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Debt Rattle May 24 2024

May 242024
 
 May 24, 2024  Posted by at 9:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Theodoor Rombouts Prometheus 1627

 

• Moscow as the Third Europe, and a Fourth There Will Never Be (Karganovic)
• US Diplomacy Needed to Avoid Ukraine’s ‘Overwhelming’ Defeat Sy Hersh (Sp.)
• Ukraine Seeking To Spark Direct NATO-Russia Clash – Moscow (RT)
• Threat Of World War Grows Every Day – Hungary FM (TASS)
• US OK for Ukraine Attacks on Russia Could Mean Nuclear War – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• Blinken Lobbying For Strikes On Russia – NYT (RT)
• Israel Abandons Major Invasion of Rafah in Favor of Targeted Raids (Sp.)
• Unified Reich Hoax One Of Most Blatantly Dishonest Attacks On Trump Yet (ZH)
• Will Garland Send Hunter Biden Perjury Allegations to a Grand Jury? (Turley)
• Nikki Haley Endorses Trump: He’s Not Perfect But Biden ‘Catastrophe’ (Sp.)
• Pentagon Pumped $756 Mln Into Hypersonic Missile That Doesn’t Fly (Sp.)
• Dutch Lawyer Prosecuted For Social Media Post Slamming Mass Migration (MN)
• 292 United & American Boeing 777s At Risk For ‘Exploding’ Fuel Tanks (ZH)

 

 

I don’t like the rhetoric these days…

 

 


House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul

 

 

Trump Bronx
https://twitter.com/i/status/1793782406388027528

 

 

AOC
https://twitter.com/i/status/1793485913797882305

 

 

Trump 1989
https://twitter.com/i/status/1793725371357020478

 

 

Comey

 

 

Tucker Trump Bet-David

 

 

Bill oh Bill

 

 

Cruz

 

 

Bridgen
https://twitter.com/i/status/1793568491456668057

 

 

 

 

Russia as the guardian of western civilization.

Very nice historical perspective from Stephen Karganovic, President Of The Srebrenica Historical Project.

“Following the demise of the Byzantine Roman Empire, Russian monk Philotheus famously declared his firm belief that “Moscow [has become] the Third Rome, and a Fourth there will not be.”

• Moscow as the Third Europe, and a Fourth There Will Never Be (Karganovic)

Upon assuming his duties, the new Russian Defence Minister Andrey Belousov made a number of noteworthy statements that rightfully reverberated throughout the world. But tucked in amongst his other observations of mainly geopolitical character there was one pregnant remark of an entirely different nature that nobody seems to have caught on to. Arguably however it surpasses all of the rest in significance: “Russia,” Belousov stated, “should follow the path of modernized conservatism… Russia can preserve traditional Western values. The West has abandoned these traditional values and moved on to something else – to an anti-traditional mindset within the framework of postmodernism.” One suspects that this circumlocution refers to the woke ideology which is currently ravaging the Western world. “It is important,” he continued, “to preserve traditional Western values, which in a certain sense are the values of Western Christian civilization, European civilization.”

Now comes the punchline: “Russia can become the guardian of these values. This may sound like a paradox, but it’s true. In this respect, it would be wrong to call the West our enemy … In the West, there are certain elites, and considerable parts of society that are associated with traditional values. And in this respect, they may grasp at this straw, this chance which Russia offers them to preserve some of their values.” These are remarkable affirmations. It would not be an exaggeration to call them epochal, coming from such a high-ranking source in the country that until quite recently symbolised a radical ideological rupture with the very civilisation and moral values in the defence of which Mr. Belousov has raised his voice. And he is doing it not just in his own name but plainly on behalf of the entire land for which he so self-confidently speaks. Granted, Mr. Belousov personally has all the required credentials to make such a statement because he is known to be a believing, church-going Orthodox Christian.

In defending the European civilisation and European values he is standing up for his own deeply cherished principles and for the Orthodox Christian civilizational milieu from which those principles have sprung. But on the symbolic level, as everyone with a solid grasp of relevant history knows, there is much more to it than that. Oddly, Western analysts and commentators missed completely the connection between Belousov’s bold depiction of Russia as the residual guardian and defender of Western civilisation and strikingly similar sentiments articulated earlier by another Russian, at an analogous historical juncture. Following the demise of the Byzantine Roman Empire, Russian monk Philotheus famously declared his firm belief that “Moscow [has become] the Third Rome, and a Fourth there will not be.” Western experts might have noticed the congruence between Philotheus and Belousov if they had a modicum of historical awareness, or, as Andrei Martyanov likes to put it, if their CVs contained even minimal evidence of culture and education. But in fact they are a culturally challenged and deplorably ignorant lot.

Therefore, they overlooked the premium point that Defence Minister Belousov gratuitously handed to them. Were they brighter or better educated, and capable of earning their keep, they might have gleefully twisted the minister’s words into rather plausible-sounding proof of Russia’s expansionistic ambitions. Such disinformation, bolstered with a decontextualised quote from one of the highest officials, would have corroborated perfectly their propaganda claims. They could have had a field day connecting Belousov’s words to their mendacious misrepresentation of current events. And if their propaganda skills were not so pathetically unrefined they could even have made the case that their geopolitical rival’s expansionistic pretensions did not start in February 2022 but go back for centuries, to at least the time of the monk Philotheus. Alas! to make such connections you need a bit of intellect, some imagination, and at least a bright schoolboy’s knowledge of history.

But needless to say, the issues that Philotheus broached in the epistle to his emperor in the 16th century, and also the issue that Defence Minister Belousov has raised more recently, are neither symbolic nor metaphorical, and least of all are given to vulgar propagandistic simplification. They reflect today as they did in the time of Philotheus an emerging civilizational paradigm, a reality that has been profoundly and for the West perhaps irreversibly reshaped. The new reality today is analogous to conditions in Christendom that prevailed when Philotheus made his bold declaration. Constantinople, the eastern Second Rome, had recently been conquered, just as in our time Europe, the First Rome, has finally imploded, ceasing to be either the political or spiritual centre of civilizational gravity. For recent evidence of that multi-level implosion one need look no further that the festival of satanic degeneracy in Malmo or the occult symbolism embedded in plain view in the official portrait of the head of the Church of England, the British monarch.

Today, as in the 16th century, who else is there that could possibly fill the void but the then surging, and in our own time resurgent, Russia? That in my view encapsulates the significance of Andrey Belousov’s history-making manifest that, regrettably, seems to have slipped under the radar but whose momentous impact will soon be felt.

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What diplomacy? They barely know how to spell it.

• US Diplomacy Needed to Avoid Ukraine’s ‘Overwhelming’ Defeat Sy Hersh (Sp.)

Diplomatic efforts from Washington, which are withheld due to President Joe Biden’s irrational views on Russia, could have resolved the Ukrainian conflict that Americans and their allies are now unable to win, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said. “America, in the years Biden has been in office, has spent $175 billion to fight a war that cannot and will not be won. It will only be resolved by diplomacy—if rationality prevails in Kiev and Washington,” Hersh wrote in a Substack article. Otherwise, the “undertrained, understaffed, and poorly-equipped Ukrainian army faces an overwhelming defeat,” he predicted.

In addition, Hersh, citing a longtime senior US official said that the US intelligence community has been concerned about Biden’s views on Putin and Russia, which date back to his time serving in the Senate. However, some within the American intelligence community believe that the United States bears its own share of responsibility for the conflict in Ukraine, Hersh added. “Putin and his predecessors in Moscow watched for three decades—since the reunification of Germany in 1990—as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) added member states that brought NATO to Russia’s doorstep,” Hersh said.

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“..the use of US-provided weapons to strike strategic targets within Russian territory under certain circumstances.”

• Ukraine Seeking To Spark Direct NATO-Russia Clash – Moscow (RT)

Calls by American lawmakers to allow Ukraine use foreign-made weapons against targets deep in Russian territory play into Kiev’s hands, as they encourage a direct clash between Moscow and NATO, Russia’s Ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, has warned. On Wednesday, a group of US congressmen submitted a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking him to authorize “the use of US-provided weapons to strike strategic targets within Russian territory under certain circumstances.” This stance has previously been supported by Victoria Nuland, the former acting US Deputy Secretary of State, who played a major role in the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. Earlier this week, however, Austin stopped short of endorsing the policy shift, suggesting that Kiev should focus “on the close fight” rather than on long-range strikes with foreign-made weapons.

On Thursday, Antonov denounced the “provocative” and “extremely dangerous and reckless” calls to allow Ukraine use Western-supplied weapons to attack deep inside Russia. He added that “the calls by Russophobes mean only one thing – further US involvement in the conflict in Ukraine on the side of the agonizing Zelensky regime.” The envoy suggested that the debates on the matter were a “hysterical reaction” to Russia’s successes on the battlefield against Ukraine, and that Western policymakers “continue to test our patience.” According to Antonov, it is also obvious that by requesting permission to attack deep inside Russia with foreign-made weapons, Kiev seeks “to provoke the United States, as well as other NATO countries, into rash actions and achieve a head-on collision between Russia and the bloc’s members.”

Kiev would likely use long-range systems against Russian civilians, the ambassador claimed, adding that “the Kiev regime has long… stopped asking permission” from the West to do so. “Barbaric raids using deadly products of the NATO military-industrial complex are carried out across our country on an almost regular basis,” Antonov stated. Ukraine has stepped up its pleas to be allowed to use Western-made weapons against far-flung targets inside Russia as Moscow’s forces steadily advance in Donbass and the Kharkov Region. The latter area has been used by Kiev to routinely shell Russian territory, with strikes killing dozens of civilians. Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that Moscow’s offensive in Kharkov Region seeks to establish a “cordon sanitaire,” or buffer zone, to prevent further Ukrainian attacks.

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“.. there has been no day without another crazy statement uttered by of some of the European politicians.”

• Threat Of World War Grows Every Day – Hungary FM (TASS)

The threat of a world war is growing due to “insane statements” by Western politicians speculating about sending soldiers to Ukraine against the background of exercises in Russia involving non-strategic nuclear weapons, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said. He noted that “there has been no day without another crazy statement uttered by of some of the European politicians.” “There are those who want to send soldiers to Ukraine. Others are already speculating about the use of nuclear weapons. Every day the threat of a world war is getting closer,” Szijjarto told a news conference after a meeting in Budapest with his Swiss counterpart Ignazio Cassis. “We see what is happening: European politicians are making statements about the use of nuclear weapons. The Russians are conducting exercises involving tactical nuclear weapons,” Szijjarto said. He believes that “the time has come to stop this ma”..dness.” Szijjarto recalled that the Hungarian government had long stated that it was impossible to resolve the Ukrainian conflict militarily.

“That is why Hungary continues to tell its European partners that instead of indulging in crazy statements and fantasies that threaten to escalate [hostilities] they should spend at least half of their energy on achieving peace. Then there may be hope that this war will be ended at the negotiating table,” Szijjarto emphasized. On May 21, Russia began the first stage of exercises including practical training in preparations for using non-strategic nuclear weapons. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, they are being held in response to provocative statements by Western officials and are aimed at maintaining the readiness to respond and ensuring the country’s sovereignty. Missile units of the Southern Military District are practicing preparations for launching Iskander tactical missiles, while the personnel of the Aerospace Forces will equip air-launched delivery vehicles with special warheads, including hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, and head for patrol areas.

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“..it’s not taking place with State Department or Department of Defense connivance. It’s taking place with the assistance and the facilitation of the Central Intelligence Agency – a covert war. All Tony Blinken is now talking about is taking this covert war and making it an overt war..”

• US OK for Ukraine Attacks on Russia Could Mean Nuclear War – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul added fuel to the fire of escalatory rhetoric swirling around Washington on Wednesday regarding restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American long-range strike weapons, trotting out a map during Secretary Blinken’s testimony showing areas of Russia hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian frontlines that weapons like ATACMS and HIMARS could hit. “Will you change this policy so that Ukraine can fight without one hand tied behind its back?” McCaul asked. “When it comes to enabling or endorsing attacks outside of Ukraine, that’s not something we’ve done, but Ukraine will have to make and will make its own decisions and I want to make sure that it gets the equipment that it needs,” Blinken said, avoiding a direct answer. Privately, however, sources told the New York Times that the secretary of state favors lifting the restrictions, and that he has lobbied President Biden to do so after what the newspaper characterized as a “sobering” trip to Kiev last week, where he was briefed on Ukraine’s battlefield setbacks.

