy intervention in crisis policy that threatened to upset the Governing Council’s measured strategy of addressing the Greek turmoil, according to officials familiar with the discussions.

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Angry Bruno!

Globalist Financiers Fleece Greece (StealthFlation)

Greece was brought to her knees at the hands of its corrupt political class elites with the full support of an avaricious international banking cabal. Please don’t put the blame on the little old lady pushing her Gyro cart up the steep streets of Kolonaki. She was perfectly within her rights to assume that the leadership of her country knew what the hell they were doing whilst managing her distinguished nation’s finances. Yet today, she has taken the full brunt of the fiscal pain, while those most responsible for this massive over leveraged abomination, namely the Greek political family dynasties and their complicit int’l banksters, continue to bask in the sun off of Mykonos on their luxury yachts. Along with the privilege of leadership comes responsibility, it’s way too easy to simply blame the little people. According to Atlantic Media today:

The Greek government might run out of money in two weeks. Or perhaps four. Capital controls are either imminent or a month away. Whatever the case, depositors are draining Greek banks dry, which could hasten a state default and, potentially, ejection from the euro zone altogether. The four-month bailout extension that Greece got in February now seems a distant memory, with €7.2 billion in much-needed funds still contingent on Greece drawing up a detailed list of reforms, which creditors are vetting this weekend. If they don’t like what they see, it might mark the beginning of the end for Greece’s membership in the euro.

The first mandate SYRIZA obtained from a sovereign electorate, who rightly rejected the corrupt old-guard Greek political establishment, was to offer to negotiate a more rational, realistic and productive debt repayment schedule/structure with the TROIKA. That is what Alexis Tsipras & Yanis Varoufakis have tried diligently to accomplish thus far, if they fail because Brussels insists on sucking blood from a rock, then the next momentous mandate will be to leave the Eurozone altogether, and for that they will require a national referendum from the Greek people themselves. Tsipras is much smarter than many give him credit for, he knows that he must be perceived to progress cautiously and as constructively as possible, in order not to be pigeonholed as an extreme radical, which the EU establishment is so desperately trying to paint him as.

Make no mistake, the international banking cartel of our times our are on a mission to dismantle the sovereignty of all people. Greece is the first nation to fully recognize and realize this craven conniving cataclysm, as pain often gives people proper perspective. This Multilateral Central Banking Cabal and its high finance agents are planning to transition to a new international monetary order by devaluing the USD, as they fold it into the SDR world reserve currency, backed by a basket of the existing currencies of the major trading block nations. This will serve to both ease the burden of the most indebted nation in history, the U.S., by permitting its outstanding debt denominated USDs to be debased, as well as appease the creditor nations, who will agree to have their US dollar denominated debt holdings devalued, because they now require a true stake in the globe’s future monetary system moving forward. The only question remaining is will the global economy disintegrate before we get there……..

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There’s already no interest left on deposits, and now the government wants to take more? Judging from prices on just about everything, but especially alcohol and tobacco, people here may have not much left anyway at the end of the day.

Australia To Introduce Tax On Bank Deposits (ABC)

The Federal Government looks set to introduce a tax on bank deposits in the May budget. The idea of a bank deposit tax was raised by Labor in 2013 and was criticised by Tony Abbott at the time. Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has indicated an announcement on the new tax could be made before the budget. The Government is heading for a fight with the banking industry, which has warned it will have to pass the cost back onto customers. Mr Frydenberg is a member of the Government’s Expenditure Review Committee but has refused to provide any details. “Any announcements or decisions around this proposed policy which we discussed at the last election will be made in the lead up or on budget night,” he said. Speaking at the Victorian Liberal State Council meeting Mr Abbott has repeated his budget message, focusing on families and small businesses.

“There will be tough decisions in this year’s budget as there must be, but there will also be good news.” The banking industry has raised concerns about a deposit tax, saying it will have to pass the cost back onto customers. Steven Munchenberg from the Australian Bankers’ Association said it would be a damaging move for the Government. “It’s going to make it harder for banks to raise deposits which are an important way of funding banks. And therefore for us to fund the economy,” he said. “And we also oppose it because particularly at this point in time with low interest rates a lot of people who are relying on their savings for their incomes are already seeing very low returns and this will actually mean they get even less money.”

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The new off-shore?

Swiss Banking Model Is ‘Dead’, Says Abu Dhabi Finance Centre Chief (FT)

Abu Dhabi intends to set itself up as a new hub for wealth management, with the head of its nascent international financial centre declaring Switzerland’s old model of private bank secrecy to be “dead”. Abu Dhabi Global Markets is an expression of world ambition, intended to elevate the oil-and-gas-rich emirate to the tables of the most influential global institutions, such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Group of 20 Nations, using Singapore rather than Switzerland as its model, its chairman told the Financial Times. “Innovation is coming from this new, emerging market.

This is why Asian financial centres are sitting on Basel committees and legislating for the west, because they didn’t make one mistake in 15 years,” Ahmed Ali al-Sayegh said in London as he set out ADGM’s stall to banks. “We have a similar ambition.” His comments come as the centre of gravity of such institutions has shifted palpably from west to east, and as Asia is developing its own bodies to rival those in the west, such as the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. ADGM, which will have its own regulator and courts based on English common law, is an attempt to diversify the UAE capital’s economy. Its heavy-hitting sovereign wealth funds, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Mubadala, will both be based in the free zone, built on al-Marya island in the capital.