McCaul’s counterparts in the Russian Duma and Senate slammed the congressman’s “madness” and apparent loss of instinct for self-preservation, warning that Russia would be forced “to take tough and swift measures” in response to such blatant aggression. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, meanwhile, recommended to McCaul that the first place in the “Russian interior” to be targeted by long-range US missiles is the American Embassy in Moscow. But the debate in Washington regarding direct US approval for Ukrainian missile attacks deep inside Russia constitute little more than “word games,” says former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.

“Ukraine is already attacking critical energy facilities inside Russia, oil tanks, petroleum depots. This is taking place. It’s just that it’s not taking place with State Department or Department of Defense connivance. It’s taking place with the assistance and the facilitation of the Central Intelligence Agency – a covert war. All Tony Blinken is now talking about is taking this covert war and making it an overt war. Why is he doing this? Domestic American politics. It will have no impact on the battlefield. But what it does is allow the Biden administration to posture itself as doing something discernable to address the Russian successes – the successful offensive north of Kharkov, the continuing successful offensives in eastern Ukraine and Novorossiya,” Ritter told Sputnik. The catastrophic situation for Ukraine is seen by the Biden administration as a “political problem” during an election year, and Blinken is “trying to come up with a political solution,” the military and international affairs observer explained.

“But it’s shortsighted. It won’t resolve the military problems that are being confronted by the Ukrainians. What it will do is create the dangerous potential for the kind of escalation that the Biden administration has been assiduously seeking to avoid – an escalation that would lead to a direct confrontation between Russia, the United States and NATO. An escalation that could see this conflict move away from conventional war into the possibility, indeed probability of nuclear conflict,” Ritter said. Ritter characterized the hostile rhetoric coming out of Washington regarding overt approval for strikes on Russia an “unprecedented” escalation, “an act of war, an act of aggression that Russia couldn’t let go without a response.” Legally, the retired soldier said, Russia would have the right not only to strike decision-making centers and launch sites inside Ukraine, but also those facilitating the attacks, potentially including “American decision-making centers in Europe.”

As for Congressman McCaul’s map, Ritter suggested that what neocons like McCaul “don’t understand” is “that they’re putting forward a slanted version of this conflict. An accurate map put up by Tony Blinken, Victoria Nuland or the congressman from Texas would highlight for instance Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Germany, France, England, Italy, the Netherlands, the Baltics…All of those nations provide a safe haven for Ukraine – a place where Ukrainian forces can train. A place where Ukrainian military materiel can be stockpiled, repaired. Where command and control activity takes place, where intelligence is collected, assessed and disseminated. All these activities are part and parcel of Ukraine’s military effort against Russia, and under normal conditions would be subjected to military interdiction. But Russia doesn’t attack them, it can’t attack them because they’re part of NATO. For Russia to attack them, even though this activity is directly related to the war, it would lead to an expansion of the conflict, an escalation. So Russia has avoided doing this even though it has every right to do so.”

“Russia has the ability to decisively interdict all of the activities that are taking place on NATO’s soil. Ukraine – if it were to launch attacks on…Russia – all it would do is kick the bear. It’s not going to have a meaningful impact. It’s not going to change the outcome. The Russians will not be defeated. This will not alter the reality that Ukraine lacks manpower, equipment and funding to sustain this conflict – that Ukraine is on a path of decisive defeat that could occur sometime this year. And no expansion of the target deck is going to change that reality,” Ritter concluded.

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With Biden incapacitated, Blinken is the de facto leader on foreign policy.

• Blinken Lobbying For Strikes On Russia – NYT (RT)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is pushing the administration of President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to attack targets deep inside Russia with American weapons, the New York Times reported on Thursday, referring to unnamed US officials. The ban, according to the White House, was imposed out of concern that if US arms were used inside what Washington acknowledges as Russian territory it would trigger an escalation and potentially World War III. Blinken has been advocating for scrapping the restriction after making a “sobering” visit to Kiev earlier this month, the newspaper said, citing insider sources. Ukrainian officials have claimed that being unable to target Russian forces across the border with American weapons led to the failure of its troops to prevent the recent Russian advances in Kharkov Region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the offensive is a response to months of Ukrainian artillery and drone attacks in Russia’s Belgorod Region and that a buffer zone is required to deprive Kiev of the capability to make such strikes. The Times said that Ukrainian weapons “don’t pack the power and speed of the American weapons.” Kiev has launched a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill to pressure the White House over the issue and has some allies among lawmakers. A group of representatives signed a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Monday calling for the Ukrainian request to be granted. During a hearing in Congress on Tuesday, Senator Michael McCaul displayed a map showing the strike range of ATACMS missiles – a weapon the US has donated to Ukraine – if Kiev were allowed to use them inside Russia.

He called the outlined territory a “sanctuary zone” for Russian troops and accused the Biden administration of tying the hands of the Ukrainians behind their backs. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has urged increased NATO involvement in the conflict and has argued that the West should not fear Russia’s reaction. Moscow believes that Zelensky’s goal is to trigger an escalation to maintain his position. Russia is currently conducting a military drill to test its capability to use non-strategic nuclear weapons, which Putin ordered in response to hostile rhetoric by Western officials. One such remark identified by Moscow came from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who said earlier this month that Kiev “has the right” to use weapons donated by his nation to attack targets inside Russia.

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More Blinken.

• Israel Abandons Major Invasion of Rafah in Favor of Targeted Raids (Sp.)

Israel has allegedly abandoned its plans for a major invasion of Rafah in the Gaza Strip in favor of targeted incursions after talks with the United States, The Telegraph has reported, citing a senior US official. The report cited the official as saying on Wednesday that Israel had taken concerns of the US into account, which had for weeks warned Israel against full-scale operation in Rafah. “It’s fair to say, I think, the Israelis have updated their plans. They’ve incorporated many of the concerns that we have expressed … This is an ongoing discussion, ongoing conversation. It’s been constructive,” the official said, referring to a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Jerusalem last week. Last week, Sullivan traveled to the Middle East and visited Saudi Arabia and Israel, where he met with Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and the Israeli leadership.

Earlier in May, the Pentagon confirmed media reports that the Biden administration halted deliveries of 1800 2000-pound bombs and 1700 500-pound bombs to Israel after the country began its allegedly limited military operation in Rafah while making public its plans to proceed with a major ground operation.In early May, US President Joe Biden said during an interview with CNN that Washington would not supply weapons to Israel if the Jewish state’s military went into Rafah. In the early hours of May 7, the Israel Defense Forces launched what it called a counterterrorist operation in the east of Rafah and took control of the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt. Later that week, Israeli media reported that Israel’s military cabinet had approved expanding the ground operation. Israeli authorities say the operation was aimed at eliminating the remaining battalions of Palestinian movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a large-scale rocket attack against Israel and breached the border, attacking both civilian neighborhoods and military bases. Nearly 1,200 people in Israel were killed and some 240 others were abducted during the attack. Israel launched retaliatory strikes, ordered a complete blockade of Gaza, and started a ground incursion into the Palestinian enclave with the declared goal of eliminating Hamas fighters and rescuing the hostages. Over 35,600 people have been killed so far by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, local authorities said. More than 100 hostages are still believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza.

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They know how dumb their voters are… But even then, this is something else…

• Unified Reich Hoax One Of Most Blatantly Dishonest Attacks On Trump Yet (ZH)

With a brand new set of polls showing Donald Trump leading in six of seven swing states, establishment media has stooped to new levels of transparent dishonesty in a desperate effort to derail his campaign. The latest example? An all-out hoax that had major outlets telling Americans that Trump shared a video promising that his reelection would lead to the “creation of a unified Reich,” in what was supposedly a shocking revelation of his intention to Make Nazism Great Again. Here’s a sampling of the hysterical headlines:
• Newsweek: Donald Trump ‘Unified Reich’ Video Leaves People Stunned
• MSNBC: Trump’s Online Account Promotes ‘Unified Reich’ Video, Adding To Alarming Pattern
• The Hill: White House Slams ‘Sickening’ Video Shared By Trump Referencing ‘Unified Reich’
• CNN: Trump Posts Video Referencing ‘Unified Reich’ If Reelected

TV’s talking heads gravely shared the news. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos said Trump posted a video that “used language from Nazi Germany, the latest in a series of antisemitic and authoritarian statements from Trump and his campaign.” Social media erupted in the latest round of bogus outrage, including this pearl-clutching tweet from archetypal deep-stater and Constitution-betraying mass surveillance architect Michael Hayden. The White House leapt headlong into the propaganda blitz. “It is abhorrent, sickening, and disgraceful for anyone to promote content associated with Germany’s Nazi government under Adolf Hitler,” said Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates. Piling dishonesty on dishonesty, here’s Joe Biden recoiling in phony disbelief as he pretends to be seeing Trump’s alleged abomination for the first time:

So what actually happened? On Monday afternoon, Trump’s Truth Social account reposted a video that had been created and posted by someone outside the campaign. The video used imagery of newspaper headlines to imagine a Trump victory in November and the beneficial consequences that would accompany it. The video was not created from scratch, but rather from a stock video template that anyone can buy online. Sold by Envato Elements, it’s called “Newspaper Vintage History Headlines Promo.” With its old-newspaper feel, whatever headlines are added to it are given a certain historical gravitas. Aside from the Trump-specific banner headlines, the video creator simply left intact all the minor, historical headlines that come with the template and serve as little more than background filler. For all the freaking out about Trump using the video to implicitly endorse the Third Reich, the vintage headline in question isn’t even about that reich. It reads, “German Industrial Strength After 1871 Driven By The Creation Of A Unified Reich.” “It’s difficult to convey just how fake the establishment American media really is,” said Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt, in this segment that lays bare the utter dishonesty behind the latest baseless outrage:

Predictably, the so-called “fact checkers” at Snopes framed the video controversy in such a way that they could stamp “TRUE” on it, addressing merely whether Trump shared a video that contained the words “creation of a unified reich.” Like many of the harpies on social media who’ve been called out for their deceptive descriptions of the video, Snopes blames the video creator for “fail[ing] to remove” the unified Reich headline — as if that video creator had used Triumph Of The Will as their starting template.

Meanwhile, with an article explaining why the video “isn’t what people are making it out to be,” The Atlantic’s David Graham pleasantly surprised us — only to then exasperate us by reinforcing one of the most persistent anti-Trump hoaxes of all. After explaining the benign nature of the video template, Graham proceeded to administer a Trump-mythology booster to The Atlantic’s lefty readership, writing that “[Trump] called neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 ‘very fine people.” Let’s go to the transcript…again. In a feisty exchange with reporters, Trump — referring to politically diverse protesters and counter-protesters who showed up in Charlottesville — said: “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides…You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”

After questioning whether statues of historical figures should be removed solely because the person in question had some involvement with slavery, Trump said: “You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.” Just as the “very fine people” hoax persists at The Atlantic and nearly everywhere else, we’re guessing the “unified reich video” hoax will have staying power too. In any event, it looks like it’s time for Scott Adams to issue another update to his hoax quiz…

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“These are instances where Hunter was under oath, prepared for months, and had counsel present..”

• Will Garland Send Hunter Biden Perjury Allegations to a Grand Jury? (Turley)

Attorney General Merrick Garland has long maintained that he is a completely apolitical figure who only follows the law. Critics have challenged that claim on key cases, including those related to Hunter Biden. However, Garland may now face one of the clearest tests of his claim in his tenure. The House committees have issued a public report alleging three different instances where Hunter Biden allegedly committed perjury. The question is now what Garland is prepared to do about it. When Hunter testified, I wrote columns suggesting that he might take the Fifth Amendment to remain silent because the risk was too great that he might lie or mislead investigators in his answers. With months of preparation, he decided to run the gauntlet and now appears to have exposed himself to the possibility of additional criminal charges. Hunter Biden has still not responded to the specific allegations, but on their face they appear strong.

Notably, the Justice Department spent considerable time and money to pursue false statements against figures like Michael Flynn over just one statement describing a meeting with Russian diplomats. These are instances where Hunter was under oath, prepared for months, and had counsel present. One of the instances concerns the controversial WhatsApp message where Hunter not only threatened a Chinese businessman to send him massive amounts of money but said that his father was sitting next to him at the time. Millions were later sent to the Bidens. The infamous WhatsApp message stated in part: “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

The response of Hunter to questions about the message was curious and evasive. Hunter said that he had only two things to say about that message. He denied that his father was sitting next to him despite saying that he had no memory of sending the message. Second, and most importantly, he stated “the Zhao that this is sent to is not the Zhao connected to CEFC” who “had no understanding or even remotely knew what the hell I was even Goddamn talking about.” The Committee staff maintains that Biden’s WhatsApp account show that he only ever communicated with one Zhao – Raymond Zhao – and that he most certainly did [know] what he was “talking about.” Another alleged lie was Hunter’s denial that he ever helped people associated with Burisma secure visas. He told Congress that he was unwilling to provide “any work as it related to visas that they needed” and that he would “never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa.”

The Committee has produced an email showing Hunter’s associate Devon Archer concerning the revoking of Burisma CEO Nikolay Zlochevsky’s visa. It states that “Hunter is checking with Miguel Aleman to see if he can provide cover to Kola on the visa…Please send Hunter an email with all Kola’s passport and visa documents and evidence and copy me. We’ll take it from there.” Hunter also swore that he had no part in shell companies that received foreign payments. Yet, Archer testified that he and Hunter had equal stake in Rosemont Seneca Bohai and the Committee has evidence from the IRS whistleblowers showing that Hunter received benefits as owner of the entity’s associated bank account. The most damning evidence may be a document reading “I, Robert Hunter Biden, hereby certify that I am the duly elected, qualified and acting Secretary of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC.” He used that document as part of his contract with Porsche Financial Services for a sports car.

That would seem pretty clear and well-founded allegations for a referral to the Justice Department. After fast-tracking false statement claims against Trump officials, the question is whether Garland will even submit the matter to a grand jury. He could also give the matter to the Special Counsel prosecuting Hunter. Ordinarily, a prosecutor pursuing a defendant in two different felony cases would jump at any alleged illegality. You would not want to stand between him and a grand jury. However, Special Counsel David Weiss has been accused of minimizing charges against the President’s son and attempting to push through a notorious sweetheart deal that collapsed in court. Now Garland faces an unavoidable choice in treating this referral as he did Trump cases (in sending this to a grand jury) or scuttling alleged perjury made by the son of the President before Congress. It is far less challenging legally than it is politically for Merrick Garland.

Garland

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Oh no, not her..

• Nikki Haley Endorses Trump: He’s Not Perfect But Biden ‘Catastrophe’ (Sp.)

Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley announced on Wednesday that she will vote for Donald Trump in November as he meets her priorities better than Biden. “As a voter, I put my priorities on a president who is going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account…,” Haley said at the Hudson Institute. “I will be voting for Trump.” Trump has not been perfect but Biden has been a “catastrophe,” she said. Haley also expressed hope that Trump will actively engage her voters rather than simply expect their support. Earlier, an Axios report said that Trump’s campaign is considering Nikki Haley for the vice presidential role.

Haley, who was a key Republican rival in the presidential race alongside Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, could be chosen if Trump believes she would enhance his chances of winning the November election, avoid potential imprisonment, and manage his multi-million dollar legal bills, the report added. Members of the Republican Party close to both politicians believe that teaming up is in their mutual interest because Haley has deep ties with sponsors who are wary of Trump, and she could help him attract the votes of some college-educated Republicans, the report said.

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“Money is one means of developing a technology, but it can happen that a technology is created with a minimum amount of funds. It can turn out that you have a lot of money, but the technology doesn’t work out. Therefore, money is not the main thing here. The main thing is people, and having the appropriate academic knowledge..”

• Pentagon Pumped $756 Mln Into Hypersonic Missile That Doesn’t Fly (Sp.)

The US Army has been teasing the deployment of its ground-based Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) system since 2021, with the system touted as the Pentagon’s first nearly operational hypersonic missile amid development delays and cancellations plaguing nearly a dozen similar projects for and by the Army, Air Force, Navy, and DARPA. The US Army has awarded Lockheed Martin another $756 million for its delay-plagued LRHW “Dark Eagle” program, with the contract involving the provision of battery equipment, unspecified logistics, systems, and software engineering support. In development since 2017, the LRHW’s $41 million apiece truck-launched missiles are expected to be able to accelerate to speeds up to Mach 17, and boast a 3,000 km operational range. The system uses the common All Up Round (AUR) munition also used in the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) program.

But like other US hypersonic missile efforts to date, Dark Eagle has become a somewhat “Dubious Eagle” after a string of testing issues. The Congressional Research Office has counted at least five failures to date:
• In October 2021, an LRHW test failed when the Common-Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) did not deploy.
• In June 2022, the complete LRHW missile system suffered another test failure.
• A scheduled LRHW test was canceled in October 2022 to “assess the root cause” of the June 2022 failure.
• In March 2023, a scheduled test launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida was scrapped.
• A second planned test at Cape Canaveral was canceled in September 2023, followed by an Army statement that it would not be able to meet the goal of deploying Dark Eagle in the current fiscal year.
• A November 2023 review by Army and Navy acquisition execs blamed the delays on unspecified “problems” with the Lockheed-made launcher, and said the issues would take “months” to iron out.

The poor track record of US hypersonic missile programs to date has been surprising, given the tens of billions of dollars in research and development funding lavishly doled out by Congress in annual defense budgets – which typically outpace the defense spending of all of Washington’s major adversaries combined. Last month, veteran Russian defense observer and missile expert Dmitry Drozdenko told Sputnik that the reason hypersonic weapons are so difficult to develop comes down not to the ability to accelerate vehicles to hypersonic speeds (which has been possible since virtually the dawning of the missile age), but creating materials that can withstand the ultra-hot temperatures hypersonic missiles encounter during flight – when they are covered by clouds of plasma. The USSR was leagues ahead of the US in the study of plasma physics during the Cold War, with Russia inheriting this invaluable knowledge and putting it to good use to field its first-in-the-world hypersonic missiles.

“Technologies are developed by people,” Drozdenko explained. “Money is one means of developing a technology, but it can happen that a technology is created with a minimum amount of funds. It can turn out that you have a lot of money, but the technology doesn’t work out. Therefore, money is not the main thing here. The main thing is people, and having the appropriate academic knowledge,” the observer said.

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“..pretending to be a democracy, a country with freedom of speech.”

• Dutch Lawyer Prosecuted For Social Media Post Slamming Mass Migration (MN)

A Dutch conservative female lawyer is being prosecuted on charges of “racism” and “inciting hatred” after she expressed fury over mass migration in response to a viral video showing a white boy being beaten up and thrown onto a railway track by a gang of migrants. Raisa Blommestijn revealed how she had received a letter that amounted to an order to appear before a Dutch prosecutor at a court hearing in front of multiple judges on August 19th. The charges stem from comments Blommestijn made on social media in response to a video of a defenseless Dutch boy being brutally kicked and punched as he lay on the ground at an Amsterdam Metro station in May last year before he was thrown onto the railway track. “Yet another white man got kicked around in the street by a group of black primates. How many defenseless white people remain to become victims? Countless probably: the open borders elite is importing these people in droves, with all the consequences that entails,” she wrote.

Blommestijn said she was subjected to a four hour police interrogation over her comments and later learned that she would be facing prosecution. “Until now, it was still unclear what would happen next with this case. Unfortunately, I can tell you that as of today, there is clarity. The sword of Damocles has fallen because this morning I found this letter in my letterbox. A letter that cannot be seen as anything other than a subpoena,” the lawyer told her followers. The conservative warned that people were being “persecuted for their political opinions” and for opposing mass migration by a nation that is “pretending to be a democracy, a country with freedom of speech.”

Prominent conservatives being punished by authorities for expressing strong anti-mass migration views has become a common theme across Europe, with the state seeking to make an example of them in order to silence dissent. As we recently highlighted, a German politician was found guilty of ‘incitement’ by a district court after she posted a link to the government’s own statistics on crimes committed by migrants, specifically rape, and asked why they are so disproportionately high. Three former members of Belgium’s right-wing ‘Nation’ party were also convicted for Facebook posts in which they compared the Brussels district of Molenbeek to Africa due to its massive non-native population and demanded the Belgian government put “our people first.”

Eva

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“According to the FAA, a metal plate attached to a fuel tank vent on the wings of the 777 was installed without an electrical bond, meaning it could potentially accumulate static electricity and cause a “fire or explosion” in the jet’s fuel tanks.”

• 292 United & American Boeing 777s At Risk For ‘Exploding’ Fuel Tanks (ZH)

Overnight, DailyMail reported that yet another fleet of Boeing jets has a potentially disastrous flaw. The 777, commonly called the Triple Seven, has poor electrical insulation near its fuel tank that can cause “fire or explosion.” Back in March, the Federal Aviation Administration raised concerns about the 777’s safety and set a deadline of May 9 for Boeing and third-party experts to respond. However, it’s still unclear whether the company has taken any action, as reported by DailyMail. “This condition, if not addressed, could result in an ignition source inside the fuel tank and subsequent fire or explosion,” the Airworthiness Directives note states. The FAA noted the safety fix includes “installing electrical bonding and grounding” to prevent short-circuiting “electrostatic discharge to the surrounding structure” around the air intake system near the 777’s center-wing fuel tanks. The projected cost to fix the 292 vulnerable wide-body planes is around $700k.

777 are flown across the world. Many of these jets are commonly used by American and United Airlines. This was the same jet earlier this week that abruptly dropped 6,000 feet during a London to Singapore flight. Last month, Boeing whistleblower Sam Salehpour told lawmakers on Capitol Hill about “serious concerns about the safety of the 787 and 777 aircraft.” Salehpour is one of the lucky whistleblowers still remarkably alive after more than a month from his statement on Capitol Hill. At that time, he told lawmakers about “premature fatigue failure” on these planes and warned Boeing was “putting out defective airplanes.” In each passing week, problems for Boeing are growing, from the 777 earlier this week that abruptly dropped to a 747’s engine that erupted in a fireball last week to these recent mishaps: In markets, Boeing shares have been battered in the last 5.5 years following the twin Max 737 crashes (separate crashes) that killed 346 people.The optics for Boeing are terrible. This is why Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun is preparing to step down at the end of the year.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Milei

 

 

Chips

 

 

Public schools

 

 

US food system
https://twitter.com/i/status/1793673993058426979

 

 

Elk
https://twitter.com/i/status/1793375257388372054

 

 

Bark
https://twitter.com/i/status/1793217697540342117

 

 

Self defense shark

 

 

3 little bears

 

 

Baby sitter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1793671312235499566

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle May 7 2024

May 072024
 
 May 7, 2024  Posted by at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Paul Klee In the Houses of Saint Germain 1914

 

• Russia Issues Military Ultimatum To UK (RT)
• The ‘Escalation Ladder’: French, British Threats Provoke Russian Warning (Sp.)
• Russia To Hold Nuclear Drills To ‘Cool Hot Heads’ In West – FM (RT)
• Western Leaders Are ‘Infantile Morons’ – Medvedev (RT)
• Israeli Tanks Enter Rafah (RT)
• The Beast Of Ideology Lifts The Lid On Transformation (Alastair Crooke)
• Russian Intelligence Claims US Wants To Replace Zelensky (RT)
• China Causing De-industrialization in EU – von der Leyen (RT)
• A Disbarred, Serial Perjurer Walks into a Court, Asks to Take an Oath (Turley)
• Witness Says Trump Did Not Ask Him to Carry Out ‘Hush Money’ Payments (ET)
• Trump Says Jack Smith Should Be ‘Arrested’ After Documents Revelation (ET)
• Trump Found In Contempt Again, Judge Threatens “Jail Sanction” Next (ZH)
• Prisoners of Themselves (Kunstler)

 

 

Merchan

 

 

Jan 6
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787540670883725753

 

 

Kash
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787550215592989176

 

 

Easter as a time of peace?

• Russia Issues Military Ultimatum To UK (RT)

Moscow will retaliate against British targets in Ukraine or elsewhere if Kiev uses UK-provided missiles to strike Russian territory, the Foreign Ministry told London’s ambassador on Monday. Ambassador Nigel Casey was summoned to the ministry following remarks by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron to Reuters that Ukraine has the right to use long-range missiles sent by the UK to strike deep inside Russia. ”Casey was warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory could be any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the meeting.

The US and its allies had previously qualified their deliveries of long-range weapons to Kiev by saying they could only be used on territories that Ukraine claims as its own – Crimea, the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Cameron’s statements to the contrary “de facto recognized his country as a party to the conflict.” Russia understands Cameron’s comments as “evidence of a serious escalation and confirmation of London’s increasing involvement in military operations on the side of Kiev,” the ministry added. Casey was urged to “think about the inevitable catastrophic consequences of such hostile steps from London and to immediately refute in the most decisive and unequivocal manner the bellicose provocative statements of the head of the Foreign Office.”

Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry announced an exercise to test the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. President Vladimir Putin ordered the drills after “provocative statements and threats” by Western officials, the military said. Moscow hopes the drills will “cool down the ‘hot heads’ in Western capitals and help them understand the possible catastrophic consequences of the strategic risks they generate,” as well as “keep them from both assisting the Kiev regime in its terrorist actions and being drawn into a direct armed confrontation with Russia,” the Foreign Ministry said in a follow-up statement. French Ambassador Pierre Levy was also summoned to the Foreign Ministry. Moscow has not yet disclosed the details of the meeting.

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“The Russians are speaking pretty tough – tougher than ever before..”

• The ‘Escalation Ladder’: French, British Threats Provoke Russian Warning (Sp.)

While defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war,” said former US President John F. Kennedy during an address at American University in 1963. The remark, coming a few months after the previous year’s Cuban Missile Crisis, demonstrated Kennedy’s newfound sense of restraint in navigating Cold War tensions. The confrontation with the Soviet Union brought the world to the brink of nuclear war with both Washington and Moscow poised to save face by unleashing the deadliest weapons ever conceived by mankind. A repeat of the scenario must be avoided, Kennedy reasoned, with each world power tacitly accepting the other’s existence. Half a century later the slain leader’s realization has been forgotten, claimed former CIA analyst Ray McGovern on Sputnik’s The Critical hour program Monday.

The founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity joined hosts Garland Nixon and Wilmer Leon to discuss the latest developments in NATO countries’ proxy war against Russia in the Donbass. “Things are getting pretty intense and the Russians are pretty much saying, ‘okay, that’s enough,’” said McGovern, responding to the latest statement from Russian government officials. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron was quoted by media saying Ukraine could use UK-supplied weapons to strike within Russian territory during a visit to Kiev last week. The comment provoked a strong response from Moscow suggesting Russia could target British military assets in Ukraine or elsewhere in response to such an attack on its territory.

“We have those reports that [French President Emmanuel] Macron is crazy enough to want to send French troops into battle there in Ukraine, and… the Russians actually have claimed to have killed seven of them this morning,” McGovern added. “Friends vacationing in Cyprus or other military facilities run by the British, I would tell them to go and sun themselves on some other beach,” he said. “The Russians are speaking pretty tough – tougher than ever before. If one of these British long-range missiles does significant damage in Russia proper there will be retaliation. It will be tit-for-tat, and the Russians will be perspicacious, but they’ll be offensive. These will not be defensive measures.” McGovern claimed Russia’s response could even be nuclear in nature, noting, “the Russians are waving the nuclear possibility as never before. I can say ‘never’ because I’ve been around a while – would you believe six decades of watching Soviet and then Russian leaders? They don’t brandish nuclear weapons. Now they are.”

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Russia won’t back down.

• Russia To Hold Nuclear Drills To ‘Cool Hot Heads’ In West – FM (RT)

Russia’s upcoming exercises to test its tactical nuclear weapons should be viewed in light of the “belligerent statements” made by some Western officials and NATO’s “destabilizing actions,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday. Earlier in the day, Moscow announced plans to test its military’s ability to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. The exercises, which were ordered by President Vladimir Putin, will be held in the near future, the Russian Defense Ministry said. According to the Foreign Ministry, the move was a response to the continued “power politics” pursued by the US and its allies against Russia. Washington and Kiev’s other backers openly declare their support for Ukrainian “terrorist acts” and “directly contribute” to such attacks, the statement read, pointing to the continued supply of ever more powerful Western weapons to Ukraine. It particularly drew attention to the US-made ATACMS missiles capable of “striking targets deep inside Russian territory.”

Last week, former UK prime minister and current Foreign Secretary David Cameron stated that Kiev had every right to use British weapons to strike targets inside Russia as well. The US has also created new threats to Russia’s national security through deployment of its intermediate-range ground-based missile systems around the world, the ministry said. Such weapons were banned under the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), but Washington unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2019. The move left Russia with no choice but to leave the treaty as well. However, Moscow introduced a moratorium on fielding weapons that used to be covered by the treaty. Russia now reserves the right to a “mirror response” to American actions, the ministry said, adding that the moratorium could be lifted.

Moscow also slammed statements by French President Emmanuel Macron about a potential NATO troop deployment to Ukraine. “This cannot be perceived in any other way than a demonstration of the readiness and willingness to enter a direct military confrontation with Russia,” the ministry warned. Last week, Macron said that Western nations would have to consider such an option if Kiev officially requested it. “Such actions of the NATO member states show that they deliberately strive for further escalation of the Ukraine crisis towards a direct military clash between NATO and Russia,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

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Putin’s alter ego.

• Western Leaders Are ‘Infantile Morons’ – Medvedev (RT)

The US, the UK, France and other Western nations should take a Russian nuclear drill as a reminder of where escalation of the Ukraine conflict could take them, former President Dmitry Medvedev has said. On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced an imminent exercise to test the capability to deploy non-strategic nuclear weapons. It said the training was ordered by President Vladimir Putin after “provocative statements and threats” by Western officials. Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of the Russian security council, referred to debates in the West about possible deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine, as well as “active encouragement [of Kiev] to use [Western] missile weapons against the entire Russian territory” as grounds for the drill. Russia “will have to respond” to the proposed deployment of Western soldiers, “and this response will not be” in Ukraine, the Russian official warned.

In that case “there will be no hiding on Capitol Hill, in the Elysee Palace or at 10 Downing Street. The situation is comparable to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, according to Medvedev. He said current Western elites were “infantile morons” who refuse to see the risk, unlike US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khurshchev, who managed to walk back the escalation six decades ago. French President Emmanuel Macron has been advocating “strategic ambiguity” regarding Ukraine, maintaining that he could not exclude deployment of troops to the country under certain conditions. Multiple Western leaders said they had no intention to send their soldiers to fight Russia on Ukraine’s behalf, after he voiced his idea in February. Macron’s rhetoric may be explained by his ambition to make France the leader among EU members, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron told Reuters last week that Kiev “has the right” to use British-provided missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia. For years, major Western arms donors were reportedly conditioning their aid on Kiev’s pledge not to use the weapons outside of the territory that it claims. US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said American policy remained unchanged following Cameron’s remark. On Sunday, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed that “there’s a significant likelihood that America will have to get into the conflict – not simply with our money, but with our servicewomen and our servicemen” in the event of Ukrainian defeat. A victorious Russia would pose a threat to NATO, he reasoned during an interview with CBS News, repeating the case for continued aid made by the Biden administration for months. Moscow has said it has no intention of starting a direct conflict with the US-led military bloc.

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Footage is crucial.

• Israeli Tanks Enter Rafah (RT)

The Israeli army has entered the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, as West Jerusalem announced strikes against Hamas militants in the area. In a statement on Tuesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was conducting “a precise counterterrorism operation in the eastern Rafah area” in a bid “to eliminate Hamas terrorists.” A video released by the IDF shows at least four Israeli tanks on the Gazan side of the Rafah Crossing on the border with Egypt. Part of the clip was apparently filmed by a soldier sitting on top of one of the vehicles. The IDF also said its troops have “managed to establish operational control of the Gazan side of the crossing.” It added that ground troops and the air force had destroyed Hamas military structures in the area, claiming to have eliminated approximately 20 militants. According to an unnamed Palestinian security official and an Egyptian official cited by the Times of Israel, Israeli tanks reached as close as 200 meters from the Rafah Crossing terminal, which is directly on the Egyptian border.

The Egyptian official told the paper that “the operation appeared to be limited in scope.” The IDF said it had encouraged local residents to evacuate to the expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, located on the coast and further away from the Rafah Crossing. The Rafah operation comes after the IDF said mortar shells had been fired from the area at Israeli troops, killing four soldiers and injuring several others. It also follows the decision by Hamas to accept an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal, the details of which so far remain unclear. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, however, said that the deal “is far from meeting Israel’s core demands.” It added that the national war cabinet had unanimously decided to push ahead with an IDF operation in Rafah, “in order to apply military pressure on Hamas” and to make progress on freeing hostages captured by the Palestinian militant group since the start of hostilities on October 7.

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“..collapsing under the leaden weight of western hypocrisy..”

• The Beast Of Ideology Lifts The Lid On Transformation (Alastair Crooke)

The Transformation is accelerating. The harsh, often violent, police repression of student protests across the U.S. and Europe, in wake of the continuing Palestinian massacres, exposes sheer intolerance towards those voicing condemnation against the violence in Gaza. The category of ‘hate speech’ enacted into law has become so ubiquitous and fluid that criticism of the conduct of Israel’s behaviour in Gaza and the West Bank is now treated as a category of extremism and as a threat to the state. Confronted by criticism of Israel, the ruling élites respond by angrily lashing out. Is there a boundary (still) between criticism and anti-semitism? In the West the two increasingly are being made to cohere. Today’s stifling of any criticism of Israel’s conduct – in blatant contradiction with any western claim to a values-based order – reflects desperation and a touch of panic.

Those who still occupy the leadership slots of Institutional Power in the U.S. and Europe are compelled by the logic of those structures to pursue courses of action that are leading to ‘system’ breakdown, both domestically – and concomitantly – provoking the dramatic intensification of international tensions, too. Mistakes flow from the underlying ideological rigidities in which the ruling strata are trapped: The embrace of a transformed Biblical Israel that long ago separated from today’s U.S. Democratic Party zeitgeist; the inability to accept reality in Ukraine; and the notion that U.S. political coercion alone can revive paradigms in Israel and the Middle East that are long gone. The notion that a new Israeli Nakba of Palestinians can be forced down the throats of the western and the global public are both delusional and reek of centuries of old Orientalism.

What else can one say when Senator Tom Cotton posts: “These little Gazas are disgusting cesspools of antisemitic hate, full of pro-Hamas sympathisers; fanatics and freaks”? When order unravels, it unravels quickly and comprehensively. Suddenly, the GOP conference has had its nose rubbed in dirt (over its lack of support for Biden’s $61bn for Ukraine); the U.S. public’s despair at open border immigration is disdainfully ignored; and Gen Z’s expressions of empathy with Gaza is declared an internal ‘enemy’ to be roughly suppressed. All points of strategic inflection and transformation – likely as not. And the rest of the world now is cast as an enemy too, being perceived as recalcitrants who fail to embrace the western recitation of its ‘Rules Order’ catechism and for failing clearly to toe the line on support for Israel and the proxy war on Russia. It is a naked bid for unchecked power; one nevertheless that is galvanising a global blow-back. It is pushing China closer to Russia and accelerating the BRICS confluence.

Plainly put, the world – faced with massacres in Gaza and West Bank – will not abide by either the Rules or any western hypocritical cherry-picking of International Law. Both systems are collapsing under the leaden weight of western hypocrisy. Nothing is more obvious than Secretary of State Blinken’s scolding of President Xi for China’s treatment of the Uighurs and his threats of sanctions for Chinas trade with Russia – powering ‘Russia’s assault on Ukraine’, Blinken asserts. Blinken has made an enemy of the one power that can evidently out-compete the U.S.; that has manufacturing and competitive overmatch vs the U.S. The point here is that these tensions can quickly spiral down into war of ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ – ranged against not just the China, Russia, Iran “Axis of Evil”, but vs Turkey, India Brazil and all others who dare to criticise the moral correctness of either of the West’s Israel and Ukraine projects. That is, it has the potential to turn into the West versus the Rest. Again, another own goal.

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“..war financing schemes that yield “enormous profits” to both Kiev and Western arms manufacturers..”

• Russian Intelligence Claims US Wants To Replace Zelensky (RT)

The US has stepped up efforts to find a replacement for Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and has already talked with a number of politicians, including former President Pyotr Poroshenko and Kiev mayor Vitaly Klitschko, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed on Monday. Zelensky is “clearly losing the battle for the hearts and minds” of Ukrainians, especially since his legitimacy as president will be “completely lost” after his term in office expires on May 20, the SVR wrote in a statement. Ukraine was supposed to hold a presidential election on March 31, but last December Zelensky canceled it along with all other elections, citing martial law and the conflict with Russia.

The US State Department and EU’s Diplomatic Service are “extremely” concerned by the growing discontent among Ukrainians over the “endless” protraction of the hostilities with Russia, according to the intelligence service. “Distrust in government institutions is growing and apathy is spreading rapidly,” the SVR said, adding that the number of desertions and voluntary surrenders in the Ukrainian armed forces is soaring. The US is now looking for alternatives to Zelensky, the SVR claimed, noting that Washington “is not even trying to hide the fact that essentially it doesn’t care” who will lead Ukraine. For the West, it’s crucial that the new president be capable of continuing the armed conflict, so that the “war till the last Ukrainian” does not stop, the agency said.