That has worried some in neighbouring Dubai, whose own International Financial Centre opened a decade ago, attracting the world’s biggest banks and law firms. Mr Sayegh and his team, which includes Sir Hector Sants, the former head of the UK’s financial watchdog, are adamant that there is room for two financial centres within two hours’ drive of each other, stressing that not only will Abu Dhabi focus specific areas such as wealth management but also that nearby centres can complement each other.

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Still a crazy story.

Kim Dotcom Loses $67 Million Of Assets To US Government (RT)

Megaupload streaming service mogul Kim Dotcom has just been slapped with a civil penalty from the US government. The lawsuit will cost him $67 million worth of assets, including cars, property and luxury goods. The victory by the US court comes as he lost the right to contest the seizure of the assets. Dotcom, who is wanted in the United States for copyright infringement through the former file-sharing website, told the Herald on Sunday that this is indicative of the “sad state” of the US justice system. “By labeling me a fugitive, the US court has allowed the US government to legally steal all of my assets without any trial, without any due process, without any test of the merits,” he said, vowing to appeal the decision, which his legal team says would likely not hold up in New Zealand or Hong Kong courts.

“The asset forfeiture was a default judgment. I was disentitled to defend myself,” the internet guru went on. “First the US judge ruled that I can’t mount any defense in the asset forfeiture case because according to him I’m a ‘fugitive’… Think about that for a moment. I have always said that I’m innocent. There was no conspiracy. I have done nothing wrong.” He also claims the US government had to act in this way to spare the New Zealand authorities from having to return all of his assets in mid-April, when he claims he will have gone to the Appeals Court and won them back. “They would have had to return everything. Imagine all of the New Zealand media at the mansion when the police has to return everything, all my cars, my TVs, my servers and me directing them where to put my stuff.”

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Complicated.

Who’s Fighting For Whom In Yemen’s Proxy War? (Reuters)

An aerial campaign on Yemen’s capital, launched by a Saudi-led pan-Arab force, has escalated what had in many ways been a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. While the worsening war in Yemen shares similarities with other conflicts in the Arab world, it is the role of foreign powers in Yemen’s descent into leaderless chaos that is particularly striking. Because Yemen is viewed as the Arab world’s poor brother — inconsequential and with little influence over the region as a whole — it serves as an avenue for the Arab world to push back against Iran. There is little other incentive for Arab governments to become involved with Yemen’s internal quagmire, other than not having a hostile government in a nation bordering the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a highly trafficked shipping line leading to the Suez Canal.

Though Yemen’s domestic power struggle since the end of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s reign three years ago was based largely on local grievances, these two historical foes, Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, worked to use who they could in Yemen for political advantage. The Saudi kingdom long was Yemen’s largest benefactor and held sway over powerful Yemeni tribal leaders. Yet following Saleh’s resignation in November 2011, Iran swiftly worked to increase its influence in Yemen by creating ties with whomever shared a common disdain for Saudi Arabia, including liberal anti-Saleh activists. The Houthi rebels, an oft-ignored militia from Yemen’s far north, were an obvious ally for Iran. Houthi fighters, who follow a sect of Shi’ite Islam known as Zaydism, consolidated power in the wake of the 2011 government collapse.

They are staunchly anti-Saudi. They believe that the Kingdom was involved in the systematic corruption of their distinct Zaydi culture via the promotion of Wahhabism (a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam that began in Saudi Arabia) in the Houthis’ traditional homeland in the north. Then last September, Houthi militia swept into Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, taking over government institutions and effectively forcing the resignation of President Abd- Rabbu Mansour Hadi — a man whose power stemmed from Western governments and the United Nations, which crafted and promulgated the transition agreement that made him president. There was no real attempt at a democratic transition in Yemen. Hadi was propped up by the West despite his lack of leadership experience, local support and political savvy.

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Only one gets full US support, though.

Ukraine’s Oligarchs Turn on Each Other (Robert Parry)

In the never-never land of how the mainstream U.S. press covers the Ukraine crisis, the appointment last year of thuggish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky to govern one of the country’s eastern provinces was pitched as a democratic “reform” because he was supposedly too rich to bribe, without noting that his wealth had come from plundering the country’s economy. In other words, the new U.S.-backed “democratic” regime, after overthrowing democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych because he was “corrupt,” was rewarding one of Ukraine’s top thieves by letting him lord over his own province, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, with the help of his personal army. Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky confronting journalists after he led an armed team in a raid at the government-owned energy company on March 19, 2015. (Screen shot from YouTube)

Last year, Kolomoisky’s brutal militias, which include neo-Nazi brigades, were praised for their fierce fighting against ethnic Russians from the east who were resisting the removal of their president. But now Kolomoisky, whose financial empire is crumbling as Ukraine’s economy founders, has turned his hired guns against the Ukrainian government led by another oligarch, President Petro Poroshenko. Last Thursday night, Kolomoisky and his armed men went to Kiev after the government tried to wrest control of the state-owned energy company UkrTransNafta from one of his associates. Kolomoisky and his men raided the company offices to seize and apparently destroy records. As he left the building, he cursed out journalists who had arrived to ask what was going on. He ranted about “Russian saboteurs.”