According to the SVR, Washington is in talks with Poroshenko and Klitschko. “Secret work” is also being carried out with the presidential head of office, Andrey Ermak, former top Ukrainian commander General Valery Zaluzhny, and the ex-speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Dmitry Razumkov. However, the US and EU would like Zelensky to remain in his post for now as long as he is tied to war financing schemes that yield “enormous profits” to both Kiev and Western arms manufacturers, SVR added.

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Dumb.

• China Causing De-industrialization in EU – von der Leyen (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen intends to talk to visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping about policies that she claims pose a threat of de-industrialization in the bloc. The Chinese leader arrived in France on Sunday as part of a six-day, three-country trip to Europe, his first since 2019. The head of the EU executive branch said she would discuss “current imbalances” in Chinese trade during talks with Xi on Monday. ”China is currently manufacturing, with massive subsidies, more than it is selling due to its own weak domestic demand. This is leading to an oversupply of Chinese subsidized goods, such as EVs (electric vehicles) and steel, that is leading to unfair trade,” she claimed. ”Europe cannot accept such market-distorting practices that could lead to de-industrialization in Europe,” von der Leyen added.

In the last several weeks, the EU authorities have launched investigations into alleged unfair Chinese practices, including restrictions on the supply of European medical devices to the Asian nation’s market and subsidies for Chinese firms producing wind turbines, electric vehicles, and trains. Meanwhile, China has opened an anti-dumping probe into brandy imported from the EU, which particularly affects French exporters. The mutual investigations are perceived as a mounting tit-for-tat stand-off over protectionism. Von der Leyen has pushed for “de-risking” trade with China, but has not gone as far as to advocate decoupling from the economic powerhouse.

EU members have largely decoupled their economies from Russia in an attempt to penalize Moscow over the Ukraine conflict. The loss of access to cheap Russian natural gas has hit energy-intensive industries in Western Europe, forcing businesses to move manufacturing to other locations. The US was among their primary destinations, as the government offered subsidies to certain producers under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. In an op-ed published in the French press ahead of his visit, Xi said Beijing was committed to reaching “new vistas” in its relationship with the country. He wrote: “France is advancing re-industrialization based on green innovation, whereas China is accelerating the development of new quality productive forces.” After France, the Chinese president is scheduled to visit EU member Hungary and Russia-friendly non-member Serbia.

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“..He has long marketed his curious skill of voluntarily saying whatever the highest bidder wants him to say..”

• A Disbarred, Serial Perjurer Walks into a Court, Asks to Take an Oath (Turley)

A disbarred, serial perjurer walks into a courtroom and asks to take an oath . . . No, seriously, this is not a joke. Michael Cohen will soon appear in a Manhattan courtroom in what is sure to be one of the most bizarre moments in legal history. Cohen nearly comprises the prosecution’s entire case against former President Donald Trump under a criminal theory that still has many of us baffled. It is not clear what crime Trump was supposedly trying to conceal by making “hush-money” payments to former porn actress Stormy Daniels. What is clear is that none of the witnesses called in recent weeks has had any direct involvement with Trump on the payments. The witnesses had a lot to say about Cohen, and most of it was not good. They described an unprofessional, self-proclaimed “fix-it man” who created a shell corporation to buy out Daniels with his own money. The money was later paid back by Trump after the election, with other legal expenses.

So Cohen will now make the pitch to the jury that they should put his former client in jail for following his own legal advice. This would be difficult even for a competent and ethical lawyer. For Cohen, it is utter insanity. But Bragg is betting on a New York jury looking no further than the identity of the defendant to convict. Cohen has an impressive history of lies and exaggerations that may be unparalleled. Just weeks ago, another judge denounced him as a serial perjurer who was still gaming the system. This is not the defendant, mind you, but Alvin Bragg’s star witness. I have been an outspoken critic of Cohen going back to when he was still representing Trump. His unethical acts were matched only by his unprofessional demeanor. In 2015, after students on the Harvard Lampoon played a harmless prank on Trump, Cohen was quoted by a student on the Lampoon staff as threatening them with expulsion.

When a journalist pursued a story Cohen did not like, he told the reporter that he should “tread very f—ing lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting. Do you understand me?” It is not hard to “understand” Cohen. He has long marketed his curious skill of voluntarily saying whatever the highest bidder wants him to say. He is a convicted perjurer who seems to lie even when the truth would do. Each time he is caught lying, he claims to be the sinner who has finally seen the light, seeking redemption. When he was called before the House to testify against Trump soon after his plea agreement with the Justice Department (for lying), Cohen was again accused of perjury. House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), warned Cohen repeatedly that he had better tell the truth this time. Cohen then testified that Trump wanted him to work in his administration and offered him multiple jobs, which he turned down. He also claimed, “I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.”

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It was all Michael Cohen.

• Witness Says Trump Did Not Ask Him to Carry Out ‘Hush Money’ Payments (ET)

A witness in President Donald Trump’s New York “hush money” trial on May 6 appeared to confirm his attorneys’ claims that payments at the center of the case were legal expenses and that he was not personally directed by the former president to make those payments. Former Trump Organization Controller Jeffrey McConney testified that payments sent to former attorney Michael Cohen were legal expenses, confirming defense attorneys’ arguments. “Michael Cohen was a lawyer?” Trump defense attorney Emil Bove asked Mr. McConney. Mr. McConney replied, “Sure, yes.” Mr. Bove asked, “And payments to lawyers by The Trump Organization are legal expenses, right?” Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” Later, Mr. McConney said President Trump and Trump Organization official Allen Weisselberg never told him to log the payments to Mr. Cohen as legal expenses. “President Trump did not ask you to do any of the things you just described?” the attorney then asked. Mr. McConney replied, “He did not.”

Mr. Bove asked, “And as far as you know, President Trump did not ask anyone to do those things? “In none of the conversations that you had with Weisselberg, did he suggest that President Trump had told him to do these things?” Mr. Conney replied, “Allen never told me that.” Mr. McConney said his interactions with Mr. Cohen were “minimal.” He said that other than emails about invoices, he never spoke to Mr. Cohen about the reimbursement arrangement. In court papers, Trump lawyers have described the payments that were sent to Mr. Cohen as legal expenses, while prosecutors say it was an attempt to cover up the true nature of the payments during an election. Mr. Cohen used the funds to pay adult film actress Stormy Daniels to not speak publicly about allegations about an affair in 2006, which President Trump has denied. At one point, Mr. Bove asked Mr. McConney about the internal payment system, and Mr. McConney suggested that it was antiquated.

“Legal expenses [were] part of a drop-down menu?” Mr. Bove asked him. Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” Mr. Bove asked, “[It] was a bit antiquated?” Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” Mr. Bove asked, “These categories, there was a level of rigidity to them?” Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” Mr. Bove asked, “So if you are talking about payments to an attorney, legal expenses was the category that was used?” Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” The defense argued that the legal expenses were legitimate and not illegal. Mr. Bove got Mr. McConney to say that he didn’t know whether Mr. Cohen did legal work for President Trump in 2017. Also, when he was asked by the attorney if President Trump personally asked him to carry out any of the tasks, the former controller said that he “did not.” He also said he didn’t speak to President Trump on a regular basis, noting that any talks with him wouldn’t be about accounting programs.

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“..committed blatant Evidence Tampering by mishandling the very Boxes they used as a pretext to bring this Fake Case..”

• Trump Says Jack Smith Should Be ‘Arrested’ After Documents Revelation (ET)

Former President Donald Trump argued that special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against him should be tossed after prosecutors wrote that they misled a judge about the order of items in an evidence box. In a post on Truth Social over the weekend, President Trump called for the arrest of Jack Smith and argued that the case should be thrown out based on the new court filing. It came after Mr. Smith’s team wrote that that the order of items within a box was “not the same” as they appear in digital photographs of materials after the FBI obtained those boxes from President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022. “Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants’ review of the boxes,” Mr. Smith’s team told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon last week.

They added that there are “some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” His team also acknowledged in a footnote that federal prosecutors effectively misled the court after telling the judge that the evidence was exactly the same when it was seized. “The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the footnote said. Mr. Smith’s team provided multiple “possible explanations” as to why the documents were rearranged after seizing the boxes from Mar-a-Lago, according to the filing. “There are several possible explanations, including the above-described instances in which the boxes were accessed, as well as the size and shape of certain items in the boxes possibly leading to movement of items,” they wrote. “For example, the boxes contain items smaller than standard paper such as index cards, books, and stationary, which shift easily when the boxes are carried, especially because many of the boxes are not full.”

But President Trump wrote that Mr. Smith’s filing is effectively an admission of what he has “been saying happened since the Illegal RAID on my home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach … that he and his team committed blatant Evidence Tampering by mishandling the very Boxes they used as a pretext to bring this Fake Case. He then called for the case to be immediately dropped. President Trump has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges connected to allegations that he illegally retained classified documents at his home after leaving in January 2021 and obstructed officials’ attempts to retrieve them. Two of his aides, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, have also been charged in the case. Legal group Judicial Watch also suggested that Mr. Smith’s classified documents case against President Trump should be tossed after the admission.

Judicial Watch head Tom Fitton wrote on X that prosecutors’ latest filing suggesting that there was “evidence tampering” involved is “yet more reason to throw out this sham prosecution.” He said that the filing also included an FBI “admission” that the agency was “completely screwing with the classified documents.” His comment pointed to a statement from the FBI that said that its agents had “created an index to correlate the documents with classification markings to codes,” labeled the cover sheets in the boxes, and “generally replaced the handwritten sheets with classified cover sheets annotated with the index code” after the boxes were brought to the Washington field office after they were taken from Mar-a-Lago, according to the court filing. “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet,” it added.

Last week, President Trump’s lawyers wrote to Judge Cannon that the case should be dismissed, arguing that Mr. Smith and his team have an “improper political animus” against him. He said that White House lawyers worked with the National Archives and Records Administration when it referred the allegations to the Department of Justice and that it is an attempt to ensure that President Trump doesn’t get reelected.

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“Mr. Trump, I want you to understand the last thing I want to do is put you in jail.”

• Trump Found In Contempt Again, Judge Threatens “Jail Sanction” Next (ZH)

Former President Donald Trump has been found in contempt of court for a second time by a New York judge overseeing his hush-money trial. On Monday, judge Juan Merchan said that Trump had violated a gag order with additional social media posts about witnesses in the case, and will consider jail if there are additional violations. It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent,” said Merchan. “Mr. Trump, I want you to understand the last thing I want to do is put you in jail.” “The magnitude of such a decision is not lost on me, but at the end of the day, I have a job to do.” Last week, Merchan fined Trump $9,000 and held the former president in criminal contempt of court for violating the gag order nine times.

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“Who will prosecute it if Jack Smith can no longer function as Special Counsel?”

• Prisoners of Themselves (Kunstler)

You realize, don’t you, that the gross misconduct of government officials from RussiaGate on down to the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan has amounted to one continuous operation against the American people? If it were ever honestly adjudicated, many hundreds of them might go to prison, or worse. Each successive seditious and treasonous action they attempt against their arch-nemesis, Mr. Trump, only compounds their criminal liability — the Steele Dossier, CIA agent Eric Ciaramella’s 2019 impeachment prank, the Covid-19 caper, the George Floyd-BLM hustle, the 2020 election hijinks, the J-6 op and the House J-6 Committee conjured up to spin it, the present battery of farcical court cases — and yet the Golden Golem of Greatness not only remains defiantly at large, but seems to amass ever more electoral mojo.

The epic failure of these mighty efforts, and the humiliation entailed, has lately driven this vast bureaucratic cabal — collectively styled as “the blob” — to a stage of abject desperation that looks a lot like insanity. They fear for their lives, their fortunes, their chattels, and their families, and they seem ready to wreck the republic to save themselves. They have so far pretty much wrecked American justice with their lawfare tactics — a degenerate campaign to use the vested authority of prosecutors and judges to twist and cheat the law at the cost of the law’s legitimacy. Merrick Garland, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, Marc Elias, Christopher Wray, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg have made law the enemy of the people.