It was a revealing display of how the corrupt Ukrainian political-economic system works and the nature of the “reformers” whom the U.S. State Department has pushed into positions of power. According to BusinessInsider, the Kiev government tried to smooth Kolomoisky’s ruffled feathers by announcing “that the new company chairman [at UkrTransNafta] would not be carrying out any investigations of its finances.” Yet, it remained unclear whether Kolomoisky would be satisfied with what amounts to an offer to let any past thievery go unpunished. But if this promised amnesty wasn’t enough, Kolomoisky appeared ready to use his private army to discourage any accountability.

On Monday, Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, chief of the State Security Service, accused Dnipropetrovsk officials of financing armed gangs and threatening investigators, Bloomberg News reported, while noting that Ukraine has sunk to 142nd place out of 175 countries in Transparency International’s Corruptions Perception Index, the worst in Europe. The see-no-evil approach to how the current Ukrainian authorities do business relates as well to Ukraine’s new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who appears to have enriched herself at the expense of a $150 million U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund for Ukraine. Jaresko, a former U.S. diplomat who received overnight Ukrainian citizenship in December to become Finance Minister, had been in charge of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which became the center of insider-dealing and conflicts of interest, although the U.S. Agency for International Development showed little desire to examine the ethical problems – even after Jaresko’s ex-husband tried to blow the whistle.

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Not so smart.

Risks Involved In UK Smart Meter Scheme Are ‘Staggering’ (BBC)

The government’s smart meter scheme could be an “IT disaster”, the Institute of Directors (IoD) has said. The risks involved with “the largest UK government-run IT project in history” were “staggering”, a report said. It recommended that the government drastically scale back the programme or abandon it altogether. Smart Energy GB, the independent body set up to publicise smart meters, said the IoD wanted to take the UK “back to an analogue dark age”. Energy-saving digital smart meters, designed to replace existing analogue gas and electricity meters, should help householders to monitor their energy-use far more accurately, and energy companies to do away with estimated bills. By some estimates, the new meters could save us £17bn on our energy bills.

But the IoD believes the government’s plan to roll out smart meters to all 30 million UK households by 2020 is far too ambitious. “The pace of technological innovation may well leave the current generation of meters behind and leave consumers in a cycle of installation, de-installation and re-installation,” it said. Under the scheme, energy companies must begin offering free smart meters to their customers from the autumn. Despite the £11bn estimated cost to the industry, it will not be compulsory to have one. Responding to the IoD report, Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Smart Energy GB, said: “The IoD does not understand what’s needed to secure Britain’s energy infrastructure for the future. “The smart meter rollout must be for everybody. It will only deliver the national transformation Britain needs if every home is part of this national upgrade.” Nearly 1.4 million households have already had a smart meter installed, he added.

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And you’re sitting on your asses watching it happen. What are you thinking, someone else is going to solve it for you?

Antarctica Recorded Its Hottest Temperature Ever This Week (CP)

The coldest place on Earth just got warmer than has ever been recorded. According to the weather blog Weather Underground, on Tuesday, March 24, the temperature in Antarctica rose to 63.5°F (17.5C) – a record for the polar continent. Part of a longer heat wave, the record high came just a day after the previous record was set at 63.3°F. Tuesday’s temperature was taken at the Argentina’s Esperanza Base, located near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The Monday record was from Marambio Base, about 60 miles southeast of Esperanza. Both are records for the locations, however the World Meteorological Organization is yet to certify that the temperatures are all-time weather records for Antarctica.

Before these two chart-toppers, the highest recorded temperature from these outposts was 62.8°F in 1961. Setting a new all-time temperature record for an entire continent is rare and requires the synthesizing of a lot of data. As Weather Underground’s weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, explains, there is debate over what exactly is included in the continent Antarctica, and by the narrowest interpretation, which would include only sites south of the Antarctic Circle, Esperanza would not be part of the continent. According to the WMO, the official keeper of global temperature records, the all-time high temperature for Antarctica was 59°F in 1974. As Mashable reports, the verification process for these new records could take months as the readings must be checked for accuracy.

Even in their unofficial capacity, the readings are stunning. As Burt reports, these temperature records occurred nearly three months past the warmest time of year in the Antarctic Peninsula, December, when the average high is 37.8°F. The average high for March is 31.3°F, making this week’s records more than 30°F above average. Burt also points out that temperature records for Esperanza have previously occurred in October and April, so these spikes are not unheard of. They should also not be unexpected: the poles are warming faster than any part of the planet and rapid ice melt is being observed at increased rates in Antarctica. According to a new study, ice shelves in West Antarctica have lost as much as 18% of their volume over the last two decades, with rapid acceleration occurring over the last decade. The study found that from 1994 to 2003, the overall loss of ice shelf volume across the continent was negligible, but over the last decade West Antarctic losses increased by 70%.

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