All this becomes more obvious each day, for instance events of the past week in Judge Aileen Cannon’s federal courtroom in Florida where the Mar-a-Lago documents case proceeds. Turns out that Special Counsel Jack Smith has deliberately messed with the evidence, which is patently felonious. Also, turns out that sometime between the “Joe Biden” inauguration and the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in August, 2022, boxes of presidential documents stored by the US General Services Administration were “delivered” to Mr. Trump’s mansion without any proper accounting for what might have been in them. A set-up you suppose? Why not? After everything else the FBI and the DOJ have attempted since 2015?

Christopher Wray in particular might have wanted some surefire probable cause to get his agents into Mar-a-Lago where, rumor has it, Mr. Trump kept his own dossier of evidence against the FBI and DOJ officials who concocted the “Crossfire Hurricane” chapter of RussiaGate. Even if you assume that Mr. Trump had multiple copies of the thing, FBI Director Wray — in position since 2017 throughout most of RussiaGate — surely wanted to see what Mr. Trump was holding if it would become necessary for current and former FBI / DOJ officials to defend themselves in court against very serious charges.

You see the desperation, don’t you? And how stupendously amateurish these machinations have been? Planting evidence and then fiddling around with it? I’m waiting for the moment when Judge Cannon summons Jack Smith and announces to his face that she is tossing the case for prosecutorial misconduct. Will she add a criminal referral to that? How will that affect the other case (attempting to overturn the 2020 election) brought against Mr. Trump in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s DC federal district court? Who will prosecute it if Jack Smith can no longer function as Special Counsel? And since the case was contrived in his name — even if Eisen, McCord, Weissmann, and others are really the authors — does that case blow up, too?

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Fish
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787532840034279879

 

 

GOAT
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787595853001019729

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 12 2024

Feb 122024
 
 February 12, 2024  Posted by at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  98 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Snowy landscape with Arles in the background 1888

 

• How Ball Got Rolling With Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview Proposal (Sp.)
• Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate ’79 Peace Treaty (ZH)
• Ukraine Should Be A ‘Buffer Zone’ – Orban (RT)
• EU Openly Threatened Orban For His Reluctance To Finance Kiev (TASS)
• Ukraine ‘Must Accept New Reality’ – Kremlin (RT)
• 10 Million More Refugees Could Flee To Germany If Ukraine Falls – Welt (RT)
• Zaluzhny’s Photo With Banderite a ‘Threat’ to Zelensky (Sp.)
• Russia Must Permanently Abandon Europe And Turn Fully To Asia (Karaganov)
• Farmers Bring Poland To Standstill (RT)
• “That is Not the Judgment of the Press” (Turley)
• “Oh What a Tangled Web Biden Weaves, When He First Practices to Deceive” (VDH)
• Could Trump Win By Simple Attrition Rather than Vindication? (Turley)
• Soaring Debt Pushing Wealthy Nations To ‘Fiscal Death’ – Economist (RT)
• Peaceful Protests Are a Waste of Time and Energy (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Crime Of The Century: Midazolam Murders – Euthanizing The Elderly (Kelly)

 

 

 

 

Liberal tears
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756706512540499971

 

 

Ads
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756692976426701093

 

 


Maria Zakharova: “After watching Putin’s interview, Scholz and Sunak disobeyed the orders of the USA.

“Scholz disobeyed the order of the USA not to watch the interview. If he continues to violate the instructions of the White House, he may lead Germany out of the crisis. The recent Prime Ministers of Britain, weak-willed individuals, they carried out the will not of the British people or even their own personal will, but obediently waltzed, led by Washington towards the boudoir.”

 

 

Nikki Haley

Trump Haley
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756832137980838180

 

 

Biden Superbowl
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756726329695973841

 

 

Sure this is not a Trump ad?!

 

 

 

 

“..the Kremlin had concerns even before the interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that there would be a “persecution” of Tucker Carlson. ”

• How Ball Got Rolling With Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview Proposal (Sp.)

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, released Thursday, lasted more than two hours and covered a range of topics, including the Ukraine conflict, sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, and Russia-NATO relations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has told reporters that Tucker Carlson himself proposed the interview with Vladimir Putin and that the president quickly agreed. He also noted that the West is becoming more and more unpredictable, and that the Kremlin had concerns even before the interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that there would be a “persecution” of Tucker Carlson.

Peskov believes that Tucker Carlson foresaw the heated sentiments around the interview with Vladimir Putin, but that it added to the popularity of the American journalist. “He’s still having a hard time, as far as I’m aware. But he is a clever enough man, I think he foresaw things would get heated. It’s fair to say that this interview has greatly raised his popularity,” Peskov said. On Thursday night, Carlson published his interview with the Russian president, which lasted for over two hours. Prior to that, the journalist faced criticism from his Western colleagues just for sitting down with the Russian leader. The interview sparked huge interest around the world, and has received more than 180 million views on X and 12 million on YouTube.

Oz dub
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756802067711115605

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“..if past is prologue, watch for the Israeli government to disregard the protests of its partners and benefactors — protests that may be offered primarily for domestic consumption..”

• Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate ’79 Peace Treaty (ZH)

With Israel on the verge of invading Gaza’s southernmost city, Egypt is warning that such a move could trigger a suspension of the treaty that has maintained peace between the two countries since 1979, the Wall Street Journal reports. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday directed the Israeli Defense Forces to plan the evacuation of the city of Rafah, which lies on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt and reportedly holds more than a million refugees already forced from their homes elsewhere in the 25-mile-long strip. One particularly sensitive slice of real estate is the so-called Philadelphi Route or Philadelphi Corridor, which stretches nine miles along the Gaza-Egypt border. Diplomatic accords establish limits on the number of troops that either Israel or Egypt can position in several delineated zones along and near the border, and certainly don’t authorize large numbers of Israeli troops and armored vehicles.

In late December, Netanyahu said the Philadelphi Route “has to be in our hands” if Gaza is to be effectively and permanently demilitarized. In January, an Egyptian official said, “It must be strictly emphasized that any Israeli move in this direction will lead to a serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations.” While an Egyptian diplomatic delegation visited Tel Aviv on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza, Mexican Egyptian President Sisi has rejected several phone calls from Netanyahu over recent weeks, sources tell the Journal. The threat that large numbers of Palestinian refugees could soon be pouring across the border raises many deep concerns for Egypt. Perhaps more than the challenge of managing a humanitarian crisis, if displaced Palestinians launch attacks on the IDF from Egypt, that could trigger Israeli retaliatory strikes across the border. If Israel doesn’t allow the Palestinians to return, tensions between Israel and Egypt would be sharply increased for years to come.

Since the war began, Egypt has been reinforcing its border with Gaza, building a concrete, barbed-wire-topped wall that extends six meters into the ground below it, while also boosting surveillance capabilities, and moving tanks and armored vehicles into the vicinity. The Israel-Hamas war is proving costly for Egypt in other ways, as Suez Canal traffic has plummeted some 30%. Egypt’s warning comes alongside expressions of concern by a variety of countries both inside and outside of the region: “Military operations right now would be a disaster for those people, and it’s not something that we would support,” said US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

“Invading Rafah… which is the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of civilians whom the brutal Israeli aggression displaced will have [grave] consequences,” said the Saudi foreign ministry. “Deeply concerned about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah – over half of Gaza’s population are sheltering in the area,” tweeted UK foreign secretary David Cameron. “The people of Gaza cannot disappear into thin air…[it is a] “humanitarian catastrophe in the making,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. A Rafah invasion would create an “unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe,” said EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell. Israel’s plan “threatens to cause the loss of more innocent life and exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip,” said the United Arab Emirates foreign ministry. However, if past is prologue, watch for the Israeli government to disregard the protests of its partners and benefactors — protests that may be offered primarily for domestic consumption.

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“Ukraine offers Europeans no additional security because most of us are already members of NATO, which is much stronger than Russia..”

• Ukraine Should Be A ‘Buffer Zone’ – Orban (RT)

Ukraine’s best geopolitical bet would be to become a “buffer zone” between Russia and the West, under arrangements made to guarantee the country’s future security, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. The Hungarian premier made the remarks while debating former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel, with excerpts from the exchange published by the Vienna daily Die Presse. Orban disagreed with Schussel’s contention that the Ukraine crisis could be solved only if the immediate start of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU and NATO coincided with the start of ceasefire talks. [BQ] Whether we like it or not, whether Ukrainians like it or not, Ukraine is on the map where it is. The best prospect for it would be to form a buffer zone between Russia and the West – with security guarantees, of course.

In any other case, according to the prime minister, “Ukraine will lose its land,” and “the Russians will destroy Ukraine again and again.” He stressed that Moscow would “never accept an EU and NATO member like Ukraine on its doorstep.” Orban also rejected claims by officials in Brussels and Kiev that Ukraine is “defending” Europe. “Ukraine offers Europeans no additional security because most of us are already members of NATO, which is much stronger than Russia,” he stated, adding that there is “no risk” that Russia could attack a bloc member. He also pushed back against Schussel’s argument that a ceasefire would mean a de facto defeat for Ukraine, saying that this depends on how a person sees the future as Kiev could potentially lose more territory.

According to Orban, the EU is also in no position to provide Ukraine with an adequate amount of weapons and money, adding that the bloc’s citizens are “dissatisfied because their governments are giving Ukraine more and more financial support”. Russia has repeatedly voiced concerns about NATO’s unchecked expansion towards its borders after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with President Vladimir Putin citing Ukraine’s push to join the alliance as one of the key reasons for the current conflict. In December 2021, weeks before the start of the hostilities, Moscow submitted a draft of security guarantees to the US and NATO, demanding that the West ban Kiev’s accession to the military bloc and retreat to its borders as of 1997. The overture, however, was rebuffed.

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Nice club to be a member of…

• EU Openly Threatened Orban For His Reluctance To Finance Kiev (TASS)

Leaders of the European Union openly threatened to undermine the Hungarian economy if its government refuses to approve financial aid to Ukraine, said Balazs Orban, the political director of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Financial Times reported on January 29, citing an internal EU document, that Brussels was drawing up a confidential plan to undermine Hungary’s economy if it continued to refuse to approve funding for Ukraine. According to the article, the EU threatened to completely freeze Hungary’s outstanding funds and collapse the exchange rate for the national currency, the Hungarian forint, in order to harm the Central European country’s economy and impair its investment attractiveness. “When the heads of EU states and governments talked to the prime minister by phone, they openly threatened him with these particular consequences,” the official told Austria’s Exxpress news portal.

At the EU summit in Brussels on December 14-15, 2023, the Hungarian prime minister blocked amendments to the community’s budget for 2024-2027 that called for allocating 50 bln euros to Ukraine. Instead, Viktor Orban proposed providing financial aid to Kiev on an annual basis with strict controls over expenditures. On February 1, the European Union summit approved the allocation of 50 billion euro from the EU budget to Ukraine spread out over the next four years. At the same time, they accepted Hungary’s proposal and established a mechanism to control the spending of funds. In a year from now, the EU will discuss this issue again, and in two years, it will revise the amount of financial aid to Ukraine in light of its own new budget drafting.

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“Should we begin the same negotiations, there’s a completely different reality now. And this new reality, no matter how painful it may be for the Kiev regime, must be recognized..”

• Ukraine ‘Must Accept New Reality’ – Kremlin (RT)

Ukrainian authorities must accept the “new reality” no matter how “painful” it might be for them, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He was responding to a question on the prospects of new talks between the two warring countries. Peskov made the remarks in an interview released by Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday. Should Russia and Ukraine ever actually get back to the negotiating table, the potential talks will not be the same as those held early in the ongoing conflict, Peskov suggested. “Should we begin the same negotiations, there’s a completely different reality now. And this new reality, no matter how painful it may be for the Kiev regime, must be recognized,” he stressed.

While Peskov did not elaborate, he presumably referred to the territorial changes, namely incorporation of the four formerly Ukrainian regions, Zaporozhye and Kherson, as well as Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics into Russia following referendums in late 2022. Kiev, however, has repeatedly vowed to seize all its former territories from Moscow, including Crimea which broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup and subsequently joined Russia. The March 2022 negotiations between Moscow and Kiev culminated in the signature of a preliminary agreement between the two nations, signed in Istanbul. The deal obliged Russia to withdraw its troops from around the Ukrainian capital, but Kiev violated the agreement almost immediately after it had been signed.

According to recent revelations by David Arakhamia, the leader of president Vladimir Zelensky’s party in the Ukrainian parliament, and a key negotiator at the botched talks, then-UK PM Boris Johnson played a pivotal role in orchestrating the failure of the talks. As Arakhamia put it, Johnson at the time simply told the Ukrainians “let’s just continue fighting” and urged them not to sign anything with Russia. Moscow has repeatedly insisted it was ready to settle the hostilities through negotiations, blaming the lack of any diplomatic effort on the matter on Kiev. The stance was reiterated by the Russian President Vladimir Putin during the conversation with the American journalist Tucker Carlson last week. “The President of Ukraine [Vladimir Zelensky] has legislated a ban on negotiating with Russia. He signed a decree forbidding everyone to negotiate with Russia. But how are we going to negotiate if he forbade himself and everyone to do this? We know that he is putting forward some ideas about this settlement. But in order to agree on something, we need to have a dialogue,” Putin stated.

RFK Ukraine

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EU governments would be overthrown.

• 10 Million More Refugees Could Flee To Germany If Ukraine Falls – Welt (RT)

As many as 10 million more refugees could flood into Germany if Ukraine disintegrates, Welt am Sonntag has said, citing estimates from officials. Despite the worsening situation regarding the conflict with Russia, the German government still believes this worst-case scenario is not likely to materialize this year, the media outlet added. Since the conflict between Kiev and Moscow flared up almost two years ago, 1.1 million Ukrainians have fled to the country, according to the German Interior Ministry. Meanwhile, the flow of newcomers from other countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, and African nations, shows no sign of abating. In 2023, more than 350,000 people applied for asylum in Germany, the highest number since 2016, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) reported last month.

The German government estimates that approximately 10 million people would flee Ukraine if the country falls apart, Die Welt, citing anonymous security officials and a lawmaker, said in an article on Saturday. The vast majority of these people would head westward in hopes of reaching Germany, the media outlet claims. Roderich Kiesewetter, an MP from the opposition Christian Democratic Party, told reporters that European nations should pick up the slack as US President Joe Biden’s aid package remains deadlocked in Congress. “If we don’t change our strategy on support for Ukraine, the worst-case scenario of a massive exodus from Ukraine and a spread of the war to NATO states will be much more likely,” the lawmaker predicted. Kiesewetter went on to warn that in this case, “ten million refugees are a rather lowball assumption.” Last week, the governor of the German state of Hesse, Boris Rhein, announced that the federal government and all 16 states of the country had agreed to issue special debit cards to refugees, which are supposed to supersede cash payments during the course of the year.

According to the official, the cards will “prevent the possibility of transferring money from state subsidies to countries of origin, and thus combat… human-trafficking.” Pre-paid cards will apparently have limited functionality, with features such as free cash withdrawal and transfers to recipients inside and outside of Germany disabled. They will also not work outside of the country, or even a designated municipality within it. Last month, the German parliament passed legislation that facilitates the deportation of failed asylum seekers and grants additional powers to the police. The new rules considerably extend the custody period pending deportation, in order to prevent situations in which failed applicants simply abscond around the time they are supposed to be sent home.

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“..while Zaluzhny was respected by his troops and liked by the civilian population, Syrsky evokes the opposite reaction..”

• Zaluzhny’s Photo With Banderite a ‘Threat’ to Zelensky (Sp.)

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the top General for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, after weeks of speculation and conflicting reports. The weekend before, after media outlets reported on his imminent firing but before it became official, the Ukrainian commander of the 67th Mechanized Brigade Andriy Stempitsky posted an image of himself smiling next to Zaluzhny with a portrait of former Nazi Stepan Bandera and a red and black Banderaite flag. Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security analyst told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Friday that the image was an “explicit threat against Zelensky.” “We saw Zaluzhny pose over [the] last weekend for a photo with a commander of the Right Sector*, the Banderite fascist, neo-Nazi battalion that is now an official part of the military,” Sleboda recounted. “In front of his giant portrait of Stepan Bandera, the West Ukrainian genocidal Nazi collaborator […] and next to a red and black Banderite flag with the inscription ‘victory without negotiations.’ So, I saw that as a pretty explicit threat against Zelensky.”

Sleboda noted unconfirmed reports that the Ukrainian intelligence agencies were given orders to watch for soldiers leaving the front but also noted that any potential unrest depends largely on Zaluzhny’s next move. “Does he do anything to incite this? Does he maneuver behind the scenes with other political figures against Zelensky? Does he stay quiet and actually put the interest of the regime above his personal ego for the time being?” Sleboda asked. “I don’t know about that because he refused to resign and decided to make, obviously, a political issue out of this,” he concluded, referring to Zaluzhny’s reported refusal to resign. March 15, will be a date to watch, Sleboda said. March 15 is when Zelensky’s current presidential term should end but likely won’t because of a martial law declaration that has been in place in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special military operation, but Sleboda thinks forces in Ukraine may use that date to make a move against the president.


Zaluzhny with Ukrainian 67th Mechanized Brigade commander Andriy Stempitsky post with a metal in front of a portrait of Stepan Bandera.

“There may be political forces unhappy with Zelensky within the regime that will use that as the point to say that he is not a legitimate leader after that and seek to seize control,” Sleboda speculated. Sleboda also explained that he does not believe Zaluzhny’s dismissal was based on bad strategy but for personal reasons. “This was all personal,” Sleboda explained. “He made mistakes, there’s no question there but most […] on both sides, seem to regard Zaluzhny as more intelligent, more competent and more, shall we say, [an] out of the box thinker than [Zaluzhny’s replacement General Oleksandr] Syrsky.” Earlier in the interview, Sleboda explained that while Zaluzhny was respected by his troops and liked by the civilian population, Syrsky evokes the opposite reaction.

“He was the commander of the ground forces, he was responsible for the unsuccessful defenses of [Artemovsk] and […] Soledar,” Sleboda explained. “They call him General Butcher and General 200 (ed. note: ‘Cargo 200’ – military slang used in the Soviet and post-Soviet states referring to the transportation of the deceased soldiers) and neither one of those are favorable,” Sleboda continued. “It is in reference to his seemingly casual way of throwing away the lives of his own men.” Despite his Russian background, Syrsky was picked because of his loyalty to Zelensky, Sleboda explained. He also speculated that Syrsky would be more willing to commit reinforcements to Avdeyevka than Zaluzhny was, just like Syrsky did in the failed defense of Artemovsk. “This is evidently where we’re going, and General Butcher […] is going to be throwing more Kiev regime lives away,” he predicted.

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Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow.

• Russia Must Permanently Abandon Europe And Turn Fully To Asia (Karaganov)

At the end of the 2000s, with a group of young colleagues, we began to argue the merits and necessity of Russia’s “eastern pivot” (at the same time, current Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu – and his colleagues – were working in the same direction). The concepts and development focus of this challenge included the whole of Siberia and the Urals – a single historical, economic and human region. However, it turned out differently – pivot to Asia and its markets went administratively mainly through the Pacific Far East, and then the Arctic was added to it. The turn that began in the 2010s was successful, but only partially, largely because the Far East was artificially disconnected from the much more populous, industrialized and resource-rich eastern and western Siberia. It also continued to suffer from the “continental curse” – remoteness from markets.

Now, the new geostrategic situation urgently requires a return to the original idea – the eastward turn of all of Russia through the primary development of all of Siberia, including, of course, the Urals. In other words, we are talking about the “Siberization” of the whole country. Western Europe will be closed for many years and should never again become a first-class partner, while Asia is developing rapidly. The war provoked and unleashed by the West in Ukraine should not distract us from the movement towards the south and the east – where the center of human development is shifting. This new, but long foreseen, situation calls us to return to our “home.” A European journey of more than 300 years has given much, but long ago – a century ago, in reality – and has exhausted its usefulness.

Without this journey, initiated by Peter the Great, Russia would not have had many achievements. Foremost among them is the world’s greatest literature – the result of combining Russian culture, religion and morals with Western European culture. Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol, then Blok, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn – and other giants of the mind who have shaped our modern identity – would hardly have emerged without the “European injection.” During these three centuries, we have half-forgotten the eastern roots of our state and our people. The Mongols plundered, but they also promoted development. Finally, in opposition and cooperation with them, we learned from many elements of their statehood, which allowed us to build a powerful centralized state and continental thinking. From Genghis Khan’s empire we also seem to have inherited our cultural, national and religious openness. The Mongols did not impose their culture or their beliefs. Indeed, they were religiously open. That is why, in an effort to preserve Russia, Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky made an alliance with them.

Great Russia would not have come into being, and probably would not have survived on the Russian plain, besieged by rivals and enemies from the west and south, if our people had not moved en masse “behind the stone” (the Urals) “to meet the sun” from the 16th century onwards. Inexplicable, apart from the intervention of God’s will, is the speed of their impulse. The Cossacks reached the Great Ocean in six decades. The development of Siberia made the ancient Rus’, the Russian kingdom, into Great Russia. Even before it was proclaimed an empire, the resources of Siberia – first “soft gold,” then silver, gold, and other minerals – allowed us to create and equip a powerful army and navy. The caravans of the Northern Silk Road, carrying Chinese goods in exchange for furs to Russia and beyond, played an important role in this. There in Siberia, the Russians, competing and trading, began to work closely with the Central Asians, the ‘Bukharans’ as our people called them at the time.

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More protests to come.

• Farmers Bring Poland To Standstill (RT)

Traffic in cities and town across Poland was severely obstructed on Friday as farmers staged protests over what they consider to be unfair competition from cheap Ukrainian produce, as well as the EU’s green policies. Over the past few months, Polish agricultural workers have also repeatedly blocked the border with Ukraine. The month of January saw similar demonstrations in other EU nations, including Germany, France, and the Netherlands, over Brussels’ climate policies which have led to fuel price hikes. German farmers have been demanding that Chancellor Olaf Scholz reverse the proposed scrapping of a diesel fuel subsidy worth as much as €3,000 ($3,260) annually. The authorities in neighboring France withdrew plans to cut similar subsidies after farmers blocked a major highway near Paris last month.

Organized by the Solidarity trade union, Friday’s protest affected around 260 localities across Poland, with thousands of farmers blocking or slowing down traffic with tractors and other heavy machinery. They also blocked several border crossings with Ukraine. Several highways leading to the capital, Warsaw, were congested as a result of the demonstration, local police reported. In a statement released ahead of the protest last week, Solidarity said it was planning to set up road blockades until March 10. The trade union called out the Polish government for readily accepting the EU’s guidelines on the “import of agricultural produce and food products from Ukraine.” The protesters also called the position adopted by Brussels at the latest EU summit “unacceptable.”

Similar rallies were held across Poland in January. A separate protest by another group of farmers and truckers blocking a key border crossing with Ukraine saw Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government capitulate to the protesters’ demands, which included reinstating a permit system for Ukrainian truckers, adopting government subsidies for Polish corn, and a moratorium on tax hikes. Last Thursday, the European Commission proposed extending the suspension of customs duties on agricultural goods from Ukraine and Moldova through 2025. The measure was originally scheduled to expire this year. Thousands of farmers from across the bloc descended on Brussels ahead of that summit, throwing eggs, rocks, and fireworks at the EU Parliament building and setting huge piles of manure on fire.

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“The problem is Hur, not a President who not only appeared confused in the press conference but openly lied about various established facts…”

• “That is Not the Judgment of the Press” (Turley)

“That is not the judgment of the press.” Those words from President Joe Biden were a telling moment after a reporter noted that there is widespread concern that he is mentally diminished. Biden’s cranky response was overshadowed by his confusion on other points during the press conference, including mixing up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico. However, it captured the sense of license and expectation of the Biden White House that the press is supposed to toe the line, as it has for three years. In the disastrous press conference, CNN correspondent MJ Lee reminded Biden that he had urged Americans to “watch me” when he was confronted over his age: “Many [of the] American people have been watching, and they have expressed concerns about your age.” The President angrily responded: “That is your judgment!. That is your judgment! That is not the judgment of the press.”

The next day, many in the media came to Biden’s defense and attacked the Special Counsel report which detailed his “diminished faculties.” Others cleaned up the remark about the press. Biden clearly stated “That is your judgment! That is your judgment. That is not the judgment of the press.” NBC did not include the line in articles on the press conference despite showing it on the live coverage. Roll Call actually edited the President’s remarks to insert “for” in the key line: “That is not the judgment [for] the press.” That changed the line from questioning the right of the press to make such judgments to telling a reporter what the press view should be. Even if it was a Freudian slip, it was a telling slip. Other media inserted or suggested “public” rather than the press in the line. The obvious exasperation of the President reflects years of a passive, enabling media that shielded Biden from difficult questions on various scandals, including the corruption scandal.

What was striking, however, was the degree to which President Biden and his staff spent this week putting out clearly false statements. In an administration that has pushed for the censorship of citizens accused of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, the President openly lied about his conduct and the report. President Biden, for example, stated that the Special Counsel report found that he did not willfully retain material. It found the opposite . . . repeatedly. He stated that he did not disclose classified material to his ghostwriter. Special Counsel Hur found precisely the opposite. Biden stated that the material was not highly classified with “that red stuff…around the corners.” In fact, Hur found that the material was “highly sensitive,” including an Afghanistan-related memo from the National Security Adviser to President Barack Obama in 2009 marked “TOP SECRET/SCI” (Sensitive Compartmented Information).

Biden stated that all of the material was kept in locked or lockable filing cabinets. That was a lie. As the pictures vividly demonstrated, Hur found material in unlocked areas and virtually spilling out of torn boxes in his garage. What is notable is that Biden works almost entirely off teleprompters, reading statements clearly crafted by his staff. That would indicate that some of these comments were promulgated by staff. Even in the press conference on Friday, Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office ran into a skeptical reporter in the form of Jon Decker, the White House correspondent for Gray Television. Decker is the former head of the White House Correspondents Association and one of my former students. Decker is the gold standard for reporters and has always been objective, tough, and fair. His approach has not changed from the Trump to the Biden Administration.

Decker challenged Sam on coming to the podium to address the President’s statements and proceeding to make a false claim that this is the first Special Counsel to end his investigation without charges. So why would the White House risk looking like it is going full “Baghdad Bob” in denying readily observable facts? Because this is no real risk. The reason was evident the day after the report. While usually supportive outlets had to acknowledge the President’s false claims, media figures from MSNBC and CNN quickly fell into line and launched a full attack on Hur, often repeating identical words used by the White House about his observations being “gratuitous.” The problem is Hur, not a President who not only appeared confused in the press conference but openly lied about various established facts.

5 minutes

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“..who exactly had serially lied about Beau Biden’s demise, by claiming that he had died while on duty in Iraq, serving in the Delaware National Guard as a Judge Advocate? Joe Biden.”

• “Oh What a Tangled Web Biden Weaves, When He First Practices to Deceive” (VDH)

Joe Biden and his White House handlers continue to peddle misinformation if not lies about his removal of classified files. The worst is that Biden—supposedly so unlike Trump—came forward willingly as soon as he realized that he had unlawfully, but inadvertently, removed and possessed classified files. And thus he cooperated fully and promptly with federal authorities. The truth is far, far different. Biden removed files improperly both as a Senator and Vice President. He held some of them in his unlawful possession for perhaps at least 14 years without a word to authorities, dating back at least to his departure from the Senate on January 15, 2009 when he resigned to become Vice President—or if not longer over his some 36-year Senate career. In fact, in 2017 Biden was fully aware that he had wrongly removed these classified files. As Hur noted, there is a taped conversation on record between Biden and his ghostwriter to just that effect.

Biden, at home in Virginia, was recorded as remarking, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs”. And yet Biden apparently did nothing. He never came forward to any federal authorities for nearly the next five years. So given that knowledge, why did the attorneys belatedly disclose Biden’s possession of the files on November 2, 2022? Civic virtue? Altruism? Respect for the law? Hardly. Otherwise, Biden would have disclosed his unlawful possession at any time during either the intervening prior years when he was a private citizen or during the first 18 months of his presidency, when he knowingly still possessed classified files and still did nothing about it. In truth, Biden would likely never have come forward, save for one insurmountable problem: Merrick Garland had likely decided to appoint Jack Smith as a special prosecutor to investigate the Trump files that the FBI had swooped into Mar-a-Lago looking for 3 months earlier on August 8, 2022.

In other words, knowing that Smith or a generic special counsel would very quickly be appointed (Smith was sworn in a little over two weeks later, on November 18, 2022), suddenly Biden and Co. preempted that announcement, in fear that Biden had done virtually the same thing as Trump—albeit without presidential declassification power and for at least 14 years in possession of classified files. Had the attorneys and Biden not come forward, Trump and others would have asked whether Biden had not also removed files. So to get out in front of the formal announcement of the Smith appointment, they preempted, misleadingly and disingenuously, preening that civic virtue had prompted Biden’s “voluntary” disclosures and “cooperation”.

A final note: one of the more disturbing moments in Biden’s catastrophic press conference was his flare up at Hur’s revelation (“How dare he bring up that!”) that in formal interviews an enfeebled Biden had not remembered the general date of his son’s tragic death from a glioblastoma brain tumor on May 30th, 2015 at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC. Biden went on to vent at Hur. But Hur was simply documenting his analysis that Biden was severely cognitively impaired, and not as VP Kamala Harris claimed, gratuitously smearing Biden. But who exactly had serially lied about Beau Biden’s demise, by claiming that he had died while on duty in Iraq, serving in the Delaware National Guard as a Judge Advocate? Joe Biden.

Mayorkas

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“Trump has a curious fortune in critics who seem over time to combust in rather spectacular fashion..”

• Could Trump Win By Simple Attrition Rather than Vindication? (Turley)

While Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of success is showing up,” former president Donald Trump proved this week that the same could be said about “just sticking around.” Trump had one of the best weeks as cases and critics seemed to implode from the disqualification effort in Washington to the scandal in Georgia. Yet, Trump is not out of the woods and is facing significant threats in what is becoming a war of attrition. In Washington, the Supreme Court gave a chilly reception to the disqualification effort that bordered on the glacial. While law professors like Harvard’s Laurence Tribe insisted that the basis for barring Trump from office under the 14th Amendment was “unassailable,” the justices seemed utterly unconvinced and there is the possibility that the entire effort could now be defeated unanimously. Even liberal justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson called the effort anti-democratic.

In Georgia, the case against Trump is floundering as allegations mount against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her intimate relationship with her subordinate special prosecutor Nathan J. Wade. This week, a court filing alleged that Willis and Wade filed false claims in court on when their relationship began. The two prosecutors have insisted that they only became intimate after Willis hired Wade. Wade’s former lawyer has reportedly come forward to contest that claim. That allegation, if true, could make the continuation of Willis and Wade in the case untenable. Various defendants being prosecuted in Georgia are accused of false statements and filings in court. Of course, the removal of Willis and Wade will not necessarily end the case, but it will present logistical and optical problems for the office. There are also calls for the removal of Alvin Bragg in New York, who is accused of being lax on crime overall despite his determined effort to convict Trump.

Trump has a curious fortune in critics who seem over time to combust in rather spectacular fashion. Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, went to jail and lost his law license. At the Justice Department, various FBI officials from the Russian investigation were accused of wrongdoing and forced out of the Justice Department. That included James Comey who was found to have removed FBI material after Trump fired him and gave it to a friend who leaked it to the press. Another official pleaded guilty to criminal conduct associated with the Russian investigation. In politics, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who attacked Trump for his treatment of women, was forced out of office for sexual harassment. Michael Avenatti was sentenced to a long prison term for fraud and other crimes. Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) who voted for Trump to be convicted in the Senate is now under indictment for corruption.

Even in the arts, Trump critics have fallen from great heights. Comedian Kathy Griffin has not only become persona non grata after her gory depiction of a beheaded Trump but she is now beseeching people to buy tickets for a languishing come-back tour. Alec Baldwin, who scathingly played Trump, has been criminally charged after shooting a movie crew member. Of course, it is fair to note that some of Trump’s allies have fared equally badly, including those convicted or facing trial such as Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others. Yet, there is no question that time has worked in Trump’s favor in fulfilling certain narratives. He has accused the Democrats of trying to rig elections. While debunking claims in 2020, Democrats like Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold bulldozed any high ground by trying to prevent citizens from voting for Trump as he leads in the polls.

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“Global debt has surged by $100 trillion from a decade ago and hit a record of $307.4 trillion last September..”

• Soaring Debt Pushing Wealthy Nations To ‘Fiscal Death’ – Economist (RT)

Major economies that fail to address their mounting debt issues will die a “fiscal death,” the head of investment and wealth advisory Laffer Tengler Investments, Arthur Laffer, has warned. In an interview with CNBC this week, he predicted a “decade of debt,” adding that the borrowing crisis has embraced both developed and emerging countries, and it is not going to “end well.” Global debt has surged by $100 trillion from a decade ago and hit a record of $307.4 trillion last September, amid the biggest surge in global interest rates in 40 years, according to the economist. Wealthy countries such as the US, UK, France, and Japan account for more than 80% of that increase due to their uncontrolled accumulation of debt.

China, India, and Brazil saw the most pronounced growth of borrowings among emerging markets. “I would expect that some of the bigger countries that don’t address their debt issues will die a slow fiscal death,” Laffer said, adding that some emerging economies “could quite conceivably go bankrupt.” While low-income countries are at high risk of debt distress, repaying debt would be particularly problematic for high-income countries due to an aging population and a lack of workforce, the economist warned. The most recent report by the Institute of International Finance shows that the share of debt has hit a staggering 336% of global GDP compared to an average debt-to-GDP ratio of 110% in 2012 for advanced economies, and 35% for emerging markets.

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“If Putin and Xi and the Iranians think that they can sit out the conflict, they are mistaken. You cannot sit out a conflict that is directed at you.”

• Peaceful Protests Are a Waste of Time and Energy (Paul Craig Roberts)

Will protesters ever learn that peaceful protests do not work when governments care not what people think and represent private agendas and not the people? The protests that work are the violent ones by Black Lives Matter and Antifa. It appears that one-tenth of a million Gazans have already been killed or maimed by the American-financed and militarily-supplied Israeli intended genocide of the remnants of the Palestinian population, a people who have been evicted from their lands and villages bit by bit since 1947. This time the violence is massive, and only the Houthis, a poor population in Yemen that survived years of Washington-inspired attacks from Saudi Arabia, has lifted a hand to help the Palestinians. The “civilized West” responded to the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians by cancelling their contributions to the UN agency that provides Palestinians with humanitarian aid.

Consequently, now 1,000,000 Palestinians are facing starvation as Israel has blocked food deliveries and medicines, knocked out the water supply, hospitals, sanitation, and intends to drive any surviving Palestinians into Egypt. So what do we hear from the governments of the “great moral West”? We hear about Israel’s right of “self-defense.” The Western governments, immoral to the hilt and all enthralled to Israel, have redefined genocide as self-defense. The West’s citizens are so successfully propagandized by Israeli disinformation over decades and generations that the subservience of Western “democracies” to Israel goes unremarked among the small part of the world that is considered to be the West. But not in the rest of the world. The United States and Israel have achieved the status of pariah states, the agents of Satan.

Why, despite this realization, does the rest of the world sit watching the destruction of a people, as Romans watched for entertainment lions devouring Christians in the Colosseum? Russia, China, Iran, and the rest with the exception of South Africa, which took Israel to the International Court of Justice, have not lifted a finger to help the Palestinians. Washington claims to protest but keeps sending Israel the weapons. This despite the fact that the governments of Russia, China, and Iran know that the real target is them. Israel and the neoconservatives intend the destruction of Iran, which will release “jihadists” into the Russian Federation and deprive China of oil. It is Japan in the 1930s all over again, and yet the targeted countries do nothing. If Putin and Xi and the Iranians think that they can sit out the conflict, they are mistaken. You cannot sit out a conflict that is directed at you.

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“The widespread and persistent use of Midazolam in UK suggests a possible policy of systemic euthanasia.”

• The Crime Of The Century: Midazolam Murders – Euthanizing The Elderly (Kelly)

If the data is correct, the only conclusion is that tens of thousands of elderly English were murdered with an injection of the end of life drug Midazolam. These deaths were then falsely blamed on Covid, which was the basis of the public fear campaigns used to justify the lockdowns and mass mandated injections of the public (including children) with an experimental medical intervention that had zero long term safety data. And along the way, a small group pushing the need for mass mandated injections made billions.

https://researchgate.net/publication/377266988_Excess_Deaths_in_the_United_Kingdom_Midazolam_and_Euthanasia_in_the_COVID-19_Pandemic

This paper shows that the UK spike in deaths, wrongly attributed to COVID-19 in April 2020, was not due to SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was largely absent, but was due to the widespread use of Midazolam injections which were statistically very highly correlated (coefficient over 90 percent) with excess deaths in all regions of England during 2020. The widespread and persistent use of Midazolam in UK suggests a possible policy of systemic euthanasia.

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SolarActivity

 

 

RFK vaccines

 

 

Biolabs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756606702634348580

 

 

 

 

Model X

 

 

CO2

 

 

Fish
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756426580446834935

 

 

 

 

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